Magical May: Space Mountain

My favorite – like my all-time favorite of all time – ride is Space Mountain. I love outer space and I love Disneyland and I love rides so naturally I LOVE SPACE MOUNTAIN. I could honestly spend an entire day going on it over and over and over and over again. and one of the best parts is racing out of the ride to see the picture snapped at the end.

When I lived in California, I would trek down to Anaheim and use my annual pass to get dinner and people watch, or grab coffee and enjoy the fireworks. But I would usually always make sure to take a ride on Space Mountain and photobomb other people’s ride pictures. Because what else would you do as a single rider on Space Mountain?

I have since discovered the joy of riding with my friends.

Okay but onto some details, right??

• At its maximum speed, the ride is only going 30.3 miles per hour. It depends on the weight of the car.
• To help make it seem like it’s going faster, there are fans on the walls constantly blowing air.
• Space mountain accommodates 2,000 people each hour.
• After seeing the potential for thrill rides at Disneyland following the success of the matterhorn bobsleds, Walt Disney began plans to build Space Mountain, but his death put the project on hold indefinitely. It instead opened at Walt Disney World and was later brought over to Disneyland.
• The ride was originally sponsored by RCA but was later sponsored by FedEx from 1993-2005, but it is no longer sponsored by anyone.
• When Space Mountain was completely refurbished in 2003, they cut a hold in the back and took the whole coaster out to replace it with a new one.
• At the reopening on July 15th, 2005 Neil Armstrong was the guest speaker.
• The cast members need to load and launch each rocket in 20 seconds. When people take a long time to load, it eventually causes the ride to shut down.

I’m not a huge fan of Walt Disney World, but I’d be interested to see how their Space Mountain compares to Disneyland’s. I can’t imagine anything topping it.