- [Narrator] Epilepsy warning
for flashing lights and colors.
You may be looking at the title of this video
thinking that it's clickbait.
However, Disneyland did indeed destroy
one of their biggest attractions completely by accident,
forcing them to pretty much rebuild it from scratch.
But what exactly happened to this coaster?
Let's find out today on Theme Park Crazy.
(upbeat music)
Let's start off with a little background
about Space Mountain.
The story of this coaster
dates all the way back to the 1960s.
Shortly after Disneyland's opening in 1955,
Walt Disney was unhappy
with how the Tomorrowland section of the park turned out.
Budget constraints forced him to rely on sponsors
to fund the land's development.
This resulted in such forgettable attractions
as the Kaiser Aluminum Hall of Fame,
the Monsanto Hall of Chemistry,
and the Crane Plumbing Company's Bathroom of Tomorrow.
And, of course, I'm serious.
The latter even had a valve turning ceremony
that Walt Disney himself attended.
Walt didn't have a problem with working with sponsors,
but he felt the obvious product placement
greatly interfered with this vision of Tomorrowland,
so in the early 1960s,
he started thinking of ways to improve the land.
Looking at the recent success of the Matterhorn Bobsleds,
Walt was interested in building another large scale coaster.
Eventually, he approached his imagineers
with the idea of a massive scale rollercoaster theme
to space.
This proposed attraction named Space Port
would be an indoor/outdoor coaster hybrid
much like the Matterhorn.
However, the project was canned
due to technical limitations at the time.
And after Walt's death in 1966,
his imagineers refocused their attention
on the upcoming Disney World Project in Florida.
Eventually, Disney World's first theme park,
the Magic Kingdom, opened in 1971.
Its layout was much like that of Disneyland
and it too featured a Tomorrowland section.
Unfortunately, this Tomorrowland was also criticized
for its lack of exciting attractions.
In fact, the only rides it debuted with
were the Skyway and the Grand Prix Raceway.
What the land and the park as a whole needed
was a major A-list attraction,
more specifically, it needed a big thrill ride
to appeal to teenagers and young adults.
While a copy of the Matterhorn was originally considered,
spatial limitations drew imagineers
back to the scrapped Space Port project.
The rollercoaster would be redesigned
to be entirely indoors.
After years of construction and planning,
the new ride would make its debut to the public in 1975.
The coaster was an instant success,
and it led Disney to build a second Space Mountain
in California,
though there would be a few differences
with the one in Florida.
While the Magic Kingdom's Space Mountain
featured two separate tracks,
spatial limitations forced the Disneyland version
to stick with one track.
Supposedly to make up for the reduced capacity,
the trains were designed to see two people per row
as opposed to the Magic Kingdom's single file seating.
Moreover, the presentation of the ride area
was far grander than the one at Disney World.
This coaster pretty much had its own pavilion,
complete with a stage for live performances,
a restaurant, and an arcade.
Perhaps the most fondly remembered part of the ride area
was the initial speed ramp that was part of the queue.
This covered speed ramp added anticipation to the ride
and is still a great source of nostalgia
for longtime fans.
The new project would cost a whopping $20 million to build,
which was more than the 17 million it cost
to build the entire park in the '50s.
In the end, though, the new ride was worth it,
drawing a new attendance record of 185,000 people
in just three days.
Over the years,
the coaster would operate as it was
without many changes.
That was until the mid 1990s,
when the ride would undergo
its most significant alterations.
Around that time period,
park officials were looking to seriously renovate
Tomorrowland.
The area's vision of the future from the 1960s
had become dated.
At the same time,
they didn't wanna spend too much money on refurbishments.
After the disappointing opening of Euro Disneyland,
Disney was hurting financially and was looking to cut costs.
After Paul Pressler's appointment
as Disneyland's head executive in 1994,
efforts were made to save money.
The desire to update Tomorrowland
at the lowest cost possible
proved to be a huge problem in the mid to late '90s,
as quick fixes and penny pinching became the norm.
In addition to costly classic attractions
like the PeopleMover and Submarine Voyage closing,
other existing attractions were given makeovers
to save money on new big ground up rides.
One ride that was updated was Space Mountain.
Around 1995,
although some sources say it was 1994,
FedEx took over sponsorship of the ride from RCA.
Soon afterwards in 1996,
several changes were implemented to the ride experience.
The queue area and ride station were revamped,
adding a robotic FedEx worker
and several television monitors.
The monitors presented a compilation of skits
that parodied television programs
including sci-fi themed commercials, a weather report,
and of course, a FedEx ad.
A new pre-show was edit as well,
which was pretty much a standard ride safety video.
Around this time,
the fan favorite speed ramp was also removed,
reportedly due to concerns about guest traffic.
These changes, though were minor,
compared to the ride experience.
For the renovation,
the coaster received newly-designed trains.
While they largely resembled the old ones,
these vehicles had a distinctive new feature:
a set of speakers on each seat to provide onboard audio.
This system was introduced
a year earlier in 1995 at Euro Disneyland,
then renamed Disneyland Paris.
That year,
they premiered their own rendition of Space Mountain
named Space Mountain: From the Earth to the Moon
at the park's Discoveryland area.
Disney collaborated with Dutch manufacturer Vekoma
on the attraction.
The ride was not only much more intense
with a launch and three inversions,
but it also featured a first of its kind
onboard audio system.
Through the use of speakers on each seat,
a soundtrack was able to be perfectly synced up
with the ride's layout.
This ride, much like the original Space Mountain,
was an instant success
and many credited with saving Disneyland Paris
from going under.
It's worth noting though that with Paris's Space Mountain,
Disney spared no expense,
as they were aiming to boost park attendance
after a dismal underperformance.
In fact, the company spent over $90 million
on the new coaster.
Of course, with an ongoing effort
to cut costs on everything else,
California's Space Mountain makeover
received no such budget.
Aside from the new audio system,
no major changes were made to the ride,
and the layout was exactly the same,
with the same track.
To its credit,
the new onboard audio was very well received.
Specifically, the soundtrack was a collaboration
between composer Aaron Richard
and show producer Eddie Sotto.
They, along with famous guitarist Dick Dale,
created a soundtrack that blended sci-fi
and surfing elements.
Sure, the pairing sounded as odd
as mixing Metallica and Lou Reed,
but as odd as it seemed, the end result was amazing.
The soundtrack was a perfect fit for the attraction
and park fans still praise it today.
With a soundtrack in place,
Space Mountain was given a new burst of flavor.
On the downside,
it was soon given a new paint job in 1997.
The idea was to give it a similar paint scheme
to Paris's Discoveryland.
But instead of an interesting steampunk design
like the one in Paris,
the one in California got an ugly brownish color scheme
that was more outhouse than outer space.
Nevertheless, guests still love the right itself,
and it continued to operate unchanged
for the next few years.
Things were looking good for a while,
but in the year 2000,
the ride suffered a notable accident.
On August 2nd of that year,
a wheel assembly came loose from one of the ride vehicles.
This gave guests on board a sudden jolt,
as the ride reportedly came to a violent stop.
All nine passengers on board were sent to the hospital,
though none were badly injured.
A few more years went by,
and then in 2003, a troubling discovery was made.
On April 10th of that year,
park officials suddenly decided to close the ride
out of nowhere.
Usually, Disney announces ride refurbishments in advance
in order to let guests plan ahead.
But in this case,
Space Mountain's problems were clearly glaring enough
to suddenly shut down the attraction.
Shortly thereafter,
the park announced that the ride would be closed
for two years,
which caught many park fans off guard.
This was an unusually long amount of time
to close down a ride for,
so what happened?
Apparently, the ride had become structurally compromised
due to the vehicles.
The problem was that the onboard audio system
made the train substantially heavier.
Meanwhile, the track and support structure
were the exact same as they were in the 1970s.
This old track was now tasked with the burden
of having to carry ride vehicles
that were way heavier than what it was designed to handle.
Slowly but surely,
the structure was straining and struggling
under the weight of these vehicles.
Moreover, the ride was apparently so far beyond repair
that Disney was forced
to pretty much rebuild the ride from scratch,
the whole thing.
As fan site ultimateorlando.com put it,
"Without ripping out the entire track
and installing a brand new version,
the metal was set to fatigue
and might even have broken with riders aboard it.
The rollercoaster closed before such a tragedy happened."
So yes, Disney accidentally destroyed
one of their biggest attractions
and nearly turned it into a death trap in the process.
When it gets to the point
that you have to rebuild an entire attraction,
you know you've seriously messed up.
Thankfully, Disney was more than willing
to make the necessary changes to fix this ride.
Vekoma, who had worked on Space Mountain in Paris,
was brought on board to provide the track
and imagineers worked around the clock
to get Space Mountain back in operation.
Finally, in 2005, the rollercoaster reopened to the public.
A new set of trains were provided
with the onboard audio still intact,
though unfortunately,
the original soundtrack was phased out.
More importantly, though,
the track was properly engineered
to handle the weight of the trains.
Today, Space Mountain remains in operation
as one of the resort's top thrill rides.
Unlike Rocket Rods, this story does have a happy ending,
but when it comes to Disney theme park mistakes,
there are still plenty of them to talk about.
If you have an idea for a future video,
feel free to comment down below
and I may feature your comment in that video.
Now it's time for the comment shout out program.
This is where I take five random comments
from my previous video and read them out.
These comments are from my video
on Disney's Rocket Rods ride.
Doug says, "I never knew how much I wanted
a Living with the Land rapids ride until now!"
Gitner says, "I love the Rocket Rods!
One of my grandfather and I's favorite rides when it ran."
Chris C says, "This video absolutely nailed it.
The ride itself was actually fun,
but not worth more than a half hour wait.
And it broke down so much
that in around five visits to Disneyland when it was open,
I only rode it twice.
And yeah, the fact that it destroyed
the PeopleMover infrastructure was a really bad thing.
They could have easily rethemed the PeopleMover
to go with the retro future look,
added something cool in the SuperSpeed Tunnel,
and it would've been successful
and still an operation to this day."
Liam Collinson says,
"I kind of wish that if Disney had a cool idea like this,
that they would not bother until there is enough money
instead of cheaping out.
It feels like when money is short,
everything becomes half arsed."
And Miranda Turner says,
"Rocket Rods was my absolute favorite ride.
And the next time I went to Disneyland after it was closed,
I was so beyond devastated."
If you wanna see your words in my next video,
leave a comment down below
and it may be selected.
Please note though that inflammatory or spam comments
will not be read.
Thank you all so much.
And if you wanna support me on Patreon,
you can do so once again at the link in the description.
Thanks for watching, everyone.
Feel free to like, share, and subscribe.
If you wanna follow me on social media,
you can check out the links I put in the description.
This is Theme Park Crazy,
and I'll see you all next time.
(upbeat music)