Grizzly River Run
| Grizzly River Run | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disney California Adventure |
| Land / area | Grizzly Peak |
| Type | River rapids ride |
| Opened | February 8, 2001 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Height req. | 42 in (107 cm) |
| Status | Operating |
Grizzly River Run is a river rapids ride in the Grizzly Peak area of Disney California Adventure in the Disneyland Resort, California. Opened with the park on February 8, 2001, it sends circular eight-person rafts around Grizzly Peak, a 110-foot (34 m) rockwork mountain shaped as a grizzly bear, which serves as the park's central landmark. It is generally regarded as the wettest ride at either park of the resort.
History
The ride was part of the park's original plan, in which the area around it represented California's state and national park lands and the Sierra Nevada. The fictional operator is the Grizzly River Rafting Company, and the queue and station are dressed as its base camp, with equipment, signage and accounts of the river's hazards. The surrounding district was first called the Grizzly Peak Recreation Area within the Golden State land; after the park's rebuilding programme it was restyled as Grizzly Peak in its own right, with a stronger national-park and airfield theme, while the ride itself was left substantially unchanged.
Experience
Rafts are loaded at a rotating platform and carried up the mountain on a long wooden conveyor lift, passing beneath leaking pipes that begin the soaking early. At the top, the current takes over. The course runs through a darkened cave section, past the remains of mining works and a log jam of stranded timber, and through channels cut into the rockwork, the rafts turning freely as they go.
Two drops punctuate the ride, the larger of about 22 feet (6.7 m). On the final descent the raft is deliberately set spinning as it drops, so that which riders face the wave at the bottom is a matter of chance. The course ends in a field of geysers that erupt around the returning rafts. A circuit lasts about six to seven minutes. Free lockers beside the entrance exist because bags left in a raft are unlikely to stay dry; how wet any individual rider gets depends largely on where the raft's spin leaves them at each drop.
Design
The ride was designed by Walt Disney Imagineering and manufactured by Intamin, the Swiss firm responsible for many of the world's river rapids rides. Its closest Disney relative is Kali River Rapids at Disney's Animal Kingdom, but the two differ in an important respect: the California rafts are engineered to spin during descents, which the Florida rafts are not. The system uses 32 rafts, each seating eight riders in a single inward-facing ring. Water drained from the upper flumes is stored in the basin across the walkway, in what is now San Fransokyo Square.