Stitch’s Great Escape!: The Animation Invasion That Made Disney World’s “Worst Attraction Ever”

Disney and disaster. Two words that don’t often go together… and yet, our Declassified Disasters collection has traced the surprising stories of several of Disney’s pitifully-bad overlays, reimaginings, and replacements whose stories are too surprising to be forgotten…

But when you ask Imagineering fans, there’s one single attraction that most agree stands the test of time as the worst that Walt Disney World has ever hosted… Avoided by guests, skipped by fans, and mercilessly mocked by all, this can only be the story of the Magic Kingdom menace that is Stitch’s Great Escape!

In today’s in-depth feature, we’ll fast-forward through the extraterrorestrial tale that lead to this character’s Tomorrowland invasion, endure a walkthrough of the experience inside, and take a look at the moves Disney finally made to mothball this detested attraction for good. Could this seemingly-simple family attraction really be a source of misery and madness earning such hatred? Once you read, we’ll let you decide in the comments below…

The story so far…

Since 1955, Tomorrowland has been a staple of Disneyland. And for almost as long, Imagineers have been struggling to keep it relevant. After all, time always seems to pass, and no matter how accurately designers were able to capture the architecture, spirit, and science of any given era, it consistantly fell out of favor with prevailing pop culture, actual innovation, or both!

Take for example Disneyland’s ROCKET TO THE MOON – a 1955 original promising previews of commercial flights to space that Imagineers expected would be commonplace by the ’80s. Housed in two twin domed theaters, guests would sit in concentric, tiered rings of seating facing inward. This “motion-less” simulator would provide guests with projected views of lift-off, space, and the moon via “windows” in the floor and ceiling at the center of the rocket.

Barely a decade after Tomorrowland’s debut, its style had fallen out of favor, necessitating a New Tomorrowland in 1967, bringing with it a rebuilt and upgraded version of the ride – FLIGHT TO THE MOON– accounting for the Space Race and humanity’s very real attempts to make it to the moon. Unfortunately, just two years after the attraction’s auspicious reimagining, humans actually made it to the moon, instantly dating the attraction’s narration and footage.

Luckily, when Magic Kingdom opened, it, too, offered dual theater-in-the-round auditoriums for the attraction, and in 1975, both the Anaheim and Orlando rides were updated again, this time to MISSION TO MARS – a clever way to buy time since actual trips to the Red Planet seemed far off.

This Mission to Mars remains for nearly two decades, still showing its 1970s footage as late as 1992! It was time for yet another reimagining – not just for the attraction, but for all of Tomorrowland.

New Tomorrows

In the 1980s – under the leadership of then-chairman Michael Eisner – Disney was evolving. Brought on specifically to right the sinking ship of Disney’s long-stagnant studios after decades of duds, Eisner brought with him decades of experience in the film industry. His connections had convinced him that movies weren’t just the answer for Disney’s filmmaking business; they could save Disney’s long-neglected theme parks, too.

Eisner famously kickstarted the “Ride the Movies” era – a decade-long period in the ’80s and ’90s where Disney invested as never before in its parks, opening elaborate, ambitious, and expensive attractions that infused the characters and stories people cared about… even if they weren’t Disney characters and stories! Of course, that’s the origin of the Lost Legends: Captain EO and STAR TOURS – attractions born of Eisner’s desire to inject pop culture and thrills into Disney Parks, making them cool, hip, edgy places for teens and young adults.

Eisner’s ambitious, cinematic attractions coalesced with the growing need for yet another New Tomorrowland. However, executives wanted this facelift to the land to be the last by eschewing actual predictions of things to come or commitments to continuous upgrades in favor of timeless, evergreen Tomorrowlands not bound by time and taste. In other words, Tomorrowlands based not on science, but on fantasy and science-fiction.

It aligned perfectly with a project Eisner had taken great interest in: finally filling that tired, dusty Mission to Mars theater in Disneyland and Magic Kingdom with something more his taste.

Though he ultimately rebuked Imagineers’ efforts to use 20th Century Fox’s groundbreaking and grisly 1979 horror film Alien, Eisner adored the idea of a multi-sensory, technological special effects show using sound, lighting, and “4D” effects to convince guests an alien had escaped into the crowd after a routine demonstration. If Eisner had his way, “Alien Encounter” would be the anchor of a New Tomorrowland in both Disneyland and Magic Kingdom.

Alien Encounter

As Imagineers in Glendale put the finishing touches on their plans for Alien Encounter, Eisner announced that things had changed. The 1992 opening of Disneyland Paris – meant to be his magnum opus and lasting legacy with the company – had failed. The European resort had entered a financial freefall upon opening, and Eisner declared that bankruptcy was under consideration.

Plans for a New Tomorrowland were outright cancelled in California, meaning the Alien Encounter attraction needed to debut in Florida instead. It did – and as an anchor experience in an ambitious and sensational New Tomorrowland that barely squeaked through before Paris’ pitfall.

The 1994 New Tomorrowland overlayed the formerly-simple-70s land with Factory Pomo architecture and elaborate alien eccoutrements, creating a living sci-fi city of landed spacecrafts, robotic newsboys, and mechanical palm trees – a comic book retro-future inspired by pulp stories of Buck Rogers.

Best of all, this New Tomorrowland was an early adopter of the kind of immense world-building and interconnectivity that only became standard after the opening of the Wizarding World fifteen years later – in fact, all of the rides, attractions, shops, and even restaurants in this land were all subtly connected within one overarching mythology; a frame story that explained the land as a “real, living” city of alien immigrants and visitors, real public transit, a science museum, and more.

And hosted in the Interplanetary Convention Center was X-S Tech, an eerie, Twilight Zone-esque alien technology conglomerate inviting Earthlings to view a demonstration of their new interstellar teleportation technology. This is the place to be sure you’ve read up on the Lost Legend: The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter. 

Guests who dared enter into the main demonstration chamber found a theater still arranged in concentric circles, now oriented around a massive glass tube fed by wires and pipes overhead. Locked in via shoulder restraints, the technological showcase would begin.

What followed what a multi-sensory experience, wherein a grotesque insectoid alien would appear to escape its glass confinement, flapping over the crowd, roosting in the corners of the room, killing a security guard, stomping past guests, licking their heads, and drooling down their necks… Of course, the incredibly intense attraction took place almost entirely in pitch-black darkness and the innovative use of 3D audio and in-seat special effects meant that it was inescapable. Terrifyingly intense, brilliantly original, and a rare dark experience at Magic Kingdom, Alien Encounter was a cult classic adored by fans.

Now you’re caught up, which means the true nightmare can begin… If you thought a carnivorous, flying alien was horrifying, just wait until you see what came next. Read on…