What’s your favorite ride at Disneyland?

Photo courtesy of Disneyland

Disney certainly knows how to tell stories.
And they know how to get us caught up in the stories they tell. That includes the hordes of little girls that I recently saw wandering the Magic Kingdom in princess dresses. And there were the young boys crying out to be chosen at the Jedi Training Academy (Star Wars isn’t a Disney creation, but no one seems to mind.)

For those of us a bit older, we still get to ride the rides. And these days a few of the attractions include the chance to rack up points firing laser guns or “spring-action shooters” at all sorts of targets as your special cruisers/cars scoot you through the ride.

Yes, Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters was among my top rides. Yes, the photo above shows that I did outscore my wife. But she beat me twice at the other shooting ride, the Toy Story Mania at California Adventure. Of the two, why did I prefer Astro Blasters? It’s not merely that at Toy Story I was soundly defeated twice by my darling bride. For Buzz, we waited 20 minutes or less to ride. The Toy Story attractions had waits of 45 minutes to an hour. (Before you get on these rides, you may want to look on Google to learn the secrets to better scores. Obviously I failed in this regard with the Toy Story Mania.)

So what rides do you like best at the two parks? I cast my votes for the Twilight Zone’s Tower of Terror (California Adventure) and the Indiana Jones Adventure. Maybe I liked them because for both we used the Fastpass system to greatly reduce the wait. Do you sense a theme? Waiting wears on me. Some of those lines are really long. If you have some tips on how to avoid or deal with the waits, I’d love to hear them. It will help for my next trip, tentatively scheduled for 2021.