Mickey Has Fast Company in Andretti on Rocket Rods

Mario, meet Mickey. Mickey, Mario.

The one would be Mr. Andretti, the famous race car driver. The other is Mr. Mouse, the famous leader of Team Rodent. And both helped start Walt Disney Co.’s publicity engines Thursday as Disneyland revved up its renovated Tomorrowland.

Andretti and Mickey were drafted to open Rocket Rods, a wheelie-popping ride replacing the comically outdated People Mover. The Mover crew, shrugging off the threat of polyester poisoning from “futuristic” stretch suits, used to seat visitors in golf-cart knockoffs that creaked around a mile-long course in 16 minutes. Rocket Rods burns up the same route in less than three minutes.

After a lengthy delay while Andretti struggled to get his seat belt on, he and the Mouse shot off in a spray of sparks. The crew, like other Disneyland workers, now wears loose-fitting cotton duds.

Also on hand was Disney boss Michael Eisner, who was asked what he especially wanted changed at what had become known as Yesterdayland. “As a type A person,” Eisner said, “I wanted something faster than the People Mover.”

Another new draw is the 3-D film “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience,” which was a hit at Disney’s Epcot park in Florida. There’s Innoventions, which previews cutting-edge consumer products--and a lot of updated older attractions, such as new audio effects on the Space Mountain ride.

“It’s mainly a huge paint job,” grumbles longtime Disneyland observer Al Lutz, who operates an online site for devotees of the theme park.

Tomorrowland, outdated no longer, reopens to the public today.

Sandy Mountain Is All Site Can Bear for Now

Meanwhile, check out that large mountain-like structure emerging from the former Disneyland parking lot where the company is building its latest theme park, Disney’s California Adventure. In reality it’s, well, a large mountain-like structure.

It is going up at the site of a prominent attraction at the new park: Grizzly Mountain, a white-water rafting simulation. But the current mountain is not the Grizzly Mountain, Disneyland spokesman Bill Ross says.

It turns out that an eight-acre mountain weighs so much that, given the loose sandy soil beneath the Disney site, it could split apart the buried 36- and 42-inch pipes carrying water for the ride.

It also turns out that the cheapest way to handle the problem is to build a mock mountain, the shape and size of the real one, to stabilize the soil by squashing it down, said Alan Rose, Disney’s construction manager for the site.

So that’s what is being done, using sand excavated from other areas at the upcoming theme park. When the mountain is complete, and the soil beneath it fully compacted, it will be scraped away, pipes and other infrastructure installed in the ground, and the real Grizzly Mountain then constructed on top, Rose said.

Just don’t expect it to come capped with faux snow like the mountain across the way at Disneyland. A conceptual drawing of the new park in Anaheim shows the peak shaped like the head of a snarling bear. California’s mascot, after all, is the grizzly, even though they have long since been killed off in the state.