7. Kitchen Kabaret (12 yrs) vs. Soarin’ (19 yrs)
Kitchen Kabaret: 1982 – 1994 (12 years)
Soarin’: 2005 – Today (19 years)
When Kraft Foods took over sponsorship of The Land pavilion during its development, Disney’s plans for the space were reshaped to focus on agriculture and nutrition – natural fits for Kraft’s money and messaging.
Among the pavilion’s headliners was the Lost Legend: Kitchen Kabaret, an animatronic musical revue exploring the very-’80s “Four Basic” food groups determined by the U.S.D.A.: meat, milk, fruits & vegetables, and breads & cereals. Starring Bonnie Appetite, the show saw each food group join in for a lounge act, reminding guests to chase away their “Meal Time Blues” with such hits as “Boogie Woogie Bakery Boy” and the still-celebrated “Veggie Veggie Fruit Fruit” cha-cha.
By the mid ’90s, a lot had changed. Epcot was in the midst of its infamous ’90s “upgrade”; Nestle had replaced Kraft as the pavilion’s sponsor; and the “Four Basic” food groups were replaced with the Food Pyramid that ’90s kids would recognize. Kitchen Kabaret made way for “Food Rocks!”, a much more saturated, flat, and frentic show fit for the Saturday morning cartoon crowd. Rather than lounge music, Food Rocks spoofed pop music tunes with characters like Chubby Cheddar, Pita Gabriel, and The Peach Boys.
In 2004, Nestle – a decade into their sponsorship of the pavilion and seeking a return on their investment – requested that Disney upgrade the pavilion and bring in a true anchor attraction. Luckily, that coincided with Disney’s desire to bring Epcot a version of the Lost Legend: Soarin’ Over California that had been the single, solitary hit at the opening of Disney’s California Adventure Park in 2001. Food Rocks closed, and Soarin’ arrived in 2005.
Soarin’ didn’t really celebrate agriculture, but its whirlwind tour of California’s vastly diverse habitats and ecosystems – like deserts, beaches, oceans, forests, and mountains – was “close enough” to The Land’s ethos, and more to the point, it was an E-Ticket hit. In 2016, the ride was “upgraded” to Soarin’ Around the World, whose focus on architectural landmarks arguably makes it a worse fit for The Land than the “Over California” ride him had been, but the fact remains that Soarin’ has outlasted Kitchen Kabaret and Food Rocks, and doesn’t appear to be coming in for a landing anytime soon.
8. Space Mountain: De la Terre á la Lune (10 yrs) vs. Space Mountain: Mission 2 (12 yrs)
Space Mountain – De la Terre á la Lune: 1995 – 2005 (10 years)
Space Mountain – Mission 2: 2005 – 2017 (12 years)
Hyperspace Mountain: 2017 – Today (6 years)
Disneyland Paris is often regarded as the most beautiful and enchanting Disneyland-style park on Earth. Part of its spectacular appeal is thanks to the work Imagineers did to make the inherently-American concept of Disneyland more palatable for European audiences. Instead of a Space-Age inspired, all-white Tomorrowland, designers created Discoveryland – a rich, bronze, Victorian, retro-futuristic land based on the designs (and initially, stories) of European fantasy writers like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.
In 1995, the park’s headlining attraction and Lost Legend: Space Mountain – De la Terre á la Lune opened. Rather than a sleek, white, mid-century mountain, Paris’ peak was inspired by the Jules Verne novel From the Earth to the Moon. As in the novel, riders were launched into outer space from the gold Columbiad Cannon (resting against the mountain’s gold and copper exterior). Rather than the pulsing sci-fi score of its Californian counterpart, a full, orchestral score accentuated the fantasy trip to the moon and back, including allusions to the 1902 Georges Méliès film adaptation, considered the first sci-fi film ever.
It shouldn’t be surprising that, like its Tomorrowland counterparts, Discoveryland was soon overtaken by Disney and Pixar characters, leaving the land a gilded golden shell. That goes for Space Mountain, too. Despite how beloved and celebrated the original, literary, fantasy-inspired ride was, it lasted only a decade. In 2005, the ride became “Space Mountain: Mission 2,” essentially applying the sci-fi styling and theming of the U.S. rides to the French mountain’s interior and ignoring its copper outsides.
Even if that was an odd stylistic choice for Discoveryland, it’s got nothing on the ride’s latest incarnation, “Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain: Rebel Mission,” a quasi-permanent Star Wars overlay that fails to explain why our trip to a “galaxy far, far away” begins by being launched out of a gold cannon. In any case, it’s amazing to consider that the Jules Verne version of the ride that fans still think of as the definitive, essential version actually hasn’t been seen in nearly 20 years… longer than it lasted to begin with!
9. World of Motion (14 yrs) vs. Test Track (14 yrs)
World of Motion: 1982 – 1996 (14 years)
Test Track: 1998 – 2012 (14 years)
Test Track Presented by Chevrolet: 2012 – Today (12 years)
We’ve got one more EPCOT Center classic for you… One of the first topics cemented for the park’s Future World was transportation, all thanks to General Motors’ early sponsorship. The resulting attraction – the Lost Legend: World of Motion – was (as you’d expect) an epically-scaled dark ride through the history of human transportation from the stone age to the cities of the future, differentiated from other Future World originals by the work of Disney animators Ward Kimball and Marc Davis.
World of Motion closed in 1996, again in preparation for Epcot’s Millennium Celebration and the resulting evolution of the park. General Motors stayed on a sponsor for the new attraction, eschewing educational histories and slow-moving dark rides for the Lost Legend: TEST TRACK, a mile-a-minute journey through a GM testing facility, subjecting guests to the routine trials of crash test dummies.
While Test Track would eventually be replaced by a modernized, upgraded spin-off, the crash test version of the ride lasted from its soft-opening in 1998 to 2012… just as long as the classic dark ride that preceded it. Will the new version of Test Track last another 14 years or more? It sure seems that way!
…But if this list has taught us anything, it’s that the things you think of as “classics” today might not last forever… and eventually – for better or worse – their “replacements” become classics for a new generation!