A Few Changes

So, you might notice that there’s a new layout here at The California Chronicles. How do you like it compared to the last one? I like that you can actually see the background picture, but maybe that’s just me. Give me some feedback on the layout if you can, ‘cause I’m still trying to find a look that works.

Anyway, hopefully you’ve noticed that I missed an update this week. Wednesday’s vlog post didn’t make it online…in fact, Wednesday’s vlog post didn’t even get recorded. To be honest, per usual, I just got too ambitious in my planning and simply ran out of time…though I’m definitely composing the tools to put together a pretty awesome post for this Wednesday. I really am serious about keeping this regular and keeping you all updated, so watch for it next week. From here on forward, just watch for posts here on Sundays and Wednesdays, though I may put up other stuff if I have the time or if something particularly awesome happens. If I happen to do anything else that’s worth checking out, I’ll post a link here.

So, the week at Nemo has been pretty crazy, actually. The ride actually went down for an hour on Friday, and today all sorts of nutty stuff happened. I’ll start with a quick run-down of how the ride works so I can explain Friday’s situation:

Finding Nemo’s Submarine Voyage is a series of submarines that run in sequence through “the Great Barrier Reef,” taking you on a under-sea exploration with Nemo, Marlin, Dory, and tons of the other Finding Nemo peeps (well, they’re not “peeps,” they’re fish…but you get it.) This video does a great job of explaining the background and how it all works:



Fascinating, isn’t it? Honestly, seeing the animation techniques from inside the sub is pretty intense, and the coral reef and whatnot outside in the lagoon look really great. But one of the subs froze up out in the lagoon on Friday right in the middle of everything! It’s a bit of a complicated story to explain why (a story I’m not sure if I can tell, so I’m erring on the side of caution), but the summary is that the sub’s battery died. The place that it died in was a critical point in the ride’s travel track, so we had to shut the whole thing down and evacuate people from inside the ride. Then, since the sub was stranded in the lagoon with no power, maintenance workers had to throw a rope to the submarine and then pull it in, Greek-style. That’s right; 4 men pulled a 92,000 lb sub into its dock…it was awesome to watch. I really wanted to record it to show all of you, but I was working at the time…figured my supervisors would frown on me whipping out my camera. And there were LOTS of supervisors there.

Anyway, today was the start of what looks to be a three-day heat wave. I’m used to Midwestern Septembers where the weather starts to get really chilly right near the end of the month, but apparently it doesn’t get cold out here until mid-October. We were up in the 90s today, and apparently we could reach 100 by Monday. TERRIBLE. I swear that the heat has an odd effect on guests and staff members…people were a little more short-tempered all day, but I guess that happens when you stand in line for 45 minutes to ride a submarine. Two of our subs went down unexpectedly today, so that made things a little worse than usual. But the Nemo crew made it work, and everything came out alright!

Well, I’m going to go ahead and wrap this entry up for the day. Just so you know, Wednesday is Q&A Day; I’ll use the video to go through the comments I’ve received and answer all the questions I’ve gotten. Seriously, comment it up! I love comments! In the meantime, let me wrap up with Video Blog 3 (unposted content!) This is a shot of a me and a couple of my friends standing outside of the Tiki Room, Disneyland’s animatronic parrot show. I had video of the actual show, but I had to delete it to make room for other vids I was taking…in the meantime, check out the outside of the Tiki Room! And the Dole Whip….