Disneyland: It's A Small World Happy Holidays

I had heard good things about the holiday version of the It's A Small World ride, but not only had I never been on it, we had not been on the regular ride for years.

When we were going in October, the ride was closed for the holiday makeover. When we went in February it was also closed, though I am not sure if it was for the regular take down of the holiday decorations or for other maintenance.

There were a few surprises that I had to ask about to see if they were part of ride normally, or only for the holidays. We saw characters from Disney movies scattered throughout the ride. For example, Peter Pan and Tinkerbell fly over London Bridge, Ariel is with the other mermaids, and Lilo is near Polynesia.

This is a regular part of the ride now, and I liked it. It is subtle enough that it doesn't take away from the focus of the ride, and at least for us it was a nice surprise just because it was so new.

For the holiday changes, I thought they worked well. It had occurred to me before that they would fit in pretty naturally. You start the ride in an Arctic setting, so bringing in the North Pole is not too much of a stretch. We do associate toy soldiers with Christmas - probably because of Babes in Toyland - but there are toy soldiers in the England setting, so it fits in well. And of course, children singing and being united feels like it should be a part of Christmas, so that part works.

It is worth stating that the things that a lot of people hate about the regular ride don't bother me, as I am the sentimental type, and I believe in multiculturalism. I am sure there are complaints about how well or simplistically they portray the various cultures, but I recognized a lot of things there that I hadn't before, and there are some pretty good details included. I have seen that type of dancing, and they have the movements right. Oh, that costume represents this country. They were things that went over my head when I was younger, but having read more and traveled more, I am pretty impressed.

Obviously I did not take any pictures on the ride, but there are still a lot of pictures of the decorations because they did an amazing job. As you got into the area of the ride, there were multiple wreaths that matched the artwork of the building and ride, which has a very distinctive style designed by Mary Blair. The line and control booths were decked with white wreaths and garlands and multi-colored balls. It was a different look from the rest of the park, but it worked.

And of course at night, everything was lit up amazingly. This is another area where I am not sure how different that is from normal, because I think it normally does light up at night, but we have not tended to be in that area after dark. This time we made a point of riding the train at night so we could ride through it and see it from that vantage point, and it was good.

So we enjoyed it, and we did some thing we had never done before to make sure we got the full enjoyment of it, which worked out.

If you get a chance, see this attraction.