Since the earliest days of WED Enterprises, Imagineers have built a reputation as the ultimate in creative design. Their many triumphs have led to a theme park industry valued at $45.2 billion, and that number strikes me as low given Disney’s 150 million park visits last year. Still, the global leaders in innovative attractions aren’t above the occasional misstep. Some of their blunders were so aggressively incompetent that they get mentioned decades after the fact. Here are seven times when Imagineers blew it.
7. Kali River Rapids
Image: DisneySome Disney theme parks are better than others. An explanation for the inconsistency in quality is resource expenditure. You may roll your eyes and think you’re in a boring office meeting when you hear the term, but the reality is that time and money are critical components of a wonderful attraction.
At Disney’s Animal Kingdom, the harsh truth is that most of the early resources justifiably went toward the habitats for the animals. Disney’s then-CEO, Michael Eisner, cut corners in many areas rather than increasing the park’s budget. It’s why we never received the greatest themed land that Disney never built.
For attractions that did make the cut, they were often behind schedule and fell below the high standards of Disney Imagineers. Kali River Rapids is a blueprint example, as it wouldn’t open until 11 months after Animal Kingdom. When it did, many of the promised features on the attraction were lackluster at best. Some didn’t work as expected, while others tore up quickly and have proven challenging to troubleshoot.
Disney’s current solution to the problem is to refurbish the ride during the winter months, although it doesn’t get plussed. The time is almost exclusively spent on repairs. The fire, fog, and mist features are inconsistent at best, and the “rapids” are as tranquil as It’s a Small World. And the many fragrant aromas intended to accentuate the ride get drowned out by other smells at Animal Kingdom. This one’s a big oopsie for Disney, even though the splash of water is refreshing on a scorching Florida day.
6. Rocket Rods
Image: DisneySometimes, a ride fails so much in the conception phase that it’s irredeemable from that point forward. I can think of no better example of this statement that Rocket Rods, the Tomorrowland attraction that replaced the beloved PeopleMover at Disneyland.
Someone at Disney miscalculated mightily when they decided that the PeopleMover had grown outdated. Disneyland needed a futuristic attraction for this Tomorrowland track, and so they embarked on a quixotic quest to repurpose the PeopleMover. The outcome was predictable.
For all its glory, the PeopleMover was never intended as a high-speed transportation system. Rocket Rods could go as fast as 35 miles per hour, making it one of the 20 fastest Disney attractions. It’s like sticking a train in a skateboard park.
The slogan suggested that you could “Ride the road to Tomorrowland.” In reality, you felt like you were riding the PeopleMover in fast motion. The incongruity of the infrastructure in place and the ride apparatus caused countless mechanical and maintenance issues as well. Rocket Rods wasn’t just a disappointing attraction. It was an expensive one to keep in operation. After barely two years, Disney threw in the towel on this, one of the most ill-considered attractions in theme park history. The worst part is that they didn’t bring back the PeopleMover.
5. Primeval Whirl
Image: DisneyThis list includes two current attractions and two (somewhat) recently defunct ones. I’m not trying to pick on Animal Kingdom here, as Pandora – The World of Avatar is the pinnacle of Imagineering. And I’m also not looking to bury Michael Eisner, who I feel gets a bad rap among Disney fans. He did save the company by exponentially increasing the worth of its stock, after all.
Still, a pervasive theme with the oldest attractions at Animal Kingdom is that they’re disappointing. DinoLand U.S.A. is unmistakably the cheapest of all Disney themed lands. Many critics have derided it as a glorified carnival permanently ensconced at Disney. The strongest examples of this complaint are the cheapest attractions, Primeval Whirl and TriceraTop Spin. Since the latter is a knockoff of existing rides, I can’t very well ding it.
Primeval Whirl doesn’t have any excuses. It’s a lazy example of theme park construction. This steel roller coaster employs a wild mouse design, which means that its carts are small and designed to maximize bunny hop sensations.
The style is like Mad Tea Party on a roller coaster, but it just doesn’t work well. There’s less than 1,380 feet of track, and the top speed is only 29.1 miles per hour. The ride experience is weird, and the track has proven dangerously unsafe to cast members as well. Two have died from injuries while performing maintenance. It’s a thoroughly dislikable ride whose flawed design has led to tragedy.
4. Journey into YOUR Imagination
Image: DisneyChange for the sake of change is one of the perils of plussing. When Imagineers plot updates to popular attractions, they must decide whether the alterations lead to a better attraction. In the case of Journey into Imagination, park planners picked wrong.
For no apparent reason, Disney pushed through a plan to modernize the attraction in anticipation of their huge millennial celebration. They closed the original ride after 15 years of operation. Their plan called for a replacement version with an entirely new story. Shockingly, this version wouldn’t showcase the previous stars, Dreamfinder and Figment. Disney introduced a new character, Dr. Nigel Channing, in their place.
Suffice to say that the change didn’t go over well. During the early days of Epcot, the park lacked new intellectual properties. Figment and his friend were the huge exceptions. The fact that the new ride tossed them aside angered diehard Epcot fans. The fact that the new ride sucked didn’t help any, either. Journey into YOUR Imagination lasted two years and one week.
3. Stitch’s Great Escape
Image: DisneyThe similarities between the third and fourth entrants are unmistakable. Stitch’s Great Escape is another example of Disney changing something great, only to substitute in something vastly inferior. The original attraction in this Magic Kingdom space was ExtraTERRORestrial, a genuinely brilliant presentation. Guests found themselves thrust into a dangerous encounter with a murderous alien, only to escape catastrophe at the last moment.
When Disney shuttered this attraction in 2003, Lilo & Stitch had just finished a wildly successful theatrical release. Corporate officials knew that they had a merchandising gold mine in Stitch and tried to capitalize on that opportunity. They re-themed the Tomorrowland attraction to swap out a generic alien for a more lovable but equally dangerous one.
The results were shockingly poor. For whatever reason, Stitch’s Great Escape felt inferior to its predecessor in all ways, and I say that as a Lilo & Stitch superfan. Disney’s park polling perennially placed this presentation at the bottom of all Walt Disney World attractions. It wasn’t just disappointing to park guests; it was extremely annoying, too. The disruptive nature of the Stitch encounter agitated rather than entertained. People just hated this attraction.
2. Luigi’s Flying Tires
Image: DisneyThe only thing worse than Imagineers making a mistake is Imagineers repeating the same error. This happened with Luigi’s Flying Tires. It needs some backstory, though.
During the 1960s, Walt Disney and his team completed an attraction known as Flying Saucers. It was intended as a simulation of those silly flying disc alien spaceships shown in movies and television series. The premise was that Disney would build these cyclical crafts and employ technology to make them hover. The closest comparison is an air hockey table, only guests would be the pucks on the largest such table ever built.
The problem had flaws from the beginning, as some riders were too small to control the craft. The girth of others prevented the Flying Saucers from moving. After a few years, Disneyland scrapped the ride and left it in mothballs. Imagineers despise failure, though.
After 46 years, the concept returned on Luigi’s Flying Tires. This Cars-based attraction at Disney California Adventure (DCA) shared the same underlying mechanics as Flying Saucers. Imagineers felt confident that they’d mastered the technology enough to construct the ride that Uncle Walt had wanted, the one that his team couldn’t perfect.
When Luigi’s Flying Tires opened, park officials realized almost immediately that history was repeating itself. The new version had many of the same design flaws as the original. Even worse, it just wasn’t any fun. Disney executives famously freaked out when they tried the ride, quickly noticing that the new tire-style ride cart had less maneuverability than the one from the 1960s.
During the first two months of the highly anticipated attraction, the best solution Disney had was to throw beach balls at other riders. And that proved super-dangerous. Several guests suffered injuries and sued the company. After less than three years, Disney gave up on this ride and repurposed it as Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters. Remarkably, this wasn’t the quickest closure in the history of DCA. That dishonor belongs to…
1. Superstar Limo
Image: FigmentJedi, Flickr – All rights reserved, used with permission
In terms of worst Imagineering misfires, there can be only one. And the worst of the worst is unquestionably Superstar Limo, the ride that almost singlehandedly sunk the early days of Disney California Adventure.
By now, you’ve almost certainly heard about this attraction, even if you never rode it. The notoriety of Superstar Limo’s failure has taken on a life of its own. Critics rightfully wonder what everyone involved in the project was thinking.
This dark ride attempted to convince guests that they’d just arrived at Los Angeles International Airport and were now touring Hollywood. Since many Disneyland visitors had done precisely this, the thought process was recursive in theory. Again, it failed entirely in execution.
For starters, the “celebrities” on this ride are the kind that you’ll find on Celebrity Family Feud, not people you want to see. Some of the celebrity encounters were Joan Rivers, Regis Philbin, Whoopi Goldberg, and Antonio Banderas. When your biggest star is Tim Allen, you’re in trouble.
Even worse, the ride was painfully cheesy. The narration seemed written by a high school sophomore…and a C student at that. The agent was such a cliché that all attempts at immersion were doomed to fail. So was the ride. Disney shut it down after only 11 months!
While all of the attractions here represent the worst of Imagineering, Superstar Limo is something different. It’s a total failure on a scale that Disney had never experienced before and hopefully will not suffer again.
