Fantasyland at Disney’s theme parks might have been designed to inspire the kid in all of us, but it hasn’t always been a sanitized and always-happy place.
Although Fantasyland is generally thought of as a child-friendly paradise, it was actually once home to two of the most bizarrely frightening rides Disney has ever had to offer. Walt knew that children’s dreams turn to nightmares just as often as they do to frothy sweetness, and that childlike imagination can create all kinds of impossible twists and turns.
Much has been made of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, which is still in operation at Disneyland but closed at Walt Disney World in 1998, despite a very public Save the Toad protest campaign. Whether they ever had the chance to ride or not, few Disney fans are unaware of the naked lady and trip to Hell that once existed where The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh stands today.
Yet as gritty, surreal, and terrifying as Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride was, for sheer frights, it was actually bested by an attraction based on one of Disney’s most beloved films ever—Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. How did this happen? Many more people report crying during the movie than shrinking away in horror. What of the unsuspecting children who eagerly piled into their ride vehicles only to spend the next two and a half minutes shrieking in fear?
Here we will explore the unlikely evolution of this incredibly popular but oddly terrorizing Fantasyland ride…
The film
In the early 1930s, Walt Disney was finally enjoying a reasonable amount of success after fighting through some very hard times. He had developed and then lost control of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but bounced back with the extraordinary popularity of Mickey Mouse. His Silly Symphonies enjoyed moderate success, especially after he switched them to Technicolor in 1932. That same year, Walt won his first Academy Award for the creation of Mickey Mouse. He was married to the love of his life, Lillian, and after an early miscarriage, Lillian gave birth to their first daughter, Diane, in 1933.
Life was good, but Walt being who he was, he was not content to settle down. Instead, he set his eye on a groundbreaking new idea—the first ever full-length animated film. Both Lillian and Walt’s brother and business partner, Roy Disney, tried to talk him out of it. The film industry, believing that such an audacious idea would sink Walt’s studio, began referring to it as “Walt’s Folly”. But he would not be dissuaded. The new film would be a retelling of the classic tale of Snow White entitled Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Walt had to take one of the biggest gambles of his life, mortgaging his own home to pay for the movie.
Against all odds, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a smash success. Its December 21, 1937 premiere at the Carthay Circle Theatre drew a standing ovation from such Hollywood royalty as Judy Garland and Marlene Dietrich. Following its general release in 1938, the film made four times more money than any other movie that year. By 1939, it had become the highest grossing “talkie” (film with sound) in history…though it was surpassed a year later by Gone With the Wind.
Even more importantly, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs established Walt Disney as a legitimate Hollywood filmmaker, setting the stage for him to build an empire based on groundbreaking animation. It won an Academy Award, for which child actress Shirley Temple presented Walt with one full sized and seven miniature Oscar statuettes. Walt Disney was suddenly a household name.
Disneyland
Image: Disney
Flush with success, Walt went on to enjoy the Golden Age of Animation, producing such classics as Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). A brief foray into producing military films during World War II barely affected the studio’s stride. By the late 1940s, the Disney family was living in a new home on a large piece of land, and Walt had a miniature steam train in the backyard. He was also planning his next “folly,” a full-scale theme park where parents and children could have fun together.
At the time, amusement parks were dirty and dangerous places where parents sat on benches while kids rode standard-issue rides. Walt envisioned something immaculately clean, superbly maintained, and highly immersive, where families could leave their worries behind for the day. His original plan was for a small park adjacent to his studio, but his dreams quickly outgrew the space.
Instead, Walt made another bold move, acquiring 160 acres in nearby Anaheim, California. To obtain funding, he created a show called Disneyland for the ABC network, which agreed to provide financing in return. Like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt’s latest big idea was met with a great deal of head scratching and nay saying, but once again, he proved his detractors wrong. Despite a messy opening day in 1955, Disneyland went on to transform the concept of themed entertainment, and allowed Walt to found a dynasty.
Snow White and Her Adventures
Image: Disney
As one of Disney’s most beloved films of all time, and the beginning of Walt’s animated film empire, it was only natural for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to be featured as an opening day attraction at Disneyland. Walt wanted to entirely remake the amusement park experience, transforming rides from a run of the mill exercise in physics into a truly immersive new world. What better way to do that than to put guests inside some of the most beloved properties in the Disney vaults?
Walt’s idea was brilliantly simple. Inside the attraction, guests would take the leading role in a reimagining of the familiar story. For example, rather than simply flying WITH Peter Pan, guests would BECOME Peter Pan as they soared high above London on their way to Neverland. The concept was never fully communicated to guests, though, and in some ways it fell flat. For rides like Peter Pan’s Flight, guests simply left scratching their heads, wondering why they never saw Peter. At Snow White and Her Adventures, however, things were a little different.
What was largely forgotten by 1955 was just how dark and frightening portions of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were to 1930s audiences. The film drew on the great Gothic tradition from which such novels as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and such early horror films as Nosferatu were also drawn. In the years immediately preceding Disney’s take on Snow White, Universal began its legacy of horror, putting its own spin on those traditions to develop such classics as Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a sensation for many reasons, not the least of which is that Disney intentionally heightened its emotional touchstones to ensure that it resonated with adult audiences whose sensibilities usually precluded cartoons. In many ways, it ranks among the best of the Gothic films, from its sense of scale to the rawness of its most tragic moments. Rather than shying away from or sugar coating the horror sequences, Disney made them intentionally and purposefully frightening in a way that was uncommon at the time.
While Hollywood’s Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 focused primarily on pornography and violence, the British Board of Film Censors and Mussolini’s censors in Italy had banned horror movies altogether. Yet, as a cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was allowed to play in its entirety. Many young people who grew up with censorship had never been exposed to the emotional notes that were masterfully hit in the film’s forest and transformation scenes. Even among American audiences, no one expected the terror of those scenes to feel so real.
But that was 1937. By the 1950s, more sophisticated audiences were taking in low-budget monster movies. The horror industry had moved on to jump scares, and the Gothic storytelling style was increasingly seen as quaint and even boring. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, re-released in 1944 and again in 1952, still had a lot going for it, but its horror moments had lost the bulk of their impact.
Walt had a tremendous knack for keeping his finger on the pulse of the public. To bring Snow White’s story to life, he recreated some of the film’s most emotional moments, including the forest scenes and the witch’s transformation, in one of the first amusement rides to take full advantage of black light. With its short, quick trip through the story, the attraction traded Gothic story development for the best of traditional scary dark rides amped up as only Disney could do. The results were legitimately frightening, even for then-modern audiences. Yet it was not this original version of the ride that became the stuff of legends.
The Florida Project
Walt and his team learned many valuable lessons from Disneyland. Most of all, they learned that in order to fulfill one of their biggest dreams, that “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world,” they really needed the benefit of space. Disneyland seemed enormous when it opened, but it was quickly pinned in by a plethora of T-shirt shops and motels that sprang up to take advantage of the tourist trade.
Never content to sit still, Walt wanted to improve upon what he had created at Disneyland, while simultaneously embarking on his biggest adventure yet—building a fully functioning, futuristic city that would serve as a model for urban planning and development. Under pseudonyms and mysteriously named subsidiary corporations, Disney began buying up enormous plots of land in Central Florida, knowing that if the company’s name got out, prices would skyrocket. Yet many in the area correctly guessed what was coming next.
The Florida Project was officially announced in 1965. Fresh off a smash success at the 1964 World’s Fair, Walt laid out his ambitious new plans to a disbelieving but largely supportive public. Unfortunately, he passed away in 1966, before he could bring his greatest dream to life.
In the years following Walt’s passing, Disney management tried valiantly to maintain a course that would have pleased the big boss. The Magic Kingdom was a bigger, bolder, more immersive version of Disneyland that smoothed out some of the original park’s rough edges. It also took some new risks.
The 1960s and 1970s
Although only 16 years had passed since Disneyland opened, the United States and, indeed, the world had changed dramatically by the time the Magic Kingdom opened in 1971. The 1960s were a tumultuous time marked by women’s liberation, civil rights, and protests against the war in Vietnam. The movie and music industries, as well as the burgeoning counterculture movement, were grounded in psychedelic and flower power imagery.
Yet, while the growing youth movement had shifted radically from the beliefs and ideals of its parents’ generation, those parents were often the ones with the money to pay for vacations to theme parks. Disney faced the immense challenge of needing the Magic Kingdom to be forward-thinking and hip and cool enough to attract the flower children, without alienating their more conservative parents.
The way the company married these very different groups was nothing short of masterful. Like Disneyland, the Magic Kingdom got a Main Street USA and a castle (this one belonging to Cinderella instead of Sleeping Beauty), and plenty of family-friendly rides and attractions.
Yet overall, the Magic Kingdom’s lineup was just a little bit edgier than Disneyland’s attractions. This is especially apparent when comparing opening day Magic Kingdom rides to their opening day Disneyland counterparts. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and Snow White’s Adventures are among the most glaring examples.
1971 Fantasyland
While Disneyland’s Mr. Toad follows a fairly traditional dark ride layout and feel, Walt Disney World’s version amped up the experience by giving it a second track. Guests had a largely different experience depending on whether they boarded on the left or right, and at numerous points the two tracks raced directly toward each other, giving riders the sense of an impending collision before veering off at the last moment. Both the Disneyland original and the Walt Disney World version featured a head-on train crash followed by a trip to Hell, but the Walt Disney World attraction was, as Walt liked to say, “plussed.” The Disney company still uses plussing today, tweaking and tinkering and adding just a little bit of extra magic to existing attractions.
Snow White’s Adventures was the Magic Kingdom’s plussed version of Snow White and Her Adventures. Just like Walt had ramped up the scares in the 1955 original to capture audiences who had grown immune to the horror of the 1937 film, the Disney company needed to upgrade the attraction once again to appeal to the cultural zeitgeist of the early 1970s.
The technological advancements alone are well worth mentioning. Thanks to dramatic, rapid advances in technology, Snow White’s Adventures featured characters that were far more realistic than was possible when Snow White and Her Adventures was built. In addition, the legendary Claude Coats was put in charge of Fantasyland development. His artistic style drew heavily from the Gothic traditions, creating an even darker and more ominous backdrop than that of the original ride.
Snow White’s Adventures
Yet much of the ride’s true terror came from the fact that Coats was also a master of lighthearted beauty. A breathtaking façade, complete with a shimmering waterfall and wishing well, led more than a few parents to believe that this would be a shiny, happy trip through a beloved film. True, the Wicked Queen could be spotted peering down at the ride vehicles, but surely Disney would minimize her scariness in a Fantasyland ride, right?
Wrong. Almost as soon as the ride began, it became abundantly clear that this was no silly kid stuff. Cast as Snow White, you were about to experience the feeling of being relentlessly pursued by a Witch bent on your utter destruction.
The first stop was the Wicked Queen’s castle, where she peered into a mirror only to swing around in the guise of the howling, cackling Witch, just inches from your ride car. As you passed through the throne room and the dungeon, you quickly learned that this was no ordinary dark ride, and this Witch was playing for keeps. By the time you reached the potions room, where the Witch’s offer to “Have an apple, dearie,” was immediately followed by a shelf crashing to the ground, your heart was already thumping. But you had little time to catch your breath, as your ride vehicle went careening outside to the moat. Just as you got your bearings, the Witch came zipping by in a boat, beseeching you once again to take the apple. And when I say zipping by, that is exactly what I mean. The movement was fast, sharp, and completely unexpected.
Image: Disney
Escaping once again, you suddenly found yourself in the middle of the forest. Surrounded by demon trees, floating eyeballs, and bats, you were under constant auditory assault by the ongoing sounds of howls and shrieks. Finally, just up ahead, you spotted the familiar comfort of the dwarfs’ cottage. “Ah, we made it,” you might have thought. “The rest of the ride will be cozy and light.”
Wrong again. As you entered the cottage, it was dark and foreboding. The furniture seemed alive, staring at you with oddly well-crafted eyes open wide in silent terror. The forest animals were huddled together in the open window, staring in horror at something outside of your visual range. Rounding the corner, you finally spotted the Dwarfs, stopped on the stairs. On the upstairs landing, a huge ghostly shadow was illuminated in light from an open door.
Just then, the Witch appeared out of nowhere in an open doorway, again shrieking and trying to make you take the poisoned apple. You escaped by heading straight through the wall. Now what? If even the dwarfs’ cottage was no longer safe, what did that mean for your ultimate fate?
Back outside, the Witch was again in front of you, cackling and menacing. You just managed to slip by, heading into the Seven Dwarfs Mine. Seemingly devoid of life, the mine was at once chillingly open and intensely claustrophobic. The color scheme became rich and vibrant here, a stark contrast to the darkly muted colors of the previous scenes.
Rounding a corner and proceeding down an apparently empty straight corridor, you again faced the Witch, this time standing high on a ledge. She ripped a crossbeam off its supports and asked in a cackle if you were enjoying the ride. Speeding off before you even had the chance to properly register her presence, you realized that the mine shaft was swaying precariously—possibly signaling an imminent cave-in.
Another cackle broke the silence as a mine cart filled with glittering gems came careening down the tracks, stopping just short of crashing into your ride car. You sped away, into the breathtaking Diamond Vault. All around, brilliantly colored gemstones twinkled gently as haunting music played. Your ride vehicle slowed down, allowing you to take in the wonder as you rolled gently toward a wooden door at the far side of the room.
Yet your reverie was quickly broken as you came to the shocking realization that the Witch was standing atop that door, crowbar poised underneath an impossibly large gem. Just as you approached the door, she shrieked, “Goodbye, dearie!” as she gave the gem a hard push.
The next room was filled with starburst patterns, strobe lights, and a slightly bizarre repeating version of the Witch’s cackle. Some say you were merely meant to be knocked out, while others claim that this was a death scene analogous to Mr. Toad’s Hell. Regardless, before you knew what happened, you were disembarking back into the bright Florida sunshine.
So for those who weren’t keeping count, there were eight separate run-ins with the witch (including the mine car), two direct attempts on your life, and the final murder scene, all packed into two and a half minutes. Not to mention your flight through the forest and the utter helplessness of the dwarfs, trapped inside their own cottage gone wrong.
Further enhancing the terror was the ride’s lack of a musical soundtrack. In the relatively small, tightly packed building, the shrieks and cackles and howls and screams created echo effects that reverberated throughout the ride. You were never quite sure where the Witch was going to appear from next, since you could hear her from every direction.
How was this ride even possible? Situated on prime real estate in the heart of Fantasyland, it was inevitably a major draw for kids. Yet even the bravest were taken down a notch or two by the bizarre and unrelenting horror of this ride. More than a few locals claim that the ride, in tandem with Mr. Toad, was where they first learned to conquer their fears.
Yet it makes perfect sense in the broader context of Snow White history. Every generation is a bit more sophisticated and a bit more jaded than the one that came before. What scared film audiences in 1937 was passé by 1955, and what frightened a generation of original attraction riders was old hat by 1971.
Regardless, legions of parents were not amused. Not only did they not get to see Snow White, but their kids were terrified of a Fantasyland ride. Warning signage was placed outside to let riders know what to expect, but the ride, along with Mr. Toad, always teetered in a slightly controversial space where everyone had a strong opinion. You either passionately loved it or passionately hated it, with very few people falling in between. As a child of the 1980s, I happened to love both rides.
Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland Reboots
Image: Disney
Tokyo Disneyland opened in 1983, the same year that the original Disneyland park got a major Fantasyland refresh. At both parks, new versions of the Snow White attraction attempted to balance the more subdued 1955 ride against the much edgier 1971 version. Yet Disneyland arguably did the better job. Tokyo fused the best of both incarnations, but ended up with an attraction that seemed to jump around quite a bit in tone and style.
As for Disneyland, the 1983 refresh was overseen by Tony Baxter, perhaps best known for the original version of Journey Into Imagination. Now called Snow White’s Scary Adventures, the new ride brought in some of the menacing elements of the 1971 ride, but smoothed out their intensity. Significantly, the reboot placed the dwarfs underneath the rock at the end, putting them rather than the rider in peril. In addition, the ride ending became nebulous, featuring only a clap of thunder and a final shriek before dumping the rider back into the sunshine. This was a highly effective technique, forcing the rider to write his or her own ending to the attraction’s story.
Disneyland Paris and Magic Kingdom Reboot
As time passes, public sensibilities change. By the 1990s, a decided focus on “keeping the children safe and innocent” had begun to permeate American culture. Scaring the pants off little kids was no longer socially acceptable. Fantasyland’s scary rides, Mr. Toad and Snow White, had always had an uneasy alliance with parents, and the parents of the 1990s were largely ready to call off the truce.
When Disneyland Paris opened in 1992, its Snow White ride was modeled on the 1983 Disneyland version with one highly significant change: It featured a genuinely happy ending. The softened attraction proved popular with parents and kids alike.
Walt Disney World went through a period of rapid flux during the 1990s, as part of then-CEO Michael Eisner’s Disney Decade. Fantasyland was the first to fall. Citing maintenance difficulties and lack of disability access, the venerable 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea closed “for rehab” in September 1994, never to reopen. Mr. Toad took his last Wild Ride in September 1998, a month before Epcot’s Journey Into Imagination inexplicably closed for a much-hated reimagining.
As for Snow White’s Adventures, the ride survived, but it was radically overhauled in 1994. In 1998, just like the 1983 version of the Disneyland ride, the Magic Kingdom attraction was renamed Snow White’s Scary Adventures to better reflect its frightening content. Yet by that point, Disney needn’t have bothered. The 1994 version was but a shadow of its former terrifying self.
Gone were the stunning Gothic Claude Coats color schemes, the ghostly figure at the top of the stairs in the dwarfs’ cottage, and perhaps worst of all, most of the movement within the ride. Rather than suddenly appearing in the window, the Witch was now frozen there. Instead of zipping by you in a boat, she approached so very slowly. Where the ride vehicles themselves had once seemed to jump in terror at each new threat, they now rolled sedately through each scene as though the entire ride was nothing more than an amusing set of vignettes. The feeling of pursuit was lost for good. Static figures of Snow White were dropped into multiple scenes, adding to the sense that you were just watching events play out rather than being an active participant.
Another huge change was to the ending. Rather than a “death” or “unconsciousness” field of stars and strobe lights, riders now entered a final tableau room where the Prince awakened Snow White with a kiss, followed by the pair riding off into the sunset. Dopey appeared above the final door, waving goodbye to riders. The story was cleanly wrapped up and everyone left with a smile and a warm feeling.
It wasn’t a bad ride by any means. It did a good job of compressing the essence of the story into two and a half minutes, and was certainly much more kid-friendly. But for those who experienced both Magic Kingdom versions, it was easy to pick out the oddities. It was almost as if an overlay had been placed on the existing attraction, and everything from the staging to the ride vehicle movement felt slightly “off.”
Beyond that, many fans were sad to see the old Fantasyland go. As Walt knew, a child’s imagination is sometimes a scary place. The original Fantasyland honored and respected that, and gave kids a safe space to battle their fears. When coupled with the fact that 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’s giant squid attack was replaced by a playground, and the sanitized and relentlessly happy Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh took over Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, the changes to Snow White felt like a downgrade. Rather than trusting kids to persevere, they were suddenly being spoon fed the idea that eternal safety and happiness is all we should expect from life.
Regardless, the 1994 version of Snow White’s Scary Adventures at least retained much of the spirit of the original 1955 Disneyland attraction. It was also one of the few remaining attractions of a dying classic breed: the dark ride. Which is why many long-time fans recoiled when the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train was announced.
New Fantasyland
In 1988, Mickey Mouse turned 60, and Disney decided to celebrate the event in style. At the Magic Kingdom, Mickey’s Birthdayland was added behind Fantasyland. It was a very simple area, designed to be a temporary land only for the birthday celebration. Yet its popularity with the preschool set convinced Disney to keep it. In 1990, Mickey’s Birthdayland added some then-popular Disney cartoon characters and transformed into Mickey’s Starland. After a brief incarnation as Mickey’s Toyland in 1995, the land closed for major rehab. It reopened as an expanded permanent land known as Mickey’s Toontown Fair in 1996.
At the D23 Expo in 2009, Disney announced plans for a radical expansion to Fantasyland. Mickey’s Toontown Fair would be replaced by the Storybook Circus section of New Fantasyland, retaining and enhancing its most popular rides while adding a great deal of new activities for small children.
Meanwhile, the expansion also added such crowd pleasers as the Beast’s castle complete with the stunning Be Our Guest restaurant, an excellent dark ride based on The Little Mermaid, and the highly interactive Enchanted Tales With Belle show. There was just one major problem: Snow White’s Scary Adventures closed in 2012 to make room for a Disney Princess meet and greet. But not to fear, a brand new roller coaster attraction based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was on its way. Surely this would justify shuttering a classic in favor of yet another character spot, right?
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
Snow White fans had to wait a long time to see what their beloved ride’s replacement would look like, as the Mine Train did not open until 2014. When it finally did, a lot of people were underwhelmed. Like the 1983 Tokyo version of the original ride, it’s not that it’s bad, exactly. It’s just a strange fusion that never hits the right notes.
The 38 inch height requirement means that it fails spectacularly as a kiddie ride. Goofy’s Barnstormer has a height restriction of just 35 inches, opening it up to much younger children. Meanwhile, kids who hit the 38 inch mark are eligible for Kali River Rapids at Animal Kingdom—a full-scale, genuinely thrilling attraction. Once they hit 40 inches, they will be ready for all but the most extreme rides Disney has to offer.
As a “roller coaster,” the ride also fails. Two short sections of track that mimic Big Thunder Mountain in appearance, if not thrills, do not a roller coaster make. Interspersed with a slow roll through or past two scenes, the coaster portions seem more superfluous than exciting.
Yet the dark ride elements are also underwhelming. It is true that the mine has a trippy psychedelic quality, and the much-hyped next generation audio animatronics are cool to see, but the scene lacks any sort of storytelling or plot, which the old ride presented masterfully. It comes across as more jarring than cohesive.
Then, after the next mini-coaster track, you roll slowly past a set of windows where you can sort of see some of the original figures, the Wicked Witch is hanging out outside…and then it’s over. If you didn’t know the story, the ride would just leave you confused. Even when you are a fan of the movie, it’s kind of weird. Why is she just standing there in the middle of the afternoon sun? She’s not exactly setting up much of an ambush. All sense of story is gone for good, and in those last few seconds, the ride does an admirable job of looking like it was ripped from a 1950s roadside attraction rather than built by the legendary Disney Imagineers.
So there you have it. A classic with a rich history replaced by…a carnival ride with a moment of good audio animatronics? Again, it’s not a bad ride. It’s just an incredibly confused one. But it doesn’t scare the kiddies, which seems to be rule #1 in today’s society.
So what do you think? Which version of the Snow White attraction was your favorite? Does the Mine Train have a high repeatability factor for your family? Share your thoughts in the comments!
