From Journey into Imagination to Indiana Jones Adventure; The Enchanted Tiki Room to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea… There’s no denying that Walt Disney Imagineering has created some of the most sensational, unbelievable, and innovative stories, technologies, and experiences on the planet. Look no further than Theme Park Tourist’s LEGEND LIBRARY, stocked with in-depth stories of both closed, classic Lost Legends and today’s fan-favorite Modern Marvels, each a testament to the industry-defining advances and imaginations at Disney.
But that doesn’t mean Imagineering always gets it right… In fact, sometimes things go wrong – very, very wrong. That’s the purpose of Theme Park Tourist’s Declassified Disaster series, where we dive deep into the usually-secretive world of theme park flops, failures, and missteps that simply can’t be forgotten, like the staggingly stupid Superstar Limo, the disastrously doomed DisneyQuest, the misunderstood Dinoland, the frazzled Rocket Rods, and so many more.
But if you ask Imagineering insiders, that’s especially true of an attraction some Disney Parks fans call the worst that Walt Disney World has ever hosted… Avoided by guests, skipped by fans, and mercilessly mocked by all, this can only be the story of the Magic Kingdom menace that is Stitch’s Great Escape!
In today’s in-depth feature, we’ll fast-forward through the extraterrorestrial tale that lead to this character’s Tomorrowland invasion, endure a walkthrough of the experience inside, and take a look at the moves Disney finally made to mothball this detested attraction for good. Could this seemingly-simple family attraction really be a source of misery and madness earning such hatred? Once you read, we’ll let you decide in the comments below…
But to understand where Stitch’s Great Escape came from, we need to start at the beginning. If you haven’t already, you’ll want to make the jump backwards in time to “Part I” of this alien escape – our in-depth history of the Lost Legend: The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter. You won’t want to miss the making of Disney’s “scariest attraction ever…” or the reasons it closed, which will become a part of today’s story, too…
Once you’ve caught up on Alien Encounter, you can skip to page 2 of this feature by tapping here. But for those who just need a quick refresher, here’s the one-page catch-up.
The story so far…
Since 1955, Tomorrowland has been a staple of Disneyland. And for almost as long, Imagineers have been struggling to keep it relevant. After all, time always seems to pass, and no matter how accurately designers were able to capture the architecture, spirit, and science of any given era, it consistantly fell out of favor with prevailing pop culture, actual innovation, or both!
Take for example Disneyland’s ROCKET TO THE MOON – a 1955 original promising previews of commercial flights to space that Imagineers expected would be commonplace by the ’80s. Housed in two twin domed theaters, guests would sit in concentric, tiered rings of seating facing inward. This “motion-less” simulator would provide guests with projected views of lift-off, space, and the moon via “windows” in the floor and ceiling at the center of the rocket.
Barely a decade after Tomorrowland’s debut, its style had fallen out of favor, necessitating a New Tomorrowland in 1967, bringing with it a rebuilt and upgraded version of the ride – FLIGHT TO THE MOON – accounting for the Space Race and humanity’s very real attempts to make it to the moon. Unfortunately, just two years after the attraction’s auspicious reimagining, humans actually made it to the moon, instantly dating the attraction’s narration and footage.
Luckily, when Magic Kingdom opened, it, too, offered dual theater-in-the-round auditoriums for the attraction, and in 1975, both the Anaheim and Orlando rides were updated again, this time to MISSION TO MARS – a clever way to buy time since actual trips to the Red Planet seemed far off.
This Mission to Mars remains for nearly two decades, still showing its 1970s footage as late as 1992! It was time for yet another reimagining – not just for the attraction, but for all of Tomorrowland.
New Tomorrows
In the 1980s – under the leadership of then-chairman Michael Eisner – Disney was evolving. Brought on specifically to right the sinking ship of Disney’s long-stagnant studios after decades of duds, Eisner brought with him decades of experience in the film industry. His connections had convinced him that movies weren’t just the answer for Disney’s filmmaking business; they could save Disney’s long-neglected theme parks, too.
Eisner famously kickstarted the “Ride the Movies” era – a substantial period spanning the ’80s and ’90s where Disney invested as never before in its parks, opening elaborate, ambitious, and expensive attractions that infused the characters and stories people cared about… even if they weren’t Disney characters and stories! Of course, that’s the origin of the Lost Legends: Captain EO and STAR TOURS – attractions born of Eisner’s desire to inject pop culture and thrills into Disney Parks, making them cool, hip, edgy places for teens and young adults.
Eisner’s ambitious, cinematic attractions coalesced with the growing need for yet another New Tomorrowland. However, executives wanted this facelift to the land to be the last by eschewing actual predictions of things to come or commitments to continuous upgrades in favor of timeless, evergreen Tomorrowlands not bound by time and taste. In other words, Tomorrowlands based not on science, but on fantasy and science-fiction.
It aligned perfectly with a project Eisner had taken great interest in: finally filling that tired, dusty Mission to Mars theater in Disneyland and Magic Kingdom with something more his taste.
Though he ultimately rebuked Imagineers’ efforts to use 20th Century Fox’s 1979 horror film Alien, Eisner adored the idea of a multi-sensory, technological special effects show using sound, lighting, and “4D” effects to convince guests an alien had escaped into the crowd after a routine demonstration. If Eisner had his way, “Alien Encounter” would be the anchor of a New Tomorrowland in both Disneyland and Magic Kingdom.
Alien Encounter
As Imagineers in Glendale put the finishing touches on their plans for Alien Encounter, Eisner announced that things had changed. The 1992 opening of Disneyland Paris – meant to be his magnum opus and lasting legacy with the company – had failed. The European resort had entered a financial freefall upon opening, and Eisner declared that bankruptcy was under consideration.
Plans for a New Tomorrowland were outright cancelled in California, meaning the Alien Encounter attraction needed to debut in Florida instead. It did – and as an anchor experience in an ambitious and sensational New Tomorrowland that barely squeaked through before Paris’ pitfall.
Image: Disney
The 1994 New Tomorrowland overlayed the formerly-simple-70s land with Factory Pomo architecture and elaborate alien eccoutrements, creating a living sci-fi city of landed spacecrafts, robotic newsboys, and mechanical palm trees – a comic book retro-future inspired by pulp stories of Buck Rogers.
Best of all, this New Tomorrowland was an early adopter of the kind of immense world-building and interconnectivity that only became standard after the opening of the Wizarding World fifteen years later – in fact, all of the rides, attractions, shops, and even restaurants in this land were all subtly connected within one overarching mythology; a frame story that explained the land as a “real, living” city of alien immigrants and visitors, real public transit, a science museum, and more.
And hosted in the Interplanetary Convention Center was X-S Tech, an alien tech-conglomerate advertising demonstrations of their new teleportation technology. This is the place to be sure you’ve read up on the Lost Legend: The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter.
Image: Disney
First, it started with a disturbingly dark pre-show where a simple demonstration of the technology – teleporting a fuzzy alien creature named Skippy from one side of the room to another – goes horribly wrong, leaving the unwitting volunteer burnt to a crisp, wailing and in pain. This morbid and startling pre-show was an intentional check meant to weed out guests who couldn’t have imagined that this terrifying attraction might actually offend.
Guests who dared continue on entered into the main demonstration chamber. Still arranged in concentric circles, guests now faced a massive glass tube fed by wires and pipes overhead. Locked in via shoulder restraints, the technological showcase would begin.
Of course, when the commander of X-S Tech offers to beam himself to the theater, we know something is likely to go wrong, and boy does it. The teleportation ray is intercepted by a bloodthirsty insectoid creature that gets beam in, instead. It makes quick work of shattering the glass tube and taking flight into the audience. As the lights sizzle, guests are left in pitch black darkness as special effects embedded in the seats, harnesses, and floor simulate the stomping alien growing closer, growling in guests’ ears and drooling down their necks, splattering blood from an unlucky convention center worker overhead, and more.
At the last second, the alien is lured back into the shattered glass tube as the X-S technicians boost the power. Wires break loose spewing fog as the machine powers up and a metallic blast shield falls just as the creature explodes, splattering guests with goo. The intense attraction took place almost entirely in pitch-black darkness and the innovative use of 3D audio and in-seat special effects meant that it was inescapable. Think about it – closing your eyes would only make it worse! Terrifyingly intense, brilliantly original, and a rare dark experience at Magic Kingdom made Alien Encounter a cult classic adored by fans.
So what went wrong? If you thought a carnivorous, flying alien was horrifying, just wait until you see what came next. Read on…
Complaints
First of all, let’s be clear: despite making it into our Lost Legends collection, Alien Encounter wasn’t exactly a masterwork of Imagineering. After enduring a very troubled production period, the show infamously went through multiple re-writes during its Test & Adjust phase accounting for things as simple as repacing the audio to allow plenty of time for screams, and as complex as relighting and re-animating the signature Alien to give guests a better sense of its anatomy (and thus, abilities).
The attraction was allegedly edited again and again during its Test & Adjust phase for being too scary, then not scary enough; too simple, then too complex; not fun enough, then too relient on jokes that sapped the seriousness for thrillseekers while doing nothing for terrifying children trapped in a seat in the dark with no way to see or touch their parents for comfort.
Image: Disney
And of course, that leads us to the attraction’s lasting legacy and its most well-known complaint: guests allegedly visited Magic Kingdom’s City Hall in droves each evening, decrying the unimaginably intense attraction, so out of place in the “G-rated” fantasy of Magic Kingdom. Sure, signs offered that Alien Encounter may not be suitable for children, and the word TERROR was emblazoned in the attraction’s very name, but even the most imaginative parents couldn’t have thought that a Disney attraction might literally scare their kids into wanting to go home.
Alien Encounter was an experimental thrill ride merging Eisner’s cinematic scale with Disney’s cutting edge technology; it was dark, grim, eerie, disturbing, and even – yes – terrifying. A generation of Disney Parks fans recall being terrified and traumatized by the experience during its relatively short life.
But unlike any other theme park experience we can think of, the mix of darkness and atmospheric dread let many guests totally let go. There, in the pitch-black darkness, they would scream and laugh, surrendering to the idea that maybe – just maybe – a carnivorous alien really was loose in the building. At the end of the day, Alien Encounter was good fun and a sincere memory-maker.
Image: Disney
It was also that most revered kind of Disney attraction – an original. Based on original characters in a purpose-made setting that wrapped perfectly into the overarching story of a gorgeous New Tomorrowland. While it may be unfair to group Alien Encounter with the Enchanted Tiki Room, Country Bear Jamboree, or Carousel of Progress, it really fit there – a uniquely conceived, fresh concept that could’ve gone down in history as a classic. It was smart, fun, dark, scary, and an instant classic.
And, boy, was it doomed.
The writing on the wall
As if eight years of complaints leveled against Alien Encounter weren’t enough, the entire M.O. of Eisner and Disney Parks was about to change…
The dismal opening of Disneyland Paris didn’t just lead to decades of cop-outs, cancellations, and closures… it’s single-handedly remembered as a pivot point in the story of Michael Eisner. Though his first decade at the helm of Disney and its parks had seen an era of unthinkable expansion and ultra-expensive attractions that remain among Disney’s best ever (think, Indiana Jones Adventure, Star Tours, Fantasmic!, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror…), things seemed to change overnight once Paris collapsed.
Eisner was infamously open about his sudden retreat from extravagance. When discussing the cancellation of the Possibilityland: WESTCOT Park in California with the LA Times, Eisner commented, “We had a very big investment in Europe and it’s difficult to deal with. This is an equally big investment. I don’t know whether a private company can ever spend this kind of money.”
And frankly, Eisner seemed to decide then and there that he would never take such a risk again. That’s why – from the mid-90s through the end of Eisner’s tenure in 2004 (when he left ahead of his contract’s expiration) – the story of Disney changes.
First, Eisner’s Disney Renaissance – the string of never-ending hits from 1989’s The Little Mermaid to 1999’s Tarzan – ended up ending, after all. The studio switched to “cheap and cheerful” direct-to-video sequels and lackluster originals like Home on the Range, Chicken Little, Brother Bear, and Meet the Robinsons that just failed to resonate with wide audiences, sending Disney back into another period of decline.
Meanwhile, Disney Parks became marked by surprise ride closures, massive budget cuts, eliminated staffing, deferred maintenance, low-cost parks, and a massive influx of Disney characters as a string of budget-conscious executives came and went, each cutting costs and trumpeting earnings even as attendance and quality fell dramatically. Original stories and characters were largely expelled in favor of merchandise-friendly, high-earning characters being inexpensively overlaid wherever possible. And that was very bad news for the ambitious New Tomorrowland that had debuted in 1994…
Character years
With the edict that Disney Parks make room for more gift shops coming down from on high, classics began to fall to make way for more marketable characters. This is when you’ll see the introduction of characters in Epcot’s Future World; the Lost Legends: Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and The Country Bear Jamboree shuttered in Orlando and Anaheim, respectively, each to make room for Winnie the Pooh.
Perfect evidence of the era, this is also when Iago and Zazu – the avian sidekicks in Aladdin and The Lion King – took up residence in a genuine Walt Disney original, creating fellow Declassified Disaster: The Enchanted Tiki Room – Under New Management, inserting direct-to-video humor and cheap modern pop culture references into a once-revered classic.
And that’s to say nothing of the “Pixarifcation” of Disney Parks – so widespread in the era, we explored it in its own in-depth DISNEY•PIXARLAND feature – a must-read for Imagineering fans.
Altogether, the influx of characters into Disney Parks probably hit Tomorrowland the hardest. In both Orlando and Anaheim, Tomorrowland was swiftly stripped of any substance or continuity to instead become a catch-all for animated intellectual properties regardless of their fit.
At Magic Kingdom, the Lost Legend: If You Had Wings and its aviation-themed successors gave way to Toy Story 2‘s Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin (which is as least tangentially related to Tomorrowland if you work off the assumption that ‘outer space = the future,’ which we probably shouldn’t.)
Next door, the Lost Legend: The Timekeeper closed up shop, taking with it the “Metropolis Science Center” setting of that “real city” mythology. It became Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor, for which there’s really no narrative excuse.
As for Alien Encounter? It appeared to have a match made in heaven.
Stitch invades
When Lilo & Stitch debuted in theaters in 2002, it was the kind of cultural “win” Disney hadn’t genuinely experienced since Tarzan. Built around a (in retrospect, so-early-2000s) marketing campaign featuring the mischievious alien protagonist interrupting famous moments from Disney films, the fourth-wall-breaking, irreverent, and chaotic character was widely recognized even before the film debuted.
Despite its viral marketing, Lilo & Stitch turned out to be one of Disney’s most clever and charming animated features in the early 2000s (though, admittedly, that isn’t saying much). It follows the rambunctiuous, chaotic, laboratory-created Experiment 626, who crash lands on Earth in an escape from the Galactic Federation. Blending in as a “dog,” the creature is adopted by the equally-wild and lonely Lilo and her guardian sister, Nani, who live on Kaua’i in modern day Hawaii.
Though Lilo & Stitch‘s box office return was meager (especially by the standards of the Disney Renaissance) with just $145 million during its initial domestic release and $127 million overseas, it bested both with nearly $200 million from home video. It was clear that the film’s mischievious alien protagonist who learns the meaning of ‘ohana had been accepted into the cultural zeitgeist like Disney’s other 2000s films weren’t, and that Stitch himself was a merchandising gold mine.
And given the new quick-turnaround, direct-to-video direction of Disney, that meant it was time to act. In 2002 alone, Stitch starred in three video games: “Lilo & Stitch,” “Lilo & Stitch: Trouble in Paradise,” and “Stitch: Experiment 626.”
In August 2003 – just thirteen months after Lilo & Stitch debuted in theaters! – Stitch: The Movie hit video store shelves. A month after that, Lilo & Stitch: The Series premiered on both Disney Channel and ABC Kids. Two years later, Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch went direct-to-video, and less than a year after that, Disney churned out Leroy & Stitch – yet another direct-to-video sequel made of cobbled together episodes of the TV series. For those keeping track, that’s four movies in three years!
Stitch was hot. And it seemed like a win-win… Not only could Stitch fulfill Eisner’s new character mandate for Disney Parks and offer a full gift shop dedicated to the most merchandise-friendly Disney character since Pooh, but replacing the terrifying alien antagonist with Stitch would finally quell all those complaints about the horrifying mismatch for Magic Kingdom!
After a year of closure, in November 2004, the attraction re-emerged from behind construction walls as Stitch’s Great Escape! A fitting “celebration” for the visitation of the irreverent Stitch, Cinderella Castle was “teepeed” – that is, strung up with toilet paper and graffiti – as evidence of the alien’s arrival.
And that’s where the problems begin… On the next page, we’ll step inside of the new Galactic Federation Prisoner Transport Center that suddenly appeared in Tomorrowland to see what horrors await in Stitch’s Great Escape! Read on…
Image: Disney
Welcome, one and all, to the Galactic Federation Prisoner Teleport Center. That’s a mouthful, but all you need to know is that the Councilwoman of the Galactic Federation – the interstellar governing body from 2002’s Lilo and Stitch – has recruited you as a guard for the Galactic Federation. It’s in this facility that alien prisoners are teleported and stored to await sentencing, and your job will be to oversee the incoming creatures.
As you move through the queue, you enter into the first pre-show, with guests standing on three tiered walkways and looking out over Sargeant 90210 (a would-be comical redress of the sinister S.I.R. robot from Alien Encounter) who will teach us the basics of prisoner hazard classification levels (ranked Level 1 or Level 2) and the basics procedures of our guard duty. When prisoners are caught, they are teleported into “one of these tubey things,” he offers, gesturing at the floor-to-ceiling glass tubes behind him.
Image: Disney
The tube on the left is already occupied by an adorable, fuzzy, goo-ball of an alien. (Fans will instantly recognize this fella as Skippy, the unwilling participant in the ill-fated, grisly, dark pre-show of Alien Encounter. Remember, that’s when X-S Tech would demonstrate its new teleportation technology by simply beaming Skippy across the room into the second tube, where he’d arrive charred, smoking, and in pain.)
The screen above Sergeant lights up as an officer radios in. He’s captured another alien, this one caught stealing donuts from a space bakery. Another easy one. Sargeant sighs: “When are you guys gonna send me some Level 2s for a change?” The empty second tube begins to fill with smoke and crackling electricity as the captured cartoon alien on screen readies for teleportation. Indeed, as the smoke clears, the unusual donut-thief is there in the room with us. (Astoundingly, this second alien is actually the “burnt” Skippy animatronic! So totally disfigured was Skippy in his Alien Encounter voyage that the “burnt” version can now stand in as a second, separate alien. For Alien Encounter fans, it has to be odd to see Skippy and his charred self both visible at once.)
Image: Disney
Before our training can continue, red lights and alarms blare and Captain Gantu appears on the overhead screen. To Sergeant’s dismay, we’re about to recieve a Level 3 prisoner at the facility. That’s right… Level 3. Gantu instructs us all to move along to the High Security Teleporation Chamber with extra defenses to keep us safe from “whatever kind of monster they caught out there.”
The Teleporation Chamber
Image: Disney
As guests enter the High Security chamber, you’ll find that the arrangement hasn’t changed at all from the days of Alien Encounter. There are still concentric circles of stadium-style seats arranged around a central tube, enclosed behind a metallic shield. Indeed, whatever they beam into this room, it must be nasty. Once seated, security restraints lower over your shoulders. Like Alien Encounter this is not a ride, and you won’t move anywhere. The restraints serve a double purpose: they keep scared youngsters from racing out into the darkness and they provide all the special effects you’ll need.
Once guest are seated and secured, the metallic blast shield rises out of the way, revealing a heavily reinforced glass tube. As it readies for teleportation, it fills with fog and flashing lights, as blaring sirens indicate that something serious is about to happen. A countdown begins as the energy builds. “5, 4, 3, 2, 1.” A microwave’s ding! signals that the device is finished and there, coughing and fanning away the smoke is Stitch, sealed away behind the glass.
“That’s a Level 3?” “Is this some kind of a joke?”
Even though this blue creature hardly looks like a criminal, Gantu and company decide to “do it by the book” and give him a DNA test anyway. Two roving laser cannons drop from the ceiling and focus on Stitch as the glass tube rises away, leaving fog billowing out from him. “Awe, isn’t that cute! He’s a cute little fella!” Gantu sing-songs. “Recruits, keep your eye on this little monster while I straighten this out. Heh… Level 3!” Gantu steps away on screen leaving us with Stitch and the two cannons fixated on him. For a moment, Stitch plays with them, laughing as the cannons react to his every move.
Image: Disney
Then, he hocks a loogie and spits on them (and the guests below). The cannons short circuit and send a power surge through the room, filling it with fog and loud crackling electricity. Stitch laughs darkly as lights flicker on and off, revealing that he’s inexplicably disappeared from the central pedestal and escaped into the room.
So far, Stitch’s Great Escape has closely followed the storyline of Alien Encounter, albeit in a much more flippant, less atmospheric tone. The rest of the attraction will do the same, as from here on out, almost everything you see, hear, feel, and smell will be tricks of the dark. In pitch-black darkness, 3D sound and special effects built into the over-the-shoulder restraint will make you feel as if Stitch is terrorizing you. And while the former alien might’ve been a bloodthirsty, indescribable Martian menace, Stitch may be worse.
First, he decides to bound around the room, hopping across people’s restraints. What that means is that, in pitch black darkness, pneumatic pistons slam your restraints down against your shoulders as surround-sound audio gives the impression that Stitch is bouncing across the room. Then, through the magic of 3D sound, Stitch eats a chili dog and burps in your face, with the sickening smell of coney sauce literally blasting you. While it’s summarized quickly, know that this process takes place in four or five minutes of literal can’t-see-a-hand-in-front-of-your-face darkness.
Finally, the laser cannons power back on as Stitch hides in the crowd, tricking the lasers into firing on guests, with blasts of fog erupting at guests’ feet. It’s mayhem, and not quite in the fun way. At the last moment, Stitch is recaptured in the center of the room and hastily teleporated away. His destination? “Flor-ee-duh.” The screens illuminate again, this time showing Stitch climbing across Cinderella Castle and then leaping toward the screen and licking it. And… that’s it!
Aftermath
Maybe it occurs to you that Stitch’s Great Escape lacks the brilliance, creativity, nuance, or emotional impact and foreboding of Alien Encounter. Despite its efforts (and trust us, it really, really tries), the attraction isn’t funny or, really, even fun. If you can imagine, guests just brace themselves for the next horrible thing – being spat on, burped on, or slammed with over the shoulder restraints. It’s really not clever or creative. In fact, it’s sort of dreadful.
Sure, fans of Stitch would be glad to finally see him “in person,” and we happily concede that the Stitch Audio-Animatronic itself is an impressive feat of Imagineering. The Stitch figure even earned a spot on our must-read countdown of the best Animatronics on Earth, and we don’t regret it! But make no mistake: Stitch’s Great Escape as a whole is a nightmare.
In fact, about the only thing is succeeds at (and only mildly) is taking as much of Alien Encounter as it could and creating something less outwardly offensive. That said, we’d argue that Stitch’s Great Escape really is no more family friendly than the bloodthirsty predecessor. Why? We break down the innumerable problems with Disney’s “worst attraction ever” on the last page. Read on…
Stitch saturation
Remember, Stitch’s Great Escape! opened in November 2004 – and even then, two years out from the debut of Lilo & Stitch, it must’ve seemed like Stitch was an evergreen breakout character who would stand among Pooh and Tinker Bell as timeless merchandising icons. In fact, that’s why Stitch was inexplicably promoted to stand among the “Fab 5” on merchandise (see above). Yep – Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, Pluto… and Stitch.
Meanwhile, all those Lilo & Stitch sequels, spin-offs, and series that debuted in quick succession between 2002 and 2006 saw rapidly diminishing returns, each earning less than the one before. (Frankly, another tried-and-true mark of the late Eisner era: pulsing out products for quick financial return without considering how low quality products serve as “brand withdrawals,” cheapening future products and reducing loyalty.)
2005 and 2006 saw Walt Disney World gift shops wildly overstuffed with Stitch merchandise that just wasn’t moving, even as those spin-offs and sequels desperately introduced new characters whose sole purpose was clearly to inspired more merchandise. The wave was over. Perhaps in part because of the oversaturation of Stitch, interest in the character and its associated merchandise fell off of a statistical cliff.
And while Disney could easily ship its excess merchandise to wholesale distributors and off-property warehouse depots, one thing that could not be so easily covered was that two-year-old Tomorrowland attraction now playing to half-empty – and worse, half-hearted – audiences.
Stuck with Stitch
Stitch’s Great Escape might have seemed like a coup when it opened in 2004 – at the height of Disney’s investment in the Lilo and Stitch franchise… But reporting on Stitch’s Great Escape just over a year after its debut, entertainment writer Jim Hill noted:
“Even though this Tomorrowland attraction has officially been open for less than 15 months now, the current wait time for Stitch’s Great Escape has already fallen (on average) to 10-15 minutes.
Now keep in mind that this lack-of-line flies directly in the face of an on-going promotional campaign for this new Tomorrowland attraction. After all, every guest who uses the monorail to get to the Magic Kingdom still has to hear an on-board spiel that hypes Stitch’s Great Escape.
And yet all this extra effort has yet to translate into any extra bodies in [its] queue. In fact, if what some Tomorrowland-based cast members have been telling me proves to be true, attendance levels for Stitch’s Great Escape has already fallen below the numbers that Alien Encounter used to pull in. Meaning that the $25-30 million that WDI reportedly spent to turn Alien Encounter into a more family-friendly attraction was basically a wash.“
Why was Stitch’s Great Escape such a disaster for Disney Parks? Here are our top reasons.
1. IT CAUSED THE DEATH OF ALIEN ENCOUNTER. Again, we’ll readily admit that Alien Encounter wasn’t perfect. In fact, by most metrics, it was probably one of the weakest products to emerge from Michael Eisner’s “Ride the Movies” era. It was relatively inexpensive, emotionally uneven, and (obviously) short-lived compared to the other cinematic attractions of the time.
But it was also original; ambitious; different. It was gritty and unique, crafted solely by Disney Imagineers in coordination with George Lucas himself, armed with a dystopian sci-fi mythology. Alien Encounter is probably more beloved today than it was when it was open. In many ways, it’s evolved into a cult classic more appreciated in hindsight’s rose-colored glasses.
Put another way, Alien Encounter probably wasn’t actually as good as fans like to think it was. After all, the same effects they detested on Stitch – pounding shoulder harnesses, occasional sprays of water, and extended periods of darkness – were literally just exported from Alien Encounter to its cartoon replacement! The difference is all about context, and Alien Encounter’s original, eerie, and imposing mythology made all the difference – it was a true original, and Stitch taking its place fits neatly into the other cartoon invasions we explored earlier as a cheap and cheerful downgrade.
2. IT WAS ANOTHER HIT TO TOMORROWLAND. Though the New Tomorrowland Imagineers debuted in 1994 may have been divisive for covering up the classic Space Age architecture of yesteryear, even detractors have to be in awe of the narrative attempts the land made to create an immersive, connected, world-building story the likes of which wouldn’t become industry standard until the Wizarding World and its peers in the 2010s!
Obviously, that sci-fi styling and the “real world” locales within were pretty much bulldozed by the cartoon invasion. Suddenly, a pulpy, comic-book city that once offered interconnected attractions became a catch-all for Lilo & Stitch, Toy Story 2, and Monsters Inc.
That left the ambitious sci-fi exteriors as a gilded shell; a style being piecemeal walked back as we speak, with those extraterrestrial ornamentations being stripped away to return Tomorrowland to its geometric ’70s simplicity… not that that would excuse the mashing-together of Toy Story, Monsters Inc, and TRON any better, but at least it doesn’t have a pretense of being something it’s not.
3. IT WAS TROUBLINGLY INFANTILE. In the early 2000s, the success of the Disney Renaissance and the advent and accessibility of computer animation lead to something Disney hadn’t faced before: competitors. Suddenly, other studios decided to get in on the animation game and if they couldn’t necessarily match Disney’s heart, they would find a new way in: modern music, celebrity voice actors, irreverent humor, and – for lack of a better term – “fart jokes.”
Image: Disney
Think of 2001’s Shrek, which singlehandedly proved Disney was no longer the lone horse in the race. Unsurprisingly, Disney’s early 2000s efforts were meant to fight back Shrek and its peers by matching their irreverence and humor, which in turn became a major component of those direct-to-video sequels, TV series, and crossovers Disney was producing.
The kind of “gross-out” humor, fourth-wall-breaking references, and cartoon comedy crossovers we see in Stitch’s Great Escape were also evident in fellow Declassified Disasters: Superstar Limo, The Enchanted Tiki Room – Under New Management, Journey into YOUR Imagination, Disney’s California Adventure, and many of those quick character overlays in the era.
4. IT WAS APPROPRIATE FOR PRACTICALLY NO ONE. At the end of the day, this may be the most important error Stitch’s Great Escape made, and the easiest for us as fans of the industry to learn from. Stitch’s Great Escape didn’t have an audience. Stripped of its original mythology, its viral word-of-mouth, and its promise of terror, the “cartoonified” alien encounter with Stitch at the helm was offensively annoying and pandering to anyone over the age of 10.
And maybe that’s an okay trade-off – after all, one of the major goals of Stitch’s Great Escape must have been to transform the traumatizing Alien Encounter into a more family-friendly experience more fit for Magic Kingdom… But anyone under the age of 10 (Lilo & Stitch‘s core audience) would’ve still been horrified by the enclosed spaces, anxiety-inducing special effects, darkness, and pandemonium.
In other words the reformatted experience wasn’t reliably “better” for any single demographic! Quite the contrary, there was no age group that could predictably enjoy it. It was still too scary for kids; now it was just too juvenile for anyone older.
The End in Sight
On September 21, 2016, Disney’s spokesperson confirmed that, as of October 2, 2016, Stitch’s Great Escape would switch to seasonal operation, opening only when crowd levels at Magic Kingdom peaked around holidays – a well-known death-knell for Disney Parks attractions.
When the crowds left Walt Disney World at the conclusion of its 2017 holiday celebrations, Stitch left too. The attraction was quietly closed on January 6, 2018 and hasn’t opened since. Its first pre-show room was briefly converted to “Stitch’s Alien Encounter” meet and greet (get it?), and it’s likely that – at least for now – that’ll become a standard use for the site…
That October, images surfaced online of both the Stitch and Skippy animatronics figures stripped of their parts. In other words, Stitch’s Great Escape appears to have closed for good without much fanfare, without an announcement or entry on the Disney Parks Blog… and with no indication of a replacement.
Interestingly, insiders say that the decision was made in part due to exit surveys. Data collected from guests allegedly signaled that guests who visited Stitch’s Great Escape tended to rate their overall experience at Magic Kingdom lower than guests who skipped it. By statistically significant measures, overall guest satisfaction with Magic Kingdom was actually higher on days when Stitch’s Great Escape was closed.
In other words, Magic Kingdom as a whole may have been stronger with no attraction in that space than with Stitch’s Great Escape.
Image: Disney
Even before Stitch officially closed, it was long reported that it would be replaced with virtual reality (VR) attraction themed to 2012’s Wreck-It Ralph. Had this rumored Wreck-It Ralph attration come about, the remains of the Mission to Mars theaters would likely be leveled, replaced with individual motion simulating pods equipped with VR headsets. Guests would’ve been transported via those immersive VR headsets into the film’s candy-coated Sugar Rush video game to race alongside Ralph and Penelope.
But Wreck-It Ralph and its 2018 sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet came and went without any movement inside Stitch’s Great Escape. It feels too late now for a Ralph attraction, which is perhaps the best confirmation that there shouldn’t have been one to begin with. Like Stitch, it probably would’ve felt like a short-sighted and technologically-trapped show doomed to continuous replacement. And after the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, it seems exceedingly unlikely guests will be putting on VR headsets anytime soon.
Still, Disney filed permits in March 2020 officially seeking to demolish the interior of Stitch’s Great Escape. Whether the extended closure of the pandemic allow that demolition to proceed has yet to be determined, and even if it does, the inevitable budget cuts coming in the wake of COVID-19 all but assure that any planned replacement for the space will be delayed or cancelled entirely.
Disaster Personified
Let’s face it: with Stitch’s Great Escape, Walt Disney World had by far its least successful attraction creatively, commercially, and emotionally. It was too scary for kids, too juvenile for teens; filled with dated humor and ’90s straight-to-video styling; it was a thoughtless and hasty replacement of a storied cult classic… it was a laughing stock. Just as insultingly, only a few tweaks (and a new and improved Audio Animatronic alien) kept Stitch’s Great Escape from becoming Alien Encounter once more. But that ship has sailed.
Will Alien Encounter ever appear at another Disney Park? Don’t hold your breath. We maintain still that Alien Encounter could still today work at Disneyland if and when a New Tomorrowland finally lands there, but today’s Disney is far less interested in original concepts and far more likely to bring more of the characters they own into Walt’s world of tomorrow.
… Of course, Disney’s $71 billion purchase of 20th Century Fox in 2019 did bring 1979’s Alien into Disney’s character catalogue…
If you enjoyed looking through the details of this Disaster File, make the jump to our LEGEND LIBRARY to dig into another disastrous feature.
Then let us know: Have you ever been on Alien Encounter or Stitch’s Great Escape? How do they compare? Do you agree with our assertion that Stitch’s Great Escape is one of (if not the) worst attractions Disney’s ever dealt in? Or are we overexaggerating? As we continue our Disaster Files series, we look to you to share your thoughts, memories, and stories in the comments and to let us know what other “disasters” in Disney Parks and beyond you’d like to hear the full stories behind. We can’t wait to read your comments below!
