From Arthur Levine,
Your Guide to Theme Parks.
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Apr 24 2008

There'll be plenty of attractions debuting at California parks in 2008. Let's take a park-by-park look at all of the new fun, starting with the Disneyland Resort on this page. The California Ride Guide 2008 continues on page two with more California parks and their new attractions.

Disneyland Resort
Anaheim, CA

• Year of a Million Dreams throughout the resort
• Toy Story Mania at Disney's California Adventure
• Pixar Play Parade at Disney's California Adventure
• Revamped Playhouse Disney Live on Stage at Disney's California Adventure

One good year deserves another I suppose. After the highly successful Year of a Million Dreams at the Disneyland Resort (and Florida's Walt Disney World), Disney decided to keep the dreams alive into 2008 as well. Newly added prizes for the YOAMD, Part II include overnight stays at the Disneyland Dream Suite, an in-park apartment Walt Disney originally planned for his family above Pirates of the Caribbean in New Orleans Square (the rooms had housed the now-closed Disney Gallery), and a ride in a hot air balloon decked out like Mickey Mouse. Returning prizes include a trip around the world to visit four Disney resorts, Dream Fastpasses, and, oh, about a million other giveaways.

So how can enterprising enthusiasts wrangle their way into the castle suite or score some of the other swag, er dreams, that Disney is giving away? It's a completely arbitrary process, and no amount of cajoling will land you in Walt's posh apartment. The Dream Squad, Disney employees who roam the resort and hand out the prizes, follow a strict set of guidelines. A computer program randomly chooses the prescribed days, times, and places to pick winners. If a person is in the right spot at the right time (and meets eligibility requirements), he or she wins a prize. If nobody is there, the prize defaults to the next randomly chosen winner.

Maniacal New Ride

Disney's California Adventure will be sprinkling Pixar dust on the new Toy Story Mania!, based on the Disney-Pixar Toy Story films. The interactive 3-D ride will offer video game-style fun. It will use a carnival midway theme and will move guests through a series of 3-D-enhanced "game booths" where they will rack up points by using onboard toy cannon controllers. Read my Toy Story Mania preview.

Play 'n' Spray

With its acrobats, stilt-walkers, larger-than-life characters, and eye-popping colors, the new Pixar Play Parade at Disney's California Adventure (which, curiously, follows on the heels of another all-Pixar parade at the park, Block Party Bash) is quite a sight--that is, if onlookers can shield their eyes from the onslaught of water fired at them. Taking theme park spritzing to a new level, virtually every character and float in the parade is armed with locked-and-loaded water cannons. With twelve floats and dozens of characters, that's a lot of spritzing. Disney says that the parade will revert to bubble-only mode (the parade also incorporates lots of bubbles) depending on the weather. Be forewarned: On water-friendly days, guests lining the route will get wet. Maybe they should call it Pixar Spray Parade.

Featuring the characters from "Finding Nemo," "Cars," "Toy Story," and other Pixar animated films, the parade is a typical over-the-top Disney affair--minus Mickey and the usual four-fingered suspects. Among the highlights are The Incredibles riding some nifty air-board vehicles that hover above the ground (imagine a Segway crossed with a vacuum cleaner and a floor polisher), an enormous part-animatronic, part-puppet Crush aboard a "Finding Nemo" float, and Heimlich from "A Bug's Life," who is made up of a number of sections that alternately fall in line and scatter during the parade.

The tunesmiths from "High School Musical" created zippy new numbers for the parade that have guests voluntarily bopping along. If you share my aversion to dancing among complete strangers, you'll prefer the free-will boogying of Pixar Play Parade over the coerced participation that the dictatorial Pixarians demanded in Block Party Bash. Then again, they weren't armed with giant water cannons. See my Pixar Play Parade photo gallery.

Mini-Minnie

A revamped Playhouse Disney Live on Stage also debuted in 2008 at Disney's California Adventure. Geared to the small-fry set that watches "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse," "My Friends Tigger and Pooh," and other Disney Channel shows, the presentation features pint-sized puppets and hyper-caffeinated actors. It's disconcerting to see a four-foot Mickey Mouse on stage when a life-sized Mickster is roaming around the park, but the toddlers in the audience don't seem to mind. In fact, the squirmy kiddies in attendance at the performance I caught were so completely tuned into the Playhouse Disney zeitgeist, they sang, clapped, shouted, and otherwise hit their marks as if they had rehearsed the show for weeks. The brief vignettes give each of the Playhouse Disney TV show's characters a chance to shine. It's all loosely tied together around a plot that has something to do with arranging a surprise birthday party for a mini-Minnie Mouse.

• Disneyland Resort 2008 Preview Photo Gallery
• Disneyland Dream Suite Exclusive Photo Gallery
• Toy Story Mania Preview
• Pixar Play Parade at Disney's California Adventure Photo Gallery
• Disney's California Adventure Expansion- Overview of the 5-year, $1.1 Billion re-imagining of Disneyland Resort's second park.
• Yo Ho, Yo Ho, the Pirates' Ride for Her- Contest winner joins the classic Disneyland ride, Pirates of the Caribbean.
• Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage Ride Review- The E-ticket ride that reopened in 2007.

The California Ride Guide 2008 continues on page two with more California parks and their new attractions.