One of the most restrictive mental exercises is the Mount Rushmore challenge. You’re likely familiar with the concept, but I’ll explain just in case you’re not. Mount Rushmore is an American monument with the faces of four American presidents carved into the walls. The honored politicians are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. These gentlemen have the most prestige of all early American presidents.
The trick is that someone had to decide which four American leaders were worthy of the Mount Rushmore honorific. During the social media era, internet users have taken the Mount Rushmore challenge, choosing the four most iconic figures from a given field. In this article, I’m going to attempt the same thing for something that we all love. Here are the attractions I would choose for Disney’s Mount Rushmore plus an explanation of why.
The shortlist
Image: DisneySimply starting the process of choosing Disney’s four most iconic attractions is problematic. Collating a list of worthy choices is brutal in and of itself. Even at the start, I realized that choosing only four of them as the best would be nightmarishly difficult. In fact, I even struggled with the criteria.
What’s most important for a theme park attraction? Should the oldest attractions, the ones that have stood the test of time, receive more recognition than new, breathtaking triumphs of Imagineering? Is Jungle Cruise a better candidate than Avatar Flight of Passage? I’m inclined to say yes, which means that Mad Tea Party and Peter Pan’s Flight are worthy contenders, too.
How important is name recognition? You can walk into any room on the planet and hum the tune of It’s a Small World. Others will get that dreaded earworm, too. Is the global awareness of the song and its accompanying ride reason enough to list it?
Image: DisneyI don’t see any right or wrong answers to these questions. Should you put together your own Mount Rushmore of Disney attractions, I’d probably agree with some of your choices but think you’re nuts about others. I expect that the same is true for you as you read this. Keeping this in mind, here’s what I decided.
After a lot of thought, I’ve decided that the best examples of Disney theme park attractions are the ones with the best combination of innovation, theming, ride quality, and cultural status. I shortlisted the following eleven rides as the finest examples of all things Disney:
- Haunted Mansion
- It’s a Small World
- Jungle Cruise
- Kilimanjaro Safaris
- Mad Tea Party
- Matterhorn Bobsleds
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Space Mountain
- Spaceship Earth
- Splash Mountain
- Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
Culling the list
Image: DisneyI had to eliminate several of these selections, a few of which I admit didn’t get serious top-four consideration anyway. For example, I showed deference to Mad Tea Party by shortlisting it since it’s one of the best-known ride concepts of all-time. The public awareness of the design elevates it over Peter Pan’s Flight. Let’s be honest, though. It never had a shot of being one of the most important four attractions at Walt Disney World.
Similarly, I love and admire Kilimanjaro Safaris, the attraction that exemplifies the stunning triumph of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Walt Disney famously wanted real animals for Jungle Cruise, but Imagineers needed 40 more years before the idea was plausible. Everything about it is impressive, but how many people know the attraction by name compared to Jungle Cruise? Between the two rides, the one with cheesy fake animals somehow seems more significant in stature, at least in Disney lore.
Image: DisneyAnother core Disney attribute is the architecture, and Matterhorn Bobsleds started that particular arms race. Walt Disney loved giant, attention-grabbing structures. He felt strongly that they drove ticket sales. The Matterhorn led to all of the man-made mountains that you know and love, and it was also the first steel roller coaster of its kind in the world. Is that enough to earn a spot on Disney’s Mount Rushmore? I decided that being the first isn’t the same as being the best.
My next cuts happened at the round of eight. Out of the remaining titles, I just couldn’t justify Twilight Zone Tower of Terror being one of the four most iconic Disney attractions, even though it’s one of my favorites. The same is true of Jungle Cruise, the most convivial of all Disney attractions. The cheesy nature of the ride somehow elevates it AND holds back its candidacy for inclusion.
Image: DisneyWith six remaining selections, I faced the two most brutal cuts. It’s a Small World is undeniably world-famous. It also has ties to Walt Disney’s proudest moment, his dominant performance against the world’s elite at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Ultimately, my bias won out here. I simply find the attraction too repetitive and occasionally annoying to place it on Disney’s Mount Rushmore.
Ultimately, I found myself with five worthy selections for four spaces on the mountain. Something had to give, and I made a call that I suspect won’t prove popular. My final and most dramatic cut is Splash Mountain, quite possibly the greatest Disney attraction. I’ve previously praised many elements of the ride experience, and the Flash Mountain/viral images aspect gives it a respectable amount of renown. In a vacuum, however, I view it as clearly inferior to three of my selections. The final spot is more of a judgment call, but I’ll explain my thought process in a moment.
My Disney Mount Rushmore:
Image: DisneyWithout further ado, here are my selections of Disney’s Mount Rushmore, along with explanations regarding their candidacies.
Haunted Mansion
Image: DisneyI don’t think anyone would argue with either of the middle two selections, the ones I’ll discuss next. The first and fourth ones are a bit more debatable, although I feel strongly that there’s a solid gap between the top three and the other major candidates.
I chose Haunted Mansion for several reasons. The most important one is that it embodies the best parts of Disney Imagineering. The earliest geniuses from WED Enterprises wouldn’t take no for an answer, even when trapped in paradoxical discussions. A haunted house at the Happiest Place on Earth couldn’t be terrifying. It couldn’t be a joke, either. Thanks to a sublime combination of conflicting concepts, however, they built something that’s equal parts funny and scary.
When we talk about well-known Disney elements, Haunted Mansion claims five: the Ghost Host, Madame Leota, the Stretching Room, Grim Grinning Ghosts, and the Hitchhiking Ghosts. I’m not including the Hatbox Ghost or the Bride in that, and I could mention several other aspects. I feel strongly that Haunted Mansion is one of the four seminal Disney theme park attractions.
Pirates of the Caribbean
Image: DisneyI see this one and the next one as inarguable. Your mileage may vary, of course, but here’s the argument in support of Pirates of the Caribbean. The attraction was so popular when it opened at Disneyland in 1967 that Floridians expressed outrage that Walt Disney World didn’t open with it four years later.
Disney executives had understandably believed that Floridians wouldn’t treasure a pirate attraction the way that Californians did. After all, it was already a part of the state’s culture and history! Pirates of the Caribbean is so appealing that the people who knew all the stories already still wanted to experience it. In marketing terms, Disney pulled off the equivalent of selling ice in Antarctica.
Even if the world had never learned of Captain Jack Sparrow and his adventures, Pirates of the Caribbean would still stand as a seminal Disney attraction. Theme park tourists are so passionate about the set pieces that the idea of changing them stokes outrage in certain circles.
Space Mountain
Image: DisneyThis one needs no explanation. Space Mountain possesses a rare and profound level of awareness in pop culture. For more than 40 years now, any discussion involving the best and most iconic roller coasters in the world must begin with it.
Space Mountain’s concept was so brilliant and original that Imagineers were forced to wait roughly a decade for technology to catch up to their version. Their computing needs were greater than the processing power available at the time. While this statement sounds a bit trivial now in the same way that describing Pac-Man as a transcendent videogame borders on comical today, the undeniable fact is that Space Mountain redefined the perception of Disney theme parks. To this day, it’s an attraction that guests must ride unless they want to leave the park feeling incomplete.
Spaceship Earth
Image: DisneyI recognize that I may have lost some of you. Please hear me out on this one. Shut your eyes and think about Epcot. How many things flash in your mind before you visualize the prototypical ride building in the Disney theme park lineup? Now that I’ve incepted the image in your brain, take a moment to appreciate the symbiotic relationship between Epcot the theme park and Spaceship Earth the landmark.
Now, let’s talk about the associated attraction. How easily can you summon Dame Judi Dench’s voice in your head? Do you hear her narrating about the Phoenicians, the Romans, and the Renaissance? Can’t you picture that breathtaking view of Earth from outer space, the one that indicates you’ve reached pinnacle of the geodesic dome?
The applicable cliché here is that Spaceship Earth gets hidden in plain sight. When you see the giant golf ball off in the distance, you know that you’re about to enter Epcot and have a wonderful time. Odds are good that you’ll board the time machine and experience thousands of years of human civilization in a concise 15-minute ride. You do this because Epcot is tethered to Spaceship Earth and thereby critical to the Disney theme park empire. I give it a slight nod over Splash Mountain as the worthy fourth choice for Disney’s Mount Rushmore.
