OK you asked for it... here is a fairly detailed description of the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea attraction in the Mysterious Island.

I'd read a lot online about this ride and so there were not too many surprises. They took the classic Disneyland Submarine ride and updated it with some awesome special effects and much improved technology. The storyline is very similar, yet the execution is very different. The ride vehicles are 6 person mini-subs that are suspended from an overhead track. There are 2 seats on either side and 2 looking out the front. Get those front seats if you can, as the view is 10 times better. The interior of the sub is very Vernes (as interpreted by Harper Goff). Lots of brass and Victorian looking gauges and lighting fixtures. On your second ride, be sure to watch the gauges! The windows are big domes and unfortunately for me, set a little low for someone 6 feet tall. I had to really stoop to see, which means Pat, at 6'7" had to bend over double. After the door is sealed you move along the track and are "lowered" into the water. Unlike the DL or WDW Subs, you never actually go into real water. The show is dry, but through the use of some very well designed special effects, it truly looks and feels like you are underwater. All the water and bubbles are in your window, and the show elements are designed in such a way so that they move with the sea surge. If you are in the front seats you can see the sub in front of you in the distance as you make your way through this undersea realm. There is narration but it's all in Japanese so I may get some plot points wrong. It's fairly obvious however that you are exploring a sunken city like Atlantis and meet up with a Giant Squid whom you repel using an electrical charge along the way. This charge saves you, but your batteries are drained. As you lose power you sink to the bottom, your oxygen running perilously low. You then notice the Atlanteans swimming about. On our first ride we thought they were attacking us, but we figured out later that they were in fact rescuing us! There is a neat shadow effect that shows them pushing your sub back up to the surface. You are pulled back out of the "water" and your ride is over. This was a really neat ride and I can only think of 2 changes I'd make to it. 1 would be either lowering the seats a bit or raising the windows. The other would be for them to spray down the outside of the sub at the end so that it's dripping when you get out of it. The underwater illusion is fantastic but when you look at the sub it's bone dry. Geez that was nit-picky of me :-)

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