On our last trip to Disney World, one of the best time we had was rushing to the Toy Story Mania ride and enjoying the amazing new addition to Disney’ Hollywood Studios… It’s tough to describe how great it is as Disney’s Imagineer have really outdone themselves with the themeing and the design of the ride itself… but I’ll try anyway.
It starts with you being shrunk to the size of a toy and entering Andy’s bedroom with all his toys laying around. There is a path that takes you through this mayhem and you get to see anything from the giant ViewMaster to the Monkeys In A Barel, waltsing past Magic Spin Art or giant Crayola crayons or just a interacting with the giant audi-animatronic Mr. Potato Head. He will talk to you and if you’re not sure he’s really talking to you, he’ll identify you by your hat or shirt or hair… scary and funny at the same time.
After the winding toy-lined queue, we are given 3D glasses and shown our way to the cars. Immediate fun begins… you are taken through a series of different arcade style video games where you have to shoot animated darts, or eggs, or baseballs, or cream pies, etc… of course your score accumulates during all the different stations and then at the end you get your final score like this:
The better the score, the bigger the animal you get as a profile… I sucked on my very first turned and was named a Beaver while DR was named a mean Kitty Cat of sorts… Grrrr.. Problem is the game is over way too soon and you have to line up again for a long time to get more practice… Of course, we rush back and do it because it’s that much fun… I think we rode it 5 times in our last trip and still it wasn’t enough practice to become some kind of an expert…
Until now:
Oh yeah!
Of course we bought it as soon as it came out and have been playing quite a few times this weekend. The game on Wii is almost just as much fun as the real one (but not quite) and there are tons of newer games too based on the ones in the ride.. YEH…
The only thing I find weird is at the end of each games they want you to shake the Wii-mote control to get some extra score, the harder you shake, the higher the score… and I really don’t have to tell you what it looks like when 2 grown men hold an eight inch long object in their hands and shake it to the point of breaking sweat… At least they don’t make us shake it to infinity and beyond.
My only complaint is that the cursor is hard to track when lots of items are on the screen. It either gets sluggish or disappears entirely.
And we could do without the added on “shake it like a British Nanny” parts of the games.
But, beyond that, the game is fun. Has an exploratory aspect that isn’t too obvious so the game becomes a lot larger than expected.