Plenty of us have missed out on a lot during the coronavirus pandemic.
Visiting friends, family or even travelling overseas.
But for a California family, being unable to visit “the happiest place on Earth” has forced them into a pretty drastic alternate course of action.
They built Disneyland – or at least, a tiny part of it.
Brothers Sean and Michael LaRochelle decided to pass the time during the California lockdown by building a smaller version of the Matterhorn rollercoaster in their backyard.
They pitched the Disney-inspired ideas to their parents back in March and then spent months building a fully functional rollercoaster.
Enlisting their parents and friends, the Matterhorn mini was complete in July.
“Growing up, Disneyland was something I loved,” Sean LaRochelle, an architecture graduate student, told the Napa Valley Register.
“I’ve always wanted to create a roller coaster.”
The end result was a rollercoaster about six metres high with a track measuring about 121 metres long.
The family said the ride takes about 50 seconds.
Sean LaRochelle says he was inspired by another family – the one that made the walk-through version of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in their home.
“They talk about all the negatives of COVID, but one of the benefits of COVID is you have all this time and you realise you know, ‘what can I be doing with all this time?’,” he told local news channel, KGO-TV.
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