For almost as long as designers have been adding things to Disney Parks, they’ve been taking things away. In the name of progress, expansion, modernization, changing trends, or funding, sometimes beloved attractions are simply lost to time. As readers of ourLost Legends or our THEN & NOW layout series know, even Walt Disney World’s “blessing of size” doesn’t guarantee that classics are spared from the wrecking ball.
Given that fan-favorites are talked about like the timeless, definitive highlights of Disney Parks, sometimes it can be shocking to discover that… well… time moves on! Here, we’ve collected 9 rides Imagineering fans still tend to think of as mere “replacements” that actually lasted longer than the “classics” they took the place of! Prepare to have your mind blown.
Let’s face it – the overlap of theme park fans and animatronic fans is practically two circles, perfectly overlapped. And why not? For nearly as long as Disney Parks have existed, so have Audio Animatronics – Disney’s patented name for programmable figures whose motion is synchronized to audio (versus simpler, mechanical figures that merely go through mechanical, repeating motion).
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1. The Wicked Witch of the West
Image: Charlie Gaudet, Flickr (All rights reserved)
Location: The Great Movie Ride (Disney’s Hollywood Studios) Years: 1989 – 2017 (29 years)
When the park then-known as the Disney-MGM Studios opened in 1989, one single attraction served as the park’s heart and soul – the Lost Legend: The Great Movie Ride. Billed as “A Spectacular Journey Into the Movies,” this epic, 20-minute dark ride whisked 70 riders at a time through a narrated tour of the greatest (licensing accessible) scenes in Hollywood history. Of course, such a celebration of film couldn’t be complete without 1939’s The Wizard of Oz.
The ride’s Oz segment begins, as sweet Dorothy’s trip did, in Munchkinland. There, the celebrating draws the attention of the film’s legendary villain, the Wicked Witch of the West. Appearing in a steaming, flaming release of smoke (just as actor Margaret Hamilton did in the film), the Audio Animatronic version of the Witch accosts visitors, spars with the guide’s narrator, and delivers her famous line, “I’ll get you, my pretty – and your little dog, too!” With a maniacal cackle and another burst of fog, she’s gone.
Still, the Wicked Witch is remembered as one of the most compelling Animatronic encounters in Disney Parks history. There’s a reason. The Witch was the first of what Disney deemed the “A-100” generation. The A-100 figures relied primarily on electronics versus the hydraulics of old. But just as importantly, they were build with a feature called “compliance” – basically, shock absorption at the joints. So while old figures had to move slowly, the Witch could throw her head back to cackle, point emphatically, and whip her broom around, achieving human-like range of motion and speed that left many riders to wonder if the on-ride role was played by a live actress!
Once upon a time, Universal Studios Florida was a park defined by larger-than-life encounters with the “creature features” that made the studio famous. Arguably, none were more stunning than the Lost Legend: Kongfrontation. Expanding upon an encounter with the great ape in Universal Studios Hollywood’s fabled Studio Tour, Kongfrontation left guests suspended in aerial trams as they escaped the King’s carnage, ultimately encountering the crazed, enraged ape in two astounding animatronic encounters. (In the big finale, the banana-breathed Kong seemed to grab the vehicle and pull it off its wire, dropping to the streets of New York below!)
If Kong and all the other opening day disaster rides at Universal Studios had just hung in there a little longer, they probably would’ve become retro-cool icons that celebrated the best of Universal’s classic films. Instead, the park underwent a serious “about face” in the early 2000s, desperate to replace its cinematic classics with newer, hotter intellectual properties. At least Kong’s sacrifice yielded among the best of the “next generation” – the Modern Marvel: Revenge of the Mummy.
Universal Orlando was without a Kong ride for fourteen years. In 2016, they offered up a “mea culpa” in the form of a new ride – Skull Island: Reign of Kong. Rather than bringing Kong to our world, Reign of Kong brings us to his – a fit for the more fantastical, literary Islands of Adventure the ride is placed in. Though it centers on the “360-3D” projection tunnel concept that started as a Studio Tour scene in Hollywood, the Orlando version includes a climactic encounter with Kong as an Animatronic. The figure is impressive – it’s on our list of the 25 Best Animatronics on Earth for a reason – but it’s also a very different experience than the one we saw in Kongfrontation. Rather than an enraged, mad, terrifying ape, it’s a protective, exhausted Kong… certainly not the preferred version of the character.
The Declassified Disaster: Stitch’s Great Escape is often recalled as one of the worst attractions Disney has ever hosted. An IP-overtake of the legendary (and terrifying) Alien Encounter, Stitch’s Great Escape was an uneven, awkward, and physically uncomfortable experience wherein the mischievous “Experiment 626” spit on guests, burped in their faces, and bounced on their shoulders. Too juvenile for thrillseekers but still too scary for kids, the attraction somehow managed to last longer than its cult classic predecessor, but finally, mercifully closed for good in January 2018.
Stitch’s Great Escape may have been awful… but the animatronics that served as its centerpiece were incredibly impressive. The Stitch figure was the show’s centerpiece, and held up even under the close scrutiny that an audience of 162 seated around it would entail. Stitch was lifelike in his movements & expression, and at least technically, his ability to literally hock loogies on the audience was impressive.
It’s a shame that the same figure couldn’t have been used for a better show… except, it kind of was! A similar Stitch became the centerpiece of Tokyo Disneyland’s Enchanted Tiki Room: Stitch Presents “Aloha e Komo Mai” – a character takeover that would earn pitchforks and torches in the U.S., but suits the audience in Japan well.
4. Buzzy
Image: Disney, via D23.com
The Wonders of Life pavilion was a latecomer to EPCOT, opening in 1989. That also makes it an early foothold in what would become a major reevaluation of what the park should be. The health-and-wellness focused pavilion was anchored by the Lost Legend: Body Wars – a highly turbulent simulator using the Star Tours ride system (and besting the latter’s opening by mere months). But among the pavilion’s suite of supporting attractions was another substantial offering…
In “Cranium Command,” guests were recruited to step inside the mind of “the most unstable craft in the fleet” – a twelve year old boy. With rookie would-be commando Buzzy at the controls, guests watched through the “eyes” of preteen Bobby as he navigated the daily labyrinth of stressors and challenges young people face, underwritten by a host of organs (most voiced by comedians and Saturday Night Live cast members of the late ’80s). Meanwhile, the “in theater animatronic” Buzzy served as a sweet little hero – and a completely original one at that – who was likable, funny, and well animated.
Unfortunately, Wonders of Life didn’t last long. The pavilion’s sponsor – MetLife – declined to renew its support in 2001, leading to a quick and surprising decline of maintenance. In 2004, Wonders of Life was switched to “seasonal” status – a death knell for rides. When holiday crowds left the resort in January 2007, Wonders of Life closed, too, for the last time. In an odd and infamous incident, it was reported in 2018 (and substantiated in 2019) that the “Buzzy” animatronic had been stolen. A Disney Cast Member with an alleged penchant for stealing and selling ride props was charged in the theft and pleaded “no contest” to the charges, but as far as anyone in the public is aware, Buzzy has never been recovered.
“Here you leave today and enter the worlds of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.” Since 1955, those words have welcomed guests into Disneyland, and their spirit pervades Disney theme parks across the globe. Filled with artistry, history, and memories, each of them is, in some ways, alive, with its own unique personality.
At Park Lore, I’ve been working on a very, very niche personal art project that I’m excited to finally share: a look at the histories and personalities of the theme parks we love… as told by their pathways. Made possible by the support of Park Lore members, each of the hand-drawn illustrations you’ll find below is part mathematical model, part artistic abstraction; colorful lines that would be meaningless to most, but that can be mapped with memories for some! I sure hope they connect with you and inspire you to see each park’s story in a new light…
There’s nothing quite as distinctly Disney as the “Disneyland-style” theme park. Since Walt’s original magic kingdom opened in 1955, the tenets of a “Castle Park” have been written and rewritten, from Anaheim to Orlando; Tokyo to Paris; Hong Kong to Shanghai.
Here at Park Lore, we explored that evolution in our must-read Park Paths Special Feature, seeing how the histories and personalities of each park can be read in its pathways. That’s probably as close as we can get to comparing the more qualitative aspects of each “Castle Park” – their malleability and rigidity; their revelatory spaces and discovered ones; their naivete and certainty.
Image: Disney
So today, we wanted to compare those six sister parks more quantitatively. Luckily, our By-The-Numbers miniseries in Park Lore’s Extras Collection gives us a perfect place to start: their rides (note that as in that feature, we mean ride – not attractions, shows, walkthroughs, etc. which would be far too subjective and cumbersome to include as you’ll see below…).
After many, many, many drafts and attempts to get it just right, we’ve assembled a one-of-a-kind, six-way Venn diagram to see both the shared rides and – just as interestingly – the rides exclusive to one “Castle Park” versus its sisters. We’ll reveal each park’s exclusives one by one below, but if you’re as fascinated by this “Comparing Kingdoms” graphic as we are, you can purchase poster and canvas prints (or tees to give people behind you in line something to study) at Park Lore’s Shop.
Special Features are typically available exclusively for those who support this evolving theme park history project with a monthly Membership.It’s been unlocked for a limited time, but if you enjoy what you read, consider becoming a Park Lore Member for as little as $2 / month!
In July 2011, it ended. Adapting the final novel in rags-to-riches author J. K. Rowling’s young adult fantasy book series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 marked the eighth and final entry in the film series that had defined pop culture for a generation. For a full decade, fans had aged alongside Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson, starring as the heroic trio in the once-in-a-century, intergenerational story; a world that captivated Millennials, then grew up with them; a pop culture phenomenon to rival Star Wars. And now, it was over.
Sure, the $8 billion box office revenue of the Potter films were really just a portion of the “Wizarding World” franchise’s $33 billion in earnings since The Philosopher’s Stone‘s publication in 1997 (with the remaining billions earned by books, merchandise, video games, home video, and of course, theme parks)… But even so, the end of the film series serving as the Wizarding World’s cinematic tentpole would inevitably signal the end of a previously-assured billion dollar box office every other year or so, serving as a definitive finish to a finite franchise.
… Or would it? In 2013 – just two years after the $1.3 billion-earning send-off to Potter – J. K. Rowling and Warner Bros. announced that they’d begun pre-production on a new film that would expand the Wizarding World as never before – set decades before and far from the events of Harry Potter.
Image: Pottermore
You have to remember that when Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them was announced, fans knew only that the film would follow the exploits of wizard explorer and “magi-zoologist” Newt Scamander on his international adventures that would eventually lead him to write the textbook of the same name that would one day end up on Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s Hogwarts school supply lists. The idea of a subtle connection to Potter lore opening up an entirely new corner of the Wizarding World was spectacular. And at least on paper, so were the storytelling opportunities.
Set in the 1920s and ’30s, images were conjured in fans’ minds of the Wizarding World’s Indiana Jones; an explorer and adventurer, braving ancient temples and magical jungles in search of the rarest, wildest, and most dangerous of the Wizarding World’s creatures; a fun, colorful, adventurous, pulpy, and low-stakes exploration of a corner of the Wizarding World we’d never seen. It stood to reason that the globetrotting exploits of Scamander and his research into fantastic creatures could even become a standalone franchise in its own right – a potential made all the more real when it was announced in 2014 that before the film had even gone into production, Fantastic Beasts had been pre-approved for three films set in – but exploring a vastly different corner of – Harry Potter’s world.
Sounds fun, right? Then, the troubles began.
Fantastic Beasts…
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them made its debut in 2016. To be sure, the film earned positive reviews and earned a high-respectable $800 million. But at least for many, it wasn’t really what they’d expected.
Image: Warner Bros.
For better or worse, the Fantastic Beasts series follows Newt Scamander – not a rugged, Oscar Isaacs-type, Indiana Jones-esque explorer, but a timid, buttoned-up, and introverted worker for the Ministry of Magic played by the soft-spoken Eddie Redmayne, wrapped in a perpetual peacoat. His adventures take place not in exotic jungles or Forbidden Forests, but in New York City of 1926, where an enchanted suitcase of iridescent, unusual, CGI, Rowling-invented creatures (a divergence from the classic unicorns, dragons, mermaids, centaurs, and spiders of the Harry Potter world) accidentally, anti-climactically opens.
Scamander allies with Tina Goldstein (a former Auror caught in the bureaucracy of the Magical Congress of the United States, or MACUSA) as well as a “No-Maj” (apparently, the American equivalent to the British “Muggle”) New Yorker named Jacob Kowalski. From there… well… let’s ask: do you remember the plot of Magical Creatures and Where To Find Them?
Image: Warner Bros.
We’ll give you a hint: it involves an anti-witchcraft legion of puritans who live in a ramshackle old schoolhouse weirdly set in the middle of Manhattan, whose adopted child Credence (Ezra Miller, in the actor’s second high-profile Warner Bros. franchise after playing DC’s The Flash) has so much repressed magical potential, it turns into a violent force called an Obscurus. MACUSA weirdly sentences Newt and Tina to death because a creature killed a senator, but they escape. Also, there’s a detective played by Collin Farrel who’s actually using a Polyjuice Potion (hey, I remember those!) to disguise that he’s not Collin Farrel, he’s Johnny Depp, playing the “Voldemort” of early 20th-century Wizarding World, Gellart Grindelwald, who was remembered as a long-dead bad guy and one-time Dumbledore foe by Harry Potter’s time.
Look, Fantastic Beasts didn’t have an easy job to begin with in expanding the Wizarding World. It’s okay that the movie was (as reviews put it) “bogged down by exposition” or a bit of a “slog,” having to introduce so much new world-building and a whole new cast of characters. It’s also okay – bold, even – that Fantastic Beasts was willing to leave Diagon Alley, Hogwarts, and other iconic locales behind.
Image: Warner Bros.
And even if viewers can get the strict sense that Rowling doesn’t know much about New York City, American government, or America’s home-grown concepts of magic and magical creatures, a New York City of the 1920s is a clever, intriguing setting no one would’ve expected from the Wizarding World’s next era.
Sure, Fantastic Beasts is a little color-drained, and pretty CGI-heavy, and a little too in-the-weeds with world-building. But the 2016 film was a sizable hit for Warner Bros., earning $814 million across its theatrical run and scoring a respectable 74% on Rotten Tomatoes. While that ranked it below any mainline Harry Potter film, it was a substantial showing for a spin-off film so narratively distant from the Potter line – for all intents and purposes, a legitimate “original” story.
Then, it started to crumble…
… and How To Lose Them
Even if fans largely enjoyedFantastic Beasts, it’s probably fair to say that its reception had something in common with Avatar. That is: it was received well, made good money, and then sort of… disappeared. Fantastic Beasts never quite picked up that “water cooler” buzz, and it just didn’t seem to leave many footprints in pop culture. (If we hadn’t told you that the film’s “Ron and Hermione” equivalent were named Jacob and Tina, would you have remembered?) Fantastic Beats didn’t introduce any “theme park-able” settings, snacks, or souvenirs… no memorable characters or quotes… and frankly, not even any iconic, recognizable, or fantastic creatures.
It didn’t necessarily feel that Fantastic Beasts screamed out for two follow up films. Which made it even stranger that in the months leading up to the films release, Warner Bros. and J.K. Rowling revised their promise, proclaiming that Newt’s adventures would now span a five film franchise. That made Fantastic Beasts similar to Avatar into another way: it left industry commentators wondering who, exactly, was clamoring for more.
Obviously, the second Avatar film proved naysayers wrong. The second Fantastic Beasts, though…? Well…
By now, we all know the story – in the 2010 wake of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, it was clear that the theme park industry had been changed forever. The age of the “Living Land” had arrived, and theme park operators raced to choose, purchase, or license the biggest intellectual properties they could find in (or out of) their home-grown studio catalogs.
As the story goes, seeing guests line up for shops and restaurants in Universal’s Hogsmeade lit a fire under Disney that had not been seen in decades. The first Disney-distributed Marvel film was still a year away; the company’s purchase of Lucasfilm, two years away. So there, sensing a seismic shift to the business, Disney looked around for something – anything! – Potter-sized to bring to its parks. And in 2010, nothing was bigger than Avatar.
Image: 20th Century Studios
The James Cameron film had spent the year breaking every conceivable record. Its box office ultimately topped $2.7 billion – an unthinkable sum even today, when billion-dollar blockbusters are still rare. Avatar had captured the globe. A first wide-release modern 3D film, it was a sensation; a CGI big screen event that few had ever seen on such a scale before. If you didn’t see Avatar, you were out of the loop. And that meant that Disney’s 2011 announcement – that it had acquired the worldwide, global rights to build theme park attractions based on the 20th Century Fox film – was a major win… Right?
The Anti-Avatar Club
Image: 20th Century Studios / Lightstorm
To be clear, there was pretty immediate pushback to Disney’s September 2011 announcement. Though the deal had only been secured days earlier, we already knew the first output: a full, permanent Avatar land at Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park. That, of course, ruffled feathers.
Did a PG-13 sci-fi action film really belong at Disney’s Animal Kingdom? For that matter, how would a fictional alien moon besieged by a human-led military assault for mineral resources seen in the film translate to a theme park at all? Who would want to visit a war-torn Pandora? What made this one-year-old film worthy of a permanent land besides its box office? And why should Disney’s purest and most beautiful theme park be burdened with a land themed to a 20th Century Fox war movie?
Image: 20th Century Studios
It was clear that fans weren’t thrilled about the project that would become Pandora: The World of Avatar. And though it sounds short-sighted in retrospect, anyone who was a fan of the parks in the early 2010s will tell you: we were all on the Anti-Avatar bandwagon. It seemed like the wrong time, place, and property; like this was an unproven IP that didn’t deserve a permanent land. And adding even more complexity to the situation, something unprecedented happened to Avatar: it disappeared.
Seriously, most of the 2010s were filled with online think pieces that basically wondered aloud: Why Doesn’t Anyone Care About The Biggest Film of All Time? Just about everyone had seenAvatar; but no one seemed to remember it. An easy test was to ask a room of friends if they could recall the movie’s plot; quote a single memorable line; even name the main character.
Image: Disney
It seemed true that Disney’s big bet on Avatar had been a dud. Especially if an Avatar area was supposed to be Disney’s answer to Harry Potter, even a few years had revealed that the biggest movie of all time still didn’t stand a chance next to the “boy wizard.” Even as the first concept art and models of the land were revealed in 2013, skepticism remained high.
As Avatar fell further from pop culture memory year after year after year, fans began to cross their fingers that Disney was noticing Avatar‘s lack of staying power. Rumors began to mount that internally, Disney regretted their deal; that James Cameron’s infamous difficulty to work with was wearing on Imagineering; that Disney toured the rights-holders to J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings around Animal Kingdom, perhaps as a signal to Cameron that if he didn’t play ball, an IP-infused version of the park’s never-built Beastly Kingdom might indeed rise instead of an Avatar land.
A sequel – initially set for 2014 – didn’t materialize. Even so, Cameron announced that instead of the two follow-up films he’d initially announced, Avatar would now have no less than five sequels. It was almost laughable, starting a whole new round of mockery. In the midst of the world forgetting about Avatar, who cared about an Avatar sequel, much less five of them?! Sure, the first film had made more money than any other – probably on the back of inflated 3D ticket prices and vital, gotta-see-it CGI appeal… but a second film wouldn’t have the same built-in, billion-dollar guarantee, especially if no one cared about or remembered the characters or plot.
Image: Disney / Lightstorm
But after three years of silence, Camp Minnie-Mickey closed… and it seemed inevitable that a still-unnamed Avatar land was coming to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, like it or not. Though we all know how that went, on the next page, we’ll dissect the worries around Avatar 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 and decide if Avatar is over… again.
It wasn’t too long ago that a theme park attraction was lifeless without Audio-Animatronics. In fact, the number and complexity of these robotic animated figures was often proportional to a ride’s budget and success! Put simply: if you wanted to blow audiences away, animatronics figures were the way to do it.
“With every success the company has had since Steve [Jobs]’s death, there’s always a moment in the midst of my excitement when I think, I wish Steve could be here for this. It’s impossible not to have the conversation with him in my head that I wish I could be having in real life. More than that, I believe that if Steve were still alive, we would have combined our companies, or at least discussed the possibility very seriously.”
Those words were written by Disney’s then-exiting CEO Bob Iger in his 2019 memoir, The Ride of a Lifetime. A reflection on Iger’s once-unthinkable proposal to rebuild Disney’s then-burned bridge to Pixar by purchasing the still-young animation studio outright, Iger discusses his deep friendship with Apple / Pixar founder Steve Jobs, how much Disney learned from Pixar’s culture and creativity, and – most importantly – how, to Iger’s thinking, Disney and Apple might’ve merged if Steve Jobs hadn’t died in 2011.
Rocky Mountain Construction. The very name leaves coaster enthusiasts gushing, ranking, and daydreaming. Yep, there may be no coaster manufacturer who’s more transformed the amusement industry in the 21st century than “RMC.”
Today, we’re taking a cross-country roadtrip to look at six landmark RMCs of the past and present – including rides that redefined what roller coasters can be. Then, we’ll dip our toes into some forecasting, looking at two high profile projects that lay just over the horizon for the cutting-edge, industry-changing coaster manufacturer… and for all of us who love thrill rides. Strap in and hang on!
“Armchair Imagineering.” For Disney Parks fans, it’s a skill that’s learned early, and practiced often. Almost inescapably, theme park aficionados can’t help but to imagine what could be; what we think should be; what we would do if we were given creative control of a theme park we love and an unlimited budget to make it happen.
If you’ve been around Park Lore for long, you might have already stumbled on my hand-illustrated, ideal build-outs of Disney California Adventure, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Universal’s Islands of Adventure. It takes dozens of hours over the course of months to draft out these imaginary redesigns, so it’s probably no surprise that those park build-outs are some of the projects here at Park Lore that I’m most proud of, and reader comments, private emails, and shares on social media regarding them are some of the kindest, most creative, and most thoughtful feedback I ever receive.
So I guess all of that fueled me enough to finally do something I never thought I would: to tackle a “Castle Park.” And not just any Castle Park…
