Thursday, June 28, 2007

Close Encounters!

I always get nervous when flying saucers are around. You'd think that beings from another galaxy would at least have the courtesy to warm up those metal probes. Is that too much to ask?

Disneyland's Flying Saucers were one year old at the time this picture was taken...no probing going on here (as far as I know). Some of the astro-nuts are smiling, others are concentrating on making the thing go where they want (they were notoriously tricky to control). Personally, I'd want to glide around and avoid crashing into the other guests. But this was a fancy version of bumper cars, after all...the more sadistic you were, the more fun you had, I suppose.


Music is so important on most Disneyland attractions; does anybody know if there was music that played during this ride? Maybe a nice Buddy Baker theme for Matterhorn1959?

8 comments:

Daveland said...

Excellent slide, Major - that has got to be one of the best Saucer photos I have seen!

Anonymous said...

No music that I can remember.

But the noise of the giant fans under the flight table made a far more dramatic background...

On the other hand, perhaps there WAS music... but who could HEAR it?!

Matterhorn1959 said...

Great image. I think no music as I have not heard of any on any park sounds compilation, but it would have been cool to have the theme from the Twilight Zone playing or maybe the novelty song Flying Saucer playing!

Chris Merritt said...

I would guess no on the music - I've never seen any existance of it at work...

Stub Winged Bilge Rat said...

I did not realize that you could have a double rider on the Flying Saucers. Thanks for this great pic! I hope the lady in the black and white outfit is wearing bloomers...or maybe it is Sharon Stone's mother.

Anonymous said...

For Bilge Rat, not only could you ride double in the Saucers, but if you were too little, they usually insisted on it. The Saucers required a minimum weight to navigate properly. For the first few years, I had to ride double with my little brother--meaning we had to "coordinate" shifting our weight, which wasn't always successful. I was very glad when I finally grew enough to ride solo!

Anonymous said...

What a fun ride that was. I always thought the design of the one side exiting and loading while the other side played was a great idea.

Connie Moreno said...

I love Saucer shots! Someday I'm going to find myself in one of these photos!