Since the earliest days of Disneyland, Walt and his designers set out to wow guests by making the unimaginable real. From singing birds to zooming through the stars; haunted ballrooms to the depths of the jungle, Disney Parks are all about dazzling guests with inexplicable effects. That’s why we took an in-depth look at 10 “How’d They Do That?” Special Effects that STILL Amaze Us to celebrate how Imagineering’s tricks – from simple to astounding – make all the difference.
But for fans of Imagineering, there’s only one thing more interesting than a special effect that works: a special effect that doesn’t. So today, we’ve created a special list to explore a “lucky” 13 special effects that just didn’t work. Broken, malfunctioning, abandoned, or removed, these almost-amazing moments simply didn’t work out the way designers had hoped… And since Disney’s designers tend to have smart solutions, you may not have even noticed when these effects simply disappeared, were replaced, or were left broken in plain sight!
1. The “Footlight Parade”
Image: Tim Gerdes, Flickr
Attraction: The Great Movie Ride
Park: Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Located in the iconic Chinese Theater at the end of the Disney-MGM Studios’ Hollywood Blvd., the Lost Legend: The Great Movie Ride had all the makings of a timeless masterpiece as only Disney can create. The slow-moving dark ride through the greatest moments of (licensing accessible) Hollywood hits was an epic, 22-minute journey into the movies from the Golden Age to today. However, one of the ride’s biggest scenes never really worked as intended.
In the first scene, guests would pass through a medley of early movie musicals, all centered around the “By a Waterfall” scene from Busby Berkley’s 1933 film Footlight Parade. Recreating the film’s famous “human waterfall” was a five tier “cake” of posed synchronized swimmers, each tier rotating counter to the last as fountains lept from each level to the one below, just as in the famous scene. You can see the short-lived effect in action here. However, the heavy rotating mechanism is said to have been a pretty awful pain to keep running, and the addition of water allegedly caused quite a headache, occasionally flooding the ride path and frazzling sensors.
THE FIX: By the park’s first anniversary, the rotation and the water were halted. Soon after, a hazy scrim was placed between riders and the scene (as you can see here), with kinetic lighting replacing actual movement… which won’t be the last time on our list that Disney trades lights for action.
2. The Chamber of Destiny
Image: Disney
Attraction: Indiana Jones Adventure
Park: Disneyland
The Modern Marvel: Indiana Jones Adventure isn’t just one of Disneyland’s anchor attractions; it’s one of the most spectacular rides Disney has ever designed. The attraction’s lead-up tells the story of the ancient lost god Mara, said to grant any who came to his temple one of three supernatural gifts: timeless youth, earthly riches, or visions of the future. In fact, legend says that in the heart of the temple, the ancient Chamber of Destiny presents three locked doors, each corresponding to one of Mara’s gifts, and each leading to a legendary “Hall of Promise” beyond which visitors recieve their reward… if they can avoid looking into the dark eyes of the ancient god, that is…
Image: Disney
With the rising action out of the way, the ride’s literary climax actually happens in its first scene, when riders turn the corner from the load area and face those three locked doors of legend…
Each time that guests boarded the rumbling Troop Transports, they appeared to pass through a different door. On your first ride, you may enter the middle door – earthly riches; your second ride may pass through the left door – visions of the future; then, the right door – eternal youth. And beyond the door, each “Hall of Promise” would be filled with props, paintings, frescos, and statues appropriate to the door selected for you.
Of course, it was all just a masterful illusion. In reality, the “Chamber of Destiny” has just one functioning doorway, with two false doors on either side of it. The large, funnel-shaped chamber would simply pivot to make it appear that the single functioning door was on the left, right, or middle. The one actual door opens to a single Hall of Promise, with split-second changes in lighting, sound, projection, and scrims swapping the Hall of Promise to match the “Gift” Mara selected. (The effect is best understood by seeing it in action on the security monitor here or a behind-the-scenes video here.)
But about a decade ago, the Chamber of Destiny stopped pivoting. Rumors insist that an earthquake (common in Southern California) fatally damaged the mechanical system that controlled the enormous moving set.
THE FIX: To compensate, Disney turned to a 21st century favorite: projection mapping. Now, the three doors are brought to life by projections that can “shuffle” the order of the doors and have clever unlocking animations matching each gift. Unfortunately, guests now always pass through the middle door (even if which gift the middle door leads to appears to change via projection). That at least allows the ride’s re-rideability to continue, but firmly squashes any illusion that you’re actually passing into a different room or taking a different route. Fans still hope for the return of the effect, and it’s true that a working Chamber of Destiny plus the projections would make for a truly awe-inspiring intro.
3. The Knight of the Living Dead
Image: Chris Murray, Flickr (license)
Attraction: The Haunted Mansion
Park: Disneyland
It’s often said that the Haunted Mansion is home to “999 Happy Haunts.” And despite the ride’s atmospheric introduction and its eerie, abstract first half, eventually, even the most frightened children tend to relax by time “Grim, Grinning Ghosts” come out to socialize. The Mansion’s unique fusion of frights and fun is now seen as one of its greatest strengths, but in the 1980s, designers and executives briefly toyed with the idea that the ride might be getting stale and predictable.
Image: Disney
Since most classic haunted house dark rides featured shocking “jump scares” (commonly, rattling chains, “falling” bookcases, sudden loud noises, or the classic car horn startle), in 1985 Disney tested out a new effect that – it was hoped – would add some legitimate tension and unease to the manor. Standing near the “Endless Hallway” scene (where other suits of armor are positioned), the so-called “Knight of the Living Dead” was played by a real actor, who would literally sneak up to vehicles to ellicit screams.
THE FIX: Apparently, the presence of the figure did more harm than good. The “Knight” would frequently catch guests in… well… unsavory situations. Plus, as the Omnimovers would rotate toward the hallway, the Knight suddenly leaning into the vehicle to frighten riders would frequently become the target of a quick “fight or flight” punch to the head, or a flying purse. Insiders say that each actor playing the knight was eventually armed with his own ride-stop button to slow the Omnimover chain to return thrown personal items. Altogether, it turned out that guests wanted the Haunted Mansion to be predictable and family-friendly, and injecting actual fear into the ride simply didn’t jive.
4. The missing mermaids
Attraction: Pirates of the Caribbean
Park: Magic Kingdom
Since Disneyland’s original Pirates of the Caribbean opened in 1967, the Walt Disney Company has been in a continuous cycle of making edits – big and small – to the piratical dark rides in California, Florida, Japan, and France. A great deal of the ride’s noteworthy changes have been credited to “political correctness” (much to the chagrin of fans). But there’s perhaps even more controversy surrounding the edits Disney’s made to retroactively incorporate elements of their high-earning (if played out) Pirates of the Caribbean film series into the rides that inspired the films.
One such change was the addition of mermaids in the echoing grottos that serve as the ride’s introduction in Florida. Actually, the effect was done with a great deal of subtlety, simply adding the eerie song sung by the mermaids in the film’s fourth installment, a mermaid skeleton on the beach, and barely-discernible projections of the scaled creatures glimmering as if swimming alongside the boats. Occasional splashes of water seemed to indicate that their tails had broken the surface. You can get a sense of the effect in the video here.
THE FIX: Added in 2012, the presence of the mermaids was simply not clear or consistent enough to work the way Disney wanted, and arguably muddled the ride’s story and pacing even further. It was officially retired during a 2015 refurbishment, silencing the sirens’ song. Just this fall, Imagineers finally got aorund to removing the mermaid skeleton from the beach.
5. The Yeti
Image: Disney
Attraction: Expedition Everest
Park: Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Easily the most well-known of Disney’s not-so-functional effects, the Yeti is perhaps the most talked-about trivia piece in all of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. That’s because the ancient mountain guardian is so essential in the story of Expedition Everest. More than just being the pivotal creature driving the ride’s plot, the physical Yeti Audio-Animatronic itself was a major piece of the ride’s marketing campaign! Entire Travel Channel specials seemed to focus on the mechanics of the enormous 25-foot tall primate, capable of swinging out 5 feet horizontally and dropping 18 inches to swipe at passing trains – each move requiring aviation levels of thrust.
That’s what made it so doubly devestating when the Yeti stopped working less than a year after the ride’s 2006 opening. Uncharacteristically, a Disney spokesperson confirmed that “the complex functions have presented some challenges affecting its operation.” We dug even deeper, exploring the legend of the Yeti and what exactly happened to Disney’s version in our in-depth, standalone feature on the ride, Modern Marvels: Expedition Everest!
THE FIX: So since at least late 2006, the Yeti has been operating in its “B-mode,” which – for this figure – amounts to fans blowing on its fur while a strobe light flashes to give the illusion of movement. Honestly, it’s enough to convince most riders in the fleeting seconds of the lightning-fast encounter. Still, project manager Joe Rodhe has time and time again promised to fix the Yeti… And what’s another decade at this point?
6. Mickey Walks on Water
Image: Disney
Attraction: Fantasmic
Park: Disneyland and Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Anyone who’s seen Fantasmic at Disneyland or Disney’s Hollywood Studios knows that the nighttime spectacular is truly among Disney’s most awe-inspiring productions. The show has been elevated to the upper echelons of Disney entertainment and has become somehow timeless and evergreen. It would be hard to select just one chills-inducing moment from the show, but a true climax has to be when Mickey vanquishes the evil dragon Maleficent either with a sword (in Florida) or his magic (in California). But had things gone as planned, that final faceoff between good and evil would’ve been even more epic.
Originally, Imagineers intended for Mickey to show just how powerful his dream was by walking on water, with fountains rising as he stepped into the lagoon as if by magic. In fact, that portion of the show’s iconic score is even called “Mickey Walks on Water.”
THE FIX: The walk-on-water effect was simply too difficult to get right, and it was eventually abandoned altogether. What’s more, rumors insist that Michael Eisner felt that Mickey walking on water would also draw uncomfortable parallels to Jesus, and thought it best to withdraw the idea.
7. Q’araq
Image: Disney
Attraction: Roaring Rapids
Park: Shanghai Disneyland
At Shanghai Disneyland’s one-of-a-kind Adventure Isle, guests are invited to join the League of Adventurers to tackle the legendary Roaring Rapids. Their mission? Uncover the true origin of the distant roars emenating from behind Mount Apu Taku’s waterfalls. The answer? A massive crocodilian river guardian that the local Arbori people call Q’araq. Meant to match the intensity of the face-to-maw encounter with the Lava Monster aboard Tokyo DisneySea’s Modern Marvel: Journey to the Center of the Earth, Q’araq is indeed hiding deep in the mountain. And this massive Audio Animatronics figure is rigged to slink out of sight as rafts approach, dig its claws into the rock, and launch itself forward, leaping toward guests as its jaws snap.
Q’araq was one of the most highly-anticipated features of the Shanghai park when it opened in 2016, so fans abroad were surprised to find that the first videos to surface of the ride showed that creature entirely frozen – a malfunction most would expect to trigger the ride’s closure until fixed. Though Q’araq is now working, we hesitate to say it’s in its full A-mode. Though the crocodile’s head and jaws move, its full-body motion and its pouncing effect have never been caught on camera.
8 and 9. The falling ceiling(s)
Image: Disney
Attraction: Indiana Jones Adventure
Park: Disneyland
One of the most well-known parts of Disneyland’s Modern Marvels: Indiana Jones Adventure isn’t the ride at all; it’s the quarter-mile queue that leads to the remote, gigantic showbuilding built far outside of the park’s protective berm. Faced with the challege of literally transporting guests into the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, designers used the trek through the collapsing ruins as an opportunity to tell a story. Not only does the walk to the ride slowly reveal the story of the lost god Mara and his Three Gifts; it also gets guests used to being the stars of their own adventure by avoiding booby traps.
Image: Disney
One of those famous booby traps is a room with a spiked ceiling. Luckily, Indiana Jones has already been through and deactivated the deadly traps – in this case, by wedging a bamboo stalk up against the ceiling to keep it from falling. In a fun bit of interactivity, yanking on that bamboo pole would cause the spikes to fall from above and make the ceiling descend to the sound of ancient rocks shifting. Naturally, the effect would halt at just the last second and reset a moment later.
The effect was known for working inconsistantly and – in recent years – seems to have simply been turned off. It seems that with each annual refurbishment of the ride, designers re-set the finnicky effect (or at least a version of it, usually without the actual descent of the ceiling). Though rumors insist it’s because the lowering ceiling doesn’t leave adequate clearance, that sounds like “armchair Imagineering.” The simpler answer is probably just that the effect was superfluous to the operations of the already-intensive ride, so when it breaks, it tends to stay broken until the next big clean-up.
Image: Disney
It’s not the only falling ceiling in the Temple that’s stopped working, though. On-board the ride, when guests first enter “The Big Room” before the crumbling face of Mara, their troop transports slam down an ancient set of stairs and jerk to the left, swaying riders out over the edge of a rocky cliff over the boiling lava pits below. A green beam from Mara’s eye strikes the path, with a resulting fiery burst showing the power of Mara’s gaze. Then, a second beam hits the ceiling just above riders… but nothing happens. Of course, it used to. To simulate the temple’s actual collapse, a massive icemaker was installated in the ceiling, flash-creating large ice sheets that would be released in sync with the laser, crumbling toward the pit below where it would melt and be piped back up to be re-frozen.
As the story goes, the ice wasn’t melting quickly enough, causing the machine to malfunction. Though Imagineer Tony Baxter suggested a simple heating element to quickly melt the backed-up ice, executives thought it simpler to just shut off the effect. After all, the $50 million had plenty to see even without the collapsing ceiling effect.
Plenty of Indiana Jones’ high-tech special effects are known to flicker out for days, weeks, or months at a time, but in its 25 years, surprisingly few of its effects have been officially abandoned like the collapsing ceiling.
10. Murphy
Image: Disney
Attraction: Fantasmic
Park: Disneyland
Disney sure loves big Audio-Animatronics… but unfortunately, they don’t always like Disney.
When Fantasmic opened at Disneyland in 1992, that climactic battle between Mickey and Maleficent wasn’t quite as climactic as it is today. That’s because – for most of the show’s history – the role of the dragon was played by a relatively simple puppet: a puppeted head on the end of a cherry picker and two stick wings of sheer black material with simple lights strung throughout. (The same arrangement still used at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.) In 2009, Imagineers constructed a full-body Audio Animatronic of the dragon to take its place. Standing 45 feet tall and weighing 18,000 pounds, this spectacular fire-breathing creature easily ranked among our Countdown: 25 Best Animatronics on Earth.
Image: Disney
The new dragon, though, ended up being more of a monster than designers had hoped. Its debut was consistently delayed. When it finally made its debut in September 2009 (to thunderous applause, three months after scheduled), fans expected the wait to be over. But without fail, it failed. Almost every night, the dragon either didn’t appear or – if it did – failed to breathe fire or froze entirely. Fans nicknamed the figure “Murphy” after the so-called Murphy’s Law (“whatever can go wrong, will go wrong). Its problems came to a head in August 2010 when, during a performace, the dragon literally fell face-first. The 18,000 pound Audio-Animatronic was so stuck, it remained in its precarious position into the next day until it was literally dismantled to get it out of sight.
THE FIX: Fast-forward to today, and Murphy – er, Maleficent – rarely misses a show, and for a 9-ton robot with a flamethrower built in, that’s pretty impressive. When she does need a night-off, the press of a button launches the show’s water screens to hide the malfunctioning figure and replace her appearance with an animation created for just that occasion without missing a beat.
11. Decomissioned dinosaurs
Image: Disney
Attraction: DINOSAUR
Park: Disney’s Animal Kingdom
DINOSAUR at Disney’s Animal Kingdom is, by most accounts, a controversial ride. When the park opened, a somewhat different version of the attraction – a Lost Legend: Countdown to Extinction – was one of only two rides at the park, and its only dark ride. An off-roading thrill ride through the last seconds of the Cretaceous before the cataclysmic extinction event that wiped out most dinosaurs, the ride through time used the same thrilling ride system (and ride layout) as Indiana Jones Adventure, simply populating the ride course as a dark, hellish, steaming jungle of screaming, hissing dinoaurs.
But some of those dinosaurs didn’t cooperate. While the ride’s big baddie, the Carnotaurus, was known to have problems in its second appearance (when the day-glo dino literally takes off after riders in a terrifying, heaving full-body sprint), it’s the ride’s center point that’s most peculiar. After circling a pterodactyl nest, the Time Rover riders are seated in slips down a mudslide and beneath a pterodactyl… that’s quite obviously bolted to the ceiling from a metal arm. While this flying pterosaur originally swooped down toward riders, the effect was shut off.
Image: Disney
Immediately after, the Rover would pass underneath leaping, chicken-sized dinosaurs called compsognathus. Each dino was really a static figure on an articulating arm. As designed, those arms would sweep over the ride path and under downward-directed spotlights, giving the appearance of the creatures hopping over the car. But that effect, too, was shut off, leaving static, unmoving dinosaurs frozen in a “leaping” position simply floating in mid-air over the vehicle. You can get a glimpse of both awkward, frozen effects here.
THE FIX: The compsognathus were mercifully removed in a recent refurbishment and replaced by a projection on the wall (which you can view here), but both odd, awkward effects (and other famously-frazzled effects) only served to add to DINOSAUR’s uneven tone… and unfortunately uneven quality.
12. Chernabog
Image: Brian Jaecker-Jones
Attraction: World of Color
Park: Disney California Adventure
Part of Disney California Adventure’s billion-dollar rebirth in 2012 was the addition of its own nighttime spectacular, the astounding World of Color. This all-encompassing light show brings dazzling visuals from Disney and Pixar films to life on a massive, continuous, 380-foot water screen amid 1,200 choreographed fountains capable of blasting water up to 200 feet high. Every moment of World of Color is a stunning spectacle, but the show did go through some growing pains, including the discontinuation of projection domes that once floated on the bay.
Image: Brian Jaecker-Jones
However, the biggest lost effect from World of Color is one that never really made it into public showings. A custom 65-foot tall telescoping 9-tier fountain array that you can see here was designed specifically to become a towering, menacing Chernabog (the underworld demon from Fantasia’s “Night on Bald Mountain” sequence). It can be difficult to imagine just how massive this mechanical Chernabog really was, but videos recorded of the show’s test-and-adjust phase can help. In the rare video here, you’ll see the Chernabog tower reigning 65-feet over the lagoon just to the right of the Golden Zephyr tower.
THE FIX: By time the show opened to the public, the Chernabog tower was sunk. The demon’s appearances were swapped to the water screens and, after one of the show’s edits, the Fantasia sequence was removed entirely in favor of Pirates of the Caribbean.
13. Hatbox Ghost
Image: Disney
Attraction: The Haunted Mansion
Park: Disneyland
One of the most well-known malfunctioning special effects ever is a legendary character created for Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. Before the ride’s opening in 1969, one of its “999 Happy Haunts” was a particularly frightening ghoul called the Hatbox Ghost. This creepy, shriveled, bug-eyed spectre was designed so that his head would disappear off of his shoulders and appear magically in the hatbox he held. Of course, the relatively simple effect simply relied on blacklights flicking on, then off, to make the head appear in one place and then disappear. Designers tested the effect at Imagineering’s offices in Glendale and loved the result, installing the figure in the Mansion.
But during previews of the ride exclusively for Cast Members, Imagineers began to second guess their character. Though the Hatbox Ghost had worked perfectly when tested in isolation at Imagineering, it turned out that the ambient lighting from the scene was enough to spoil the effect. Before the Haunted Mansion ever opened to the public, the figure was removed. From that moment on, the figure – who’d been seen prominently in concept art and merchandising – became somewhat of a cult icon, remaining an essential part of Haunted Mansion merchandise and lore for decades, even though he’d never been seen by the public.
Image: Disney
THE FIX: In Spring 2015, Disney announced that a new spirit was soon to materialize within the Mansion at Disneyland. The Hatbox Ghost made his second appearance May 9, 2015 in a technological 21st century form. A dazzling new take on the effect, the figure is now one of the must-see characters of the Californian ride. You can see how they pulled off the trick here. Meanwhile, he continues to be heavily used in marketing the attraction in Florida, even though he’s never been in the Orlando version of the ride.
