For thousands of years, explorers, adventurers, and globetrotters have sought remains of an ancient civilization swallowed by the sea; a lost continent abandoned by the gods. The story of Atlantis has endured for centuries and centuries, a mythological marvel as celebrated as the gods of old. And for theme park fans, it seems like the perfect foundation for a dark ride.
We’ve made it our mission here at Theme Park Tourist to chronicle the in-depth, full stories behind landmark attractions across the world… including those that taught us what not to do… And that brings us to our Declassified Disasters series, examining failures and flops from Stitch’s Great Escape to Superstar Limo; the Rocket Rods, to Epcot’s Journey into YOUR Imagination and many more. And when it comes to “forgotten” rides, there’s perhaps no better example than a would-be E-Ticket languishing away at the unfortunately troubled SeaWorld Orlando.
Image: Jeremy Thompson, Flickr (license)
In the 1990s, an unexpected company took the helm of SeaWorld, determined to grow and expand the park to compete with Disney and Universal down the road. They wanted to transform the animal park into a destination for theme- and thrill-seekers alike. Journey to Atlantis was poised to be the perfect blend, matching Disney note-for-note in thrills, theme, score, special effects, and story. But the ride designed to exemplify a new direction for an ever-changing park is – today – all-but-sunk.
Today, we’ll dive deep into the story of SeaWorld’s Journey to Atlantis and dissect the making of, experience of, and 2017 changes to this would-be E-Ticket in an in-depth, full-fledged history. But this intense look at the ride has to start with a simple question…
What is SeaWorld?
SeaWorld. Given just that word – SeaWorld – what comes to your mind? What images? Thoughts? Sounds? Feelings? What is SeaWorld?
On a grand, philosophical level, some view SeaWorld as an inspiring animal park that provides up-close encounters with living creatures that, otherwise, would feel a world away. If it weren’t for SeaWorld, after all, many Americans might never see a sea lion, dolphin, orca, or shark in person in their entire lives… A competing (and recently vocal) group suggests that SeaWorld is a catastrophe of animal rights violations and moral reprehensibility that should be shut and buried.
But today, we’ll avoid that (important) discussion in favor of a simpler thought… Morality and philosophy aside, what is SeaWorld – as in, literally?
Image: SeaWorld Parks
Maybe you’d label it a zoo, given its emphasis on animal enclosures and encounters. Folded in here is SeaWorld’s commendable animal rehabilitation and release program (which has rescued well over 25,000 animals in its history) and its AZA-accredited zoological practices (including enrichment, veterinary care, exhibit design, etc.) that, observably, make it a very, very good zoo… and a very, very expensive one, many times costlier than your local zoo.
Maybe you’d call it a theme park. After all, time, money, and care have been spent crafting themed “lands” with notable detail, some well-designed dark rides, and entertainment (both animal and acrobatic) quite unlike anything else in Orlando. SeaWorld stands apart from your local amusement park in so many ways.
But in just as many ways, it doesn’t stand apart. Frankly, isn’t SeaWorld a thrill park, with its anchor attractions all being bare, behemoth steel roller coasters to rival any Six Flags or Cedar Fair park?
Image: SeaWorld Parks
Animal park? Theme park? Amusement park? The uncomplicated answer is that SeaWorld is all of those, and more. That’s because – quite unlike Disney or Universal’s parks – SeaWorld has been handed from owner to owner over the course of its nearly 45-year life, bending continuously to the changing whims of changing powers and changing times.
So to tell the story of Journey to Atlantis, we need to start in medias res – right in the middle of SeaWorld’s history… In 1989, the four SeaWorld parks (in San Diego, Cleveland, Orlando, and San Antonio) were acquired outright by a company that may initially seem out of left field…
Epic adventures
At first glance, Anheuser-Busch must seem an odd operator for a chain of parks. Even if the 1980s and ’90s had seen a wave of movie studios try to break into the “studio park” business, the international brewing company (producers of Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob, Rolling Rock, Shock Top, and dozens of other recognizable alcoholic beverages) seemed to have no connection to the world of animal parks.
However, the beer behemoth had a résumé perfect for overseeing SeaWorld. That’s because they’d been operating their own theme parks for decades. Anheuser-Busch breweries in Tampa, Florida and Williamsburg, Virginia had long been adjoined by Busch Gardens parks that, in a post-Magic-Kingdom-era, were flourishing.
Sure, each had a roller coaster or two… But the emphasis at the two parks – themed to Africa and Europe, respectively – was on the authentic entertainment, cultural merchants, and homemade food reflecting the vast cultures represented within. (The Williamsburg park, in particular, has hosted two rides that are the subject of their own in-depth features – a Lost Legend: Big Bad Wolf and another Declassified Disaster: Drachen Fire.)
So upon their purchase in 1989 by the brewing company, the four SeaWorld parks were simply folded into (and indeed, became the anchor of) their Busch Entertainment division. In particular, Busch Entertainment took great interest in SeaWorld Orlando. You can imagine why. SeaWorld had been a Central Florida staple since 1973 – opening just two years after Walt Disney World! And while the park had grown substantially in the 25 years since, Busch’s purchase of the park in 1989 coincided with a major change in Orlando (and the whole industry).
That was the year that Orlando became home to the Disney-MGM Studios, followed shortly by Universal Studios Florida; the dawn of the “Ride the Movies” era that would see competition in Central Florida (and indeed, all of North America) rachet up as amusement parks across the country were gobbled up by movie studios, eager to follow Disney and Universal’s new route to accessible and affordable theme parks. By purchasing SeaWorld, Busch had secured a footprint right in the middle of the growing tourism wars of Central Florida.
But to own and operate a park (literally) in between Walt Disey World and Universal Studios, Busch needed to commit to transforming SeaWorld from a mere marine animal zoo into a world class, destination theme park itself. Their way into the war would be to completely redefine what SeaWorld was… initially, by borrowing from Disney’s own ambitious innovations…
Wild life, wild rides
In 1987, Disney had broken new ground with the incomprehensibly complex (and expensive) simulator technology that powered Disney’s Lost Legends: Body Wars and the original STAR TOURS. And now, SeaWorld would get its hands on the technology with 1992’s Mission: Bermuda Triangle. Rather than exploring the blood stream or a galaxy far, far away, the still-groundbreakings simulator technology here would be used to simulate an oceanic adventure.
And unlike the tepid offerings of a zoological park, Mission: Bermuda Triangle took things in a distinctly-dramatic direction, plunging guests into rusted shipwrecks and magnetic anomalies in a thrilling journey through the supposed supernatural occurances of the Bermuda Triangle. The idea opened an untapped world for Busch: SeaWorld could be a theme park, with rides focused on nautical legends and adventures told in the story of Disney and Universal.
Image: SeaWorld Parks
Just a few years later, SeaWorld caught on to the technology’s adaptability long before Disney would, swapping the queue and ride film to create Wild Arctic. The simulators switched from subs to helicopters, flying guests on a frigid journey to the North Pole. Even more radically, 1995’s Wild Arctic’s simulated flight was only the prelude to an animal encounter, as exiting guests would step not into a gift shop, but into an enormous “arctic research base” simulating freezing conditions, home to the park’s Arctic animals.
SeaWorld’s quick and cutting-edge adaptation of the still-new Star Tours technology demonstrated a new model for the park. Not only could SeaWorld raise itself to meet the cinematic splendor of Disney and Universal by way of telling nautical fables… it could do what its competitors couldn’t: plugging signature animal experiences right into the attractions.
Evolution elsewhere
Image: SeaWorld Parks
At the same time that SeaWorld’s Orlando park was arming itself against Disney and Universal, its other three parks – San Diego, San Antonio, and Cleveland – began to experiment with that fundamental question – what is SeaWorld? – via their own forays into thrills.
In San Antonio, two steel coasters rose above SeaWorld’s otherwise unassuming skyline, with Great White (1997) and Steel Eel (1999, above) redefining the park for the region. For Texans, SeaWorld was no longer just a marine life zoo; it was an animal park with thrills.
Meanwhile, clones of the Orlando-bred simulator spread, too. Wild Arctic opened in San Diego in 1997, while Mission: Bermuda Triangle debuted at the curious (and now-closed) SeaWorld Ohio in 2000 (below). In fact, that Cleveland-area park is itself a good example of SeaWorld’s push in the era since, restricted from building roller coasters due to a county height requirement, SeaWorld actually put in a bid to purchase the operating Six Flags Ohio located directly across a lake (but in a different county); famously, Six Flags counter-offered to instead buy SeaWorld, combining them into the world’s largest theme park… before it all predictably crashed and burned.
But it goes to show just how serious Busch was about turning SeaWorld into more than an animal park, ushering in a new era of themed attractions and thrill rides. And that brings us back to SeaWorld Orlando with its unique and daunting proximity to the growing entertainment powers of Disney World and Universal. As such, Busch’s plan for the Floridian park had to be exceptionally ambitious, meeting both Disney and Universal in their own turf… A Disney-quality E-Ticket dark ride.
SeaWorld’s largest, costliest addition ever would have to match Disney note-for-note, emulating Imagineering’s detail, storytelling, and special effects. And if SeaWorld were determined to evolve into a standalone theme park earning a precious day of tourists’ Orlando vacation (and a steep entry fee on top of it), that would require a truly monumental nautical fable…
And when it comes to legends of the sea, one whale of a tale seemed perfectly primed for a SeaWorld adventure. On the next page, we’ll descend into the myth of Atlantis… and the race between Disney, Universal, and SeaWorld to open their own voyages to the sunken city first. Read on…
Risen ruins
The king of all nautical fables must be the story of Atlantis. Often described as “the Lost Continent,” Atlantis is a legendary landmass whose existence and mythology traces back even to the oral traditions of Plato roundabout 400 B.C. For thousands of years, tales of the submerged city dragged into the murky depths of the Atlantic Ocean have inspired archaeologists, philosophers, treasure hunters, and explorers. In fact, the Atlantic Ocean’s Greek name – Ἀτλαντικῷ πελάγει – literally means Sea of Atlantis.
Storytellers, philosophers, and dreamers imagine Atlantis as a supercontinent of unfathomably advanced technologies; an entire lost civilization of ancient treasure, and the unthinkable knowledge of generations, all consumed by the sea when the city fell out of favor with the gods.
Atlantis has become an embedded in pop culture as can be, inspiring novels, films, and stories. The ruins of Atlantis are even a stop for Captain Nemo in Jules Verne’s 1872 novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (and the Disney fan favorite attraction it inspired, the Lost Legend: 20,000 Leagues – Submarine Voyage).
Despite the story of Atlantis echoing through thousands of years of history, in an unusual case of parallel evolution, Disney, Universal, and SeaWorld all seem to have stumbled upon the legend’s potential fit with a theme park attraction at approximately the same time, just before the dawn of the New Millennium! Between 1998 and 1999 alone, three Atlantis-themed attractions were planned.
- For Disney, it was via Disneyland’s own, original Submarine Voyage, which had been unceremoniously decomissioned in 1998. There, Imagineers planned to give the treasured classic a new lease on life by way of a character infusion. The proposed ride – Submarine Voyage: Atlantis Expedition – was predicated on the anticipated success of Disney’s 2001 sci-fi animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire. (Unfortunately, Atlantis didn’t land at the box office, leaving the subs sunk until Finding Nemo came around.)
- Meanwhile, Universal planned to bring Atlantis to life in a surprising new way. Their ambitious plans for a second theme park in Orlando dispensed entirely with movies or seeing “behind the scenes” in favor of showing their own commitment to Disney-quality storytelling and theming. Their new park, Universal’s Islands of Adventure, would be a collection of stories, comics, fables, and myths drawn not from the screen, but from literature. One of the park’s islands would be the original, mythic Lost Legend: The Lost Continent – a land themed in part to stories of the risen Atlantis, with a special effects walkthrough called… Journey to Atlantis.
Image: SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment
- For SeaWorld Orlando, Busch Entertainment contracted with Mack Rides to build a custom flume ride that would weave through a 10-story tall showbuilding designed to look like the ancient city risen anew along the white sand shores of Greece. Spanning 6-acres, this appropriately monumental and iconic attraction appeared poised to be SeaWorld’s marketing coup, catapulting the park to a major player in Orlando.
There was just one problem: the SeaWorld team was apparently struggling to figure out a name for the attraction that would be simple enough to remember, epic enough to matter, and strong enough to advertise its mythic setting. Even as SeaWorld polled guests on lackluster names for the attraction, they glanced sideways toward the name they really liked… yep – “Journey to Atlantis,” which had already been trademarked by Universal.
As the story goes, SeaWorld wanted the name “Journey to Atlantis” badly… so much so that they were willing to fight for it. Allegedly, SeaWorld contacted Universal, legally objecting to the name of their new park by suggesting that Islands of Adventure was too close to Busch Gardens’ Tampa waterpark, Adventure Isle. The only way SeaWorld would drop the case? If Universal agreed to hand over the name “Journey to Atlantis.”
It worked. In exchange for SeaWorld dropping its challenge against “Islands of Adventure,” they opted to change the name of their special effects extravaganza in the Lost Continent, yielding the Declassified Disaster: Poseidon’s Fury. And just like that, SeaWorld finally had the name it needed to put its new attraction on the market in a big way.
A pinnacle of the reinvention of SeaWorld, it was time for Atlantis to rise…
SeaWorld Adventure Park
Click and expand for a more detailed view. Image: SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment
The year is 1998. Just down the road, Walt Disney World has seen a radical expansion… its unprecedented fourth theme park has opened, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom has set a new precedent for theme parks… Photorealistic, detailed beyond compare, and sufficiently wild, the animal-oriented park is a must-visit.
But up the street, SeaWorld is determined to be a must-visit, too, and their coup is – oddly enough – the opposite of Animal Kingdom’s. While Disney’s new park soaks up the zoological limelight, SeaWorld has left animals behind for the first time in a long time with its new additions…
As you approach the park, you’ll notice a brand-new, 12-acre entrance. Magic Kingdom has Main Street; the Disney-MGM Studios has Hollywood Blvd. And SeaWorld Orlando has a brand new harbor, with the gentle waves of a bright blue bay lapping against a boardwalk with docked ships and ceramic sea creatures setting a immersive tone. That’s on purpose.
So is the park’s new branding: SeaWorld Adventure Park.
Image: SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment
That’s intentional. Busch Entertainment wants to make it clear that this is more than a zoo; it’s an adventure. Sure, you’ll see animals. But you’ll see them among thrill rides, simulators, water rides, and more. A day at SeaWorld Adventure Park is imaginative, transformative, and transportive, whisking you into the magic, mystery, and majesty of the oceans and the legends it inspires.
And speaking of which, the destination today has to be the park’s newest ride; a real competitor to Disney and Universal’s efforts…
Risen Ruins
Image: SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment
Your first sight of Journey to Atlantis is the kind of experience that may temporarily take your breath away. The truth is, Atlantis is unimaginably beautiful. The towering, palatial temple is gorgeous, with sandstone turrets and aqueducts, oxidized copper domes, sea-blue tiled roofs, and jagged oceanic rocks bursting from within. The building’s bridges and arches are covered in frescoes, murals, and hieroglyphics that betray some distant relationship with Greece’s Knossos temple.
Water-carved rocks and sandbars with palms jut from the crystal clear waters before the temple, where a distant, hazy mist hovers as if from recent geothermal activity. A Greek fishing village set precariously along the water’s edge will serve as the queue. But weaving through these gleaming white villas based on the Greek isle of Thera, the dripping temple set among bubbling, gushing, trembling waters is a sight… This is a structure that tells a story.
If only the ride could do the same…
Image: Jeremy Thompson, Flickr (license)
A gleaming news van parked outside the village seems to indicate that we’ve walked into a live story, and indeed, throughout the queue we see reports of the miraculous temple’s emergence from the depths as scientists, historians, and locals are at a loss. One person who seems acutely aware of what’s going on is a local fisherman named Stavros. The old man has a simple word of advice: “Keep out.” Something decidedly sinister lurks within the ancient city, and we’d best stay far away.
But where’s the fun in that? As our walk through the Greek fishing village leads closer and closer to the leaking city, our departure point comes into view: an old fish market where boats await our arrival… Our tour of Atlantis begins in those rickety old Greek fishing boats seating eight, side-by-side in four rows. At once, the boat drifts from the dock of Thanos and enters into the village’s streets at night…
The Unsung Story
Image: Rain0975, Flickr (license)
Here’s what’s supposed to happen: As candles flicker in distant villas, a shutter opens revealing Stavros holding a golden seahorse, about two feet tall. “Wait!” he cries, “Hermes must guide you! Go, Hermes… show them the way!” The metallic seahorse brays, and then erupts into golden sparks. A branch of ivy overhead then comes to life as the golden sparks race up from the window and twinkle off overhead, leading us into the darkness.
Now, narratively, this is pretty neat, isn’t it? Stavros – knowing it’s too late for us to turn back – equips us with a guide. Hermes is goodness and innocence personified (perhaps it’s truly Hermes, the Greek god of travelers lending his spirit!) and he’ll follow us throughout the lost city, perpetually one step ahead as he fights off the threats within. Hermes will appear via 24,000 fiber optic lights throughout the ride, incarnating in his seahorse form only when we need him most…
Plot-wise? Great! The problem is, since the ride’s opening two decades ago, this very simple set-up with three very simple effects has never worked right. You may pull up to the scene to see Stavros’ window already open, watch his projection fade away, then see him fade back into the window with the seahorse in hand; Hermes’ lights may race overhead before Stavros’ window even opens; the door may not open at all. Watch as many videos as you like and re-ride over and over and over and you’ll likely never see the door-screen-fiber optics combo work correctly despite how simple the synchronization seems. And apparently, no one at SeaWorld cared enough to recalibrate and reprogram the seemingly-simple setup.
In any case, the boat advances out of the city, following the overhead sparks into… a black tunnel with fiber-optic stars. Alright, so it’s a little disjointed… A cavernous opening into the risen city or a grotto of waterfalls and geothermal vents might serve as a better segue, but it’s no matter…
Except that, beyond this tunnel of “stars,” the boat drifts into… the deep ocean. It’s a cartoonish coral reef lit entirely in glowing blacklight that doesn’t do much to make you feel as if you’re in the sea. Neither do the static, glowing sharks and fish scattered throughout the scene… As a matter of fact, the scene looks strikingly familiar for anyone who’s visited a “glow-in-the-dark” putt-putt golf course at their local mall. Nevermind that, spatially, it doesn’t make much sense that we’ve ended up underwater (on a river?) without going down. To be fair, this isn’t Disney, so such inconsistencies can be forgiven.
And anyway, up ahead appears one of the noted special effects SeaWorld has advertised. Beyond a wall of kelp and coral, a granite statue of a mermaid glows. Then, in a unique effect, an ethereal mermaid seems to rise from the statue itself, floating on a curtain of water as if the mermaid’s spirit was released from within the statue. (The effect actually works off of the simple principles that power the Haunted Mansion’s ballroom, though here the reflection is on a pane of running water.)
“Welcome, friends!” The mermaid chirps. “Do not be afraid… Come closer.” Before you can, Hermes zooms past overhead, reminding us to follow.
Here’s our next piece of understated story… The terror that lurks within the city is this unassuming siren, Allura. While sirens of legend delighted in seeing sailors crash among the rocks, Allura’s goal is simpler: to trap us in the depths of Atlantis forever.
As the boat sails on through the glowing blacklight reef, her disembodied voice continues, “All of this, I give to you… The magic of Atlantis!” On a distant, underwater hillside, the city of Atlantis – recreated in miniature – glows in a vibrant undulating gold. (Nevermind that this would-be Atlantis doesn’t look at all like the building we saw outside, or that it doesn’t quite compute how we can be looking at this mismatched city if we know we’re inside of it.)
The City’s Depths and Heights
With the miniature city of Atlantis still looming, we can look into the next scene: an city street inside Atlantis. Of course, it’s a ghost town. Right on the city’s edge overlooking the waterway is a pleasant stone statue of a woman pouring a vase of water into the canal. As the boat approaches, the face of the statue comes alive via projection… It’s Allura, laughing sweetly. But as we draw nearer and nearer, the laughter deepens and distorts as her face turns to liquid, melting down the statue and into the water.
Passing through the center of the city, fountains gurgle and jump, with laminar streams of glass-like water leaping over the boat (just like the gardens outside of Epcot’s esteemed Lost Legend: Journey into Imagination). Hermes arrives, peeking out of a central fountain with an umbrella in-fin. Theatrical lights activate, pointing at spots within the city where special effects must’ve been… but not anymore.
Directly ahead, one of the city’s fountains has a glass-like sheet of water falling beautifully from a stone basin. Behind the curtain of water, a projection of Allura’s face appears again. She’s saying something, but who knows what. This scene ostenisbly has audio, but it only works for a few weeks after the annual refurbishment. Your chances are much higher that you won’t hear a peep from the siren. Really, the scene doesn’t need it since Allura’s eyes begin to glow green and snake-like tendrils sprout from her head. We get the point: she’s the villain.
Hermes races past overhead, incarnating in his seahorse form behind a Grecian pillar, whimpering as he sees Allura’s nearly got us… He zooms ahead and races around the corner, as we follow beneath.
The dark lift hill leading to the temple’s heights appears, but Allura’s glowing green eyes above signal that bad news is ahead. As lightning flashes, we see her distorted, true form with gnarled fingers, fangs, and snake-like hair. The giant torso is static, but rolls toward us a foot or so as lightning flashes, not unlike the final appearance of the Carnotaur on Disney’s own Countdown to Extinction down the street.
But we pass beneath Allura unharmed and begin the ascent into the sunken city’s heights, her green eyes peering down on us… This is it… That great, watery plummet we saw outside lies dead ahead… Higher and higher the boat climbs, her glowing eyes growing closer and closer…
Then, two doors swing wide, blinding us with the Floridian sunlight. Surely we’re about to fall!
Image: Joel Rogers, CoasterGallery.com (Used with permission)
But no… We find ourselves instead lofted high up on the temple, the boat gliding along an elevated passage beneath sandstone arches. We’re concealed from onlookers behind the building’s walls, engaging with a second lift hill drawing us even higher into the city’s lofts. Certainly one of the strangest things out here is that the easily identifiable score from Beetlejuice is playing on the temple’s exterior… an odd choice given how synonymous it is with the film and how instantly recognizable it is. But the other strange thing is what’s not here. Water.
The boat is gliding through dry channels… The first hint at what this ride has in store.
Image: Joel Rogers, CoasterGallery.com (Used with permission)
At the top of the hill, the boat rounds the corner and enters into the height of the temple’s tower. A bronze chandelier flashes and seems to fall toward us. But your attention is likely drawn elsewhere: to the 60-foot dive ahead! The boat leans over the drop as Allura giggles darkly. The boat re-engages with a waterfall just in time to convince onlookers that the boat is truly a boat and not… something else, splashing headlong into the crystal clear bay below.
And while onlookers and first timers might think that epic splashdown is the ride’s conclusion, don’t be fooled… Journey to Atlantis has a twist ending in store… and this is where things get interesting…
The Twist
After our tidal splashdown in the lagoon around Atlantis, onlookers may be convinced that they’ve just seen the ride’s end… And while many flume rides would now head on to their gentle final turns drifting back to the station, Atlantis has a trick up its sleeve. The boat runs out its course and turns…
It crests a mini-lift and sails down a drop of no more than five feet, digging its nose into the water and producing the most dramatic splash in the ride’s arsenal. As it does, a tense musical note kicks in as Allura’s voice surrounds the boat. “Leaving so soon? I think not!” Her distorted laughter chills as the boat orients itself back toward Atlantis.
Image: Joel Rogers, CoasterGallery.com (Used with permission)
The boat engages with another lift, drawing it up into the side of the temple beneath sputtering ancient emblems. Drawn into the city yet again, we find ourselves in a claustrophobic, dark chamber of rust, decaying frescos, and tattered sails. This, it would seem, is an altar. The narrow passage is lined with flickering candles that do little to fight the darkness.
But a most unsettling feeling comes across you when you realize… you’re not in the water. You’re not even in a trough. You’re floating in the darkness…. atop a roller coaster track.
Here’s the ride’s true grand finale. With the tense strings of a descending score and a shrill scream from Allura (made, reportedly, by mixing a lion’s roar, a rattlesnake’s rattle, and a bear’s growl), the boat tips and slides down. The boat has engaged with the twisting, turning descent of a roller coaster, racing toward distant sunlight before hopping over an airtime hill and splashing down in a hidden grotto behind the ride.
This twist ending is perhaps the ride’s greatest strength… an enviable surprise that catches riders off-guard and leaves them chattering. The forested lagoon narrows as the boat slows, sailing to the right and re-entering the station.
As always, the experience isn’t complete with a point-of-view ride-through video that’ll give you all the visual evidence you need of this unusual would-be headliner. Sail through Atlantis here:
If you’re left feeling that Journey to Atlantis squandered a lot of potential, you’re not alone. After two decades of declining effects, SeaWorld finally decided to “fix” the problem of Journey to Atlantis… but trust us – things are about to get really, really weird. Read on…
The Atlantis experiment
Journey to Atlantis was a test… a prototype, to see if Busch Entertainment could rally its creative forces and deal a competitive hand against Disney.
Could SeaWorld transform itself from an animal park into a theme park? Maybe, but Journey to Atlantis wasn’t the way to do it. Frazzled effects were the least of its problems. Though the ride designers had concocted a compelling story (our guardian seahorse protecting us against a siren’s song), they failed to tell the story in a comprehensible way.
Clearly meant to tell a nautical fable using Splash Mountain’s medium, Journey to Atlantis instead felt like an incoherent mess, with any semblance of story difficult to discern at best. Disconnected scenes feel as if they were designed by entirely different production companies, with wild variation in style, substance, lighting, and sound from scene-to-scene, and practically no apparent upkeep after opening.
Image: Jeremy Thompson, Flickr (license)
The building’s exterior told a better story than the interior could – a design crime coincidentally committed by both SeaWorld’s Atlantis ride and Universal’s Atlantean companion Declassified Disaster: Poseidon’s Fury. And that’s a real shame.
Ultimately, the failings of Journey to Atlantis must’ve been obvious. It was clear that even if SeaWorld could become a theme park, it wouldn’t be a good enough one to take on Disney and Universal. Without the intellectual properties, in-house talent, and big corporate budgets of Orlando’s other parks, SeaWorld couldn’t keep up in an escalating arms race. Busch quickly diverted any future funds for the park not into dark rides, but roller coasters.
Image: Joel Rogers, CoasterGallery.com (Used with permission)
Journey to Atlantis’ follow-up was Kraken, a sincerely stellar steel coaster built right next door to the dark ride in 2000. Kraken is beautiful, slithering and slaloming through subterranean caverns and beneath ornate, Atlantean marble plazas burst upward from the sea monster’s rage, and even casual observers would note that the added scenery and detailed queue (sending guests past the watery, translucent eggs of the creature) elevate the experience above a traditional amusement park.
Manta (2009) and Mako (2016) became the park’s other must-sees, giving SeaWorld a trio of steel coasters as its headliners (and each tying in a complementary animal exhibit in what’s become the new de facto model for the park). New management did attempt to go the dark ride route again with 2013’s Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin (part of a mini-land meant to follow the new “land” craze kicked off by Universal’s Wizarding World), but it, too, fell flat and probably deserves its own Declassified Disaster entry…
Atlantases arise
Still, Busch Entertainment and Mack (the ride’s engineer) were contracted, so two more Journeys to Atlantis were built for each of SeaWorld’s remaining parks. To see what SeaWorld’s executives thought of Orlando’s Journey to Atlantis, one needs only to examine the two Journeys to Atlantis that followed…
In 2004, SeaWorld San Diego opened their own, though any pretense of creating a Disney-quality ride was gone (above). Mostly an unabashed – if nicely decorated – water coaster, the ride contains a single “dark ride” style element: a concealed elevator lift hidden in a blue-domed, sandstone tower. You can watch a video of SeaWorld San Diego’s Journey to Atlantis here.
SeaWorld San Antonio. Image: Joel Rogers, CoasterGallery.com (Used with permission)
In 2007, the third SeaWorld in San Antonio opened a Journey to Atlantis, too. But in Texas, the ride lacks even a single show element. Instead, it’s a traditional shoot-the-chutes splashdown boat ride, albeit with two turntables that rotate the boat for a backwards camelback drop between the lift and the main splashdown. You can watch a video of SeaWorld San Antonio’s Journey to Atlantis here.
It seemed that SeaWorld had learned its lesson and backed away from any detail-heavy dark rides.
But just because they’d eliminated dark ride elements from later installations didn’t help the confusing – and increasingly poorly-maintained – Orlando ride. Given the company’s “school of hard knocks” realization that Disney-level detail wouldn’t be their forte, they more or less left Journey to Atlantis to wither as, years after year, special effects flickered out, lights dimmed, and audio tracks came unsynched. After decades with nothing more than routine refurbishments, the cracks were beginning to show. SeaWorld’s sunken city wasn’t going to fix itself. It needed to be addressed.
And here’s the part you won’t believe.
Mermaid-No-More
Image: Jeremy Thompson, Flickr (license)
In early 2017, a most peculiar change came to SeaWorld Orlando’s Journey to Atlantis.
After an otherwise normally-scheduled winter refurbishment, the ride re-opened in March 2017 without much fanfare. But the first riders reported something unimaginable: any hint of a story was gone.
Allura and Hermes are entirely absent. Guests instead sail past remnants of the characters – often static figures – that remain unlit and unanimated. In fact, riders even sail beneath the enormous “Medusa” figure of Allura – now mostly-concealed by darkness – with the lift hill beyond lit with soothing blue. Allura’s piercing green eyes having gone dark.
Now, before you go thinking that online commentators simply caught the ride on a bad day post-refurbishment, consider what else changed: the musical score and sound effects that once narrated the emotional arc of the ride (since the characters and sets needed some help) disappeared. The ride is now scored by a continuous loop of soothing, ambiant, relaxing music (borrowed from the park’s closed cirque-style A’lure – Call of the Ocean show) with generic celebratory Greek music on any exterior parts.
And don’t misunderstand – Journey to Atlantis’ story was a barely-comprehensible mish-mash of vignettes, vaguely describing a fight between good-and-evil anyway… But by outright removing the story rather than refining or rebuilding it, Journey to Atlantis now stands as one of the most disjointed, discombobulated, and downright dissatisfying rides in Orlando.
Think about this: Journey to Atlantis is now a plotless sight-seeing tour with a drop or two along the way. You can’t miss the unbelievable experience of the “plussed” Journey to Atlantis… Watch it here:
The change is strikingly equivalent to the destruction of a must-read Lost Legend: TOMB RAIDER – The Ride at Kings Island, as new management stripped it of its musical score and special effects, replacing them with generic audio loops, a purposefully missing plot, unplugged special effects, and a lot of darkness.
How deeply confusing and telling that – faced with a troublesome ride – SeaWorld opted to simply shut off the special effects, mute the story, and make it a leisurely sightseeing cruise with generic, gentle ocean tones… A strange and cataclysmic end to a gilded experience – a beautiful building with an undercooked experience inside; a half-attempt at meeting Disney without any attempt at follow-through; a thoughtful story lost to neglect and insufficient storytelling.
The saddest thing, though, is that Journey to Atlantis had such potential, and still does. A compelling location, the start of a satisfying story with commendable original characters, and a fantastic finale now squandered as one of the most passively thoughtless rides out there.
Disaster, Declassified
Image: Alex McCabe, Flickr (license)
At least for now, it seems that SeaWorld doesn’t know what to do with its disastrous dud of a dark ride, and that’s heartbreaking. Why improve it if it’ll never beat Disney? Why remove it if it’s already there? A remnant of a bygone era and a victim of its own ambitions, Journey to Atlantis isn’t worth the walk through an empty queue… and that once-gleaming potential seems dimmer and dimmer.
Of course, that leaves armchair Imagineers and enthusiasts hard at work, imagining their own solutions to what plagues Journey to Atlantis and how the buried emotional epic of a battle between seahorse and siren could’ve been fixed. Tender loving care could’ve seen Atlantis relaunched as a 21st century dark ride with compelling characters, stunning special effects, and sincere magic. But given SeaWorld’s finances, perhaps it’s best to admit defeat and move on.
And that’s where you come in. In the comments below, let us know: Have you ridden this “Declassified Disaster?” Is Atlantis truly as sunk as we believe? Are you surprised by the changes SeaWorld made to try to curb the ride’s deterioration – simply turning off its special effects, muting its story, and making it a sightseeing cruise? What would you do to restore, rebuild, or entirely reimagine the tale of Atlantis, a golden seahorse, and an evil siren?
Then, be sure to make the jump to our LEGEND LIBRARY to venture further into our collection of Declassified Disasters, Lost Legends, Modern Marvels, and more… You never know what you’ll uncover.
