Sometimes, when you come up with a good idea, it can be easy to become too protective of it. The idea itself might be perfectly fine, but it might just not be a good fit for what you’re working on at the moment. Part of being a creator is realizing when to pick up an idea and toss it in the trash when it isn’t working.
Disney, usually, doesn’t have this problem. Walt Disney Imagineering regularly throws out parts of its concepts when they don’t work in the real world, when they muddy the attraction’s concept, or when they go over budget. The difference, however, is that Disney doesn’t usually wind up tossing such ideas in the trash.
They prefer recycling.
A good idea never dies at Walt Disney Imagineering, and some of the best ideas in the company’s history have been reworked into some truly classic Disney attractions.
Let’s take a look at a handful of those awesome ideas that Disney created, but which wound up in different rides and shows than were their original intent.
A Jungle Cruise featuring real animals becomes Kilimanjaro Safaris
Image: Jennifer Lynn, Flickr (license)
When Walt Disney was designing Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise, it was important to him that guests feel the same sense of adventure and thrills that he was able to capture in his documentary series, True-Life Adventures. It wasn’t enough, in his estimation, for guests to think they were surrounded by real animals — he wanted them to truly see real animals.
Unfortunately, the mid-1950s weren’t quite technologically advanced enough to pull off the kind of zoological upkeep that would have been required for such an attraction, and Disney downscale his version of the attraction into one populated by audio-animatronic beasts.
But, decades later, Walt Disney Imagineering returned to Walt’s original idea when designing a headliner attraction for its new park, Disney’s Animal Kingdom. While the park’s central focus would be its many exotic animals, Imagineering was given an edict to elevate the park beyond a standard zoo. That meant immersive attractions and, ultimately, taking Walt’s idea out of cold storage.
Kilimanjaro Safaris debuted in 1998, fulfilling Walt’s dream of putting guests into a highly-themed, fully-immersive adventure safari. Imagineering just needed technology to catch up with their ambition, first.
A dark ride exploring the inner workings of biology and chemistry becomes Body Wars
Image: bdesham, Flickr (license)
In 1967, Disneyland saw its first Omnimover attraction debut: Adventure Thru Inner Space. The ride was a kind of experiential tone poem designed to communicate to guests just how astonishingly weird our world gets when you take a closer look at it.
Guests would board traditional Omnimover vehicles much like what you’d find on the Haunted Mansion before proceeding through a large set piece called the Mighty Microscope. The Mighty Microscope would “shrink” guests down to the size of an atom, learning about the differences in scale as the show progressed.
Eventually, the ride grew stale and closed in 1985 to make way for Disneyland’s Star Tours ride. But, the central concept of shrinking down to explore the inner world didn’t die — it merely went into hibernation.
Four years later, Epcot’s Wonders of Life pavilion opened with a brand new centerpiece attraction exploring similar themes: Body Wars. The Leonard Nimoy-directed motion simulator ride was a less Beat Generation-y take on the same idea, but rather than using poetry and emotional feeling to teach guests about chemistry, Body Wars used an intricate sci-fi plot.
Of course Body Wars is now also closed, but you can rest assured that this idea will likely make its way back into Disney someday — it’s already come back once.
Western River Expedition becomes The Great Movie Ride … sort of
Image: nick99nack, Flickr (license)
Often considered to be the greatest attraction Disney never built, the Western River Expedition was intended to be Walt Disney World’s answer to Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean — arguably the greatest theme park attraction in history.
It included everything: a lengthy boat sequence, a roller coaster that went backwards at times, a western motif, and so on. Beloved Imagineer Marc Davis threw everything at his disposal into the designs for this attraction, and it was so ambitious, Disney quickly realized it could never be built.
But elements of Western River Expedition have since found their way into countless Disney rides and shows. In fact, most of Walt Disney World’s Frontierland was directly inspired by concept art for this lone experience.
Interestingly, one sequence, which featured guests narrowly escaping a bank robbery and a Wild West shootout, eventually made an appearance as a key element of Disney’s Hollywood Studios’ famed attraction, the Great Movie Ride — showing just how far and how long Western River Expedition’s legacy has extended.
Imagineers still love the work that was done on this attraction concept, and aspects of Western River Expedition will continue to seep into Disney’s future attractions.
Disney’s America becomes Disney’s California Adventure
Image: mtl_shag, Flickr (license)
The Walt Disney Company of the 1990s was utterly fearless and completely ambitious. They viewed the world’s entertainment attention span as rightfully theirs, and they vowed to do whatever it took to capture it.
That meant everything from buying the ABC television network to rehabilitating its anemic animation studio. But, it also meant expanding the theme park roster — and its geographic footprint.
Disney planned its attack on two fronts. One would be a smaller-scale regional entertainment chain known as DisneyQuest, using virtual reality and personal computing to create a kind of Disneyfied arcade. The other would be building a full-sized theme park somewhere that wasn’t Orlando or Anaheim.
The original idea was a new park in Virginia called Disney’s America, celebrating the history of the United States from its founding and expansion to the present. It featured everything from shows and exhibits about Native Americans and the Civil War to a roller coaster themed to the industrial revolution.
Eventually, local protests in Virginia scared Disney off from building the park there, but rather than simply throwing the plans away, Disney decided to rethink the main theme. What if instead of celebrating the entire United States of America, they just chose one state?
Thus, Disney’s California Adventure was born, and many of its rides — from Soarin’ over California to Grizzly River Run — came from attractions that were originally designed for Disney’s America. Eventually, Disney’s California Adventure was reimagined into a celebration of Walt Disney’s vision of California rather than the state itself. But, that bit of Disney’s America is still hiding in its DNA somewhere.
Disney’s Animal Kingdom’s unbuilt Beastly Kingdom becomes Dueling Dragons
Image: lorchaos, Flickr (license)
For this last one, we need to take a trip off Disney property.
From its opening in 1998 until Pandora: The World of Avatar opened in 2017, Disney’s Animal Kingdom was often overshadowed by a land that didn’t exist.
The dawn of the internet allowed Disney fans to gather and ask each other why the heck the Disney’s Animal Kingdom logo has only real animals on it … except for a dragon. The answer to that question was an unbuilt land within the park called Beastly Kingdom, which became the subject of endless speculation for nearly a decade.
Intended to be a celebration of animals from fictional stories and myth, Beastly Kingdom was designed to be full of thrill-seeking E-ticket attractions. Late budget cuts on the Animal Kingdom project meant that it was relegated to the back burner for Imagineering, and eventually, it was thrown away entirely when plans for Pandora solidified.
But, just down the road from Disney’s Animal Kingdom, Universal Orlando sought to open its second theme park, Islands of Adventure, in 1999. Along the way, the company hired many Imagineers that were either let go by Disney or lured away by the promise of something quite ambitious. When Islands of Adventure finally opened, curiously, one land seemed awfully familiar to savvy guests: The Lost Continent.
Themed to ancient myths and legends, The Lost Continent was host to numerous architectural touches that were reminiscent of the Beastly Kingdom, as well as a major roller coaster themed around two dragons fighting it out around an ancient castle — something that was a major element of the Beastly Kingdom’s concept art.
Now, in 2018, most of the Lost Continent has been returned to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and Dueling Dragons (later Dragon Challenge) has been removed. And so, just as Beastly Kingdom never saw the light of day, its legacy is slowly fading away too.
That is, until Disney dusts off some aspect of it, gives it a new coat of paint, and wows us all with a bit of recycled magic that can take your breath away.
