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Mike Bronstein
remembers… |
This was one of my favorite rides—it was just so well done. Adventures thru Inner Space was where Star Tours is now; a piece of this ride was placed in Star Tours as a tribute to the ride. As the star speeder mistakenly careens left into the hanger bay, if you look up as the speeder drops you can see “The Mighty Microscope” in the corner. This piece of machinery was the first part of ATIS. You walked into the cue area and saw “Doom Buggies”; well, at least that’s what they looked like before the Haunted Mansion had them; but these were blue in color and like the “buggies,” they moved continuously. Guest stepped onto a moving walkway and into the car, then the unit closed and moved in a line up and into a giant opening of the microscope. From the outside area of the queue and the entrance, you watched people move into the microscope and shrink down to miniscule size. They used a glassed-in area that lined up with small cars of people in them that moved at the same speed as the real cars...giving the impression that you were going to be one of those small people—great effect!! Then the announcer talked about how you were going to shrink down and view an ice crystal...and then the atoms that made up the crystal...hydrogen and oxygen atoms all buzzing along in rows. Then the atom started to melt and the atoms started to scatter around instead of the precise rows in the crystal. At the end of the ride was the famous “eye” that was watching you (supposedly from the control area).
Naturally this was a great ride during Grand Night—all these kids wanted a dark place to make out, but the Disney people would sometimes play games with them. As with all Disney dark rides, there are cameras inside the ride areas…so they can watch and see to make sure everything is ok. On one specific grad night, a couple asked a cast member how long the ride was. He told them it was 10 minutes or something of the sort…the ride was only 3-5...so off the couple went. As the crew was watching the kids take their clothes off, the rest of the cast waited at the end the of the ride where the car came out. As the car jumped into the lighted area, the half-naked kids jumped around trying to put their clothes back on as the cast members started to applaud and dole out cat calls.
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