How many of you---postal workers and police officers excluded---get to squeeze off multiple rounds from a .38 caliber revolver during your typical work day?Disneyland provides its Jungle Cruise skippers with this unique work experience. Each trip through the Jungle, the skipper fires two shots in order to save his crew from dreadful attack by audio-animatronic hippopotami.
The gun we used in the Jungle was a real Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. Okay, it has been modified so that no one could fit a real round into its chamber, but those plastic "blanks" we use are still mighty noisy. That's why skippers hold the gun above the canopy and shoot upward---it is a little quieter for the guests in the front of the boat.
I heard once of a "friend" who took a boat through the Jungle with a couple of obnoxious teenagers sitting up front, alternatively interrupting, heckling and often ignoring the captain. By the time he arrived at the Hippo Pool, the skipper had had enough. Instead of discharging his weapon above the canopy, he lowered it straight out, pointed toward the hippos and fired two deafening rounds---about three feet from the ears of the teenage pests.
My friend was deafened, too, from the blasts, but---(it is my understanding)---it was worth it! The teenagers kept their sassy little mouths shut for the remainder of the trip.
As we say at the World Famous Jungle Cruise:
"Ride's over. Get out."
Love,
Mike
