A Perfect Disney Day (Part 2 of 3) Quiz

Answer: Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

Added to a struggling Disney California Adventure park in 2004, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is one of the most popular rides across all incarnations of the Disney parks as well as a personal favorite of mine. In spite of its popularity, it usually manages quite short standby wait times due to an elaborate ride system that keeps all three vertical lift/drop shafts in constant operation. Each shaft contains two cars, one of which is loading and the other is in the actual ride sequence.

The loading docks are on two different levels and set away from the actual shaft, so the ride begins with a backwards move into the actual shaft where the seat assembly attaches to the main track.

A nice touch on this ride (as well as on several other "spooky" rides throughout the Disney parks) is that the standby wait indicator shows 13 minutes instead of the usual 10 or 15 whenever the actual wait is under 20.

Answer: Flik's Flyers

A Bug's Land is home to four rides, mostly aimed at a younger audience. The Chew Chew Train is a slow food-themed ride enhanced with appropriate scents, the Buggies are kid-friendly bumper cars, the Ladybug Boogie is a teacup style ride using an 8-shaped main track instead of the standard assembly with a large disk carrying multiple smaller disks and finally, Filk's Flyers is a hanging balloon ride with gondolas rising about six feet at the highest point.

Answer: Redwood Creek Challenge Trail

Based around the characters of Brother Bear, the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail is built over and around a playground area for kids aged six to twelve with the main attraction being a three-dimensional network of stairs and rope bridges. Many of these bridges have a netting floor as pictured and they pass over each other in layers so that on the upper floors, visitors actually see the people below them.

The attraction also has some educational value in the form of information about various North American animals with the tracks of those animals actually embedded in the lower-level concrete walkways.

Answer: Adventureland/New Orleans Square

The Disneyland Railroad (like its cousins in Orlando and Paris) goes around the entire Magic Kingdom in a clockwise direction, allowing foot-sore visitors an alternative to walking. In Disneyland, the train stops at Main Street, New Orleans Square (accessing Adventureland and, with a short walk, Frontierland), Mickey's Toontown and Tomorrowland. Fantasyland is accessible from both of the latter two stations at about equal distances.

Interestingly, there are two different types of train on the track - one has standard forward-facing seats while the other has the seats facing right, towards the park itself. If you want to experience the Grand Canyon diorama between Tomorrowland and Main Street, make sure you get on the latter style for the best view!

Answer: Indiana Jones

Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye is a fast-paced dark ride using Enhanced Motion Vehicles - cars that have the capacity to tilt forward, backwards and to the side to enhance the effect of accelerations, sudden stops and turns. The ride has three slightly dissimilar storylines picked at random, depending on which door is chosen in the Chamber of Destiny.

While it does seem that the track diverges into three different paths there, this is not actually the case. Instead, the chamber's walls and facades are rotated into place to match the simulate this effect.

The car reaches the chamber in a sharp, long right turn so it does not actually become apparent that it always turns the same angle instead of diverging. After the temple's wish is granted, the visitors accidentally trigger a curse, leading to a demonic wrath being unleashed upon them with many scenes actually resembling actual events in the Indiana Jones movies (in particular the rock ball scene and several elements from the mine car chase).

Answer: Jungle Cruise

Jungle Cruise is a relaxing riverboat ride with some live narration provided by your boat's captain (of quite varying talent - some of the cast members are great in this role, others could definitely employ a bit more actual acting of the emotions, humor and surprises).

It was also one of Disneyland's opening day rides and the audio-animatronics definitely have a certain retro flair, but nonetheless, the ride still captures classic, timeless Disney magic through simple but surprising effects. The flora and fauna seen alongside the ride actually reflect three different continents - East Asia, Africa and finally South America.

Answer: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

At 50 feet peak height and a maximum speed of 30 mph, Big Thunder Mountain is a rather small roller coaster, but it does make up for these numbers in sharp turns and intelligent track layout. In addition, it is essentially three coasters in one since it has three separate but intertwining segments each having its own traditional chain lift hill.

It picks up on the traditional wild west theme of a ghost town, in this case a mining town with quite a lot of forgotten explosives. The ride operates with up to six trains of 45 people and at a duration of over three minutes, it is one of the longest coaster rides available at the resort.

Answer: Yo-ho, yo-ho

Being so closely associated with the movie business, Disneyland contains many movie-themed attractions, but "Pirates of the Caribbean" went the opposite way. Conceived in the late 1960s as a more thrilling version of the river ride type introduced with "It's a Small World", this ride has become an instant hit and has been replicated in all of the Disney resorts except Hong Kong.

The California version however is still the longest, lasting over a quarter hour with two drops. The theme song "Yo-ho (A Pirate's Life For Me)" is one of the few ride tunes that were actually written for the park instead of having been adapted from a Disney intellectual property.

The attraction's popularity has proven so constant that Disney released a motion picture based on the same theme in 2003 - "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" (which has since then spawned several sequels), retrofitting some appearances of Jack Sparrow into the attraction as well.

Answer: The Haunted Mansion

Keeping in line with the family-oriented, magical enchantment of the Disney franchise, the Haunted Mansion is hardly a place of terror and frights, but a ghost-themed marvel of subtle humor. From the queue area sporting gravestones with rather interesting names over the "lift" chamber whose wall portraits elongate to uncover the initially dignified characters in less than grand poses and quite nasty predicaments to the actual ride passing the 999 happy haunts, the Haunted Mansion is filled with a plethora of subtle details that allows visitors to discover something new every ride.

Originally planned from the very beginning as a walk-through attraction, the building was finally begun in 1962 and stood by 1963. However, there was no interior yet and in 1966, the original concept was revised to the gondola-type ride that finally opened in 1969. Like "Pirates of the Caribbean", this ride has spawned a motion picture of the same title, also released in 2003, starring Eddie Murphy.

Answer: Tigger

Situated in the small area called "Critter Country", "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" is a relatively new dark ride that replaced the Country Bear Jamboree, a musical revue show with animatronic actors, in 2003. It is a typical Disney dark ride that, more than others, emulates the comic book style of its characters.

In spite of the success of the attractions of the same name in the other Disney parks, this ride, situated between and thus somewhat competing with four top level attractions (Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, Pirates and the Haunted Mansion), does usually not attract many visitors and usually has a very short wait even during the busiest times of the afternoon.