What Are the Worst Disney Re-Themes?
Several recent Disney re-themes have garnered headlines.
Former rides like The Great Movie Ride, Maelstrom, and Splash Mountain have died so that new attractions may live.
While the overwhelming majority of fans support the new rides, Frozen Ever After and Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, we should keep something in mind.
Disney isn’t perfect. Its track record for re-themes is quite good overall, but there have also been some misses.
Here are the worst Disney attraction re-themes.
The Enchanted Tiki Room (Under New Management)
The danger of Disney’s plussing concept is obvious. Sometimes, park officials toy with the notion of fixing something that isn’t broken.
The Enchanted Tiki Room is an exceptional attraction from management’s perspective because it offers tremendous throughput.
During the 1990s, the 20-year-old attraction had lost some of its popularity.
As a way of renewing attention, park officials redesigned the show, a decision that proved to be a colossal mistake.
Two characters from The Lion King interrupted Jose the bird and debated the merits of updating the show.
This attempt at breaking the fourth wall rarely evoked more than a chuckle.
Zasu provided a warning to Iago, who changed the show anyway. So, we got songs from The Lion King instead.
You’d think that an updated soundtrack may please fans, as The Lion King was still quite hot in 1998.
I’m here to tell you that the new soundtrack did NOT please fans.
This show proved immediately unpopular, and it still blows my mind that Disney kept Under New Management for 12+ years.
That choice must have come from someone who couldn’t admit they were wrong.
Seriously, have you ever watched this? It’s an abomination.
The stunning part is that we might still have it today if not for a fire in 2011.
Tens of thousands of Magic Kingdom fans needed an alibi that day.
Journey into YOUR Imagination
Fans always want Disney to rush decisions so that new attractions arrive sooner.
This article should serve as an excellent demonstration of why patience is often a virtue in theme park design.
Sometimes, someone makes a short-sighted decision to generate immediate interest in a change.
Often, those quick, ill-considered updates aren’t worthy of the Disney brand.
Perhaps the ultimate example of this is the Journey into YOUR Imagination debacle.
Management understandably wanted to add some special touches for the millennial celebration.
At the time, EPCOT had entered a kind of 15-year lull, as Future World had grown a bit dated.
Disney sought to change the story by updating one of the classic attractions, Journey into Imagination.
For no apparent reason, Imagineers chose to do this by removing the two popular characters in the story, Figment and the Dreamfinder.
Folks, this happened 25 years ago, and we still haven’t seen the Dreamfinder on the attraction since then.
After two years and a week, park officials acknowledged the brutal judgment error.
Disney closed this version of the ride and replaced it with the current Journey into Imagination with Figment.
While that ride is far from perfect, at least it has Figment.
How could Disney make a version of Journey into Imagination without Figment?
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
I’ve got nothing against The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. I mean, if I’m in the area, I’ll definitely ride it.
So, my problem here has nothing to do with the attraction itself other than that it’s less than what came before it.
As someone fanatical about Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, I’m annoyed that Magic Kingdom simply replaced it.
While the Winnie the Pooh ride encapsulates all the joys and perils of a trip to Hundred-Acre Wood, it’s just not the same.
Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride possesses a vigor and storytelling bravery that we haven’t seen since the 1950s.
Name another North American ride where a judge banishes you to jail followed by Hell. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
If Disney isn’t going to replace an opening day attraction, it needs to pick something special enough to justify the opportunity cost.
With all due respect to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, it isn’t that.
Mission: SPACE
I realize that not all these criticisms will garner universal consent.
For example, Mission: SPACE definitely has its fair share of ardent supporters.
Even as a NASA superfan, I’m not one of them, though. I’ve always found Mission: SPACE a bit lacking as an attraction.
This experience isn’t interactive enough for me, and it’s frankly a bit dated.
You sit in a space capsule and press the occasional button. That’s the extent of the interactivity.
Everything else happens on a small monitor display that’s not much bigger than a tablet. So, it doesn’t draw me in as an active participant.
Conversely, Horizons was a dark ride I adored, a spiritual successor to Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress.
While Carousel of Progress embraces the recent past, Horizons envisioned a better tomorrow made possible due to technology.
Horizons embodied the innate optimism of a Disney theme park, while Mission: SPACE feels like a least-case scenario result.
If anything, Imagineers tried to honor outer space travel by making it too realistic, thereby negating much of the fun.
Rocket Rods
For historical reasons, Disney fans rarely associate the PeopleMover with Disneyland.
That’s true because when Walt Disney announced this form of transportation, he promised it at EPCOT.
Eventually, the PeopleMover would wind up at Magic Kingdom, but that ride wasn’t the first of its kind.
In actuality, Disneyland Park opened its PeopleMover all the way back in 1967, only a year after Uncle Walt revealed the concept.
For whatever reason, the Disneyland version of the ride never quite gained the popularity of its East Coast equivalent.
Some park officials actively disliked it at Disneyland and wanted it gone. Be careful what you wish for.
In the 1990s, Disney committed to a new direction for the above-ground track system.
Disney would re-theme the slow-moving ride with its replacement, Rocket Rods.
As the name implies, Rocket Rods was a thrill ride, making it the polar opposite of the relaxing PeopleMover.
That aspect alone might have doomed Rocket Rods to failure, but the kicker was the math error that followed.
Nobody stopped to wonder whether the existing structures could carry the additional weight of the Rocket Rods tech. It couldn’t.
The new ride didn’t lack popularity, as Tomorrowland could always use more thrill rides.
Sadly, Disney couldn’t keep Rocket Rods running because the PeopleMover tracks couldn’t support its heft.
To this day, I have no idea how the always-brilliant Imagineers missed this glaring mistake.
Stitch’s Great Escape!
Sometimes, a Disney attraction proves too daring, too brave. Perhaps that’s the crime Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride committed.
Similarly, ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter aimed too high but somehow reached that mark. And that was the problem.
Disney created an absolutely terrifying show-based attraction wherein guests discovered they were trapped with a hostile alien.
This experiential story made many guests feel too much, which was a problem for Disney crowds at the time.
You go to Disney to escape all your problems, right? The last thing you want is to feel scared out of your wits at an attraction.
So, Disney tried to add the one element this show was lacking: a child-friendly element.
That’s how Stitch’s Great Escape! came into being. Imagineers took the same general premise but made the alien Stitch.
Who could be afraid of that adorable critter? Sadly, the answer proved to be a strange combination of “too many” and “not nearly enough.”
Magic Kingdom guests hated the change, as it made some of them hate and fear Stitch, which wasn’t good for merchandising.
Others resented that Disney had nerfed the stunning ambition of ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter and made it too cutesy.
In short, the change not only failed to fix the original problem but added a second one.
For years, Stitch’s Great Escape! was the lowest graded Magic Kingdom attraction before Disney closed it permanently.
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Feature Photo: Disney