Adventure Thru Inner Space: The View From Within Disneyland’s Molecular Mid-Century Dark Ride

Living on…

Adventure Thru Inner Space closed more than three decades ago, but it lives on in a number of astounding ways.

1. The Omnimover

Believe it or not, Adventure Thru Inner Space was the first ride to use Disney’s patented Omnimover ride system when it opened in 1967. The ingenious and groundbreaking ride system is comprised of a continuously moving chain of ride vehicles that guests board from a moving walkway.

Because they’re continuously moving and constantly loading, Omnimover ride systems have exceptionally high capacities and tremendous hourly throughput. Many rides using the system direct the vehicles to turn and pivot at precise moments along the leisurely course, directing riders’ attention exactly where designers want, giving Imagineers the real-world power of a movie camera. Unsurprisingly, that’s made our countdown of the 7 Modern Wonders of the Theme Park World.

Inner Space’s use of the Omnimover predates what might be its most famous application in Disney’s own Haunted Mansion two years later, in 1969. And it wasn’t done there – the Omnimover would go on to star in many of Epcot’s classic dark rides like World of Motion, Journey Into Imagination, Horizons, The Living Seas, and Spaceship Earth. The still-revolutionary design was even taken out of the mothballs and used as the ride system in the two 21st century dark rides based on The Little Mermaid that opened at Disney California Adventure and Magic Kingdom in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

From under the sea to the dreamy clouds of imagination; the atomic inner world to the farthest reaches of toy-sized space, the Omnimover can do it all – and it all started with Adventure Thru Inner Space.

2. Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters

In a most unusual twist of fate, the Omnimover lives on in Tomorrowland, too. Adventure Thru Inner Space closed in 1985 in Tomorrowland’s south showbuilding. Almost two decades later, the north showbuilding along Tomorrowland’s entry (formerly home to Circlevision 360 and, later, to the Declassified Disaster: Rocket Rods), opened with Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters.

On board, guests join Star Command from Disney-Pixar’s Toy Story 2 and take flight aboard a continuous chain of constantly-moving intergalactic space ships… An Omnimover alive in Tomorrowland just a few dozen feet from where the technology was first pioneered!

3. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Nano Battle!

In an even stranger twist of fate, Buzz Lightyear’s dark ride gave way to a “spiritual sequel” of sorts to Inner Space, albeit by way of Disney’s more modern hallmark (intellectual properties) and across the ocean.

Ultimately, a version of Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters became one of the few attractions to be located at every Disney Resort on Earth! However, in 2018, Hong Kong Disneyland’s version of the ride was annexed from Tomorrowland as part of the ongoing formation of a Marvel Avengers-themed mini-land. Though the ride system remained, the experienc was redesigned as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Nano Battle!, “shrinking” guests to the size of a spec of dust to infiltrate nano-bots and blast them from the inside.

While Nano Battle isn’t a particularly great ride by most accounts, it is a second Omnimover ride that shrinks guests to microscopic size! Coincidence? Totally. But how cool is it to imagine the return of Inner Space – no blasters, and actually-educational – but with Ant-Man and Pym Technologies as the driving force!

4. Star Tours

Oddly, the most direct way Adventure Thru Inner Space lives on is in its own replacement; a ride that appears to be as different from its predecessor as possible!

First and most obviously, those who experienced Adventure Thru Inner Space will recognize its DNA in the Star Wars terminal concourse. The winding, descending path toward the parked Star Speeder is actually a very in-tact remnant of the Inner Space queue, right down to the lighting. Of course, back then, that parked Star Speeder was instead the Mighty Monsanto Microscope with the continuously moving chain of Omnimovers advancing into it. Yes, this first room of Star Tours’ queue is where riders boarded their Atommobile and were miniaturized.

Because Star Tours requires so much less room than the more elaborate dark ride of old, parts of the dark ride were reconfigured into the rest of Star Tours’ winding queue, space for the four military-grade motion-simulators that Star Tours takes place in, and the Star Traders gift shop it exits into, all of which was formerly space taken up by the dark ride itself.

While it’s now impossible to see at a Disney Park, the original Lost Legend: Star Tours paid tribute to Adventure Thru Inner Space in an exciting way. After Rex’s first faulty maneuver (“Brakes… Brakes! Where are the brakes?!”), the Star Speeder fell down into a Maintenance area and pulled up at the last second, gliding past a Control Booth. Just past the control tower, you could catch a glimpse of the Mighty Microscope jutting out. The Microscope made this cameo appearance (at about :50 in the video here) in all four versions of Star Tours across the globe.

It’s strange-but-true to consider that, in a way, Adventure Thru Inner Space lives on even in parks where it next existed! When Star Tours was cloned at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Tokyo Disneyland, and Disneyland Paris, the original queue at Disneyland and ride video were copied, too, so even though those three parks never had Adventure Thru Inner Space, they all had pieces of its DNA!

In 2010, Star Tours closed at Disneyland, reopening a year later in June 2011 as Star Tours: The Adventures Continue. The new, HD-3D iteration includes randomized beginnings, middles, and endings, producing dozens and dozens of possible combinations so that your journey is different every time.

Even still, amid the chaos of this new iteration, the Mighty Microscope lives on. In one of the possible endings to your journey, the StarSpeeder arrives at the Death Star, still under construction, orbiting Geonosis. As you escape through a hangar bay filled with Stormtroopers, the Mighty Microscope appears on the left, apparently overtaken by the Empire. (You’ll see it at about 6:20 in the video here.)

5. A younger sister

Claude Coats – the famed Imagineer and Disney Legend responsible for designing Adventure Thru Inner Space – was far from finished. In designing Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland, Coates reached into his own archive and crafted another Omnimover-based ride built off the basic blueprints for Adventure Thru Inner Space.

Replace the Mighty Monsanto Microscope with a globe and airport terminal and you’ve got the basics for another Lost Legend: If You Had Wings. The aviation-themed dark ride (sponsored by Eastern Air Lines) gave a generation wings to widen their world and set the course for EPCOT Center. We soared into the in-depth story of Coates’ creations in that standalone feature – a must-read for fans of Magic Kingdom’s early years.

Looking forward and back

Adventure Thru Inner Space has been gone for a very long time; so long, in fact, that many Disney fans never got the chance to ride it. But it remains beloved today for another reason: because of what it represented.

It was a holdout of Walt’s Tomorrowland – an optimistic world whose limitless advances in technology signaled a rebirth of culture. Guests were astounded by the hope of atomic energy and in awe of what the future could hold. It was a time when families wanted to come to Disneyland to learn about America’s past, present, and future.

Maybe if Adventure Thru Inner Space were recreated today, it would be beloved and revered and celebrated as a retrofuturistic spectacle and a grand show of Imagineering’s artistry. Who could say? But take a look at Epcot and you’ll notice that what we want – or at least, what Disney thinks we want – is to leave the real world behind. In their thinking, we don’t want to bother with science or history or learning. We’d rather blast aliens with Buzz than shrink to the size of an atom on a self-serious dark ride that teaches us the structure of atoms. Maybe they’re right.

But Adventure Thru Inner Space will remain a beloved memory of a different time and a different Disneyland. For our part, we do hope that one day, the Omnimover across the way in Tomorrowland gets a nostalgic and classic facelift to become an Adventure Thru Inner Space style exploration of science. But we won’t hold our breath. The continued invasion of Monsters Inc. and Lilo and Stitch seems a more likely – and unfortunate – path for Walt’s vista into wondrous ideas signifying man’s achievements.

Now, it’s your turn. Use the comments below to tell us what you think about Adventure Thru Inner Space. Is it yet another Lost Legend and a painful reminder of the high aspirations Disney once had in Epcot-style learning adventures? Or was it a dated remnant of a Tomorrowland that tried and failed to keep up with real scientific progress? Tell us your stories and thoughts as we keep memories of this lost classic alive.