Space Downtime
by Allen Huffman, Staff Writer

March 2, 2001

A few years ago, Disneyland allowed people to ride Space Mountain with the work lights on. This was at one of the last Annual Passholder parties Disneyland offered which is a shame. Today it seems very unlikely many of us will ever have a chance to see any of the attractions "behind the scenes" without getting a job at The Happies Place on Earth™.

During my recent Disneyland visit I had gotten almost to the main queue are for Space Mountain when it went down. Drats, I thought. It seems rides always break down before I am about to get on. (Come to think of it, Peter Pan did the same thing the next day.) A few minutes into the "wait and see if it is going to start up again" process the work lights were turned on and I was able to capture a few shots of what the Mountain looks like when it is not floating in deep space. There are also a few QuickTime movies for you to view which let you see and hear various stages of the reset process, including cast members walking up to a vehicle so it can be released back to the loading area. Clicking on the smaller images will bring up the full size version. Enjoy!

QuickTime videos of the Disneyland Space Mountain reset proceedure:

• Trapped in Space #1 (336K) - a rocket is sent home
• Trapped in Space #2 (320K) - another rocket is sent home
• Trapped in Space #3 (932K) - CMs to the rescue
• Trapped in Space #4 (456K) - operations resume

DisneyFans.com has dozens of hours of digital video from Disneyland, Disney's California Adventure and the Walt Disney World parks. Video clips and stills will be making their way to this site in coming months, so please bookmark this site and check back! -- Allen