A Bon Voyage

With a surge of bubbles, a chapter of Southern California history closed Tuesday night as the 39-year-old Disneyland submarines took their last voyage around the turquoise Tomorrowland lagoon, their replacement still a question mark.

Crowds lined up at the vintage 1959 attraction--one of the original E-ticket rides christened along with the Monorail and the Matterhorn--and patiently waited up to 90 minutes for one last ride on the yellow submarines, which take passengers to and from the polar ice cap in eight minutes.

It was a wistful farewell for many.

“I remember when the mermaids at the ride were real,” Dorothy Shader of Long Beach recalled fondly, her four children tagging along. “I thought it would be a great job for my daughter, Monica. . . . She’s less shy than I was.”

Monica, 11, had to agree. Of course, she added, “any job here would be good, but being a mermaid would be really good.”

Thirty-two Disneyland buffs who know each other mostly from the Internet took their final Submarine Voyage together Monday night, some of them flying in for the experience. Their common link: a Web site for Disney enthusiasts.

“We filled a whole sub,” Al Lutz, founder of the Web site and an oft-quoted source on all-matters Disney, said Tuesday. He said others have previously flown from Chicago, Missouri and Florida to take a last ride.

“It was great. We all cheered, applauded the cast member. It was a hoot. . . . It was a lot of jubilant cheering, a lot of the people recited the dialogue along with it,” he said.

Guest surveys, Disneyland officials said, indicate that the public wants a more thrilling ride than rumbling around a giant tank with fake fish bobbing in place and a humongous sea serpent with a silly smile at the end of the voyage.

But the nostalgic would beg to differ.

“I’ve heard it over and over,” said one ride operator in a sailor outfit as the Triton submarine returned to dock Tuesday afternoon. “People grew up with the ride and still have childhood memories. . . . I think the ride operators, the people who work here, will maybe miss it the most.”

And indeed, Disneyland “cast” got the absolute last undersea voyages Tuesday night for two hours after the park closed at 9 p.m.

“The park will be closed at that point,” said Disneyland spokesman John McClintock. “Then at 11 o’clock it will shuffle off. The subs were decommissioned in a ceremony at 7 a.m. We had a representative of the Navy, Commodore Robert Thomas, who said he’d grown up in Tustin and rode subs as a kid. . . . There is no formal decommissioning ceremony for the Navy, but Thomas said usually there is a ceremony with the lowering of a banner.”

That was performed aboard the Nautilus by longtime park employee Manny Mendoza, who worked in the Submarine Voyage back when it opened in 1959. Then the Nautilus made a circuit of the lagoon and the banner was presented to Donald Duck in his sailor suit. At that point, park workers had the opportunity to take a ride before the park opened.

Dreamed up by founder Walt Disney, the Submarine Voyage debuted June 6, 1959, its eight vessels christened by U.S. Navy brass. Construction of the blue bay and 38-seat subs was--like the original park--overseen by retired Adm. Joseph Fowler. The original fleet was gray and modeled after the Navy’s 1950s-era nuclear subs. Sometime in the 1980s the vessels were painted yellow and deemed underwater research labs. But the submarines park guests rode Tuesday are the originals.

About 2 p.m., the mother-daughter team of Pearl Cass and Pam Dongerkoffler of Pinole, Calif., took one last round-trip journey to the North Pole. Cass was taking her first and last voyage; her daughter had been on the ride several years ago, and remembers it decades ago when the mermaids were live.

“I remember,” she said with a sigh, “when everything was more real.”

In those days--starting in the summer of 1965--the finned water sprites sunbathed on the lagoon rocks four hours daily, primping in oversized mirrors and dragging jumbo combs through their hair. They waved at passengers. They occasionally swam around and waved through the portholes underwater. For little kids, it was like seeing Submarine Barbie. It was a job for which Disneyland held auditions at the nearby hotel.

Alas, the water that is so clear got that way with a special mix of chemicals that was no friend of human hair, and overzealous men on occasion dove into the lagoon to answer “their siren song,” in the words of “Disneyland: The Nickel Tour.” The live mermaids were decommissioned in the summer of 1967.

On Tuesday, the ride was showing its age: terra cotta patches and a ladder were visible from some portholes. Long stretches of darkness or murky water persisted, though the mermaids were visible as was the volcano conjured up with red lights and bubbles. And, in the words of the submarine captain, “Great Scot! It’s a sea serpent!”

“That was my favorite part,” Dongerkoffler said, adding that she was glad someone had mentioned Tuesday being the submarine ride’s last hurrah. “It’s kind of sad.”

Vincenta Stahmer and her daughter, Jessica, 6, of Duarte, waded into the Submarine Voyage’s snaking line of camcorder-equipped adults and children wearing “Little Mermaid” T-shirts.

Jessica had been on the ride before, she said, demonstrating her knowledge with wiggling fingers beside her face in imitation of the goofy sea serpent that ends the ride. In comparing “The Little Mermaid” Disney movie of her generation with the submarine ride of her mother’s, she wisely concluded: “Both are underwater.”

As with most adults versus children, her mother was more sentimental about this era of Disneyland ending. “We came special today,” Stahmer said, “because we knew this was it.”