RIP Splash Mountain

-- "What goes up is sure to come down" - How Do You Do, verse 1


Splash Mountain is my favorite Disney ride, but that wasn't always the case. As a lad the ride scared the near literal crap out of me. The mountainous drop loomed in the far reaches of the park, an omnipresent terror which you heard before you saw, the screams, the rumble of the log flying down the flume, the crash of the water all testifying that this ride was not for me. And that was before I found out Splash has no seat belts. Not one! Even Peter Pan has a restraining bar, I'd tell my dad, hoping an appeal to his conservative nature would keep me on the safe side of the park.

But my dad was smart. He knew I didn't care about seat belts -- that lesson had been drilled into his head quite well when I rode unstrapped in Nestor's Volkswagen van while my mom experimented with her first manual transmission. Despite my dad's best instruction the hippie van stalled with such force that I catapulted stomach first into the metal box which was supposed to be a heater but served forever more as a reminder to buckle into our seats. 

For years I wondered how my mom had managed to make our car do that. I didn't even know how to describe what she'd done. When I heard the word 'clutch' my mind went to BYU beating Utah in LaVell's last game in miraculous fashion. I had no knowledge of the intricate timing required to make a manual vehicle sing, and I certainly wasn't going to learn it on my first day on the Granger driving range. Yet there I was, to my utmost disbelief, sitting in a truck, being taught how to drive a stick shift by a co-pilot who wasn't known for speaking English. 

"So I've never driven a stick before. What do I do here?" 

"You puts feets on the peddles and pushes." 

"Yeah, but there's three pedals here. I'm pretty sure I don't push all three of them at once." 

"Don't dos the brakes peddles and you gon be fine." 

I wasn't fine. I lurched around the parking lot for half a lap, the instructor mocking me over the radio from his eye-in-the-sky tower, my poor seatmate getting quite ill, and the truck! Who knows if it ever worked again after three minutes of burpees. I felt sure I was going to get a bill the next day to repair a dislodged engine.

So yes, 10 years after the fact I realized driving a stick is hard and I forgave my mom for nearly killing me in the hippie van. But at the moment of impact, forgiveness was far from my mind. When my stomach high-fived the metal box I was winded, unable to talk, alarmed, and left feeling betrayed by my parents, which is the exact feeling I had when my dad forced me to ride Splash for the first time. 

It didn't help that the line was eternal. Every 45 seconds a fresh batch of screamers would drop down the hill, and with it my heart did the same. When we came upon the sign discouraging pregnant women from riding I frantically searched the fine print for a similar provision for colorblind folk. No such luck. I was taking a mental note to file a complaint with Disney's disability department when next thing I knew the Cast Member asked how many were in our group.

"Four," my dad said.
"Three living, one about to croak," I corrected. 

My sister had given me the scouting report of the ride, including letting me know the first drop in Splash was rather tame, but that didn't stop me from clenching the rail bars like Climps handling a discarded piece of meat. When we reached the bottom I realized I was wet. I might have been splashed or I might have sweated through or I might have done something else. The fog of war is hazy. 

Clarity came as we arrived at the final climb. Every part of my body was strained to its max as we inched up the hill. I ducked my head as low as it could go, thinking if hiding under the covers worked as a kid this might too. It didn't. As we hit the top, our log now dipping instead of climbing, I looked over the entirety of Disney's kingdom and thought to myself, "I'm going to die before the Jazz win a championship." 

I survived that first ride of course, relief flooding my body more than the actual splash, and when the talking animals celebrated my performance with a rendition of Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, I realized this is what my dad meant when he said he feels the spirit when the tabernacle choir perform. I asked my dad if he could arrange for our ward to sing Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah after I gave my next youth talk, which represented the other great nerve-wracking, sweat-inducing task of my day. 

In retrospect it's weird that Splash terrified me so much. I went on the much taller Rocket some 7 or 8 times before I mustered the guts to try Splash again, and that was only because I had a girlfriend I needed to impress. Unfortunately my manliness was more on the lines of this during the ride ...

than this ...

The Angry Splash Lady would have been pleased with me. The girlfriend, not so much.

Seven years would pass before my next return to the Land, and in that time I matured into a seasoned vet of thrill rides. Hah, gotcha! In reality I became someone who needed a hard drink of Sprite and a 20-minute lay down after going on California Screamin'. Rides with the rapid accelerations of Screamin' or the joltiness of Tower of Terror would push me over the edge, and suddenly the casual float of Splash, despite its dash of fright, became very appealing. 

Splash made its official debut in my top ten rides when we convinced Jackie's grandma to ride in the front of a log loaded to the max with adults, resulting in a wave so catastrophic I believe it hit the boat behind us. It was a dunking so thorough that Gma had to wring herself out like a towel while Gpa cursed out his ungrateful grandkids, surely wondering like all parents do why he had taken his offspring on such a trip. 

Everything changed five years later when Jackie and I made a stunning realization that Splash is unoccupied after 11PM in the cold winter months. Sure the drop still scared me, sure it was freezing, but who cares, you can't beat walking onto a ride. Me, Jackie, and Karlie would shut Splash down every night, the workers asking if we wanted to go again instead of de-boarding, and we'd nod along or shout 'yes!' like kids shivering outside in the snow not wanting to come in for dinner. We'd batten down the hatches (tighten our hoodie strings) and man the port bow (put me in the front, as the most willing to be soaked) and ride out those waters until midnight closed the doors. We'd go 6 times one night, 7 times another.  

The combination of the fear of the drop, the fear of getting soaked, the eery chilliness of being in a boat at night, the chance to see a small part of Star Wars land just visible beyond the trees, the lack of abrupt speed changes to mess with my brain, the memorable tunes, and the incredible line lengths transformed this ride from the terror of my childhood into my dream ride. I got to the Splash party late but I've made up for lost time. 

The bank of recently earned memories include stifling our laughter when our group Ubered back to the hotel after a late night Splash soaking, wondering how upset our driver would be when he learned his passengers were dripping wet. They include watching Alison's jaw drop when the elevator doors parted and she saw Jackie and I headed back to the park after a long day to go get Splashed. They involve a person named Wonka Tonka, she who once turned the Jackie-Karlie-Spencer threesome into a foursome, and shielded us from the water (translation: she was large and in the front) while interrogating us to find out which of us had said "Yuck!" during the climax of the ride. (trust me, the actual experience was just as confusing as that sentence) 

Splash was the ride that made the Disney nonbeliever Ryan laugh himself giddy during a late night dousing. It was the ride that taught me I could experience Disney with the kids during the day and still experience Disney as a kid at night. It was the ride that provided the healing balm after I became a crowd pariah pushing a wheelchair through a parade. 

Splash puts me in such a good mood that when I mistakenly ordered an extra $20 of ice cream for my sister as a post-Splash celebration, I didn't bat an eye. Splash puts me in such a good mood that I can choke on the ride -- in fact choke so dramatically that I tried to climb off the boat and heimlich myself before Jackie used Hulk strength to force me back into the seat -- and not have it lower the ride even one spot in my rankings. Splash puts me in such a good mood that I can have a panic attack on the ride and still write 1,600 words praising it's features ... and now 400 words lamenting its death.

You see, Splash is my favorite Disney ride, but this won't always be the case. You've heard the news. All too soon the joyous Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah will be replaced by some song from a movie I have no ties to and that makes me sad. Even worse, in today's climate it also probably makes me a racist. And worst of all, Disney had Moana right there as the obvious replacement! Moana is a movie about sitting on wood that floats in the water! The combination of the Rock and Lin-Manuel might have even managed to take away 70% of the sting of losing Splash. 

By the way, given the broader concerns globally -- a pandemic spreading everywhere, a TV character acting as president, police brutality being exposed -- I get feeling down about changes to a Disney ride seems pretty dumb, but then again this is a blog lol, you know what you're getting here. 

So yes I think I can be bummed about never again seeing the bunny trapped in honey who sounds exactly like Karlie's mission buddy. To shed a tear that I'll never be mooned by a bear while going down the intermediate hill of ... Princess and the Frog (even typing it out feels wrong). 

Original Splash will live on in YouTube, in cellphone pictures that rendered the pay-for-photos useless, and in that hilarious time the Utes tried to invent a celebration in Splash's name. 

new MUSS tradition: SPLASH MOUNTAIN 💦 after the first touchdown, use our water bottles to fill up @ stadium to throw water in celebration 😎 pic.twitter.com/IYMq45IWpg

— The MUSS (@TheMUSS) August 30, 2017

As twitter user Steve Pierce put it, "If you told me one fanbase would name a weird celebration after a famous Disneyland ride, I would have bet $1 billion it would be BYU."

Me too, and wouldn't that have been something, seeing my favorite team merge with my favorite ride. We'd have been mocked to death by everyone -- "there go the Mormons again!" -- but love such as this isn't embarrassed easily. When I fell for Splash I fell hard. I don't know if it qualifies as irony because I don't get irony but to see the ride I once thought would kill me pass away just as it became my favorite sure is something.

"How do you do," the friendly critters always asked as we floated through Splash.
"Pretty sad sure as you're born," I'd reply today.