Failures don’t happen every day at Disney Imagineering or Universal Creative, and when a million dollar attraction only lasts a few weeks or months, you’ve got to wonder why.
That’s why today, we’re touring a number of unbelievably short-lived attractions at Disney and Universal parks. From frazzled ride technology that fell apart to mis-marketed masterclasses in poor decision-making, these astounding flops and failures may only have been around for a few years or even months, but for those who experienced them, they won’t be soon forgotten…
Disney might prefer that we forget these failures happened… but trust us – we haven’t. And if you were “lucky” enough to snag one of these ultra-ride ride credits in person, we want to hear your memories! Were these short-lived failures as bad as the Internet makes them out to be? Or did you enjoy your experience and wish the ride would’ve lasted? Let us know in the comments below or when you share this feature on social media!
1. Rocket Rods
Lifetime: May 1998 – September 2000 (intermittently) (2.25 years)
Certainly among the famous “flubbed” attractions in theme park history, we dedicated an entire Declassified Disasters: Rocket Rods feature to this infamous Tomorrowland failure.
Long story short: in the ’90s, Disney set out to modernize its Tomorrowlands, which were largely still stylized as mid-century, white utopias born of the Space Age. The bad news for Disneyland visitors was that in the wake of Disneyland Paris’ opening and its poor financial results, the money set aside for a land-wide redesign wasn’t enough to do much.
Aside from painting the land bronze, copper, and green, most of the “New Tomorrowland” budget was funneled into a high-risk experiment: transforming the aerial highways of the Lost Legend: The PeopleMover into an adrenaline-packed thrill ride. The idea was that riders would blast across the land at high speeds, racing in and out of buildings and accelerating through the elevated tracks that wind through the forests outside the land. The Rocket Rods were meant to complete in three minutes the course that had taken the PeopleMover sixteen.
Guests waited hours for the relatively low-capacity ride. Unfortunately, most reported that the ride wasn’t worth the wait. The land’s low budget infamously meant that the old PeopleMover tracks weren’t banked to accommodate the new high-speed ride. As a result, it had to slow down for every turn in the meandering track, wearing out tires, frazzling computer systems, leading to continuous breakdowns, and leaving riders to wonder why they’d waited several hours.
After operating on-and-off for about two years, the Rocket Rods closed in September 2000. Signage indicated that the ride would return sometime in 2001, but it never did. The empty PeopleMover tracks still criss-cross through Disneyland’s Tomorrowland to this day.
2. Luigi’s Flying Tires
Lifetime: June 2012 – February 2015 (2.75 years)
In the 1960s, Disneyland’s Tomorrowland featured a ride called the Flying Saucers. Guests climbed aboard small, individual, circular “saucers” that basically behaved like pucks on an air hockey table, “floating” on a thin curtain of air supplied by thousands of embedded air nozzles below. Guests could lean to and fro to change the direction of their saucers, bumping into one another like chaotic, air-powered bumper cars. Unfortunately, the saucers were low capacity, difficult to operate, and expensive to maintain, lasting only five years.
Fifty years later, the concept was reborn as Luigi’s Flying Tires – part of the brand new Cars Land at Disney California Adventure. Reportedly a pet project of then-Chief Creative Officer (and big Disneyland nostalgia fan) John Lasseter, the Cars-themed homage was meant to fix the failings of the original with double-rider “tires,” an intensive grouping and boarding process, and on-board levers for riders to change the tires’ direction.
It turned out that the levers were entirely ineffective. (They were removed before the ride even opened.) Instead, guests were instructed to lean in the direction they wanted to float. But the double-sized, double-passenger tires made travel difficult to coordinate, and the increased weight meant that the tires moved very, very slowly. To make the ride both more fun to ride and to watch, large, inflatable beach balls in the colors of the Italian flag were added, but of course, those brought about their own issues.
Unfortunately, the Flying Tires didn’t even last as long as the Saucers had. They closed in 2015 – less than three years after opening. The space instead became Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters, using trackless, LPS-guided ride vehicles that “dance” to Luigi’s songs in coordinated maneuvers. Ultimately, it’s more fun to watch, more fun to ride, higher capacity, and much easier to operate than the Flying Tires were.
3. The Original Poseidon’s Fury
Lifetime: June 1999 – May 2001 (23 months)
Theme park aficionados across the world came together to mourn Universal’s long-inevitable announcement that Poseidon’s Fury would close forever in May 2023. A quirky, odd, cult classic and fan favorite, the mysterious attraction wasn’t a ride at all, but a walkthrough show that saw guests trapped in an ancient temple with a nervous archaeologist who accidentally awakens an evil high priest and sets into motion an epic special effects battle with the heroic god of the seas, Poseidon.
“So bad it’s good,” the weirdo walkthrough had the distinct status of being the last original, IP-free attraction at Universal Orlando, and the final remnant of the Lost Legend: The Lost Continent – a mythological land otherwise pulverized by Potter. Altogether, fans weren’t exactly shocked by the closure of Poseidon’s Fury so much as by the fact that it lasted as long as it did – a hidden gem and underdog.
But of course, the truth is that the Poseidon’s Fury we knew was actually the second version of the attraction. When the park opened in 1999, the same rooms and effects were used to tell a different story altogether. The original Poseidon’s Fury cast the god of the sea as the villain (above, voiced memorably by Jeremy Irons, the voice of Scar in The Lion King), opposite Zeus as the hero. Instead of a young archaeologist, the tour was led by an old man named “The Keeper.” And several of the show’s most notable effects and moments were staged very differently.
Ultimately, Universal’s evaluation suggested that rather than being an anchor of the new park the way they’d anticipated, the original Poseidon’s Fury scored poorly with guests who found it difficult to follow, anti-climactic, and even boring. The quick-fix restaged version that played from 2002 to 2023 fixed many of the original’s issues (while creating plenty more). Still, rosy hindsight leads many Universal fans to insist that the original version was superior to the long-running “V2.” We dove deep into both versions of the attraction in our much-read Lost Legends: Poseidon’s Fury feature, so make the jump there to make the decision for yourself…
But a few more short-lived theme park failures await on page 2. If you managed to experience one of them, let us know… Read on…
4. Superstar Limo
Lifetime: February 2001 – January 2002 (11 months)
When Disneyland opened in 1955, its Fantasyland was a fairytale fair packed with three classic dark rides: Snow White’s Adventures, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and Peter Pan’s Flight. Today, that same Fantasyland contains six (adding Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio’s Daring Journey, and “it’s a small world.”) So you can imagine how surprised guests were to discover that the brand new California Adventure park taking shape just a few hundred feet away would have only one dark ride in the whole park… One that was so bad, it wouldn’t even last a year.
Concepts for a wild paparazzi chase through the streets of Los Angeles had been a part of California Adventure’s “bold, brash, MTV” design aesthetic from the beginning. But the unfortunate death of Princess Diana in 1997 of a paparazzi-fueled chase cooled interest in the concept, forcing the ride to be reimagined as a slow-moving tour of Southern California.
The result – Superstar Limo – was an exercise in cringe all the way through, with guests invited by a cigar-smoking agent to make it to a Hollywood premier by way of a limo ride through Los Angeles’ hoity-toity neighborhoods, passing cartoon-ified caricatures of ABC-associated celebrities like Drew Carey, Antonio Banderas, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jackie Chan.
Pretty quickly, guests turned on California Adventure. The fourth wall breaking puns, modern celebrity cameos, and “MTV” attitude that were meant to be the park’s hallmark instead left Disneyland’s guests feeling like they’d wandered into a post-modern Six Flags spoof of California. Superstar Limo – regarded even then as the worst dark ride in Disney history – closed in January 2002, less than a year after the park opened. Weirdest of all: Disney had no plans to replace it. California Adventure was simply better off with no dark ride than with Superstar Limo.
As part of a change in management (both at Disneyland Resort and The Walt Disney Company), a major push to polish the resort ahead of Disneyland’s 50th anniversary saw the ride repurposed as Monsters Inc: Mike & Sully to the Rescue in 2006. Comparing the two rides’ layouts, it’s interesting to see how Disney made use of the existing Superstar Limo’s scenes, vehicles, and even animatronics to form something fresh. But for those who managed to get a ride on this dark ride disaster in the park’s earliest, saddest days, it’s an experience they’ll never forget.
5. Discovery River Cruise
Lifetime: April 1998 – August 1999 (16 months)
Anyone who’s been to Disney’s Animal Kingdom will tell you that it’s one of the largest theme parks on Earth. And like the animals who inhabit it, to get from any one spot to any other, your only real choice is to hoof it.
That wasn’t always the case, though. When Animal Kingdom opened in 1998, the park featured an attraction called the Discovery River Cruise. Churning through the waterway that encircles the Tree of Life, the Discovery River Cruise’s primary purpose was to shuttle guests between the park’s entry area and a second dock set back in the park’s Asia. While on board, Cast Members also brought out a number of small animals for guests to observe or touch in classic “zoo-style” experiences.
Imagineers also cleverly used the ride as something of a “preview” of the park’s lands so that guests could orient themselves and get a taste of what each area offered. The shores of Africa included a geyser gulch and a goat exhibit primarily oriented for riders on the boats; likewise, the boats drove past the Iguanodon rescued on the Lost Legend: Countdown to Extinction playing in the waters outside of Dinoland. (The coast of Camp Minnie-Mickey was, famously, a gnarled, volcanic cave with a flamethrower insinuating that a fire-breathing dragon lurked within; a preview of the never-built Possibilityland: Beastly Kingdom meant to eventually occupy the space.)
Ultimately, the Discovery River Cruise ran into one big problem: its name. Animal Kingdom opened with just two “rides” (Countdown to Extinction and the Kilimanjaro Safaris). As a result, guests flocked to the boat ride expecting a “Jungle Cruise” style experience. After a lengthy wait, merely being ferried to the other side of the park was a major let-down. Six months after the park opened, the ride was renamed the Discovery River Taxi to emphasize that it was for transportation, not entertainment. Six months after that, it became the Radio Disney River Cruise, focusing on music and “live broadcasts” from Radio Disney.
Animal Kingdom’s boat ride opened with the park in April 1998. By August 1999, the ride was retired entirely, leaving its docks to be used for meet-and-greets… and leaving you and I to “hoof it” if we want to get around Disney’s Animal Kingdom. (Notably, Universal’s Islands of Adventure opened right in the same window – May 1999 – with its own similar intra-park transit system. The “Island Skipper Tours” made the exact same mistake, insinuating that it was more than just a taxi service between Port of Entry and Jurassic Park. It, too, was entirely phased out by 2003.)
6. Journey Into YOUR Imagination
Lifetime: October 1999 – October 2001 (24 months)
The big kahuna of all theme park failures must be the Declassified Disaster: Journey Into YOUR Imagination. An unspeakable scar for EPCOT enthusiasts, this short-lived ride remains one of the most infamous flops in the history of Disney Parks.
You probably know that among EPCOT’s classic lineup of epic, educational, entertaining dark rides, few can hold a candle to the Lost Legend: Journey into Imagination. An abstract, colorful, musical extravaganza, this incredible dark ride invited guests to join the enigmatic Dreamfinder and his imaginative dragon sidekick Figment for a flight of fancy. Guests floated through magical, glowing realms of Art, Literature, Performing Arts, and Science collecting “sparks of inspiration” to power new ideas, all set to the tune of the iconic Sherman Brothers’ song “One Little Spark.”
In an effort to update EPCOT in the ’90s, Journey into Imagination was closed. Every set, character, song, and prop was removed and the dark ride itself was shortened by nearly half. When it re-opened as “Journey Into YOUR Imagination” neither Dreamfinder, Figment, nor “One Little Spark” made an appearance. Instead, the ride was reimagined as a tour of the “Imagination Institute” – a laboratory-like setting that included illusions and narration by “Dr. Nigel Channing” (played by Monty Python’s Eric Idle).
An abysmal downgrade in every way, fans revolted against the embarrassingly bad rewrite with such fervor that Disney couldn’t close it soon enough. As soon as the Millennium Celebration ended and moved out of EPCOT, Journey Into YOUR Imagination went back under construction walls.
It re-emerged in 2002 as “Journey Into Imagination With Figment” – two decades later, still the current iteration of the ride. The third (and to date, current) version of the ride still uses the “Imagination Institute” setting and Dr. Nigel Channing as host, but re-inserts Figment (or at least, a very annoying version of him) with odes to “One Little Spark” throughout. The current Journey Into Imagination is not a great ride, or really even a good one. But for those “lucky” enough to experience the version that ran from 1999 to 2001, it’s practically a masterpiece.
We have to know – did you get a chance to experience any of these short-lived flubs and failures? If you managed to snag one of these incredibly “limited time” ride credits, we want to know your thoughts! Tell us about your experience on the ride in the comments below and let us know if these short-lived failures were better than fans tend to give them credit for.
