It's Andy Fish!

Let me start this by saying Veronica will not lie to me to get me on a ride– she knows I like wooden roller coaster type rides, I would love it if someone opened up a genuine Spook House type of ride– but loopity loop coasters and stuff like that? Nope not for me.

Last year she lured me onto GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY ™ at Epcot becuase she told me it was “just” a roller coaster– like Space Mountain– which I’d been on many times over. Well, it’s not like Space Mountain at all, it exists in a car that is not secured to anything so it whips around and twists and turns while hurling you up down and over treacherous tracks with strobe lights and music blasting at you. I’ve never thrown up on a ride but man did I come close on this one– honest to god, one more click– thats ten seconds– and my stomach contents would have shot into the poor folks on the ride as my head was whipped around from side to side.

That was on my mind with this ride.

After getting off, Veronica, Gina and Caitlin all told us it wasn’t that bad– it was a great ride, so great in fact that they would go on again if we changed our minds. Veronica thinks GUARDIANS is a great ride. This was on my mind.

We wandered around for a while, I may or may not have eaten something that settled that awful omelette in my stomach and I decided what the hell, I’d give the ride a shot– I do like Monsters after all– and so far the only actual monsters appeared to be on the ride. Son’s #2 and #3 hesitantly agreed to come along– or maybe they were excited — I don’t remember all that well.

We did plan a joke that we would say we were bailing once we got to the same spot in the waiting line, but we didn’t sell it. We walked into the room where the ride was and it had that moving sidewalk thing which does speed up the loading process but doesn’t really let you think through that car that is sitting in front of you. It’s not a car, it’s more like a half a bucket seat from a 1973 Chevy Vega combined with those egg chairs that were equally popular at the time. The padded bar is very thick and it lowers into place without securing. You can not see the person next to you, no head whipping on this ride, it was held pretty securely to the back of the seat.

I felt like the bar holding me in was a little too snug– my claustrophobia was edging in. Then the ride started and very soon I was thinking the bar wasn’t tight enough.

The ride quickly whips from one scene to the next, and I’d love to see a diagram of the ride because some of the exhibits are right in front of you, some are far above you, and the ride whips back so that your head is below your feet so you can see the full Hunchback hanging in that bell, and then it flips forward so you are now 180 degrees staring straight down at the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Then you’re whipped to your right and you see the Wolfman, then whipped to the left to see Dracula’s brides, then flipped back again because there’s the Wolfman again– you get the idea.

I knew from the introduction that Dracula was the end of the ride, so you can imagine that I was on the happy side when The Count was revealed. The ride came to a stop and you dizzily stumble off onto the moving sidewalk.

The effects are amazing– the animatronics are top notch, the whipping around is the least fun and god forbid you’re flipped on your back or hanging on your chest when the inevitable ride break down occurs.

It won’t effect me because while I’m glad I did it– I won’t be jumping on it anytime in the future. I like simple rides and that’s not going to change.

More next time.