AtomiCo

Queue (Enderby Cove)

The Enderby Cove queue is based around the pursuit of power as guests in this line have been hired as part of AtomiCo.’s “Tundra Mountain Extraction Team” a team of low-level expendable crucial and capable employees being sent deep into the core of the icy mountain to recover the top secret alien technology. Due to this side of the attraction being very AtomiCo heavy, the queue suits that as well, passing through a variety of rooms as you peruse through the sanitized suburban aesthetic of the offices and preparation rooms.

It also appears that within the shack, someone left the radio on as it plays 50s music, along with much of the rest of the land, in a crackling radio that adds to the eerie and hollow feel of the land as a whole despite the bustling industry and business.

Once through the outdoor portion of the queue, guests enter the ice cavern featuring massive opened blast doors. The doors have a few warning signs that have been effectively scrubbed away so nobody can read them, but some eagle-eyed guests may be able to piece the warnings together about the dangers of the atomic energy that these blast doors are meant to withstand. Though surely, that’s not true, they’re for blizzards, why would AtomiCo lie to you? Immediately inside are offices, rows and rows of empty cubicles equipped with typewriters, binders of paperwork, and rotary phones. The radio continues to play here, the same static crackling as the songs play over the empty office space.

As the queue continues, you pass by a corner office with tinted glass on the outside and a door clearly made of alien metals. The sign on the door reads “Out to Lunch” but the occupant must’ve forgotten to draw the shade because guests can take a look in and notice graphs, charts, and boards showcasing future plans. Some are normal enough, like spreading this alien tech across the planet to better human lives or enhancing cars with it to make them fly, but you may also notice a concerning board that simply reads “Operation: Endgame” and what appears to be a massive UFO equipt with atomic bombs. Alien tech lies across the table as well, seemingly as instruments to explain the tech to higher up board members.

Continuing along, guests enter into the barracks, a mostly empty room full of bunk beds with a few showers lining the back walls. These barracks are large and open providing a severe echo to the radio that continues to play through the queue. In this room, some duffel bags sit on the ground and allow guests to get close enough to see names of people, the clothes inside their bags, and even personal items like letters to/from family members, stuffed animals, books, and anything else a person may bring with them. There is also a working bathroom in this portion of the queue, much like that in Flight of Passage, that guests who have been waiting a long time in line can use. Other than these elements, this portion of the queue is intentionally dull and perfect for guests to soak in the atmosphere… Or play charades on their phone.

Once out of the barracks, guests enter a locker room where the walls are flanked by lockers and coat racks. These lockers include locks and name tags on them, but many have rubbed off or rusted over to make them difficult to see. Some of the visible names do reference the imagineers who worked on this ground-breaking land such as a locker that reads “Ace” or a jacket with a tag reading “Monkey” and “BasketBuddy” among others. As you exit the locker room and into the training room, you pass by a large wall of gloves, much like the wall of gloves in “Andor” each also referencing important people in the Imagineering community, though not necessarily those who worked on this particular land, names like “Doug” and “Tiki” appear, amongst others.

Once in the training room, guests are assigned to stand on a numbered dot as a black and white screen flickers to life. A quick countdown appears as a cast member seals the doors behind guests and the lights go down aside from security lights at the bottom of the walls. The room itself is mostly empty with a few more lockers and bags of stuff, as well as a large projector with film reels suspended from the ceiling, but not a ton to look at as the focus is the screen.

The screen flickers on and we meet Lyle Whitley, the Director of Operations for which Mount Whitley is named. Whitley welcomes guests to the program and gives them their mission log; to board an IceCar, an alien-powered vehicle that has enough energy to bring the team into the mountain’s deepest depths. There, they will uncover more long lost alien tech which they are to secure and bring back with them up to the surface. He also warns them to watch out for the Gentoo Alliance, a group of resistance fighters who have been “causing trouble” within the dig sites. Whitley then turns the video over to Dr. Alron Spicek, which shoddy editing on the reel declares is “The Late Dr. Alron Spicek'' before he gets into his safety spiel, first discussing the potential dangers of the tech to be careful, as well as to be careful of Dasylmus IO as it appears to be unstable. He then gets into the ride safety spiel with a seat belt demonstration, keeping appendages inside the vehicle, and your other standard safety rules. Whitley returns and tells the crew he believes in them and that they are “the only ones who can do it” before giving a smile as the video cuts out and the lights return. Doors open and guests then follow the cast member’s instructions as they enter the final room, the loading docks.

Much like Dinosaur, the loading docks are full of pipes moving the alien atomic energy throughout the mountain, some releasing steam periodically. Guests follow their team to the numbered dots on the loading dock where they stand on the same numbers before being let onto the attraction proper.

As you near the end of the first downhill slope, your IceCar seems to lose traction, sending the vehicle careening to the bottom of the hill, weaving back and forth as the rudimentary computer guidance system attempts to gain traction again. A dialup tone can be heard as you slip and slide into a cavern where over the radio an apologetic voice tells you that your treads got jammed up but they should be back online now and to enjoy the rest of your expedition! From there, the cars begin to pass through the beautiful subterranean caverns of ice, with waterfalls collecting in pools of crystal blue water that glow with an almost unnatural hue as steam rises from the surface of the pools, creating a very foggy atmosphere within the cavern that also appears to confuse the computer, causing the vehicle to skid and slide along the icy floor, unable to break as you approach one of the massive pools. The vehicle’s brakes finally kick on just as the vehicle reaches the edge of the pool, slowly backing up and correcting itself before getting back on track.

From here, the ride gets a bit calmer, passing through a tunnel that was blasted open by AtomiCo’s technology. This is obvious, because atomic construction equipment sit strewn out in hallways and unfinished routes, such as excavators and bulldozers. Some of them seem to be working, possibly operated by people on the inside though no people can be seen. Suddenly, as you pass through the route, the radiation meter beeps a single time and a voice comes over the radio from the same employee saying to “ignore that.” The voice warns us that insurance requires these radiation meters be installed but that it’ll just keep beeping but nothing actually happens.

Once through the hall, you’re now on a less developed route, finding instead of the clear and laid ahead routes that made up the previous areas, instead it’s rough terrain filled with rocks, stalagmites and stalactites, and massive chunks of ice blocking the pathway. A final voice breaks the music playing from the radio as the employee says “Alright team, from here on out, you’re out of the contact zone so you’re on your own. The IceCar should switch to hostile terrain treads so don’t worry about that scary-looking terrain out there. Oh, and before you go, there have been reports of Gentoo activity out there, so keep your eye out. Good luck and remember, AtomiCo is counting on you.” With that, your IceCar radio goes fuzzy as the music fades away leaving you to sit in the darkness with the unsettling echoes of the IceCar motors and drips from the internal water sources.

This strip of attraction serves to provide lots of swerving and hair-raising near-misses with stalagmites and ice chunks. A quick turn around an ice wall and down a dark corridor is quickly followed by a steep incline where the IceCar has issues getting up, slipping backwards slightly multiple times as it attempts to climb and climb. Meanwhile, as the IceCar climbs, the radiation detector begins to beep steadily as the bars begin to increase on it, showing growing levels of radiation as you get deeper into the mountain. Once finally up the incline, there is another short bit of zipping around chunks of ice and pools of water as the scenery begins to change. At one point driving through, the ice gets too much and the IceCar skids off the main path and almost crashes into a wall before applying its breaks and getting back on course.

Going from the mountainous tunnels of ice to caverns of alien treasures and wonders. Pieces of metal emitting a faint humming noise surround the IceCar as each piece emits a very similar unearthly blue glow that the earlier pools featured. As you pass through the cavern, the pieces of metal grow in size, as if something had crashed and begun losing pieces as it went, and as you go deeper into the mountain, you encounter the grand set piece: Dalsymus IO, the massive UFO frozen in the mountain. It sits in the center of a grand cavern, emitting a much louder version of the hum that the smaller pieces were emitting. Your IceCar slows down as it circles the cavern and the radio clicks back on, hearing the voice of the AtomiCo employee who says “You actually made it? Wow, you’re the first ones yet. Well get to stripping that thing, we’ve got bogies coming up the hill and you have to get out of there, but you’d best not leave empty-handed.” The radio clicks off and the IceCar rounds the massive UFO when engine revving can be heard and another vehicle appears on the other side of the UFO blocking the path further. As the two cars stand off, guests can notice the logos on their IceCars aren’t that of AtomiCo, but rather the Gentoo Alliance, full of guests who followed that path. The two cars face each other for a brief moment as suddenly Dalsymus IO begins rumbling and an intense high-pitched beep can be heard from both cars as the radiation monitors reach maximum intake. The rumbles shake the cavern, and using similar ice machines to the (broken) ones on Indiana Jones, ice begins to fall all around the room.

Your IceCar quickly spins around and rather than going down the tunnel it initially planned to, instead, it goes into a dark tunnel, quickly followed on a (technically next to) track by the Gentoo Alliance vehicle. The two cars, the resistance one in hot pursuit, go through an insanely dark winding path with the only lights being the two cars headlights, yours illuminating ahead of you with the Gentoo Alliance vehicle lighting up behind you, creating an air of urgency that wasn’t felt earlier within the attraction. The pursuit winds and twists, your car swerving to avoid obstacles that were there as this was clearly not supposed to be your path.

Finally, the vehicles enter a chasm that is well-lit like the others previously. The hum of Dalsymus IO still echoes as the Alliance vehicle speeds up behind you. After a very quick and sharp bank turn, you see ahead of you: salvation or death as a wooden gate with a “Construction Area: Do Not Enter” sign on it. However, the rest of the room is fully sealed in by the thick walls of ice, so the car goes for it “smashing through the gate” (actually just having it open as you pass through) before plunging you out onto a massive outdoor run where the cars get up to 65 mph (104.6 km/h)! The two cars are neck-and-neck as they race side-by-side, the Gentoo Alliance car in hot pursuit as the music comes back in, something upbeat and fast as the cars race back into the mountain and immediately down a decline.