How awesome dudes have a good time

Ol’ Disneyland started out with everyone having a good time:

We discovered the Single Rider lines at Indiana Jones and Splash Mountain basically allowed you to fast pass the people in the fast pass line! It’s truly the ultimate Disneyland Pro Tip because ostensibly, single riders get separated, and since everyone at Disneyland is there with grampa and three toddlers (all four would get scared if they were on a ride by themselves), nobody separates.

We got on Indiana Jones in about ten minutes, to the whiny chorus of children in the regular line asking their dads “How come those guys get to go ahead of us?” and a flummoxed parent unsure of themselves, and wondering that exact same thing. When we got to the front we rejoined the regular folks, so we were basically indistinguishable from someone who legitimately waited in line for an hour by the ride ops. We went the honorable route, but the dude was like “Oh you have five single riders? Ok all of you get on this jeep.”

The highlight of the day was at Splash Mountain (the only other ride to offer the single rider service). As we waited moments away from boarding, a log full of sorority chicks with Mickey ears pulled in. They were probably slightly buzzed, and one of them shouted “Turn baaaack! It’s not worrrth it!” thinking she was hot shit. I leaned over and said, very concerned, “But… I’ve been waiting two minutes. Is it worth it if I’ve only been waiting for two minutes?”

Her smug self-satisfied expression morphed into confusion, and then betrayal, and right when she was about to ask me how the hell did I manage to game the system so well, the log jolted forward and whiplashed her prehensile brain right into the back of her skull.

We told one older couple about our trickery, and they both looked like they were ready to jettison their kids just so they could get some sweet animatronic Indy action a little early. Disneyland should offer some kind of Disneysitter service, where for like three hundred bucks you could get a teenager in the Goofy suit to lead your crotchspawn all around the park (in character of course) while you and the ol’ lady can get back to the $2,500 a night Pirates of the Caribbean Suite and get your freak on.

Also I was thinking how sweet would it be to have an iPhone app (Disney branded obviously) that would cull a condensed form of the current state of the park foot and ride traffic data, and give you an optimized day planner for whatever rides you’re trying to hit that day.

So let’s say you want to hit Space Mountain and Indy, you pop it in and the app goes “Hey, look, Space Mountain’s clogged up as shit right now go do the teacups and on the way grab a fast pass at Indy because by the time you get out, the bulk of traffic will be watching the parade so you can hop right on Space Mountain and then go to Indy ten minutes after you get off.”

Heck, it doesn’t even need to do that – it could just be an “at a glance” ride times and color based density overlay on the GPS data for the park – think Google Maps traffic but for Disney theme parks around the world.

The trip optimizer would be cool though as a day planner kind of deal where you put in your priority rides, and it basically plans your day out for you as efficiently as possible and you could have the option of like sprinting to every ride or rolling around in a motorized wheelchair or what have you.

I was thinking about this because Logan showed me this article, which is about a guy who did a bunch of data gathering and wrote a program to spit out the most efficient route to do all the rides.

Obviously, they would price the app at a slight premium, but I’d bet a $10 app (on a day when you’re blowing fuckin’ $4 on a Mickey shaped ice cream bar anyway) that promised saving you 2 hours of waiting around in lines all day would be worth it to the tech savvier park goers, as well as the power vacationing parental types.

Also, this app would tell you to get on the Single Rider line and fuck your kids because guess what you just got on Splash Mountain in like thirty seconds.

Problem is since we blew through the park so fast, we got pretty bored. Niko especially:

Brandon was just staring into space, so shocked was he by the furry heaven that is Splash Mountain:

Heck by the time we got to Space Mountain again, we were all just about ready to leave. Carson was still loving it though: