Other Secret Stories of Walt Disney World

by Jim Korkis

  In 2000, Imagineer Joe Rohde who was responsible for the concept of a Beastly Kingdom publicly admitted that he was doubtful such an area would ever be built. In September 2011, Disney announced it was partnering with filmmaker James Cameron to build a land themed to his Avatar film series in that same location.

  Remnants of the concept besides the logo remain in Animal Kingdom today, including a parking lot named Unicorn, a dragon head atop the entrance ticket booth, and for a while, a cave along Discovery River that housed the roar of a fire-breathing dragon and a brief burst of a propane flame. For the opening of the park, McDonalds included in one of its Happy Meals a purple-winged dragon to represent that uncompleted area.

  The entrance to Beastly Kingdom would be over a bridge guarded by a troll. The legendary realm would have been divided into two sections: one celebrating good creatures and another showcasing evil creatures.

  The evil side would have been dominated by Dragon Tower, a charred and ruined castle that was now home to a fire-breathing, jewel-encrusted dragon (the largest audio-animatronics figure to have been built at that time) who guarded a massive treasure. Bats who also lived there planned to steal these riches and enlisted the help of the guests in their robbery plans.

  Guests would be aboard a suspended inverted roller coaster to create the feeling of flying along with the bats on the heist. A climatic confrontation with the dragon would have left the guests feeling the heat of its fiery breath.

  Also in this section would be a waterfront eatery called the Loch Ness Terrace with periodic visits from the fabled sea serpent-like creature.

  The good side would include the Quest of the Unicorn, an adventure through a maze of medieval mythological creatures to find the unicorn’s hidden grotto in the center. In addition, a musical boat ride entitled Fantasia Gardens based on the mythological scenes in the Disney animated feature film Fantasia (1940) would be included.

  With the opening of Expedition Everest, Imagineers introduced the first mythological presence into the park, the legendary Yeti who terrorizes riders at the peak of the roller coaster.

  Things That Never Were

  The Never Built Mountains

  Walt Disney World is famous for its many mountains: Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, and the Forbidden Mountain at Animal Kingdom.

  However, over the decades, other mountains were planned for the WDW parks such as a Matterhorn bobsled ride similar to the one at Disneyland for a proposed Switzerland pavilion at World Showcase near the Italy pavilion. The real Matterhorn is located between Italy and Switzerland.

  Another mountain that was proposed was Mount Fuji for the back of the Japan pavilion where a roller coaster would have raced around the outside and inside of the iconic mountain. Fujifilm was ready to sponsor the attraction, but Disney already had an existing sponsorship agreement with rival film company Kodak.

  Fire Mountain was planned for Adventureland in the area between the Pirates of the Caribbean and Splash Mountain attractions. It was to be a gigantic, forbidding volcano with guests soaring around and through this erupting menace.

  Fire Mountain was originally planned to be built in Fantasyland, but it was felt that it would blend in more appropriately with the theme of Adventureland and the volcanos of the Pacific Rim. In fact, there was even discussion to expand the entire area into a subdivision called Volcania.

  The twist on being just another roller coaster was to have a unique switch in the middle of the ride. Guests would board the vehicles with the track railing underneath them as in a traditional coaster but as the ride progressed, the track would shift to being above them. This switch would give the guests a more up close experience as they dangled over the bubbling lava that was threatening to erupt. The track would switch back before the end of the attraction.

  Obviously, budget concerns eliminated that idea and the final proposal was more along the lines of having the guests lay face down with the track above them as they swooped through the experience.

  Disney even floated a balloon high in the air to mark the top of the peak of the mountain to see if it could be seen on Main Street, USA. While it was not visible to guests in that location, it was clearly visible to guests at the Polynesian Resort.

  Eventually, it was decided that such a massive investment might not translate into the extra attendance needed to compensate for the expenditure.

  Bald Mountain from the Disney animated feature film Fantasia (1940) where it was the home of the demon Chernabog would have been in Fantasyland on the location of the closed 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea attraction. Plans were even discussed to make this part of the park a section themed to the Disney villains who were not just popular as characters, but were generating a new lucrative merchandise franchise for the company.

  In ride vehicles modeled after Hades’ River Styx boats from the Disney animated feature film Hercules (1997), guests would take a harrowing water journey where they inadvertently interrupted a meeting of notorious Disney villains debating who was the most evil of the group to lead them in taking over the Magic Kingdom.

  Once discovered, it was a wild race to escape the villains trying to prevent the guests from revealing their sinister plans and ending with a massive water flume plunge down the side of the mountain.

  Sadly, one of the reasons this particular attraction was never built was that the idea of constructing a fifth WDW theme park based on villains was being considered and so the idea was withdrawn in order to be included in the park proposal that never came to fruition.

  Things That Never Were

  Western River Expedition

  Western River Expedition would have been built in the area now occupied by Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain.

  It was jokingly referred to by Imagineers as “Cowboys of the Caribbean” because of its superficial similarities to the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disneyland.

  However, according to Imagineer Tony Baxter, “for some reason, it was thought that because of Florida’s close proximity to the Caribbean, a ride dealing with pirates wouldn’t be as popular in Walt Disney World as it was in Disneyland.”

  In addition, the Imagineers wanted some attractions that were unique to WDW and not just a duplication of Disneyland.

  Thunder Mesa Mountain would have featured a variety of attractions in addition to Western River Expedition including a runaway mine train ride, hiking trails, a canoe flume ride, and a Pueblo Native American village.

  To accommodate all of this, a four-story show building would have been decorated to look like the orange mesas of the American desert and Monument Valley. The WDW railroad would have gone through the building to offer guests a glimpse.

  Imagineer Marc Davis spent five years creating a humorous 10–12 minute boat trip through a variety of Wild West scenes. It was based on a concept he had developed as early as 1963 about a Lewis and Clark River Expedition for the never-built St. Louis indoor theme park that Walt Disney was considering.

  Guests would have entered through a cave tunnel into the mountain and boarded boats that took them up a waterfall and then into the winding river. Scenes would have featured comic Native American figures (including a rain dance with disastrous results), stagecoach robbers (where even their horses wore bandana masks), prairie dogs, antelopes, buffaloes, singing cowboys, and can-can dancing saloon girls.

  It would have contained over one hundred audio-animatronics figures. A buffalo and prairie dogs were actually built for the attraction and later incorporated into the opening ranch-house scene in Living with the Land at Epcot.

  Davis spent many long months working on the attraction and had the enthusiastic support of Roy O. Disney and Imagineering president Dick Irvine.

  Detailed sketches were made and models were created. Imagineer Mitsou Natsume even built a detailed model of Thunder Mesa and the exterior of the Western River Shipping & Navigation Company that was displayed for many years in the pre-show area of the Walt Disney Story on Main St
reet, U.S.A.

  At one point, color stylist Mary Blair, a good friend of Davis and his wife, was brought in to consult on the color choices including a painted desert backdrop. Composer Buddy Baker had the beginnings of a theme song that would repeat throughout the ride.

  The attraction was publicized with concept art in the Magic Kingdom guidebooks for 1971 and 1972 since the project was supposed to open with the park, but because of time and budget factors it was relegated to Phase 2 that would be completed by 1975.

  The project was eventually canceled because of prohibitive costs (estimated at over $125 million), the decrease in popularity of Western movies and TV shows, and other factors including guests demanding the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction.

  Davis still believed strongly in the Western River Expedition and offered a scaled-down version (removing the potentially offensive comic Native Americans) with just a boat ride to be placed side-by-side with Big Thunder Mountain that had borrowed his idea of a runaway mine train for Thunder Mesa. Davis’ official retirement in 1978 meant the loss of the attraction’s biggest advocate.

  Things That Never Were

  The Excavator, Lagoon Islands, Dark Kingdom

  THE EXCAVATOR. The area at Disney’s Animal Kingdom now occupied by Chester and Hester’s Dino-Rama featuring the carnival rides TriceraTop Spin and Primeval Whirl was earmarked for a much more impressive thrill ride attraction.

  Animal Kingdom was intended to compete and outdo Busch Gardens Tampa with its live exotic animals and roller coasters. The original DAK Imagineers proposed a roller coaster similar to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. It would be in an area that was supposedly a former sand-and-gravel pit with an enormous piece of leftover machinery called the Excavator.

  The area had been abandoned when the Dino Institute bought the property after dinosaur bones were discovered, transforming the field offices of the former business into a dormitory and cafeteria for students.

  Chester and Hester could no longer sell gas to the trucks and the workmen who operated at the site, so they converted their business into a souvenir shop for tourists who were coming to see the dinosaur dig site.

  The Excavator was meant to look like a series of ore cars used to haul up the sand and gravel from the bottom of the pit into dump trucks. The paleontology students who were working in the area had reconfigured the unsafe device that had fallen into disrepair to transport the dinosaur fossils they were finding.

  The marketing publicity described it as “a rollicking coaster ride through a section of the dig supposedly too dangerous to enter.” At one point, the ride would have zoomed through the inside of a dinosaur skeleton.

  It had been planned as an opening day attraction until budget cuts eliminated it, but the Excavator appeared clearly on the original concept painting of the area. It was felt that the Countdown to Extinction attraction, since it re-used existing technology, would be easier and less expensive to build and still attract guests wanting a thrill ride.

  LAGOON ISLANDS. According to Tony Baxter, former senior vice president for creative development at Walt Disney Imagineering:

  There just wasn’t enough things for kids to do at World Showcase [when it first opened]. So one of the proposals was to use the islands in the middle of World Showcase’s lagoon as kind of a kids’ play area.

  This play area in Epcot’s World Showcase would be like Tom Sawyer Island in the Magic Kingdom, but with an international theme.

  That idea was scrapped when concerns about safety, transportation, capacity, and budget were reviewed. An alternative concept of making the islands an exclusive “adults-only” party area was considered and became“very much the start of [Downtown Disney’s] Pleasure Island concept,” Baxter said, but was also rejected.

  DARK KINGDOM. The opening of Universal’s Islands of Adventure theme park in Orlando in 1999 and its appeal to an older teenage demographic prompted Disney to consider adding an “edgier” addition to its WDW parks. In the 1990s, Disney began formalizing a Disney Villains franchise that proved its popularity with the Villains in Vogue merchandise shop at Hollywood Studios.

  So it was proposed to add a new land at the back of the Magic Kingdom to be called the Dark Kingdom or Shadowlands. The icon for this new land would have been Maleficent’s castle.

  Bald Mountain, a massive roller coaster ride inspired by Chernabog’s lair in Disney’s animated feature film Fantasia (1940), was developed as well as a spinner ride similar to the Dumbo attraction that would have had Ursula the sea witch as the centerpiece and each of her octopus arms holding a ride vehicle. The concept was so intriguing that at one point Disney even considered expanding it into a fifth theme park.

  Things That Never Were

  Fantasyland Rides

  When designing the Magic Kingdom, the Imagineers did not want to merely repeat what they had already done at Disneyland, but to create something entirely different.

  The 1968 Annual Report to Disney stockholders stated:

  Although many attractions will be familiar to the 76 million people who have already visited California’s Disneyland, many more will be unique to the new theme park in Walt Disney World.

  In particular, Fantasyland would have looked similar but with different attractions based on classic Disney stories duplicating the same emotional experiences. Instead of a Snow White dark ride, Imagineers decided to use a different Disney princess. The story of Cinderella did not offer any dramatic confrontations.

  However, Imagineers had seen how guests had enjoyed the Sleeping Beauty Castle walk-through tableaux in California and felt the 1959 classic animated film had definite possibilities.

  The proposal was for a typical Disney dark ride where the guests would be chased through different story scenes from the film by Maleficent’s goons who were hiding in the scenery. The big climax would be a confrontation with Maleficent herself who had transformed into a fire breathing dragon and would be leaning in toward the riders who escaped at the last minute. It would have captured the mild scariness of the Snow White ride.

  Instead of the popular Peter Pan’s Flight attraction at Disneyland, the Imagineers proposed using the overhead monorail track to fly guests into an entirely different adventure inspired by the popular film Mary Poppins (1964) since guest surveys had shown Disney visitors would enjoy a ride based on those characters.

  The first proposal was to use overturned umbrellas as ride vehicles to soar over the rooftops of London to mimic Mary’s own journeys with her umbrella. A version that was more seriously considered was to use the colorful carousel horses from the film as ride vehicles. Guests would find themselves leaping through the chalk paintings done by the street artist Bert, the friend of Mary Poppins, as the horses bounced along.

  Several possible tableaux would have included scenes inspired by the film, like the fox hunt and a horse race. Figures of Mary and Bert would greet the guests in this beautiful journey through the serene English countryside.

  Instead of a Mr. Toad attraction, the Imagineers originally pitched the idea of an attraction based on the animated feature The Sword in the Stone (1963) since the character of Merlin fit in so appropriately with the theme of Fantasyland.

  The part of the film that offered the most options for dramatization was the famous wizard’s duel between Merlin and the witch Mad Madam Mim with them each getting zapped and transforming into different creatures. The finale would have had the ride vehicle circling around Mim after she had turned into a huge dragon just before she is defeated by Merlin.

  With Fantasyland so close to Liberty Square, there was also discussion about having a dark ride based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1949) near the intersection of the two lands to act as a transition. Guests would have ridden in hollowed-out spinning jack-o-lanterns through a variety of scenes until the final confrontation with the headless horseman.

  Disney fans have thought that these attractions were never built in order to save money, yet the repeated attractions were made longer and
with additional details that cost just as much.

  Roy O. Disney realized that many East Coast guests would never go to Disneyland but wanted to experience the attractions they had seen pictures of or read about, and so insisted on a balance between the classic attractions and new, unique ones.

  WDW History

  The Secret Origin of Churros

  In the January 5, 2003, episode of The Simpsons (Season 14, Episode 298, “Special Edna”), Homer escapes Epcot to get into the Magic Kingdom and asks for one churro from a vendor that costs fourteen dollars.

  In real life, the fried dough pastry costs a hefty $3.50, considering it is made with just inexpensive dough, sugar, and cinnamon.

  Churros are much more prevalent in Disneyland at a variety of carts, but can also be found at Walt Disney World in locations like the Cantina de San Angel at the Epcot Mexico pavilion and the food court at Coronado Springs Resort, among other places.

  In 1985, the man responsible for food and beverage in Disneyland’s Fantasyland was Jim Lowman. With the scheduled opening of a new dance location for young people called Videopolis, he needed to bring in something new and unique to offer them.

  That same year he attended the Long Beach Grand Prix event and saw his first churro booth and that all that was needed was a small warming oven. Snooping around, he found an empty box from J & J Snack Foods. The treat seemed popular, inexpensive, easy to produce, and something out-of-the-ordinary.

  He later phoned the company to see if they might be interested in working with Disneyland. However, to make the churro a unique Disneyland churro and to increase the price that they could be sold for, Lowman insisted that they enlarge the size from six inches to twelve inches.

  Lowman decided to do a little test before Videopolis opened. He felt the treat would theme in with Frontierland and its Mexican food influences so he stationed a small cart by the exit of the Mark Twain Riverboat. Even as the cart was rolling to that location, it was followed by at least thirty people who were entranced by the smell.