Space Mountain is the alpha and omega of Disney roller coasters. Its legendary status is so significant that it’s a pop culture reference virtually everyone understands. Perhaps no other theme park attraction in the history of the industry has better name recognition. How does the attraction pull off all the tricks that have made it such a theme park behemoth? Let’s go Behind the Ride to find out all the dazzling secrets of Space Mountain.
The Experience: The original indoor roller coaster
The Trick: An idea literally a decade in the making
Image: DisneyHere are three facts about the design of Space Mountain.
- Space Mountain debuted in 1975.
- Walt Disney was involved in the planning of Space Mountain.
- Walt Disney died in 1966.
The above reflects just how much planning was involving in the building of the world’s first indoor roller coaster. Disney employees at WED Enterprises loved space travel, one of the most popular subjects of the 1950s and 1960s. Their job duties occasionally allowed them to interact with the heavyweights of the field. Disney even aired “science factual” programming during the 1950s that used Wernher von Braun, the father of Rocket Science, as a technical advisor.
Nobody cared more about getting the science of space travel right more than Walt Disney. When his cohorts presented plans for a space travel simulator called Space Port, Uncle Walt loved the idea. He financed concept art for the attraction and even argued for a critical component of its design. He fervently believed that Space Port would only work as a dark ride. An indoor dark ride.
Image: DisneyConstructing an outdoor recreation of outer space wasn’t ideal to Disney. He knew that sunlight and inclement weather were both factors that could disrupt the illusion of interstellar travel. An indoor setting would provide a controlled environment, a better backdrop for the emptiness of outer space. Imagineers could paint the walls and control the lighting, recreating the unforgettable imagery of mankind’s first escape from its atmosphere. While Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon was still several years away, scientists already knew the mechanics of orbital launch. Innovators such as Wernher von Braun could provide Disney with advice on building the most realistic Space Port.
There was just one problem…
The Experience: A steel roller coaster system that provides a satisfying bumpy ride
The Trick: Computer relay systems
Image: DisneyDisneyland wasn’t the place where Space Mountain debuted. Instead, it became the first truly new ride in the history of Magic Kingdom. Almost everything else there was a recreation of something already existing at Disneyland. The lone exception wasn’t a ride but instead an audio-animatronic show, Country Bear Jamboree. Why did a ride Walt Disney worked on get delayed until nine years after his death?
Imagineers honed in on an emerging technology of the 1960s. At the time, business computers were literally as big as an office floor, and their processing power was inferior to a Commodore-64. Disney knew that they wanted computer controllers to pick and choose the times when coaster carts were supposed to leave the departure area. They had a similar idea in place to the way that air traffic control worked at the time. Unfortunately, technology hadn’t caught up with them yet. The hardware required to build what they were now calling Space Mountain didn’t exist yet. Even if it had, Disney would have found the prices exorbitant and prohibitive.
The company had no choice but to wait for computers to grow more powerful. Walt Disney unfortunately didn’t live long enough to see his dream of indoor space travel come to fruition. In his absence, Walt Disney World became a reality, but Space Mountain wasn’t one of the original rides. The attraction wouldn’t open for another several years. Part of it was the economics of opening a new theme park. Most of it was that the technology still needed improvement.
By 1972, Disney projected that they’d soon have the computing power needed to build an indoor, fully automated roller coaster. So, they spent a couple of years building a mountain, one carefully measured so as to avoid outshining Cinderella Castle, and they waited for the strongest computer technology available.
In 1974, Disney implemented a control system that decides when roller coaster carts leave the station as well as when they return. The power of these computer sensors was so impressive for the 1970s that they could recognize when a cart was out of position and automatically shut down the ride. It was a hallmark achievement in ride safety and perhaps the first vision of the Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow that Uncle Walt had prophesied.
Space Mountain took all the danger out of its ride system by removing cast members from the equation. Its computers track every movement all 30 carts in operation, guaranteeing that collisions never occur. This might not sound like a huge deal today, but in 1975, it wasn’t just state of the art technology. It was revolutionary theme park design that was years ahead of its time.
The Experience: Interstellar travel in the span of three minutes
The Trick: a slow ride back to Earth
The genius of Space Mountain is its dizzying experience. Because the coaster cart hurls guests into the great unknown of outer space, they quickly lose a sense of ordinary Earth standards. The perception of Space Mountain is that it’s a frenzied, kinetic coaster that travels at intergalactic speeds. The truth is shocking.
The maximum velocity for the original version of Space Mountain at Magic Kingdom is 35 miles per hour. In execution, it travels even slower, going 28 miles per hour most of the time. For perspective, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, an attraction critics assail for its gentility, goes 34 miles per hour. Why does it feel so soft whereas Space Mountain seems so frenetic?
In execution, Space Mountain is a glorified experiment in sensory deprivation. The rider starts in a room full of bright lights pulsating as they count down to liftoff. Once the cart explodes into motion from its resting position, the rider is suddenly thrust into the empty darkness of space. They’re like Sandra Bullock’s character in Gravity, alone in the void of outer space. All known sensations of Earth and gravity fall away into the nothingness as the person becomes a space traveler for 150 feverish seconds.
Disney Imagineers specifically chose this type of disruptive ride experience. Space Mountain is supposed to mimic a traveler’s return to Earth from a galaxy that may or may not be far, far away (although the similarity is unintentional since Star Wars was still three years away from reality when the attraction debuted). The trip back home is a bumpy ride, with the presumption that if air travel involves turbulence, intergalactic travel is rougher than a Rugby scrum.
The key is the setting. With a darkened interior and an indoor setting, Disney controls all light. They can trigger a sensory response any time they add a new sensation into the void of darkness. All sounds, flurries of lights, and whistling sensations of air snap the rider out of their empty isolation.
In the classic science fiction vernacular, Disney controls the horizontal and the vertical. The person in the ride cart is completely at their mercy, making Space Mountain a controlled environment where the rider is wholly at the mercy of the track in front of them. It was a revolutionary design for the early 1970s, and its underlying psychology continues to drive theme park innovation to this day. Space Mountain earned its reputation as one of the seminal theme park attractions of all-time. Its impact is profound, and it still offers a kickass ride experience almost half a century later.
David Mumpower is the author of the Disney Demystified series, which you can buy here.
