For those of you who have wandered through Fantasyland on a hot summer day,
looking for a decent place to sit and enjoy your popcorn or turkey leg, then you know the
despair and disappointment of realizing there are none. But perhaps some of you have wandered close
enough to the Matterhorn to find this peaceful oasis…you immediately fall in love with it,
not just because it has plenty of shaded tables and seating…but because this little corner of the
park is surprisingly serene for being so close to the major pedestrian arteries of the park.
You look around and marvel at the quaint surroundings, lush blooming flowers,
large shade trees, and of course the whole thing is surrounded by a beautiful green pond.
Not to mention, every few minutes you get great views of the Disneyland Monorail winding
its way around Tomorrowland and Fantasyland. Maybe you’re a frequent visitor to this little
seating area. Some of you take for granted its placement, assuming Disneyland installed this
pier over the water simply because they needed a nice place for people to relax.
But the truth isn’t so exact. You may be surprised to hear, this pier used to be the loading
area of a Fantasyland ride that lasted about 3 decades. And it was called The Motorboat Cruise.
To tell you the story of this attraction, I have to take you back to the year 1955,
just after Disneyland opened its gates for the first time. The date is July 20th, and the place: Tomorrowland.
A new attraction had opened at Disneyland, it wasn’t quite ready for
the park’s grand opening on the 17th, much to Walt Disney’s chagrin, they had to delay it.
The attraction was called the Tomorrowland Boats, and it was little more than a lagoon
that pre-dated the placement of the submarine voyage lagoon. Guests boarded these plain-looking
boats near the entrance to Autopia, and you could navigate a little gasoline-powered vehicle between
the islands in the lagoon, eventually having to make your way back to the dock when you got
bored…which would be very soon after leaving it. The Tomorrowland Boats had many mechanical issues
and the boats would break down frequently, stranding people in the middle of the lagoon.
Cast members would have to drive out on a small craft and tow the boats back to the dock.
In an effort to improve the ride and make it more attractive and easier for cast members to operate,
they decided to close the attraction within a month after it had opened, and then proceeded
to upgrade it. When the lagoon re-opened on August 16th, 1955 it featured new boats with fiberglass
tailfin designs created by Bruce Bushman, and the ride was now called “Phantom Boats”. The new boats
had a re-worked engine that was air-cooled to keep them from overheating as the old ones did,
however, this didn’t matter since the engines were enclosed in a small space at the rear of the boat.
The engine compartment would heat up, preventing the engine from cooling itself.
So the lids to the compartments were removed, leaving the engines exposed to the elements,
but there were more problems than that…due to the inefficient design of the propellers,
the engines often over-revved during use, adding wear and increasing the engine’s heat.
So the boats were modified to allow a cast member to ride with the guests to provide aid when the
engine began to overheat or even breakdown. There were 14 boats in total, this meant the
ride would have to be staffed by 14 cast members for two shifts per day, not to mention the
employees working at the dock to manage the load and unload of the guests. The costs of operation
on this attraction were becoming astronomical, and the problem of breakdowns still wasn’t solved.
So by the end of 1955, the ride closed again. Imagineers were at work re-designing the boat
ride to emulate driving a fan boat like the ones used in the Florida everglades. An advertisement
for the new attraction was placed out front of the dock and they even built a test vehicle to
try out the idea. But there were too many issues with the concept, so by mid-1956, the phantom
boats returned to Tomorrowland, offering their mechanical troubles to park guests of all ages.
By the end of that year, Walt had had enough of the ride’s issues and requested that Admiral Joe Fowler
lead a team, to redesign and reconstruct a better version of it.
This is where Imagineer Bob Gurr comes into the story. Fowler asked Bob to design the vehicles
to look like speedboats, using the elongated bow to increase legroom for the passengers.
Since the boats themselves couldn’t be elongated,
Bob simply rearranged the engine compartment and moved the pilot seats further back.
Meanwhile, the ride would be relocated a few hundred feet north in Fantasyland to free up
space in Tomorrowland for potential expansion with attractions that were actually futuristic,
compared to the modern-looking boats that Bob was designing.
The ride opened in 1957 as The Motorboat Cruise. To create a more consistent ride time, the boats
were placed on a track, similar to what you see on Pirates of the Caribbean today, where there
is a big rail on either side of the boat, just beneath the surface of the water. This allows
the boat to go in one direction without deviating from a predetermined course. But to allow people
the feeling of being able to steer the boat, the two rails were spaced far apart so there
was a bit of wiggle room for riders. But this feature in itself was a problem from the get-go.
This is because the boats were triangular-shaped; basically, the bow was pointed and had a wheel in
the front acting as a bumper against the rails of the course, and the stern was wide with a wheel on
either side serving the same purpose, this meant if a person was not properly steering the boat, it
would drive sideways through the course, rolling against one of the rails and slowing it down.
Another boat behind it would catch up to it and try to go around, but the riders didn’t know the
hidden track wasn’t wide enough for two boats, so instead, the two boats would get wedged and stuck.
Cast Members were lucky if the boats got wedged close to the mainland because they could easily
push them apart…but if the boats got wedged closer to the islands or in the big open lagoon, then the
employee would have to jump into the water and rescue the boats…and according to cast members,
there were no rubber waders to put on, so they had to deal with getting their costume wet and soaked.
Some areas of the water were deep enough that the water came up to the employee’s chest.
Furthermore, having the propeller in the front of the boat created
an unusual strain on the engine since the bow changed direction before the stern…but
despite all these issues, the ride proved to be a success, especially
since riders had amazing views of the Autopia and Tomorrowland’s short-lived Viewliner train.
By the year 1959, Disneyland underwent its most extensive expansion since the park opened.
Walt Disney was removing the Viewliner and replacing it with the new ALWEG Monorail system,
as well as the Matterhorn Bobsleds and the Submarine Voyage Thru Liquid Space.
Other attractions that had opened within a year from the expansion were also being
advertised as part of it, such as the new Alice in Wonderland ride, the expanded Fantasyland Autopia,
and the newly re-worked Tomorrowland Autopia. Because of all the changes to the Autopias
and the addition of the Monorail…the Motorboat Cruise was also re-routed and its capacity was
doubled when they created two separate tracks for the ride. A new high capacity loading
dock with automatic gates to stop the boats was constructed at the foot of the monorail track.
And to solve the issue of boats getting wedged together, the track was redesigned.
The final version resembled what you see at “it’s a small world” today,
where each boat has a wheel positioned at both the bow and stern of the underside.
The wheels extended into a trough carved out of the bed of the canal. This meant the boats
followed the exact same path and were kept in line, negating the ability to steer the boats.
Also, to prevent unnecessary wear on the engines, the propeller was placed at the stern
and was always spinning at a constant speed, the gas pedal you pressed down on was just as fake as
the steering wheel. And to create excitement for the younger pilots as they pretend to navigate,
imagineers installed artificial rapids on the waterways as well as obstacles
like boulders, and bridge supports. The attraction continued for 3 decades
unchanged…but once the 1990’s came around, the little boat ride couldn’t compete for popularity
with the other exciting adventures at Disneyland, the new generations coming to the park weren’t
going to waste precious time on this ride when they could be waiting in line for Star Tours,
Haunted Mansion or any other popular park attraction. So, in an effort to draw children
onto the ride, it was…“re-themed” …to “Motorboat Cruise to Gummi Glen”
…a storyline based on the popular children’s show, the Gummi Bears. As strange as THAT sounds…the
even stranger thing was that the retheme consisted of plywood cutouts painted as the characters.
For the next two years, the ride suffered a slow and agonizing death,
it’s maintenance budget declined along with a few other attractions in order to offset the
costs of construction on Mickey’s Toontown. And in anticipation of the opening of the new land,
Disney finally decided to close the Motorboat Cruise for good in January of 1993.
The massive footprint of this ride was too large and expensive to fully remove,
so minor disassembly of the loading dock was done in order to turn the pier and
its surrounding pond into Fantasia Gardens…a wonderful place to relax and take a breather.
The eastern side of the pond was reduced in size by the year 1997 for the construction of a new
and expensive tiered viewing area for the new nighttime parade spectacular: Light Magic…
...which barely lasted one season. Ironically, the massive viewing area constructed next to the old
Motorboat cruise would remain even to this day. In the early 2000’s the Motorboat Cruise pier at
Fantasia Gardens was used as a smoking area since it was off the beaten path of a major walkway.
When the park’s last smoking area was moved to Big Thunder Trail, the pier was once again
useful as it now provides a seating area to eat your tasty treats from the nearby snack stands.
I know some of you are probably wondering if the old motorboat
cruise was chemically treated like the submarine lagoon was,
but actually the waterways of the Motorboat Cruise have always been natural fresh water,
a large flow pipe connected the waterways to Storybookland which in turn connects to Big
Thunder Pond and the Rivers of America and so on. The future days of the Motorboat Cruise dock and
its surrounding Fantasia Gardens are numbered. The pond takes up nearly an acre of space, not
accounting for the dried-up canals of the old ride that wind beneath the Autopia and Monorail tracks.
In time, the future will reveal the fate of the Motorboat Cruise…the
once peaceful “B” ticket attraction that allowed boat pilots of all ages and sizes to journey on
a delightful adventure through this corner of the park, previously unreachable by foot.
Many adults remember with child-like fondness…that this is the first and also in some cases, the ONLY
boat they’ve ever driven. We can all appreciate this facet of the park, one of many…which no
longer exists…and admire what it was like to visit Disneyland and have the time…to take things slow.
And when the day comes that the final remnants of the attraction are removed,
I feel pleased that at least with this video, those little boats will continue to sail on...
...through the memories and imagination of us all.