Base of C

There's a position in Splash Mountain called "Base of C," during which one cast member is paid by Disneyland to sit in the dark recesses of the lift hill that pulls logs and very-much-suspecting guests up to their final plunge. The job of this individual is to stare resolutely at a small monitor that screens each log for lap-sitters or standers and, if they spot one, to enact a manual ride stop, enter the view of the guests with a flashlight, and stand there shouting until whatever was an issue has been fixed. Whenever I'm stuck at Base of C for inordinate amounts of time, such as last night, I start to go a little cuckoo. First of all, there's the vulture spiel playing directly over your head, on repeat, for however long you're down there.



"Everybody's got a laughing place... looks like this one's for you. Wait 'til you see what happened to that old Brer Rabbit... he learned his lesson alright... but I'm afraid he learned to late! Laughing place... we'll show you a laughing place... right up here. If you've found you're laughing place, how come you aren't laughing?"

x 400.

Guest response to these animatronics varies according to age and weight. Little kids cry or scream. Fat little kids laugh back in an obese attempt at cleverness (because the vultures have just asked them why they aren't laughing). Dads stare, entranced, at the mechanical gadgetry displayed before them. Mothers are usually too busy either shielding their sight from a drop that's still a good thirty seconds away or scrambling to secure all personal belongings to notice what's happening. Minorities swear (not being racist, here, just observing and making rash generalizations), and inappropriately skinny adults (read: chain smokers or meth heads, but like there's really even a difference, right?) flip them off. The same-old, same-old nature of this position gets tiring quickly.

Plus, from where I sit, I can watch the logs pass by from the corner of my right eye, which positions myself firmly to the left of their track. On the video screen, though, my view is an overhead one, with the camera perched just above the vultures. Seeing each log from two unique perspectives gets my mind all cracked out on the nature of reality/existence/whether or not I'll still be sane by thirty, and I wig out a bit. Plus, on the far left side of the monitor's image, I can see the entrance to the recess in which I sit, and sometimes I stick my foot out a bit so that I can see my own foot on the monitor. Me watching myself from a distinctly removed position - while also watching logs from two contrasting perspectives - doesn't go over too well. I leave each Base of C shift feeling dizzy and confused, or, as I've taken to calling it lately, "confizzled."

Go ahead, try it! It's fun, I promise: "Confizzled."