If you grew up in the 60s, 70s or early 80s and lived in or visited Southern California, you may remember "Adventure Thru Inner Space" at Disneyland, better known as the Mighty Microscope, The microscope ride, or the molecule ride. The ride was presented by the Monsanto corporation in the space in Disneyland currently occupied by "Star Tours," the Disney/Lucasfilm Star Wars ride collaboration.
The ride, if it still existed, would be pretty dated and hokey by today's standards... indeed it was pretty dated when they closed it in 1985 or '86, but back in the 60s and 70s it was enthralling... riders were seated in atommobiles (just like the "doom buggies" from "The Haunted Mansion") and passed through the Mighty Microscope to be shrunk to sub-atomic size and travel into a snowflake, deeper into a water molecule, and deeper into the structure of a single oxygen atom - shrinking ever smaller the entire time - until finally pulling back just before enterting the nucleus. Near the end of the ride you'd have grown large enough to be "back on visual" and would see a giant eye peering down analytically at you from through the lens of an enormous microscope. The narration for this adventure was provided by Paul Frees, best known to denizens of Disneyland as your "ghost host" in The Haunted Mansion... but here he gave it a straight-forward, sincere '60s scientist-style read, leading you on an scientific quest to penetrate and understand the molecule.
This was one of my absolute favorite rides as a little kid, and after becoming nostalgic for it during a recent four-day visit to the Disneyland Resort, I did a little exploring on the internet and discovered a site all about it called Atommobiles.com where you can relive this adventure through pics and text.
The most amazing thing about the site, however, is the dvd they sell. The siterunner apparently spent more than two years recreating a CGI virtual version of "Adventure Thru Inner Space" that you can ride just the way you did at Disneyland... you enter the atommobile, the lap bar closes and you enter the Mighty Microscope and take the entire ride in actual time, seeing everything you'd have seen back then, hearing all the music and narration just like the long-lost real thing. I have watched it several times already and I don't imagine I'll ever get tired of it... it is literally like travelling back in time and visiting my favorite ride in the Tomorrowland I remember from my youth.
If you ever loved "Adventure Thru Inner Space" and/or the Tomorrowland/Disneyland of the '60s and '70s, you've got to visit this site and think seriously about buying the dvd. Watching it is a bit like travelling back in time.
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