Let’s keep this straight: Disneyland opened with Snow White and Her Adventures in 1955. It was a subtly spooky dark ride a little more imposing than most of Fantasyland’s, with riders living out the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs through Snow White’s point-of-view (and thus, becoming target of the Witch themselves)!
When Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, it brought with it an overtly terrifying version of the ride – called Snow White’s Adventures – that more closely resembled a classic carnival spook house than a fairytale retelling, filled with dark ride gags, jump scares, horrific figures, and loud noises designed to startle.
Now, through the ’80s and ’90s, both would change. Let’s jump forward a decade and fly back to California to insert a piece of the story that will become very important very soon.
New Fantasyland
While Walt Disney might’ve adored the concept of Fantasyland and the childlike wonder its dark rides inspired when Disneyland opened in 1955, one thing he never hid was his disapproval of the low budget look of the land. A showbuilding crudely disguised behind pastel awnings and medieval tournament tents looked like something from a cheap Renaissance fair, not the kind of cinematic world Walt was determined to showcase.
To be clear, Fantasyland at Disneyland looked low budget because it was. Disneyland opened literally one year and one day after the first shovel of dirt shifted at its groundbreaking, and Fantasyland was evidence of the quick timeline. But Imagineers say it was always on Walt’s mind that when the time was right, he’d craft Fantasyland into the detailed land he had imagined from the start.
That time finally came in 1983 when – bolstered by the development of Tokyo Disneyland – Imagineers were given free reign to reimagine Fantasyland in California. For the first time since the park’s opening nearly three decades earlier, the drawbridge of Sleeping Beauty Castle was raised and Fantasyland was literally closed off.
Spearheaded by Imagineer (and today, Disney Legend) Tony Baxter, the ‘New Fantasyland’ project is sometimes discussed as merely an aesthetic upgrade… And while the new land would strip away the Medieval tournament tents in favor of dimensional setpieces, it went far further than that. In fact, Baxter has often told of his experience tearing out Walt’s 1955’s original land – reducing not just its facades, but its dark rides to the absolute studs – and mumbling in horror, “What have we done?”
In one fell swoop, Imagineers relocated the park’s Carousel, Mad Tea Party, and Dumbo The Flying Elephant; a new Pinocchio’s Daring Journey attraction opened (thanks again to development for Tokyo Disneyland); each dark ride was extended, improved, rerouted, or otherwise rebuilt from near-scratch.
And when it was finished, Fantasyland was at last the quaint European storybook village we can imagine Walt himself dreaming of. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride gained a dimensional Toad Hall exterior; Peter Pan’s Flight, a Tudor town and clocktower; Pinocchio’s Daring Journey was set in an Italian marionette theater; a new whimsical Wonderland contained both Alice’s dark ride and the Mad Tea Party; and in a grim, Germanic castle tucked into the shadow of Sleeping Beauty Castle, Snow White’s ride had been reborn… with a new name.
California & Japan: Snow White’s Scary Adventures (1983)
To stand before the refreshed Snow White dark ride at Disneyland, you’d be forgiven for getting a case of the heebie jeebies. After all, this imposing, colorless castle of gargoyles, iron gates, and pointed lanterns is all presided over by a glass window overhead with a lavish red curtain beyond. Every few minutes, the curtains part as the Evil Queen glares out…
Refreshed, reimagined, and redesigned, the new ride gained a more fitting name: Snow White’s Scary Adventures.
Okay, despite the addition of “Scary” to the ride’s name, Disneyland’s version of the dark ride had – in many estimations – become slightly less scary, as the 1983 renovation to Fantasyland’s dark rides had finally inserted each story’s respective main character as a dimensional figure. That means that Snow White herself was now visible – though only once! – along the course. That alone would be enough to lessen the scare-factor, as it cast guests not as the victim’s of the Evil Queen, but as friends of Snow White, just a few steps ahead of her as the Queen prepares for her trickery.
The more well-balanced ride featured a yodeling sing-along in the dwarves’ warm cottage, glistening gem mines with the echoing of “The Dig Song” in the distance, and a few happy woodland creatures. Still, the ride’s emphasis was on the spookier aspects of the inherently scary tale – sinister woods, snapping crocodiles, and the cackling Witch – up to and including the ride’s abrupt finale.
While Florida’s ride ended with the Queen smashing us under a gemstone, California’s more closely matched the flow of the film: the Witch’s attempt to pry a boulder onto us was cut short by a lightning strike that instead put an end to her. While you might’ve expected Prince Charming’s awakening kiss or Snow White’s happily ever after to follow, California’s ride ended abruptly (but like all products of the park’s cramped quarters, charmingly) immediately thereafter, immediately returning to daylight.
Take a ride through Disneyland’s Snow White’s Scary Adventures (and it’s iconic ending) above. Keep in mind that although the video shows the technological accoutrements of the 21st century (including some of the first ever texture-based projection mapping in Disney Parks via the “mirror” scene and the final chase up the stormy cliffside), the scenes, flow, and figures are all 1983 originals.
Well-balanced and fittingly “modern,” the refreshed version of the ride in Disneyland was a more traditional interpretation of the story, even if it lived up to its “Scary” name by accentuating the role of the Wicked Witch and omitting Snow White’s happy ending.
And it should be no surprise that when Tokyo Disneyland opened the same year as California’s New Fantasyland, the Japanese park included the New Fantasyland version of the ride. Keep in mind that all-the-while, the terrifying spookhouse Snow White’s Adventures continued to scare visitors in Florida (and would for another decade!), making it the only one of the three Snow White rides to be grotesquely out-of-sync… soon to be the only one of four…
France: Blanche-Neige et les Sept Nains” (1992)
Disneyland’s New Fantasyland and Tokyo Disneyland both premiered in 1983, each offering nearly identical dark ride retellings of the Snow White story.
Nearly a decade later, Disneyland Paris opened. Given that the entire European park had been designed under the eye of Tony Baxter (whose portfolio also includes 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Discovery Bay, Indiana Jones Adventure, Journey into Imagination, STAR TOURS, and Splash Mountain) it should come as no surprise that elements of his own New Fantasyland project crept into Paris, too.
And in fact, Disneyland Paris didn’t just give Baxter and Imagineer Tom Morris the opportunity to recreate their New Fantasyland, but to expand it. Without the confines of squeezing into existing Californian infrastructure, Paris’ Fantasyland (and the dark rides it contained) could at last breathe a little.
So in Disneyland Paris, Blanche-Neige et les Sept Nains largely looks like the Snow White dark ride Disneyland had debuted as of the 1983 Fantasyland redo – balanced, albeit with a nod to the story’s darker elements – but for one significant and noteworthy addition: a happy ending.
In Paris, the stormy cliff still ends with lightning strike foiling the Witch’s attempt to crush us alive, but the doors we pass through beneath her lead not to the ride’s unload like in California, but to a new scene: a glowing castle in the distance, with Snow, Prince Charming, the Dwarves, and a menagerie of adorable woodland creatures waving us goodbye to the angelic chorus finale of “Someday My Prince Will Come (Reprise).” You can watch Paris’ ride – an evolution of California’s with the addition of a happy ending – here:
Now between California (1983), Tokyo (1983), and Paris (1992), three of the four Snow White dark rides on Earth were in-sync: modern, carefully-crafted, slightly-spooky tellings of the story. And Disney’s experiment in Paris – the addition of a happy ending – had convinced designers that they might have found the definitive version of the ride.
That meant that it was high time for Imagineers to take a second look at the one remaining outlier. Yes, even in the early ’90s, Magic Kingdom still featured the terrifying, spook house style opening day version of Snow White’s tale. The legitimately frightening Disney World original was due for an upgrade… On the next page, we’ll ride through Magic Kingdom’s Snow White’s Scary Adventures and relive the spooky experience that left many Millennials cowering in their mother’s shoulder…