If there’s one thing Disney Parks thrillseekers know to look for, it’s a mountain peak. After all, since Disneyland’s first decade, the connection between Disney and its mountainous thrills has become second nature. In fact, we took an in-depth look at Disney’s best “E-Ticket” peaks in their own Countdown: Peaks of Imagineering, summiting the twelve best Disney Parks mountains across the globe and how their headlining thrill rides stack up. What do you think we ranked as the top three “mountain” rides in the world? That special feature is a good place to start if you haven’t already…
Because today’s look is somewhat different. For years, our Possibilityland series has explored the incredible archives of Imagineering to dive deep into never-built masterpieces that could’ve been hits… We’re talking about the shuttered Muppet Studios once planned for the Disney-MGM Studios, a failed attempt to revitalize Epcot – Project: GEMINI, a gritty New Tomorrowland 2055 once planned for Disneyland, and so many more as part of our In-Depth Collections Library.
And today, in this very special Possibilityland feature, we want to look at ten, never-built, E-Ticket “mountains” proposed for – then cancelled from – Disney Parks around the globe. Check out these cancelled classics and consider: what would your favorite Disney Parks be like today if these towering mountain peaks had risen over the skyline?
1. Fire Mountain
Click and expand for a larger and more detailed view. Image: Disney
Proposed location: Magic Kingdom
After the closure of Magic Kingdom’s most-missed Lost Legend: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Disney designers got to work developing a new E-Ticket for the park. One option they studied was the construction of a so-called “Fire Mountain” to stand as the new headlining attraction in the park’s Adventureland.
The ride would actually have been constructed outside of the park’s Railroad, with a long queue snaking alongside the Jungle Cruise (like Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure) leading to a steampunk, literary expedition base camp called Vulcania – a version of Disneyland’s never-built Possibilityland: Discovery Bay. This new sub-land within Adventureland would likewise be themed to the fantastic, otherworldly stylings of Jules Verne and his antihero, Captain Nemo.
That means that the famously scientific exploits of Captain Nemo and his world would’ve joined the genres of adventure already present in Adventureland – misty jungles, quirky Polynesia, epic pirates, and now, science fiction and Earth exploration.
Image: Disney
Reportedly, the central roller coaster ride through the peak would’ve been a “flying” coaster, sending guests careening through the molten mountain with lava geysers and magma waterfalls.
Then, in 2001, Disney released Atlantis: The Lost Empire, a big budget blockbuster animated feature that turned Disney’s fairytale formula on its head. Atlantis was a Verne-inspired sci-fi action film that could’ve changed Disney animation forever, and tying Fire Mountain to the tale seemed like a way to get the project green-lit fast. Leaving Jules Verne behind, Vulcania was recast as Whitmore Enterprises Base Camp.
Image: Disney
Disney even floated height test balloons (a common first step in construction) to be sure that the mountain wouldn’t be obtrusively visible from elsewhere in the park.
WHAT HAPPENED? Ultimately, Atlantis sunk. The movie failed to make an impression on critics or the box office. Then, the September 11th attacks on New York City quelled the tourism industry, cancelling most projects Disney and Universal were working on at the time.
Recently, rumbling rumors suggest that Fire Mountain is back on Disney’s docket as a potential project, this time tied to the award-winning film Moana… And speaking of which, that height test Disney did to see if the volcano would be visible? It wasn’t from Main Street… but the volcano would practically loom over Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort. Hmm…
2. Geyser Mountain
Image: Fan concept via Andreas Seltenheim, via Disney & More
Proposed location: Disneyland and Disneyland Paris
In the 2000s, Disney Imagineers were prepped for everything to change. Disney’s California Adventure Park was poised for a 2001 opening, and executives were sure that the brand-new second gate at the renamed Disneyland Resort would turn the California property into an international destination. Crowds would practically swarm the new, hip, edgy park, desperate to see what Disney had created. In comparison to the modern, cool California Adventure with its “MTV attitude,” old, dusty Disneyland would practically be a graveyard.
That’s why Imagineers set to work developing a new attraction that would help even the odds, bringing people back to the antique 1950s park. Brilliantly, they decided to re-use the technology they’d developed for the Disney-MGM Studios’ headlining thrill ride to create an explosive drop tower inside of a geothermal peak in the park’s Frontierland.
Click and expand for a larger and more detailed view. Image: Disney
Old mining elevators would descend through the mountain, opening to reveal crystal caverns and steaming subterranean chambers before the mountain’s most untrustworthy geyser, “Old Unfaithful,” would erupt, launching riders sky-high for park-wide views. Interestingly, Geyser Mountain would’ve made Disneyland the most-mountainous park in Disney’s catalogue (with Space, Splash, Big Thunder, Matterhorn, and Geyser).
WHAT HAPPENED? Of course, things didn’t quite work out as expected… In our in-depth Disaster Files: Disney California Adventure feature, we dissected the unfortunate fate of Disney’s costliest mistake ever, but to make a very long story short, people were not flocking to Disney’s new park. Contrary to what executives expected, it was the brand new California Adventure that needed the boost! Better yet, there was no need to reinvent the wheel with an ambitious original project like Geyser Mountain… the already-tried-and-true Hollywood Tower Hotel from the Disney-MGM Studios would be a perfect fit for the Californian park!
After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York, however, tourism came to a halt and Disney slashed budgets and cut projects across the parks division. California Adventure still needed a boost badly, but now the Tower of Terror it recieved would need to be a new, budget-friendly version – a story we told in-depth in one of the site’s most popular features, Lost Legends: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
Image: Disney
Disney still planned to bring Geyser Mountain to life at Disneyland Paris, where it would take the form of a giant drilling rig, but then the French resort’s second park needed an even bigger boost than California Adventure did! Thus, the less-expensive Californian version of The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror was duplicated in Paris’ abysmal second gate – another Disaster File: Walt Disney Studios Park – meaning Geyser Mountain never saw the light of day.
3. Discovery Mountain
Image: Disney
Proposed location: Disneyland Paris
When Disney’s Imagineers started work on EuroDisneyland, they knew that they faced an uphill battle to legitimize the Parisian park. The French media turned against the “American imperialism” of a Disney property in Paris early on, leaving designers in the unusual position of having to downplay the Americana inherent in Disneyland… which, at its core, is an icon of American enterprise whose themed lands are essentially time capsules of American pop culture, heritage, and pride.
Image: Disney
The most profound switch was that Disneyland Paris didn’t have a Tomorrowland at all, since Europeans would find little interest in the sleek, geometric, white, concrete land of NASA, circling rockets, and the optimism of the Space Race. Instead, the land was reborn as Discoveryland, based on plans for a never-built expansion of Disneyland California – the Possibilityland: Discovery Bay.
A glowing, golden nautical port inspired by Jules Verne, Discoveryland featured bubbling lagoons with the docked Nautilus, hovering zephyrs, organic rockwork, brass plates and cogs, and hot air balloons.
Since a sleek, white, Space Mountain wouldn’t fit in this golden retro-future, designers drafted Discovery Mountain. A land-within-the-land, this enormous, self-contained steampunk paradise would’ve contained multiple attractions themed to Jules Verne novels…
Images: Disney
…like a first generation free-fall drop ride based on Journey to the Center of the Earth, a walk-through tour of the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and a custom-built roller coaster through the stars themed to From the Earth to the Moon.
WHAT HAPPENED? Ultimately, the overbuilt Disneyland Paris fell into a financial freefall. Its budget was so bad, it infamously made then-CEO Michael Eisner wary of any large scale projects to follow. That’s why – in Paris’ wake – dozens of projects were cancelled or closed. Though Imagineers had intentionally left Discovery Mountain out so that they could build it when the park needed a re-awakening of public interest, Disneyland Paris needed something new now.
Image: Disney
Discovery Mountain was “downgraded” to the scale of a typical Space Mountain, but retained the beautiful, Jules Verne inspired exterior and story, becoming a Lost Legend: Space Mountain – De la Terre à la Lune, which eventually fell to the same scientific styling as the other Space Mountains (and even a current and seemingly-permanent Star Wars overlay), just in a much more elaborate shell.
4. The Excavator
Image: Disney
Proposed location: Disney’s Animal Kingdom
There’s perhaps no park so marked by ambitious, never-built attractions in such a relatively short life as Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The park – infamously short on rides – would’ve looked very different than it does today had things worked out as planned. We’ve spoken at length about the never-built Possibilityland: Beastly Kingdom that would’ve given the park a realm dedicated to “imagined” animals with headlining experiences based on dragons, unicorns, and more.
Click and expand for a larger and more detailed view. Image: Disney
But it’s not the only land you wouldn’t recognize in the park today. Initially, Animal Kingdom’s Dinoland was set to feature two attractions: a family dark ride through the prehistoric world, and the thrilling Excavator roller coaster through an active dig site…
Like Disney California Adventure’s California Screamin’ (er, uh, Incredicoaster), the Excavator would’ve looked like a traditional, classic wooden roller coaster on haphazard wooden supports, diving in and around the excavation site’s mountainous peak.
Hong Kong Disneyland concept art. Image: Disney
WHAT HAPPENED? As the park’s monumental budget ballooned, Michael Eisner was forced to choose which of his pet project lands – Beastly Kingdom or Dinoland – should be chosen for the park’s opening day. The team working on Dinoland made an unbeatable argument: that they could fuse the thrilling coaster with the primeval dark ride, inexpensively cloning Disneyland’s new Modern Marvel: Indiana Jones Adventure and redressing it as a terrifying dark ride through the last minutes of the Cretaceous. That was an unbeatable money-saver in the years after Paris, so Dinoland was green-lit… but without the towering Excavator roller coaster.
The Excavator was briefly considered for Hong Kong Disneyland’s Adventureland during early concepting for the park, where it would’ve been a wild ride past real dinosaur animatronics, but ultimately, Hong Kong’s Adventureland became a low-budget version of every other park’s.
5. Big Rock Candy Mountain
Image: Disney
Proposed location: Disneyland
In the early 1950s, Walt and his team toyed with the idea of a “Big Rock Candy Mountain” to act as a towering centerpiece for Disneyland’s Fantasyland. Initially, they’d hoped that the Casey Jr. Circus Train would weave its way through the mountain’s upper levels, with the Storybook Land Canal Boats sailing through channels and caverns beneath. The Candy Mountain would’ve contained a show scene acting as the finale for both: scenes from L. Frank Baum’s Land of Oz, for which Disney had just purchased the rights.
Early on, Walt planned for the mountain to look like it was made of rock candy, but upon deciding that it would be too difficult and impractical to keep it clean, he instead had designers assemble a “mountain” out of licorice, gumdrops, candy canes, and fudge, envisioning gooey waterfalls cascading from the peak.
Image: Disney
WHAT HAPPENED? Ultimately, Walt and his designers (including Disney Legends Claude Coats and John Hench) mutually agreed that there was simply something unappetizing about the mountain, sickly sweet and seemingly melting in the California sun. Candy Mountain was canned, and Matterhorn Bobsleds stands as a sort of conceptual “replacement.” When Disneyland Paris’s version of the Storybookland Canal Boats – Le Pays des Contes de Fées – opened in 2004, it didn’t feature a Candy Mountain, either, though it does have Wizard of Oz as its finale!
Interestingly, when Disney California Adventure had its grand re-opening in June 2012, part of its brand new, 1923-Los-Angeles-themed Buena Vista Street was the Trolley Treats confectionary… featuring a working model of Candy Mountain its window – a “sweet” nod to the never-built ride!
6 and 7. EPCOT Center Mountains
Image: Disney
When EPCOT Center opened in 1982, its World Showcase was a brave new concept – a permanent, cultural World’s Fair of pavilions dedicated to cuisine, culture, and couture from countries around the world. Part of the brilliance of that World’s Fiar model, Disney had solicited countries to sponsor, staff, and supply their respective pavilions, but zero governments bought into the concept. Instead, the eight pavilions representing Mexico, China, Germany, the USA, Japan, France, the UK, and Canada were sponsored by private companies from each country.
Even with eight pavilions, World Showcase wasn’t even half full, with ten empty plots set aside for future countries. In the park’s first year, it advertised pavilions dedicated to Spain, Equatorial Africa, and Israel as “coming soon” in official print media, but all three were cancelled. Morocco joined World Showcase in 1984, then Norway in 1988. But since then, no other pavilions have made their way to World Showcase. But Disney did try…
Image: Disney
In 1989, an official project prospectus, Disney offered their final version of a Switzerland pavilion (to be located between Italy and Germany) to management, international dignitaries, and potential sponsors. A charming Swiss village would, of course, contain woodcarving, candy, and cuckoo clock shops, but the main draw would’ve been unprecedented: a supersized, 192-foot-tall version of Disneyland’s Matterhorn featuring enhanced showscenes and run-ins with the dreaded Abominable Snowman.
(Interestingly, since Walt Disney World’s Space Mountain was a recreation of Disneyland’s original Matterhorn, Disney World’s Matterhorn would now feature the track layout developed for Disneyland’s Space Mountain, effectively flipping the rides’ layouts!)
Image: Disney
The concept must’ve gotten Disney Imagineers thinking, because it was around the same time that another mountain project was considered: the addition of a Mount Fuji roller coaster in the park’s Japan pavilion. It’s said that this high-speed coaster ride through the mountain would’ve included face-to-flames encounters with Japanese dragons roosting inside the peak.
WHAT HAPPENED? Ultimately, neither project moved forward, and you can likely assume the reason: as with most of EPCOT Center’s closed or never-built attractions, it all comes down to funding. (Though it may only be an urban legend, insiders also suggest that longtime Disney Parks sponsor Kodak wasn’t happy about the idea of Mount Fuji, fearing it may be seen as an endorsement of their competitors, Fujifilm… At least some stories say that it was the looming threat of a Mount Fuji that compelled Kodak to finance the redesign of Epcot’s Disaster File: Journey into YOUR Imagination. Whoops.) The good news is that both mountains probably spurred the design of another Modern Marvel: Expedition Everest.
8. Bald Mountain
Image: Disney
Proposed location: Magic Kingdom
Remember Fire Mountain, the adventurous thrill ride once planned for Magic Kingdom? It was one of two concepts floated for the park post-Submarine-Voyage. Another competing concept was a Bald Mountain (as in Night on Bald Mountain, the famously feared segment from Fantasia featuring the demonic Chernabog).
Insiders say that Imagineers hadn’t yet decided exactly what the ride inside would be (either a log flume or a family coaster were considered), but agreed that the ride would bring guests face-to-face with some of Disney’s most legendary villains (sometimes earning the ride the name Villain Mountain). According to most sources, the Mountain would have some cockamamie story about the Disney Villains meeting in the Underworld from Hercules to decide who was the baddest – a distinctly ‘90s concept that, admittedly, reeks of direct-to-video nonsense not really fitting the esteem that the Villains line should be treated with.
Image: Disney
WHAT HAPPENED? Insiders say that Eisner loved both Fire Mountain and Bald Mountain for Magic Kingdom and set teams to work on integrating them both. Of course, neither ended up getting built. For better or worse (depending on your opinion), Bald Mountain was shelved. Some say it’s because Disney began seriously considering a full “Villains” themed park as Disney World’s fifth gate and couldn’t waste a potential headlining E-Ticket in Magic Kingdom. More than likely, though, the cancellation was simply the same tourism downturn after 2001. And at least for this project, that might be okay.
9. North Mountain
Image: Disney
Proposed location: Tokyo DisneySea
Remember when Frozen wouldn’t quit? For at least a while, it was difficult to find a nighttime spectacular that didn’t have “Let It Go,” and when Frozen officially overtook Epcot’s Norway pavilion and its Lost Legend: Maelstrom, plus California Adventure’s Muppet*Vision 3D, Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular, Mad T Party, and the Animation building, it seemed that “Frozen Fever” had indeed dominated Disney Parks to a detrimental level. In fact, you would hear “Let It Go” in no less than three of Disneyland’s nighttime shows: World of Color – Celebrate!, Disneyland Forever fireworks, and the Paint the Night parade!
One kinda-sorta okay concept to come of the era, though, was a proposed port to be added to Tokyo DisneySea. DisneySea is already a park admired by most themed entertainment fans for its realism and detail, and that tends to translate even to its “cartoon” themed projects. For example, the park’s Arabian Coast is kinda-sorta themed to Aladdin, and Lost River Delta is kinda-sorta an Indiana Jones land, but each maintains a sense of realism passed through a fantasy in a retrained way.
Tokyo DisneySea. Image: Disney
So when the Oriental Land Company announced that they would use DisneySea’s most prominent expansion pad on a Scandinavian-themed port that was a little more obviously tied to Frozen (centered around a Cars-Land-style mountain range lorded over by Elsa’s ice palace), it gave Disney Parks fans pause… Does Frozen deserve a whole land at what many call the best theme park on Earth? Well, yeah, probably. But in a park as adored for its commitment to story as DisneySea, Frozen seemed a better fit for Fantasyland at Tokyo Disneyland next door.
WHAT HAPPENED? Ultimately, the Oriental Land Company announced that they were putting their full resources behind a New Fantasyland, adding a massive area themed to Beauty and the Beast, and that the Frozen port would move to the backburner. While we suspect it’ll still go forward (sometime after 2020), for now the E-Ticket inside the film’s North Mountain seems to be frozen itself…
Hong Kong Disneyland. Image: Disney
In the meantime, Hong Kong Disneyland is moving forward on a Frozen themed sub-section within its Fantasyland (above), which may or may not feature a clone of Epcot’s Modern Marvel: Frozen Ever After.
10. Thunder Mesa
Image: Disney
Proposed location: Magic Kingdom
Perhaps the most spectacular never-built mountain in Disney’s portfolio is Thunder Mesa, once expected to be the centerpiece of Magic Kingdom’s Frontierland. Thunder Mesa would’ve been a massive, sprawling mountain range (think Cars Land’s Cadillac Range) that would’ve contained multiple attractions and restaurants themed around legends of the Old West… For example, a log flume through dessert landscapes and past Audio Animatronic creatures, a thrilling “mine train” roller coaster across the Mesa’s plateaus and around its carved rock faces, and – most astounding of all – a spectacular, epic, oversized dark ride through the Old West on par with Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean.
Image: Disney
In fact, designers were so sure that the unimaginable dark ride (which we rode through in its own in-depth Possibilityland: Western River Expedition feature) would become the centerpiece of Magic Kingdom, they intentionally excluded Pirates of the Caribbean from the Floridian park.
WHAT HAPPENED? When guests descended upon the new park’s City Hall to ask where the Pirate ride was and when it would open, Disney rush-ordered a quick-fix version of Pirates of the Caribbean.
Click and expand for a larger and more detailed view. Image: Disney
It still seemed possible that Thunder Mesa might come around, so designers were sure to excise from Florida’s Pirates any scenes that might be duplicated in style when Western River Expedition eventually opened. But then, Tony Baxter’s Big Thunder Mountain was proposed. Inexpensive, quick-to-build, and infusing much-needed modern thrills into Disney Parks, Big Thunder was a shoe-in, and quickly became Imagineering’s go-to Western adventure. It was built in California, Florida, Tokyo, and Paris, dooming Thunder Mesa to Possibilityland forever.
And with Big Thunder Mountain, we’ve arrived again at our Countdown: Peaks of Imagineering, so make the jump there if you haven’t already. But then, consider: how would Disney Parks be different if some of these never-built E-Ticket peaks had come to pass? Would Magic Kingdom be stronger with Fire Mountain? Does Epcot need Matterhorn? Would Candy Mountain have stood the test of time?
They say that good ideas never die at Disney Imagineering, which begs the question, which lost mountain would you most like to see brought to life today? Use the comments below to share your thoughts!
