Space Mountain: Old/New Ride Itself

[111702]

I know there has been a Space Mountain: Old/New Music thread, so I made a Space Mountain Old/New Ride thread. In this thread...

Please choose the ride experience (atmosphere, music, effects, originality, lighting, cars, track, etc.) that you think is the best! Please say why!

[ManaByte]

I like the new one much better. Smoother ride. Better cars. etc.

[TopCat8]

The only reason I picked the new one is that I remember it. When the old Space Mountain closed, I was only like 12. I had been on it a few times before, but the only thing I remember from the old ride was the music.

[RankoAnime]

The new Space Mountain, of course! I only went on the old Space Mountain twice before it shut down, but twice was way more than I wanted to go on! I don't know what it was about the old Space Mountain, but when I got off I felt like throwing up. With the new Space Mountain, I went on it twice in a row and just wanted to keep on going.

The only thing I remember about the old Space Mountain that I used to like was being able to sit in the very front and see the tracks. So, at first I didn't like the new Space Mountain because of how dark it was and how you seriously only see black and stars, but now I think I like the darkness better.

[Space Rangerlvl999]

It has to be the MUSIC!
And very smooth when going on turns and chain lifts.

[ScaryTrees]

I hated the red ball they had on the old one and I like the new music better than the old one too

[PeoplemoverMatt]

Originally Posted by 111702

Please choose the ride experience (atmosphere, music, effects, originality, lighting, cars, track, etc.) that you think is the best! Please say why!

Ok, you asked for it!

Atmosphere
SM '05 wins with the night exterior lighting, comm traffic in the outdoor stand-by queue before merge, no ridiculous SMTV, and let's call it "enhanced" load/unload room.
SM '05 -1 SM '77 - 0

Music
Dick Dale created a heartpounding soundtrack to what was simply a roller coaster in the dark. This was an age where on-board ride audio systems was pretty much an unheard of concept. His music made the awkward lift hills make a little sense and made the inital descents off the lift hill incredible. So props to Dick Dale for that. While that was good, the new music is everything Dick Dale was lacking. Space Mountain was never meant to have a surfer-sounding music track! The music I think we all invisioned for Space Mountain is what was written for what's out there now. A fast-paced, high-octane tempo with the feel of flying through unknown space past who knows what. That & the entrances to both the lift hills & the main building up the 3rd & final lift hill. Wonderful way to present to the rider what you've got. SM '05 wins here for sure.
SM '05 - 2, SM '77 - 0

Effects
The addition of Dick Dale's theme to the existing trains was laughable at best. What I hated the most about it was there were no cushions on the tall headrests. If you're head came back, you bashed your skull on hard plastic. Ow. It doesn't hold a candle to the onboard audio systems that exist now. Of course state-of-the-art proven technology is going to beat prototypical glorified guess-work technology. Closing off what were windows into the main building from the queue has made the ride darker and it's next to impossible to see any track now. Stark contast to what used to be there. Finally, the lift hills on '77 were an awkward experience & finally ended up being basically a light in your face. SM '05 has those red bars that come at you and then spin with the black hole at the end. 100% improvement there. SM '05 wins
SM '05 - 3, SM '77 - 0

Originality
Space Mountain '77 was the first, the original, the ultimate wow that Disney had produced in its theme parks thus far. Roller coaster? In the dark? You're crazy right? Nope! Replacing the flying saucers, which were a neat idea but broke down all the time, was this gargantuan building which would house a roller coaster. You're off your rocker Disney! The kids would be petrified of it and the parents would stay away! Boy, how wrong they were. Great risks yield great rewards & Space Mtn '77 reaped it all. SM '05 had some good originality in the lift hill effects & re-entry tunnel, but it really wasn't anything that didn't already exist either @ DL or WDW. SM '77 wins by a landslide.
SM '05 - 3; SM '77 - 1

Lighting
Again, with newer technology comes better effects and lighting falls under this too. SM '05 does a great job of using show lights outside at night, with it's switcharoo marquee sign, show lights in the queue and the lack of just about every light in the main ride building. SM '77...no, not even close.
SM '05 - 4; SM '77 - 1

Cars
As stated before, I don't really enjoy bashing my head against hard plastic & SM '77 made me do this. With SM '05, there really isn't any headrest, so that solved that problem. Newer & better always beat old & busted & that's what the old SM had by the time it was shut down for good. SM '05 wins and my brain stem thanks you.
SM '05 - 5; SM '77 -1

Track
Track layout identical. New wins because it's, well, new. Not saying the old was rough, it wasn't too rough, but B&M's involvment somehow in this current track has allowed for some great smoothness which is usually B&M's signature. However it got there, smoothness is good & SM '05 wins.
SM '05 - 6; SM '77 -1

FINAL SCORE
SM '05 - 6
SM '77 - 1

Space Mountain 2005 is officialy declared as superior over Space Mountain 1977!

-- Peoplemover "Ah, that was a brilliant killing of 20 minutes" Matt

[Disneyland_Wolf]

D***...you type faster than me.

[ManaByte]

Didn't the WDW Space Mountain open in 1975, two years before the DLR one?

[PeoplemoverMatt]

^ Yes but I'm considering it an original because WDW's was basically Matterhorn in Outer Space.

MousePlanet puts it pretty well in this quote...

Originally Posted by MousePlanet

Since Anaheim only had room for a 200-foot-wide building, there wasn?t room for two tracks, and Bill conceived of the idea to mimic space flight via speed, long stretches of straightaway, and turns that were sometimes tight but always smoothly banked.

This concept evolved into a standard of sorts for the Disney type of thrill ride: some sensation of speed, though never overdone and envelope- pushing, accompanied by smooth turns that thrill without causing real fear. The same designer laid out the track dynamics of all variations of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and his principles can be seen at that ride, too. The legacy of the "Disney type thrill" can be found in most projects until the mid-1990s, in fact, and is most clearly seen in the simulator rides at the various theme parks.

Yeah, go SM '77...

-- Peoplemover "WDW's Space Mountain really is Matterhorn through the stars, if you've ridden it yourself, you know this to be true" Matt

[ScaryTrees]

Originally Posted by PeoplemoverMatt

-- Peoplemover "WDW's Space Mountain really is Matterhorn through the stars, if you've ridden it yourself, you know this to be true" Matt

Ive been on WDW Space Mountain and thats exactly what I thought it was too and that is actually the reason why they built it because they wanted their own version of the Matterhorn but that still doesnt mean you can call the Disneyland Space Mountain the original maybe the original of its design because now there is one in Hong Kong and I think in Tokyo too

[GreenLantern13]

Originally Posted by PeoplemoverMatt

^ Yes but I'm considering it an original because WDW's was basically Matterhorn in Outer Space.

-- Peoplemover "WDW's Space Mountain really is Matterhorn through the stars, if you've ridden it yourself, you know this to be true" Matt

Right except your reasoning for why SM 77 was original are things wdw's accomplished Doh.

Time for me to do my categorical evaluation =D Gimme a few

[GreenLantern13]

In my books, the old ride wins 4 out of the 7 categories PPM has started. But I'm reducing PPM's categories to 6 and then ignoring the results.

Atmosphere
SM 77 wins for me. Getting to the heart of it... I don't like the steel corridors. Very...futuristic...I guess? But frankly it's claustrophobic to me. Every panel the way it's layered make sit feel like the narrow cramped hallway that it is. The old ride, you approached Space Mountain, and you went up a covered speedramp onto the platform and entered. The old blue corridors were pretty much out of a 70's sci-fi space setting.

But the real mood setter to me in the queue was the dark room where the walls were black and you could hear the ride zooming by you. It was a large, dark, cold, spacey room, with the comchat talk playing, and it led into an airlock and then into a spaceport. It was what I will forever associate to the Space Mountain atmosphere. And as for the added later SMTV, whatever you may have thought about it, I could go to the airport if I wanted to hear the same safety messages playing over and over every 2 minutes like they do in the new one.

SM '77 - 1; SM '05 - 0

Music
Dick Dale managed to do something that I think gets overlooked. And I'm not talking about bringing the whole onboard music thing. That was amazing, people recognize that, and it practically wins the category from that alone for me. I talk a lot about how I liked his ear thumping / heart thumping music, especially getting you started with the loud guitar riff shooting down the first hill, as opposed to the soft flutes and violins the new music seems to want to play in some of the big moments.

But Dick Dale did something else that set the tone for the ride. The ride starts off playing a light, mysterious space music. Space age whizzing noises like comets or shooting stars are zooming past you and it slowly gets louder and louder and the buildup becomes more intense as you go up the lift and the strobe light hits your face. But then, you flatten out, and you're surrounded by the universe of space. And his music goes deafly quiet, with soft tones lightly carrying you along as you are in the calmness of it all. Only after you've circled the star and begun to climb again do the rockets flare up, you have ignition, and the adventure has taken a new turn into a speeding race through space.

The new music just doesn't do anything like that. It comes blaring from the beginning, and I understand they're trying to get you in the mood for their brand spanking new Locked in Coordinates effect, but the atmosphere in the outer realms of space in the ride is lost to me(something many people say they think the new Incredibles sounding music represents more than a surf guitar). I think they need to take more into account the stuff before what you hear on the 6disc just like the long intro Dick Dale has before he even picks up his guitar. As for the theme music itself, it's too synced up to the ride. I can tell you where we are in the ride and what's coming up. Who needs to see the track if the music is queued to every flinch and turn the track makes.

Dick Dale's brought so much more to the ride experience for me.

SM '77 - 2; SM '05 - 0

Effects
I'll give the new ride the effects category. The stars and projections look great, and the final climb hill effect is done very well. The new ride obviously has an insurmountable advantage here because they have technology they could never come close to back in the 70's, try as walt did. But despite not really being fair, it's a category that should be included because we're comparing the ride experience flat out. I will say this though, I sure can see the track in the dark. I know it's a bit darker in there, and the stars look nice, but I'm spending most all the ride looking at the track and the structures in the middle and trying to find my little fed-ex robot buddy. And furthermore, the focus onto the wall projects after the last lift, and away from the star in the middle... yeah it makes the place darker, but now I've managed to focus on how there's really a wall right in front of me because I'm looking around the track while traveling inside it and not looking into the middle of the track while being surrounded by space.

SM '77 - 2; SM '05 - 1

Originality
Space Mountain '77 was the first, the original, the ultimate wow that Disney had produced in its theme parks thus far. Roller coaster? In the dark? Oh wait...no it wasn't. That was Space Mountain '74, over at Walt Disney World. They had it first. However their's is a strong resemblance to our matterhorn, only it's in the dark and is inside to the theme of Space Mountain. However, they knew they were going to bring this to Disneyland. They had to. But they weren't going to just do another matterhorn. So they put together the ride we had, and as far as coasters go, it was an incredible feat of imagineering and was immensely original. So 1977 still gets the point, but with a little nod to 1974.

SM '77 - 3; SM '05 - 1

[u]Lighting[u] - I'm not gonna go into this because I think it's the same as Effects for this little comparison's purposes.

Cars
The cars are a good progression of technology and experience building these new rides. It straps you in well and the new music setup is also done nicely. Another category that if the new one didn't win, I'd be very disappointed at Disney because it'd be a waste of 30 years.

SM '77 - 3; SM '05 - 2

Track
This category is tricky... I say that because I have no idea what the ride was like in 1977. It was never really "bumpy" for me. The only thing people really remembered about the old one was the low bridge from getting your head or arms chopped off from the wooden posts around you. The new one is smooth, and yes it's because it's new, and we don't really know how much that will change even 10 years down the line. It's nice not to hear the chains going on the lifts though. So basically the better of the two tracks is being judged on what distracts you the least. The closeness of the old tracks was certainly noticeable, and it's better on the new one, but then again I'm spending most of the ride staring at boxes and setups they have all throughout the middle of the rink inside the the track circles. I have to force myself to look straight or look at the space stuff sometimes.

This category is mostly a draw to me and is mostly negligable. Space Mountain '77 gets the point however on account that even if I could see a track going over my head as we went under it, I can still see it on this one anyways and that's better than staring at a million light boxes like I also get to do now.

SM '77 - 4; SM '05 - 2

Space Mountain '05 wins
The ride needed a renovation, stuff needed to change, and without the enhancements they made the ride, Tomorrowland, and Disneyland might've continued to whither and lack a certain something. The people who put together the new ride did a whole lot of work and it really is a good ride. Changes are a good thing as long as they put effort into them. They're going for an entirely different theme almost with the ride, or at least bringing out what they think the old one was supposed to be(thankfully not george lucas style), and all of the things I like more from the old ride are on a far more analytical basis than they should ever worry about. They kept the old ride intact to a greater extent, and creativity shouldn't be hindered. It's not like they took out Space Mountain to replace it with The Many Adventures of Chicken Little. I like the old ride a lot more but I like a lot of memories more. But new things are supposed to get better and it'd be sad if they didn't.

[ScaryTrees]

I dont think that Originality should even be a category because no matter what even if there wasnt the WDW SM the 77 SM would still get the point because it was there before 05 SM

[Disneyland_Wolf]

So nobody voted for the old SM.