Explorer's Landing /
Fortress Explorations - II, continued
Stepping outside,
we can visit the children's water playground. It's
adjacent to the Renaissance galleon which is docked at the landing. Note
the bridge across the way, the perfect backdrop for the ship.
The level of
woodwork and detail inherent here is about par with Disneyland's
Columbia Sailing ship. Below is one of the water play areas... the theme
of course is that the ship is being loaded for a journey of exploration
somewhere.
Note the rigging
and paint job.
The arm below
lowers cargo into the ship.
In the larger photo
you can see some other buildings, here's a peek at the American
Waterfront section of the park. (Notice how enveloping the vistas are in
this park. The pole in the middle of the photo looks like it is used for
the lagoon shows, and probably retracts back down when not in use, a la
Fantasmic.) We'll come back to this area in a future chapter of this
photo tour.
Looking back the
other way from the gangplank area, here you can see how the highly
themed hotel provides the proper backdrop to the ship -
- and lighting at
night is taken care of by all the hanging lanterns. Again note the
extensive rigging.
Every walkway, each
fence and bridge is themed all the way through as see in the shot below.
But wait, this
isn't the only play area for kids, going back to our hotel map we see
the following:
Hmmm, so it looks
like we may have a date with a very famous, and most likely all wet,
redhead. Come
back tomorrow to see where California Adventure's Jumping Jellyfish attraction
originally came from - and frankly where it fits in better.
