To Infinity and Beyond! (Or Until The Attraction's Over)

From the moment you first step into line for Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, the competitive tension in the air is palpable as you find yourself wondering who will be the top scorer in your group.  In fact, every time we ride this attraction we usually have to say to one another, "Alright.  It's just for fun, this is not a contest", to calm ourselves down and try to keep it friendly.  And most of the time, the "this is just for fun" statement holds true.  But yes, loyal readers, even we love to compete every once and a while.  "So how does it usually conclude," you may ask.  Well, to be honest, we don't know.  It's one of those attractions you could ride 1000 times, and every time be different.  But, that doesn't mean we don't have any great stories to tell you.

Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters is basically a moving "shooting gallery", loosely based on plot, with lasers.  Makes complete sense, right?  Apparently, the evil Emperor Zurg (sworn enemy of the Galactic Alliance, of course) has hatched a plot to rob the galaxy of its all-important Double-A battery supply for his own nefarious purposes, and it's up to you to stop him!

Buzz Lightyear is one of our favorite attractions in The Park.  The queue is extremely well done; lots to see here including a bunch of Hidden Mickeys, pictures of Zurg and the Little Green Men, and a huge audio-animatronic Buzz Lightyear who breaks down for you exactly what is going on and what your mission is.  Once done with the queue, it's time to board for your own brand of galactic butt-kicking.  From the second we sit down in our XP-40 Star Cruiser (yes, the cars do have names) with our blasters at the ready, all galactic chaos breaks loose.  Not with each other of course, but with our blasters as we try to figure out just how off target they are this time!  We usually completely waste the first room just on this task alone, not to mention doing a whole lot of laughing and complaining.  Once we have them set we take aim and the fingers start flying, or pulling, or whatever.

As your cruiser takes you through the various rooms on the ride, your goal is probably exactly what you think it is: shoot as many targets as you can from the beginning to the end of the ride and the person with the highest score at the end wins.  And you'd be right!  Every room is littered with targets (circles, squares, triangles and diamonds) and it's your goal to plug as many of them as you can.  Even Zurg himself makes several appearances, so if it's your lifelong dream to take a shot or two at him, well now's your chance!  Targets are all over and your left and right, so you have plenty to choose from, and your Cruiser comes equipped with a joystick you can use to turn your vehicle either direction as you choose the targets you want to go after.  Either that, or you can just spin the Cruiser round and round repeatedly until you feel sick and nauseated.  Whee!  Repeated trips definitely help you know where the better targets are, though, and this is one attraction you'll definitely want to make repeated trips onto.

Another of the attraction bits we'd love to mention is the photo-op.  This is a fun little spot for a crazy pose.  So where is it?  Well, the second you leave the lightspeed tunnel (near the last room with Zurg), look up and smile!  It's an especially fun room to take advantage if you're like us and you have low scores, because at least you can get a funny picture out of it. 

When we finally enter the last room we like to check our scores.  If Mark is winning, Chad usually says, "Great job!"  If Chad is coming out on top, Mark usually starts spinning the vehicle (see the difference there?).  Oh, and just to let you know, this is a great way to mess with your opponents.  If you're opponent seems to be pulling away score-wise, give the ole XP-40 a few good spins and see what happens.  We're definitely not opposed to using whatever leverage we can to win.  It's all part of the game, right?

Once off the ride we like to see how goofy our picture came out, or how serious it is.  It's still somewhat goofy even then; by the looks on our faces you'd think we were professional soliders on a mission for the government with our trusty blasters at the ready.  Luckily the Park is awesome, and they allow you to send your "Star Command" photo to your personal email, so you can see it when you get home and laugh at yourselves (and your horrid score) for months to come.

Being the hardcore gamers that we are, and being the Park fanatics we are as well, this is one attraction that lives in hearts and our trigger-fingers.  It comes highly recommended.

Mark calls 'Shenanigans'!

A few tricks of the trade:

We won't give away all of our secrets (what fun would that be?!) but there are a few tips we can give you that might help up your scores somewhat.  They're not really secret (people just tend to not pay attention to them) so we feel pretty safe doing so.  And really, what do we know?  Did you see those wretched scores above?

• Every 10th trigger pull will garner you 100 points whether you hit a target or not, so keep pulling!
• Triangles and Diamonds are your friend!  Circles and Squares not so much.  Each target has a base score with Circles having the lowest, and Diamonds having the highest.  These are the ones you should be aiming for.
• Lit targets are really your friend!  If you manage to hit a lit target, the base score of the target is multiplied and will continue to give you the multiplied score until you miss.  So if you hit one, keep pulling!  Those really high scores you see?  Yeah, that's how they do it, along with...
• ...knowing where the secret targets are.  Yes, they do exist.  Experiment and see what you can come up with.
• Talk to other people in the queue.  We enjoy sharing with others while we're in line, and you never know what others might share with you.  We remember one particular time a husband and wife were standing behind us, and he was trash-talking her big time.  Apparently she had never beaten him.  She snuck up behind us at one point and asked us if we had ridden before and if we had any tips for her.  We told her exactly what we've just told you, and who do you think won?  Do the words, "She smoked him like a Christmas ham" mean anything to you?  She left happy, he left sad.  See what fun this is?
• Just have fun.  It's a game, and it's supposed to be fun.  Ride again and again as often as you'd like, and just have fun.

Are you a fan of Buzz?  What are some of your best scores?  We'd love to hear from you!

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