Disneyland Review: The Little Mermaid - Ariel's Undersea Adventure

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Musical journey through one of their newer classic animated films

Cons: Only minor ones

The Bottom Line: 

Go under the sea

To experience magic

Of Ariel's tale

Ariel Becomes Part of Your World in the Musical Heavy Ariel's Undersea Adventure

It's rare that Disney creates dark rides these days.  Like many amusement parks, they seem to focus on more thrilling attractions.  So when they announced that they were going to add The Little Mermaid - Ariel's Undersea Adventure to California Adventure, I was thrilled.  The result is wonderful.

 In case you aren't familiar with the term dark ride, these are the rides where Disney takes you through a story from one of their movies.  You're in a vehicle that travels through bigger than life audio animatronics that are the only things lit in an otherwise dark building, hence the name.  The most popular of these can be found in Fantasyland, although they have a few scattered around other places.

The newest ride is located near the lagoon in California Adventure.  It's replacing the Golden Dreams Theater (which is no loss at all).

The vehicles for this ride are giant, pastel colored clamshells.  They're really beautiful.  They are on a continually running track and twist and turn to allow you the best view of the scenes inside.  In many ways, these are more colorful and decorated twins of the "Doom Buggies" from the Haunted Mansion.

The thing that struck me the most about this ride was the amount of music they used.  While you'll often get a few seconds of music here and there in these rides, it's rare that you get this much music.  In fact, they use the songs from the movie to tell most of the story.  We start with Ariel in her collection of human relic singing "Part of Your World."  Then we get Sebastian leading his hot crustacean band in "Under the Sea."   Next, as Ariel decides to make a bargain with Ursala, we get "Poor Unfortunate Souls."  Finally, there's a scene for "Kiss the Girl" as Sebastian tries to get Eric to kiss a voiceless Ariel.  Obviously, we don't get the entirety of a song in this ride since it tells the entire story in about six minutes, and the looping in the tracks as they return to the beginning can be awkward at times, but it works very well.

Meanwhile, the figures are amazing.  The mouths move in perfect unity with the words, even of the spoken dialogue we get for some of the transitions.  All the colors are bright and vibrant.  As the ride begins, we tip back in our seashell and slowly go "under water."  This effect is done with light shimmers, air bubbles, and sound effects and is very impressive.  Most of the ride takes place under water, and those effects are used throughout, although they obvious stop when we return to the surface near the end.

And I've got to give a shout out to my favorite scene.  "Under the Sea" is an impressive display of color and sea creatures.  We spend the longest in this room, winding through it.  Even then, it's hard to see everything on your first visit.  Many of the creatures from that scene in the movie are here.  It's just so much fun.

The entire time, I felt like I was part of the action.  Everything seemed to be right there, more so than in other dark rides, although I'm sure I'm really no closer to the figures.  Even so, I really was immersed in the story more than normal.

Yes, the ride does have a few drawbacks.  Like the Haunted Mansion, this ride must stop to accommodate guests with disabilities getting on and off, so I'm sure the vehicles will pause at least once every time I'm on it.  Since the figures keep moving and singing, that's not too big a problem for me.

A few of the figures look out of proportion to me.  Ariel seems to have this problem the most - her eyes are often too big for her head.  It worked okay for the movie, but here it looks odd.  This is especially noticeable in the final scene.

Speaking of the end, the climax of the story is rushed and doesn't really show the complexity of things.  Then again, they don't have time to show it to us.  What they do have actually does make sense, unlike some dark rides I could mention (*cough* Snow White *cough*).

The ending as presented here is still much better than the ending of the ride that they were considering back in 1992.  A computer animated version of this ride was included in the two disc platinum DVD.  After going on this ride, I pulled my set out and rewatched the simulation.  There are certainly similarities, but this version is so much better.

These problems are minor in my eyes.  Disney has a huge success with The Little Mermaid - Ariel's Undersea Adventure.  I expect long lines for the next couple of years, and it will be popular for years to come.