In the early 1970’s legendary Imagineer Marc Davis and Disney were hard at work designing
what could have been the largest and possibly greatest Disney attraction ever.
However it never came to fruition and it’s all our fault.
OK that’s a little melodramatic.
We’ll never know if it would have been the greatest attraction and while Disney’s reaction
to fan demand did ultimately contribute to the cancellation of it, it’s a stretch to
say it’s all our faults.
Let’s go back to the early 1970s for the full story.
You see Disneyland and The Magic Kingdom were alike in many ways, but as much as Disney
wanted to carry over all of the best parts over from Disneyland to the east coast, they
also wanted to try and make sure Disney World would be a unique experience.
They also felt it was important to make changes that took into account the region the park
was in and the people visiting it.
It’s why Disneyland Paris doesn’t have our Tomorrowland and Shanghai Disney doesn’t
have a Main Street USA.
With that in mind, Disney felt that putting a Pirates of the Caribbean in Orlando, which
was relatively close to the actual caribbean, wouldn’t be appealing or exciting for guests
from the region.
So Disney opted to leave the ride out of the plans for the Magic Kingdom.
However the ride design itself was a hit, and Imagineer Marc Davis felt that creating
a spiritual successor to the ride for Disney World would be an opportunity to improve on
everything he felt was wrong with Pirates and make it even better.
This new attraction, rather than focusing on pirates, would instead focus on the wild west.
It was called the Western River Expedition, and had it come to fruition it would have
been part of a project called Thunder Mesa Mountain, which would have been four interwoven
attractions in one elaborate space.
The Expedition indoor boat ride would have been the main draw, featuring a run in with
banditos, a bank robbery in the town of Dry Gulch, a western musical number, and a meeting
with native americans.
The ride was even designed to cross paths with the Walt Disney World Railroad, which
would be passing through the show building briefly, similar to the way the People Mover
and Space Mountain intersect today.
It would have been large, in order to portray the vast scope of the west, which meant it
would have required an even larger show building than anything built before it.
In order to hide that building however, the space would be built to resemble a western mesa.
It wouldn’t have just been for show either, because plans for the mesa also included a
log flume ride, a runaway mine train ride, and a walking trail.
It’s almost hard to classify the scope of a project like this.
You can’t really call it an attraction considering the mesa was planned to include multiple rides,
yet at the same time Disney had never seen rides so tightly woven together before.
It was as if it was going to be a land and an attraction all at the same time.
So what happened?
Well, Disney decided early into development to put the project on hold to focus on answering
the most common question guests were asking Disney at the time: Where was Pirates of the Caribbean?
The attraction was wildly popular on the west coast, and so guests were confused as to how
The Magic Kingdom could open without it.
With the lack of the ride being the number one complaint, Disney decided to quickly put
together a shortened version of Pirates for Adventureland.
While on hold it was proposed that the runaway mine train ride be split off from the Thunder
Mesa project and built as its own attraction.
This idea worked out, however even that standalone attraction was put on hold after Pirates was
complete because Disney wanted to instead build a ride based on an old Walt idea for
a futuristic version of the Matterhorn.
The ride was called Space Mountain.
Eventually though by the end of the decade the standalone ride would get the go-ahead,
we would get that runaway train experience
with The Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
As for the Western River Expedition and the rest of Thunder Mesa, the project was eventually
dropped due to a number of reasons.
For one, the gas shortages in the 70’s resulted in a decline in attendance that forced Disney
to be more economical with their spending.
On top of that by the end of the decade Disney was well underway in the development of EPCOT
Center, which would ultimately prove to be an expensive project that would balloon up
to 1.4 billion dollars.
Lastly, by 1977 the lead Imagineer on the project, Marc Davis would retire, leaving
the ride without its head cheerleader.
So, while it wasn’t really the guest’s fault that this massive interwoven set of
attractions ultimately didn’t get built, I can’t help but wonder: What would have
happened if the demand for Pirates wasn’t so high in Disney World?
Would the project have gone forward?
Would Thunder Mesa Mountain have been everything it promised?
I guess we’ll never know, but it’s fun to imagine.