In the more-than sixty-year history of Disney Parks, the creative visionaries of Walt Disney Imagineering have developed an attraction catalogue filled with brilliant, masterpiece rides that showcase innovative technologies, stunning visuals, moving musical scores, and thoughtful narratives. Sometimes, even the most wondrous attractions are taken before their time.
That’s what led to the creation of our Lost Legends series, where we tell the in-depth, behind-the-scenes stories that tell the making-of and experience-of beloved and lost attractions. We’ve seen into Epcot’s future on Horizons, rocketed to Endor on the original Star Tours, joined Dreamfinder and Figment on a Journey into Imagination, braved the perilous heights of Son of Beast, explored the inner workings of the human machine on Body Wars, ventured 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, braved Epcot’s lost Maelstrom and so many more. As our series grows, we remember the soaring heights and stunning lows of creativity and innovation at Disney Parks. And today’s story is all about one of Disney’s most spectacular modern feats of Imagineering – a staggering blend of innovative technologies, incredible sights, and an indescribable score.
When Disney’s California Adventure opened in 2001, it was an outright failure in the eyes of Disney’s management. The underfunded park tried to be “hip” and “edgy,” turning the timelessness and fantasy of Disneyland on its head. By and large, the strategy failed and Disney’s intensely-loyal Southern California fanbase stayed away.
Say what you will about the original Disney’s California Adventure… it did have at least one thing going for it: a surprising headliner that made many reevaluate what an E-Ticket could look like. Gone but not forgotten, today we remember Soarin’ Over California. How was this soaring simulator developed? What was it like? Why is it gone? Today, we’ll explore it all in our in-depth look back.
Disney’s California Mis-Adventure
Image: Orange County Archives (used with permission)
Disneyland is small. When Walt made the initial land purchase in the early 1950s, he secured enough land for the theme park, its equally sized parking lot, and accessory backstage elements. And from that moment, any property around what would become Disneyland was gobbled up by developers, hoteliers, grocers, and families. Overnight, neon signs and bumper-to-bumper traffic developed mere meters from Tomorrowland. Even today, Disney World veterans visiting the Californian resort are often shocked just how small Disneyland is, with many “off-property” hotels a five-minute walk from the parks’ gates.
Walt was infamously displeased with the harsh reality that surrounded his dream park, and set out to do things differently in Florida.
Image: Disney
You know the story… Walt and his team acquired 43 square miles of property in Central Florida where they’d have “the blessing of size” and went about building the Vacation Kingdom of the World. Walt Disney World grew and grew until, by the end of the 1990s, it was poised to open its fourth theme park to join two water parks, a downtown area, and more than two dozen resort hotels.
Right about that same time, Disneyland was… well… still just a single theme park and its parking lot. Long story short, after a few ideas were announced but never-built, Disney executives decided on a cheap and cheerful park to join the original Disneyland, built right on what had been the parking lot. Their goal was that Disneyland would become an international resort (just like its younger, Floridian sister) commanding multi-day stays. Their coup was California Adventure.
Image: Disney
But when Disney’s California Adventure opened in 2001, it didn’t make as many fans as Disney had hoped. Disney’s intensely-loyal and generations-long Southern Californian audience outright rejected the new park. Attendance at the brand-new park was only a fraction of what executives had anticipated, and surveys of exiting guests showed definitively that only a fifth of California Adventure’s visitors enjoyed their experience.
If you’re looking for an eye-opening walkthrough of the original Disney’s California Adventure and want to know the full story of exactly what was wrong with this under-built and creatively starved park, you’re in luck… Disneyland’s second gate was so unsuccessful upon opening, it earned its own in-depth feature in our unfortunate series – Disaster Files: Disney’s California Adventure – that details the rise, fall, and rebirth of the park and the theme park Disneyland almost got instead.
Condor Flats
Click and expand for a larger view. Image: Disney
When California Adventure opened, it had only four theme lands (here called “districts”) – Sunshine Plaza, Hollywood Pictures Backlot, The Golden State, and Paradise Pier. All four were plagued by the park’s foundational folly: rather than being romanticized, idealized visions of a historic California transporting us to a time and place we’ve always imagined (think of Disneyland’s Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, New Orleans Square, etc), California Adventure’s districts were unabashedly modern. Each was set in the present and packed with modern allusions, puns, and jabs at Californian culture, all to the tune of modern pop music. Lightly dressed and packed with off-the-shelf thrill rides lacking Disney’s storytelling and detail, the early park’s harshest critics called these districts soulless, cheap, and notably short on attractions.
Take the Golden State. This all-encompassing district was actually made of no less than six sub-areas, each a miniscule parcel of land representing a corner of California. They included Pacific Wharf, the Golden Vine Winery, Bountiful Valley Farm, and The Bay Area. (Worth noting: between these four lightly themed sub-areas, there were zero rides. Zero.)
Image: Disney
Our story today deals with the other two sub-areas under the Golden State banner: Condor Flats and Grizzly Peak Recreation Area. Even with one ride each, these two sub-areas actually represented some of the best theming California Adventure had to offer in its earliest years. And at first, the notion of Grizzly Peak, for example, is lovely – a forested, High Sierras National Park. Disney Parks fans at once lit up with dreams of what such a gorgeous land could look like. Imagine it: set in the 1950s, with wooden fixtures, fire lookout towers, boulders, park rangers, towering pines…
The story and setting of Grizzly Peak practically wrote themselves. But rather than leaving well enough alone, the park’s designers dialed up the “MTV attitude” and cast us not as visitors stepping back into the wild beauty of a 1950s National Park, but as extreme sports enthusiasts visiting a new white water rafting challenge, with a daredevil sports group taking over the old, rusted bones of a long-forgotten logging operation. The time is now. The place is here. Who wants to be transported to California’s romantic history? Why would we care to travel back in time to see an idealized National Park? Instead, make it edgy and hip!
Likewise, the adjacent Condor Flats left California’s aviation history in the dust. The sub-area was meant to resemble an airfield landing strip populated by massive rocket engines, rusted aviation apparatuses, and used up plane hangars set in an expansive and dusty desert. The effect was more or less lost, given that the tiny sub-area nestled into the forested base of Grizzly Peak couldn’t come across as a remote desert landing strip…
Image: Disney
Put simply, Condor Flats was cold and packed with iron and steel, and designers wanted it to feel barren. The land’s inhabitant buildings were painted tan and wide runways funneled people straight through.
Even if Condor Flats wasn’t the most delicately themed or lovingly crafted area Imagineers had ever touched, it did contain the park’s single, solitary hit. Looming over Condor Flats was a massive, checkered airplane hangar whose halls were lined with photographs of California’s famous pilots, cementing and celebrating the state’s importance in aviation. This hangar housed California Adventure’s one home run, and evidence that the park’s foundational concept was not hopeless.
Image: Disney
What exactly awaited within California Adventure’s starring E-Ticket? How was it designed? What happened to it that it’s part of our Lost Legends series? We’ve got all the answers in this in-depth behind-the-scenes story. Read on…
The Queue
Image: Disney
Standing tall over the desert rocks and wide runways of Condor Flats, a towering airplane hangar lies amongst a metallic network of overhangs, lamp posts, and rocket engines. Red rotating “warning” lights, black-and-yellow warning stripes, and arid vegetation signal that this desert landing strip is active. It might even give the impression that the looming hangar houses a white-knuckle thrill like Mission: SPACE.
While Soarin’ Over California isn’t a thrill ride, it is among the park’s best – a gentle, thoughtful, and (dare we say?) beautiful ride that will whisk you around the natural and manmade wonders of California too grand for the budget-conscious park to recreate in person.
Image: Theme Park Tourist
For fans of aviatian or Californian history, the queue for Soarin’ could be an attraction itself. The “Wings of Fame” exhibition you pass through is an homage to the most well-known aircrafts and aviators sfrom Californian history, like the Bell X-1 (the first manned airplane to ever break the sound barrier, also recreated in comic-book style on the exterior of Condor Flats’ Taste Pilots Grill).
As you look across the artifacts and photos, you’ll also notice that the queue music is ambitious and exciting, perhaps conjuring images of free flight. That’s because the music is all from aviation-themed filmed like Air Force One, Patton, or MacArthur (all, coincidentally, scored by Jerry Goldmith, who composed Soarin’s ride music).
At the farthest end of the descent, the path splits to the left and right, leading to Concourse 1 and Concourse 2 – two identical mirror-imaged theaters. Each can hold 83 passengers, but your wait is still likely to be long. While California Adventure wasn’t attracting many people in its earliest years, the people who did visit didn’t find many things to do, leading to some pretty long waits.
Image: Disney
As a flight attendant directs your party toward either Concourse, you’ll walk along the back spine of the building to loading Gates at either extreme end – Gate A, Gate B, and Gate C. Cast members will meticulously count and sort guests to ensure all three Gates are filled. While that takes place, those already positioned in their Gate watch a screen overhead where the names of today’s destinations zoom past. Once everyone’s sorted, a pre-show begins.
The pre-show video stars Patrick Warburton (the voice of Kronk in The Emperor’s New Groove and Joe Swanson in Family Guy to name a few) as our chief flight attendant. A true remnant of the original California Adventure, the thorough and comical pre-show transcended its origins and became a fan-favorite for Patrick’s thorough, dry, and winking performance… But as the safety video finished, the screen begins to ding: “NOW BOARDING.” It’s time! All three gates’ doors pop open at once as flight attendants usher guests in for their first view of the ride.
Take Flight
Image: Cory Doctorow, Flickr (license)
Three rows deep and three rows across, each row with a metallic canopy overhead. First-time riders might step into the hangar, take a look at the hang-gliders parked before them, and wonder to themselves, “What is this ride? What does it do?” (It’s an ingenious and somewhat unsettling feeling that powered another Lost Legend: TOMB RAIDER – The Ride.) In any case, guests simply move to the end of their row and strap into the hang-glider as twinkling, light music in the background signals something astounding is about to happen.
And it does. Once everyone’s strapped in, a crescendo of low strings and the hiss of a pneumatic compressor signal the room’s lights to dim. As they fade away, you might encounter the sensation that you’re lifting while swinging foward in the dark. The truth is, your hang-glider is being hoisted high up into a massive, tilted dome OMNIMAX screen that’s been concealed by the darkness. But now, as the projectors spring to life, you find yourself dozens of feet in the air, gliding through endless white clouds, encompassed by the oversized screen that fills your view by curving around you.
Image: Disney
As Goldsmith’s score trumpets to life, the Golden Gate Bridge appears before you. This first view alone, accompanied by the elegant and… well… soaring score may be enough to make some riders a little misty. As the glider approaches the bridge, it banks right with motors supporting each row helping to add just enough pitching motion to combine with the on-screen effect to make your flight totally believable.
The frame cuts to the gorgeous Redwood Creek in Humboldt County, gliding over the waterway where rafters and kayakers paddle. You might even get the impression that your feet are about to dip into the water. Rounding a turn in the river, the frame cuts again as the music builds. Now you’re in Napa Valley. A gust of wind seems to propel you over a bank of trees and up to join a festival of hot air balloons. Hovering for a moment with them, you’re suddenly gliding over the Monterey Bay Sanctuary as waves crest against a rocky shore with seagulls calling all around. Here you may also notice the ride’s next trick: each canopy is filled with air tanks and a variety of scents. Breathe it in… do you smell the salty sea air?
Image: Disney
Next it’s to the frosted heights of Lake Tahoe with your toes mere feet above evergreen trees as skiiers slalom down the mountainside with the smell of pine all around. As you crest the summit, the glider pulls back and offers a stunning aerial view of the endless mists nestled atop the water with mountains all around.
Then, you’re hovering before Yosemite Falls as it crashes, following a hang-glider to the Half Dome. The scene flashes now to La Quinta (near Palm Springs) and the PGA West Palmer Course where a wayward golfball provides one of the ride’s most well-known hidden Mickeys. In a moment, you’re over Camarillo in Ventura County passing orange groves (breathe it in!) then to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park for a rendezvous with some equestrians. Then, the glider stalls and the music quiets as the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds jet past.
Now we’re at the Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego Bay, then sunset at Malibu, gliding over the surf. As the music builds and the sun sets, we’re soaring over Los Angeles and its roadways with the city alight. But there can only be one finale, and we all know what it will be.
There it is ahead: the Main Street Train Station. Our adventure can only end back at home as we glide over Disneyland at Christmas. With the castle ahead, Tinkerbell appears and, in a burst of pixie dust, races into the castle as fireworks launch out. The glider pulls up, soaring into the booming and crashing explosions of color! As the music crescendos, the gliders retreat and the screen disappears once again. With riders safety returned to Condor Flats, Soarin’ Over California is over. It’s the rare kind of attraction that earns applause from riders upon completion, and might just have inspired a tear or two from some.
We always conclude our Lost Legends ride-throughs with a point-of-view video that can truly bring the experience to life. Whether you had the chance to soar over California or not, do yourself the favor of experiencing the attraction with its stunning visuals and moving score one more time:
Behind-the-Flight
A wonder of Imagineering and truly breathtaking entry in Disney’s newest generation of rides, Soarin’ Over California was a wonder! On the next page, we’ll explore its creation by going behind-the-scenes, then we’ll go to to see how it was duplicated in many forms around the globe… and why this stunning E-Ticket closed forever just 15 years after its monumental debut. Read on…
Pre-Flight Developments
From the earliest plans for a California-themed park, Imagineers had envisioned a suspended simulator that would make guests feel they were flying over the Golden State’s natural and manmade wonders. By 1996, the plans had taken on a shape and name. “Ultra Flight” would see guests ascend to three load levels before strapping into seats suspended from an overhead track. Modeled after (of all things) a dry-cleaning rack, this arrangement would’ve seen the seats carried forward on horizontal cable mechanisms, positioned before a massive IMAX screen.
Ultimately, it was determined that the construction and operation of such a massive system was impractical. Such a ride system would require escalators and elevators to bring guests to each of the three load levels, and a separate team of Cast Members on each floor…
Image: Disney
It was Imagineer Mark Sumner who cracked the case, famously using an old erector set to prepare a working, crank-operated model of a ride system where all guests would board on the same level before being swung out and lifted vertically to “stack” the ride vehicles.
In retrospect, the idea seems simple; even obvious. By hoisting three rows of visitors sky-high, they’d align vertically, “soaring” together before a curved OMNIMAX screen.
In practice, it takes a bit more work…
Image: Disney
The million-pound steel apparatus lifts 87 riders at a time forty feet high in 37-ton gliders. Once airborne, these seemingly delicate gliders park inside of an inverted OMNIMAX domed screen and subtly rise, lower, and pitch in sync with the ride film. Speaking of which, even with the infrastructure designed, Disney still had work to do before anyone would care to fly on Soarin’ Over California.
Flight Path
The process of filming the stunning camerawork for the ride was certainly not as easy as it would seem. First, Disney needed special permission to film in some of the ride’s most sought-after scenes. Obtaining permissions to fly helicopters through Yosemite National Park took months of bureaucratic compliance, marking the first time in nearly half-a-century that a vehicle had taken to the skies there.
Since Monterey is a marine sanctuary, Disney worked for years to secure clearance. In the final shot, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration boat would be visible in the water. Far from a staged shot, the NOAA representatives were on-site to ensure the safety of Monterey’s protected sea lions, brown pelicans, and sea otters.
Image: Disney
A scene where riders would glide over the Anza-Borrego desert over a team of horses and equestrians required that Disney hire archaeologists to perform a paleontological assessment to ensure no artifacts would be disturbed by the horses or helicopter. Put another way: a research team had to dust four square miles of desert before filming could commence.
In that same scene over the desert, Disney would meet many times with the U.S. Air Force to coordinate a team of Thunderbird planes to jet through. Careful charting and arranging was necessary, since the Thunderbirds travel too fast to sense whether or not the helicopter was within their flight path. The jets travel so fast, Disney’s film crew took off in a helicopter a few miles from the scene while the Thunderbirds took off from Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas – nearly 200 miles away – at the same time to rendezvous at the filming location.
Image: Disney
Another trick? Every human you’d spot during the ride (from skiers to surfers and everything in between) would be a plant, hired to add dynamic energy to the scene. The rock climbers in Yosemite literally hung around for six hours, dangling from their climbing ropes between takes.
Finally, with the gorgeous vistas of California captured on IMAX film in 48-frames-per-second (twice the frame rate of typical films), Soarin’ Over California was nearing completion… But it was missing one integral ingredient.
Music to Fly By
For Disney, no masterpiece attraction is complete without music. In this case, Disney approached composer Jerry Goldsmith, whose resume includes 1968’s Planet of the Apes, Alien, Poltergeist, Gremlins, five Star Trek films, The Mummy, and Disney’s own Mulan.
They’d picked the right person. Goldsmith was invited to Imagineering to get a test screening of the footage collected so far for Soarin’ Over California in a mock-up theater. As the story goes, when he descended at the end of the ride film, Imagineers were shocked to find him crying. Goldsmith reported that nothing had gone wrong on the ride. Rather, after more than four decades composing, he felt he had just stumbled upon his dream project, fusing his two loves: music and flight.
Especially given that he’d been born and raised in California with a father who was a pilot, Goldsmith apparently said, “I’d do anything to be part of this project. I’d even score the film for free.”
For the record, Disney did pay him. But the resulting score has to be among the most moving pieces of composition in the Disney Parks songbook – an uplifting, powerful, majestic piece of music that perfectly underscores each progressive moment of the ride.
Soar
If every Disney Park on Earth has a “thesis statement” ride – one that exemplifies the park’s principles and story best – this free-flying expedition would be California Adventure’s. A gorgeous masterpiece skillfully blending technology and artistry in the way only Disney can, Soarin’ Over California would be a headliner.
It also meant that the technology behind Soarin’ Over California was destined for inclusion in other Disney Parks around the globe. This is where the story gets interesting. On the next page, we’ll see where Soarin’ flew to next and why that expansion actually spelled the end for the Californian original.
Good ideas never die at Disney, and that meant that Soarin’ Over California (and its stellar technology) was destined to expand across the Disney Parks chain.
Soarin’… Over Florida
Image: Disney
By the early 2000s, Walt Disney World’s Epcot was in an unusual state. Self-serious educational dark rides from the 1980s comingled with character-infused attractions and one-off thrills that only tangentially related to the park’s original thesis. Disney knew the park needed new life, and Imagineers concocted a plan to make it happen. We chronicled the full rebirth in a standard feature – Possibilityland – Epcot’s Project: GEMINI – but here’s what you need to know: while most of Project: GEMINI never came to pass, a few pieces did.
Among them was idea of duplicating California Adventure’s single hit.
Nestlé – the sponsor of Epcot’s The Land pavilion – was in the midst of a contractual refurbishment to freshen up their exhibits at Epcot, and a version of California’s hang-gliding adventure would be the perfect headliner, sending guests soaring over the ecosystems of the world.
Image: Disney
On May 5, 2005 – about four years after California Adventure’s opening – Soarin’ opened inside The Land pavilion at Epcot. Replacing the pavilion’s animatronic “dinner” shows and fellow Lost Legends: Kitchen Kabaret and Food Rocks, the ride’s queue was designed as a minimalist, glowing futuristic terminal to usher guests out to a showbuilding constructed behind the Imagination pavilion.
The ride itself was an exact duplicate of Soarin’ Over California. Which is particularly interesting when you consider that California’s habitats are so varied and diverse that the Californian ride film could reasonably stand in for the rest of the country and few people would bother to notice that only one state is represented! And indeed, even if Soarin’ at Epcot earned an eye-roll from Disney Parks fans who knew it was nothing but the Californian original in disguise, it quickly became one of Epcot’s most popular rides often earning multi-hour waits.
Image: Disney
That meant that the ride was an instant hit at Epcot. So much so that more than a decade after its opening, the ride was closed for a refurbishment and re-opened on May 27, 2016 with a third ride theater, Concourse 3, to help handle the multi-hour waits that plague the E-Ticket in a park with far fewer rides than California Adventure. Put simply, Soarin’ at Epcot is now irrevocably tied to the park and to The Land pavilion and Walt Disney World visitors have embraced it with tremendous fervor.
Soarin’ Over Tokyo
Image: Disney
On April 27, 2016 – just before the opening of Florida’s Gate C – officials with the Tokyo Disney Resort announced that a version of Soarin’ would soon come to the world-renowned Tokyo DisneySea.
DisneySea is a veritable Mecca for Disney Parks fans, seemingly built without a budgetary restriction in sight. Most of the park’s attractions and lands are stunning, groundbreaking, sought-after originals that top fans’ bucket lists (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Sinbad’s Storybook Voyage, Mysterious Island, Arabian Coast, Lost River Delta…). When the park does borrow from stateside originals, it tends to improve dramatically upon them (as in their built-out Indiana Jones Adventure, Twilight-Zone-free Tower of Terror, and gorgeous Toy Story Midway Mania).
Image: Disney
So far, it seems that their Soarin’ will fit into the latter camp. The ride will be built in the park’s gorgeous and sprawling Mediterranean Harbor within an Italian “Museo Del Volo” (Museum of Flight). In true DisneySea style, the ride is expected to be wrapped into the massive, cross-continental story of the Society of Explorers and Adventurers (SEA) and guests will fly over wonders of the ancient world aboard Leonardo da Vinci’s fabled flying machine invention. Tokyo’s version is expected to open in 2019.
Soaring Over The Horizon
Image: Disney
On June 16, 2016, the highly anticipated Shanghai Disneyland opened in Mainland China. Most every attraction and land at the Chinese park was custom-designed to be one-of-a-kind. In place of Disney’s classic Adventureland, Shanghai is home to Adventure Isle, which comes complete with its own pulp-adventure setting (a lost tropic isle in the 1930s, home to the ancient Arbori people who live in harmony with the recently arrived League of Adventurers).
There, fans expected the runaway hit to be Roaring Rapids, a waterlogged journey through the island’s mysterious Mount Apu Taku, guarded by a massive crocodilian guardian (who ranks high on our must-read countdown of the best animatronics on Earth). But the surprising headliner for the Chinese is Soaring Over The Horizon. Cast as part of Adventure Isle, the ride invites guests to journey deep into the mountains (entering beneath a carved eagle in Apu Taku’s side) to the ancient Observatory of the Arbori where a mystical shaman connects the island to the world.
Image: Jeremy Thompson, Flickr (license)
The queue winds through an otherworldly temple with the endless night sky above, where guests commune with the ancient powers. The result is a new ride film sending guests from the savannahs of Africa to Sydney Harbor, and from the pyramids of Egypt to the Lau Islands in Fiji. The international tour represented the first Soarin’ ride to not feature the original Californian ride film.
Soaring Over the Horizon expanded upon the success of Soarin’ Over California and presented the perfect opportunity to update Epcot’s ride. But that’s not the only attraction that changed…
Condor Flattened
In 2007 – just six years after California Adventure first opened its gates – Disney announced something unprecedented: a complete transformation and rebuilding of the park. So much more than piecemeal additions, the park would receive an intentional, foundational shift that would turn back the clock on its themed lands and redesign them as idealized, romantic, historic visions like the lands at Disneyland.
Image: Disney
The park underwent five years of construction, recieved an official name change (Disney California Adventure) and closed for a single symbolic day. When it re-opened on June 15, 2012, the park was reborn. Its four themed “districts” had become eight (including two brand new ones: Buena Vista Street and Cars Land). On that day, Condor Flats was exorcised from the gargantuan Golden State and given full “land” status (see map, above) alongside Grizzly Peak (now an authentic 1950s National Park rather than a modern extreme sports takeover of one) and Pacific Wharf.
Still, Condor Flats just wasn’t quality enough for the renewed park. Even the light place making offered during the park’s Grand Reopening couldn’t convince guests that they were in a remote high desert. Not with the looming Grizzly Peak and its dense evergreens on one side and the charming Buena Vista Street on the other.
And it took a few years, but in 2015, Disney proved they were willing to invest in California Adventure in the long haul.
Image: Disney
Condor Flats was flattened and the area around Soarin’ Over California was enveloped into nearby Grizzly Peak, taking on its 1950s National Park theming. Now, it makes absolute sense that the craftsman-style Grand Californian Hotel serves as the land’s backdrop – it’s the National Park’s lodge! And the towering, grizzly-shaped peak looming to the south is an icon of the land. Disney did the transformation right and designated the new area Grizzly Peak Airfield.
Image: Disney
In all ways more believable than Condor Flats, the new Airfield is an extension of the National Park theming nearby, with towering pines, limitless details, the inclusion of Walt’s long-lost 1950s character Humphrey the Bear, and authentic and instantly-recognizable National Parks signage that hearken to the days when families would pack up the Rambler and hit the great outdoors.
And most importantly, it’s packed with the details that set Disney apart – the kind of intimate storytelling the original Disney’s California Adventure lacked, and that simply couldn’t have called the cold, sterile Condor Flats home.
Images: Disney
Suddenly, the rusted rocket jet positioned outside Soarin’s hangar showbuilding became a Lookout Tower. The punny Taste Pilot’s Grill quick service restaurant became the detail-packed Smokejumpers Grill with its own mythos. The changes were stunning, as documented in Yesterland’s Then & Now: Grizzly Peak Airfield and in a fascinating interview on the change with Executive Creative Director at Imagineering Ray Spencer.
Image: Disney
Finally absorbed into the new narrative that powered a reborn Disney California Adventure, Soarin’ Over California seemed poised to soar into the horizon as a classic for generations to come. But that’s not what happened… Soarin’ Over California is a Lost Legend, after all. Find out what happened on the last page…
New Destinations
Image: Disney
At both Epcot and Disney California Adventure, Soarin’ Over California took its last flight on June 15, 2016. The ride closed for a single day and re-opened on both coasts on June 17 with Soarin’ Around the World – the ride film an almost-exact duplicate of Soaring Over the Horizon, which had premiered alongside the opening of Shanghai Disneyland the day before.
Soarin’ Around the World (like Soaring Over the Horizon) sends guests from Switzerland’s Matterhorn to the icy tundra of Isfjord in Greenland; The Great Wall of China to Neuschwanstein Castle (Walt Disney’s inspiration for Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland) in Germany. The epic ride visits the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, Utah’s Monument Valley National Park, and Mount Kilimanjaro before touching down in Disneyland or Epcot (depending on where you ride).
One surprising switch is the addition of transitions (swooping seaplanes, kites, and sea birds) between scenes… a radical departure from the acclaimed simplicity of the Californian version. It’s a change that’s been both praised and criticized by fans.
What hasn’t changed is that the ride is accentuated by wind and scent and brought to stunning, emotional life via a moving score orchestrated by Bruce Broughton (given that the original composer, Jerry Goldsmith, passed away in 2004) and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. And yes, Broughton’s arrangement is based very closely on Goldsmith’s original with new international flair and pacing appropriate for the new ride film. (Another thing that hasn’t changed? Patrick Warburton’s pre-show, rumored to be lost to the transition, seems to have been intentionally retained as a shoutout to fans.)
You can watch a gorgeous point-of-view video of the new Soarin’ Around the World at Disney California Adventure here:
Californian Controversy
The decision to replace Epcot’s Soarin’ with the global Soarin’ Around the World was a no-brainer – a natural and overdue evolution of the 15-year-old ride, even if the aerial tour of mostly-man-made landmarks technically made it a worse fit in The Land pavilion.
At Disney California Adventure, the decision read as… well… strange.
Think of it this way: it started with minor attractions themed to California’s history, culture, and industry like Golden Dreams (an educational film about the history of California’s people and culture) and the Bountiful Valley Farm leaving in favor of The Little Mermaid and A Bug’s Life (both upgrades, to be sure). Disney’s worst ride ever – which earned its own entry in our Disaster Files: Superstar Limo – then closed to make way for Monsters Inc. (again, an upgrade).
But eventually, fans started realize there wasn’t that much California left in California Adventure. The addition of Cars Land (set somewhere in the American Southwest, but decidedly not California) only exemplified the unusual issue.
The 2012 park wide redesign did insert the historic 1920s Los Angeles streetscape of Buena Vista Street, though, and it renewed the park’s themed lands to celebrate the idealized, romanticized state’s iconic locales. Plus, rides like Grizzly River Run, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and Soarin’ Over California ensured that the park retained “California” where it counts – in its headlining adventure rides.
Image: Disney
Maybe that’s why fans were shocked when it was announced that Soarin’ Around the World would replace Soarin’ Over California at Disneyland Resort, too. The fan-favorite that launched a generation of “Soarin’” attractions and proved that California Adventure did have a concept worth rallying around would change. It’s not that Soarin’ Around the World isn’t beautiful and moving and well done – it is! It’s that the original ride film was custom-made for a park dedicated to celebrating California’s stories. Flying over the Great Wall of China and the Eiffel Tower doesn’t fit, especially given that we know the right fit exists… and used to be there.
And the degradation of the reborn California Adventure didn’t end there. Fans were shocked when it was announced that the looming, legendary Hollywood Tower Hotel and its distinctly Californian lore would give way to Marvel super heroes, as the 1920s art-deco lost Golden Age hotel would become a sci-fi “warehouse fortress power plant” as part of the new Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! We traced the unbelievable history of Disney’s drop ride and its inclusion in and removal from California Adventure in its own feature – Lost Legends: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.
The end result is that Disney California Adventure is a park of beautifully decorated themed lands that exude the history and magnificence of California’s story, people, and places… but the attractions in those lands are themed exclusively to Cars, The Little Mermaid, Toy Story, Marvel, Monsters Inc., Frozen, and A Bug’s Life, with the towering Guardians of the Galaxy tower looming over it all where once had been an elegant Hollywood hotel… a fitting visual for the park’s current state.
Clear For Takeoff
Image: Disney
Soarin’ Over California was a landmark ride.
First, it served as the anchor for an otherwise depressed Disney’s California Adventure and provided early evidence that the park could survive off its Californian narrative if executives were willing to take chances in new forms of storytelling and innovative ride systems like Soarin’.
Second, its duplication at Epcot served both as a testament to the varied beauty of California and kick-started a new way of looking at Disney World’s second gate. Like it or not, Soarin’s success meant that Epcot could become a 21st century thrill park, and executives have taken the idea and run with it.
Third (and perhaps most importantly), Soarin’ Over California pioneered a ride system so magnificently versatile and so consistently astounding, it’s now entered the Disney Parks canon and spread around the world. The core technology and experience even evolved at Disney’s Animal Kingdom where AVATAR Flight of Passage is undisputed E-Ticket in the new Pandora – The World of AVATAR.
Around the world, flying theaters (of all shapes, sizes, and price-points) are becoming standard family fare at theme parks, amusement parks, boardwalks, and even shopping malls… and it’s no surprise. Soarin’ Over California showed just how effective, subtle, emotional, impressive, and stunning the feeling of flight can be. And now that we’ve got a taste, we’re thrilled to imagine where this technology could take off next…
If you enjoyed our in-depth look at the surprising story of Soarin’ Over California, make the jump to our In-Depth Features Library to set course for your next Lost Legend. In the comments below, share your thoughts and stories about Soarin’. Has this tear-jerker ever made you a little misty? How does the “Around the World” version compare with the Californian original? At Epcot? At California Adventure? What should the future hold for this amazing technology? We look forward to hearing your comments. In the meantime, thanks for soarin’ with us.
