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The Incredible Shrinking Blog

Remember those rides at amusement parks that had signs with a character holding of an arm and said “You must be this tall to ride.” Well, this is a story about a ride that made you even smaller than that.

It’s also going to be one of those blogs that give away my age again.

The other evening, I was watching the Weird Kids podcast, hosted by fellow voice actors Ashley Johnson and Taliesin Jaffe, (both members of Critical Role), when Taliesin mentioned something that happened to him when visiting Disneyland (I’ll let you go watch Weird Kid’s on Beacon to find out what it was), and it reminded me of something that happened to me when I was really young and my parents took me to Disneyland.

In the early years of Disneyland, many of their rides and exhibits, had sponsors. Such as TWA (the airline) was the sponsor of Rocket to the Moon, the General Electric Carousel of Progress, and the House of the Future designed by MIT was sponsored by the chemical company Monsanto.

In 1967 Monsanto also sponsored a ride called ADVENTURE THRU INNER SPACE. In this ride the passengers, sitting in ‘Atomobiles’ would be taking into what looked like giant ‘Mighty Microscope’. The passengers were shrunk down and move inside a water molecule at the center of a snow flake. Then you get smaller and smaller as you move into the water molecule and then into the atoms themselves. You dare not travel into the nucleolus of the atom for fear you keep on shrinking forever. Then you return to the molecule and then return home to Disneyland.

This “scientific” ride, sponsored by the manufacture of Agent Orange, was one of the very rare rides that didn’t require a paid ticket (if you’re too young, there use to be A, B, C, D, and E tickets depending on the type of ride you wanted to go one. Most of us went home with a bunch of unused A Tickets) and so drew large crowds including teenage couples to have their own fun in the dark as the sides of the Atomobile blocked all view. The ride was also very psychedelic in design, and so it was also a favorite of the drug taking hippies. Of course, these same peopled enjoyed the Disney movie Fantasia.

I do remember being on the ride, if only a glimpse of memory. The terrifying memory I have from Adventures Thru Inner Space was not from being on the ride, but standing in line waiting to get on it.

The overhead People Mover traveled through the building lobby of Adventures Thru Inner Space and you could look down on the line of people and the Mighty Microscope. Even when you traveled above the ride, you could see what was terrifying to me.

As I stood in line with my parents as we slowly zigged back and forth in line to get into one of the Atomobiles, we passed the side of the Might Microscope where through its glass side you can plainly see the people who had just on before us was now shrunk down to small then Barbie dolls.

That was more terrifying than anything the ride could possibly show me. I didn’t want to be shrunk down like that, what if I never got big again?

That is one of those childhood emotional memories that stays in my head for life.

If you don’t know about this ride, check out Defunctland’s video about this history of Adventure Thru Inner Space and see how it connects to what America was going through at the time.