Madagascar: A Crate Adventure

I attended the Annual Pass preview event and it was quite well organized!  Of course, I was a bit sore that Fun Pass holders only got to go in at 8PM, whereas Superstar Pass holders got to go in at 7.40PM.

I was most impressed that the staff anticipated that there would be a huge crowd waiting outside the barricades for the preview event to start, and directed them to form a queue.  This made the start of the event very smooth and trouble free.  Of course, there were a few people who didn't see the need to queue up and had to wait for the whole lot of us to go in before they joined up behind.

Once I was past the barricades, I was greeted with a cup of fizzy lemon / mango drink and plastic garlands.  Not bad.  The drink was quite tasty actually, and it helped to pass the time waiting in the queue.  You could feel the anticipation in the air as the pass holders all lined up patiently for their turn.

If you don't know by now, the ride is a slow boat ride not unlike Sinbad in Tokyo Disneysea or It's a Small World in Tokyo Disneyland.  Each boat can hold up to 20 people seated 4 in a row.  I clocked the ride at around 7 minutes - not the 9 minutes mentioned in the press release.  I won't spoil the ride - in fact I believe someone has already posted a video of the entire ride on YouTube the day after the preview event.

First impressions were good.  It all looked so new (duh), and came with a polish that other rides didn't have (though I must have sat on those like 10 or more times by now).  However, I think the animatronics still lose out to Tokyo Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean, though a definite improvement over the Treasure Hunter ride.  I have to emphasize that this is not a thrill ride.  There are no drops at all, and it's definitely suitable for kids of all ages.

I predict the ride would be an instant hit with the families and would see long queues for months to come.  The queue area for this ride would come in handy, unlike that for the Mummy ride, which appears to be severely underutilized given that the average waiting time was 5 minutes - roughly the same amount of time you need to navigate the empty queue area.