A California man has decided to take the reopening of Disneyland into his own hands by building a roller coaster in his backyard. He even made it to CNN.
What’s going on?
Sean LaRochelle, who lives in Napa, re-created Disneyland’s “Matterhorn” ride in his parents’ backyard, KABC reports.
- LaRochelle said he started building the ride in March. He finished it in July.
- “I always wanted to build a ride, and Disney rides are always special to me because they’re themed; they tell a unique story,” he said.
Key quote:
- “They talk about all the negatives of COVID, but one of the benefits of COVID is you have all this time and you realize you know, ‘What can I be doing with all this time?’” LaRochelle said.
Flashback:
In March, the Barenz family in Farmington, Utah, built a Disneyland experience in their living room, which I wrote about for the Deseret News. The family created a little ride in front of a television, which showed a POV video of Splash Mountain. The family would spray water over their baby when they were on the ride.
- Lara Barenz told POPSUGAR: “My husband had seen something like this on Reddit with just a regular roller coaster and so he decided to re-create it with Disney rides as a way to cheer us all up. We all are huge Disney fans and were supposed to go to Disneyland at the beginning of the month before it shut down. We decided to cancel because of the way things were headed. This went on for quite some time with several different rides over a couple days ... a great way to entertain (the kids) for a while when there isn’t much else to do. Although, maybe a bit tiring for my husband.”