The Disneyland Book of Secrets 2014: One Local's Unauthorized, Rapturous and Indispensable Guide to the Happiest Places on Earth (194 page)

Guests approaching
Paradise Pier
gaze across the bay and notice, almost immediately, the enormous, smiling face of
Mickey Mouse
–a vintage 1930’s
Mickey
with the pie cut eyes he sometimes sported, the mouse that propelled
Walt
and
Roy
on the path that secured their success and delighted millions of movie-goers around the world.  Although the image of the giant
Mickey Face
is classic, it was only recently added to the 150-foot wide
Fun Wheel
.

From
DCA
’s opening day in 2001 until 2008, the park’s Ferris wheel, named the
Sun Wheel
, was emblazoned with a smiling sunburst called the
celestial face
and themed to California, not
Disney
.  Inspired by Coney Island’s famed Wonder Wheel, the
Sun Wheel
offered Guests a choice of the stable red gondolas fixed in place along the wheel’s rim, or the orange or even-faster purple-blue kinetic gondolas, mounted on rollers so that they swung back-and-forth and up-and-down while the wheel revolved.

Guests enjoyed the
Sun Wheel
’s astonishing views, despite its lack of connection to
Disney
characters or stories.  When
Disney
decided to overhaul
Paradise Pier
, the
Sun Wheel
was spared demolition but it had to be re-themed.  It was enclosed within scaffolding from mid-fall 2008 through spring 2009.

The
celestial face
was removed.  The vintage
Mickey
face we all know and love today, 42 feet wide and 48 feet tall, was mounted in the middle of the sunburst rays.  The stationary red gondolas were painted the official
Mickey red
of
Mickey
’s pants.  The kinetic gondolas were imprinted with vintage images of
Mickey
’s pals, the rest of
Disney
’s
Fab Five
: 
Minnie
,
Donald
,
Pluto
, and
Goofy
.  Colorful LED lights were installed to provide an even more elaborate light show when night fell.  The refreshed attraction finally reopened as
Mickey’s Fun Wheel
in May 2009.

The changes were extensive but largely cosmetic
, not structural.  The wheel still stands at almost 170 feet tall on
Paradise Bay
’s south shore, loading Guests via a queue area sunk into the concrete below boardwalk level.  To Guests across the bay, the subterranean loading configuration creates the illusion that
Fun Wheel
riders board–and that the gondolas briefly travel–underwater.

Mickey’s Fun
Wheel
isn’t for those afraid of heights or prone to motion sickness.  The fixed cars on the perimeter rise to the wheel’s zenith of 168 feet–taller than a sixteen-story building.  The swaying gondolas don’t climb as high, but their rocking motion, particularly that of the faster purple-blue cars, is unnerving to Guests with sensitive stomachs.  For this reason, the moving gondolas are stocked with “barf bags”.

If
your Cousin Maria is scared of heights or Great-grandma has a heart condition or delicate constitution, you
don’t
want to bring them on the
Fun Wheel
, especially not in one of the swaying gondolas.  But for those not bothered by heights,
Mickey’s Fun Wheel
rewards you with leisurely and sweeping high views of the park and the entire resort. 
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
is too enclosed to provide such extensive views, and the now-razed
Maliboomer
, which shook Guests up and down like a dog with a sock, wasn’t exactly the place for a calm view of the park!

From the top of the
Fun Wheel
you can see all of
DCA
, including the football-field-sized expanse of fountain nozzles for
World of Color
on the three-acre expanse of
Paradise Bay
, and 12-acre
Cars Land
in the park’s southeast quadrant.  You can also see the lovely
Grand Californian Hotel
,
and swaths of
Disneyland
, especially the
Matterhorn
’s snowy peak and the frost-white glint of
Space Mountain
.  You can even see the
Mickey & Friends
parking structure to the northwest.

From sixteen stories above the ground you can clearly see how compact the resort really is, how distances between attractions and lands that seem vast at ground-level are really illusions created by ingenious
Imagineering
techniques like forced perspective and cleverly designed reveals and obfuscations.

If you decide to ride
Mickey’s Fun Wheel
, you’ll enter the sunken queue area from the attraction’s southwest side.  Read the signs carefully and proceed to the line for either the fixed or the swinging gondolas, whichever you prefer.

There are 24 gondolas in total, 16 of which slide on roller tracks.  The stable red cars bear
Mickey
’s face, the rocking cars the faces of his
Fab Five
friends.  Between the signs and the colors and character-coding and separate queues, you should be able to verify that you’re entering the right type of car, but if in doubt ask a Cast Member in the loading zone.  You don’t want to end up in the wrong gondola!

Each metal car holds up to six Guests and is fitted with seats so that riders can sit and relax during their journey.  Two are jump seats that can be folded up
out of the way to accommodate wheel chairs.  Once the Cast Member has secured your gondola door, you’ll move quickly, almost giddily upward, beginning your nine-minute double-revolution around the wheel.

During your two trips around
Mickey’s Fun Wheel
, you’ll stop from time to time so that other gondolas can be loaded and unloaded far below.  There’s a lot to see from the different levels at which your car pauses.  Although the bottom portion of each gondola is solid, the sides are composed of a wire mesh that allows clear views of your surroundings.

At the top of the wheel, sixteen stories above the ground, you can look down at
California Screamin’
s tallest hill.  The roller coaster is 120 feet tall, but from your lofty perch on
Mickey’s Fun Wheel
, the coaster almost looks small, and the tiny vehicles racing up and down it almost look like toys.  At the top of the
Fun Wheel
you’re almost as high as the 180-foot tall
Maliboomer
towers were, and you could once clearly see its vehicles whizzing up and down, and the shrieking, laughing Guests strapped into their seats.

After eight-to-ten minutes and two trips around the
Fun Wheel
, your gondola will stop at the unloading zone and a Cast Member will open your car.  Exit carefully–sometimes the revolving and the swaying motions can make Guests a bit dizzy or disoriented, so tread carefully until you get your “land legs” back.  Follow Cast Member instructions and signs to ascend to the
Boardwalk
.

I can’t stress strongly enough that if you have
issues with heights, claustrophobia, or motion, the
Fun Wheel
isn’t for you.  There’s plenty to do on
terra firma
while the more daring members of your group ride the
Fun Wheel
.  You can grab a snack, play a game, or browse in one of the nearby
Boardwalk
shops. 
Mickey’s Fun Wheel
really is fun–but it’s not for everyone. 
Did You Know?
Coney Island
was one of the world’s largest and most famous amusement venues.  At its peak it hosted three major amusement parks, crowded beaches, and fancy resort hotels, and could attract up to a million visitors on a summer day.  It had everything from a hotel shaped like an elephant to a midget village, from a half-mile-long Steeplechase ride to a parachute drop, from “Infant Incubators” to “Fire and Flames”, an infernal attraction where tenements were set ablaze and then extinguished.  Coney Island flourished from the late 1800’s into the first half of the 20
th
century, finally folding around World War II; over the years real fires and flagging attendance had destroyed its anchor parks one by one.  Coney Island continued to offer amusements, but on a much smaller scale than in its heyday. Even at its zenith, Coney Island was everything
Walt
frowned upon–crowded, noisy, loud, chaotic, garish, brash, and vulgar–but it suited the rough-and-tumble New Yorkers it primarily served, hundreds of thousands who couldn’t afford to leave the city for summer vacations.  To hard-working, struggling New Yorkers who saved all year for a summer day at Coney Island, Coney was a dream come true, warts and all.  One of its most distinctive attractions was the Wonder Wheel, which opened in 1920.  Slightly smaller than
Mickey’s Fun Wheel
(about 150 feet tall), the Wonder Wheel was forged from Bethlehem steel and like
DCA
’s
Fun Wheel
has two tracks, a ring of fixed outer gondolas, and a ring of swinging inner cars.  When
Imagineers
built
DCA
’s
Sun Wheel
, they consciously modeled it on Coney’s famous Ferris wheel, slightly increasing the size but mirroring the double-track design.  Although Coney Island isn’t the vast amusement fairyland it once was, it still offers a limited number of attractions, including the famed Wonder Wheel.  Now part of Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park, the Wonder Wheel is an official New York City landmark and enjoys protected status.  There was a Japanese replica of the Wonder Wheel, built in 1964 as an attraction at Totsuka’s Yokahama Dreamland; it was called the Wonder Wheel, like the Coney Island attraction on which it was based. Yokahama Dreamland closed in 2002.  Yokahama now boasts a Ferris wheel called Cosmo Clock 21; presently it stands
369 feet tall
—more than 200 feet taller than
Mickey’s Fun Wheel
. Sixty gondolas carry eight riders each.
Night Vision:
  With
Paradise Bay
aglow each night with the
World of Color
show that launched in summer of 2010,
Mickey’s Fun Wheel
is an even more amazing vision at night; it becomes part of the leaping lights and colors of the
World of Color
spectacular!  The
Mickey’s Fun Wheel
gondolas are closed to Guests during the nightly extravaganza while the
Fun Wheel
, with the vibrant LED light show that flickers along its circumference and spokes, adds magic to
World of Color
. 
FastPass:
No. 
Mickey’s Fun Wheel
, a continuously loading Ferris wheel, doesn’t fit the
FastPass
attraction profile.  However, despite its somewhat slow load and unload times,
Mickey’s Fun Wheel
doesn’t generate the long lines that
E-ticket
thrillers do.  On extremely crowded days the queue can extend out onto the
Boardwalk
, but for the most part you won’t have to wait more than twenty minutes to board.  On off-season days and when the park first opens, you can board in five minutes or less. 
Kid’s Eye View:
I haven’t been on this.  I’m afraid I’m going to fall out into the water.

Silly Symphony Swings
Must be 40” or 102 cm tall to ride.

[
FastView:
 
The most unfettered sense of flight at the resort.  Secured only by a light harness you whirl around and around high in the sky above
Paradise Bay
.  Pure exhilaration fueled by
Disney pixie dust
.
]

Band music plays!  Storm clouds gather!  Winds blow!  You find yourself swept up off the ground, spinning through the air as if in the grip of a tornado!  Has a natural disaster swept through
Paradise Pier
during a band concert?  Not at all.  You’re riding the
Silly Symphony Swings
, which opened in June of 2010.

With space at a premium in
DCA
, the addition of a new attraction usually means the demolition of another, and such is the case with the
Silly Symphony Swings
.  Guests visiting
DCA
in the latter part of 2009 noticed something missing from the
Paradise Pier
skyline.  Gone was the giant orange peel whose vivid color and fantastic size had drawn one’s eye to the southwestern edge of
Paradise Bay
.  First it was sequestered behind fencing, and then it was dismantled.