Learn all about Rock Candy Mountain, a sickly-sweet attraction that was planned for Disneyland but never built.
Almost as soon as Disneyland opened in 1955, Walt Disney and his Imagineers began to consider ideas for additions to the fledgling park. One of these was Rocky Candy Mountain, an enormous faux mountain that would appear to be constructed entirely out of sugary treats. It was to be incorporated into the Storybook Land area, with the Storybook Land Canal Boats sailing through the caverns beneath it and the Casey Jr. Cirus Train travelling around it.
Image © Disney
The interior of the mountain would have featured scenes from the Land of Oz, with Disney having acquired the rights to the books. A finale would have depicted Dorothy’s birthday party.
Imagineers concocted designs for the attraction, which would feature chocolate, gum drops, marshmallows and more. A small-scale model was built using real candy (including licorice, gumdrops, candy canes and fudge), but there was one one problem: it melted in the non-air conditioned building and attracted scavenging birds.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Rock Candy Mountain ended up on the Imagineering scrapheap with many other ill-conceived concepts. It was felt that it would look unappealing and perhaps make riders queasy, so the Matterhorn Bobsleds was built instead.
That wasn’t quite the end of the story. When Disney opened Trolley Treats at Disney California Adventure in 2012, it included a model of Rock Candy Mountain, based closely on Imagineer Claude Coats’ original design. Next time you’re at the park, why not pop by and take a look at this piece of Disney history?
