June 4 - The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Ride

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On this day, in 1999, the first dark ride to feature the creations of AA Milne, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, began bouncing guests through the Hundred Acre Wood in Fantasyland of the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. As the popularity of the Winnie the Pooh characters continued to grow throughout the Seventies, plans were made to create a ride at Disneyland that featured them.  However, when a newly rejuvenated Fantasyland opened in 1983, the tubby little cubby was conspicuously absent. So were any explanations. A few years later, when the new area of Mickey’s Toontown was being mapped out, plans were again made for a Pooh ride. Guests would sit in honeypots they could spin like teacups as they travelled through scenes from the films. Toontown opened in 1988 and, once again, Pooh and friends were nowhere to be found. The area allotted for the attraction (as well as the ride vehicle design) morphed into Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin, which opened in 1994. It would be another five years before Pooh received his due and it would happen in Florida, not California.

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In order to make room for the Pooh ride in the Magic Kingdom's Fantasyland, something else had to go. That something turned out to be Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. The removal of Mr. Toad also meant that cast members could no longer backhandedly tell guests to go to hell by suggesting they experience the Wild Ride (in one of the final scenes of that attraction, Mr. Toad did indeed descend into Hades). Both the ride and the insult can be considered minor losses. The Pooh ride does pay tribute to Mr. Toad however. Eagle eyed riders can spot a portrait of him in the attraction handing a deed to Owl (in other words, passing the proverbial torch in a legal and aboveboard manner). All that doesn't mean there wasn't plenty of controversy over closing the classic attraction at the time, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find terribly many people who wouldn't agree that the new ride is an improvement.

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The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh has several design elements that make it a unique dark ride. First is the inclusion of actual pages from the original A.A. Milne stories. Some are painted on the walls and some are projections. It's the ones that are projections that make for some cool effects. For instance, in the Blustery Day section, it appears that the words are being blown right off the page as each individual ride vehicle goes by. The ride vehicles themselves are probably the best innovation, though. In most dark rides, you sit in a honeypot (or mine car or caterpillar) and get ferried past sets and moving figures and the like. There might be some quick turns, but it's essentially a flat ride. In the Pooh dark ride, you get immersed in the story a whole lot more than that. Each individual vehicle is set up so that, say, when Tigger starts bouncing alongside you, your honeypot starts bouncing along the track. And when the river creeps out of its bed and floods everything, your honeypot starts rocking like it was caught up in the current.

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In 2003, Disneyland finally got their own version of the Pooh ride, but again it came with controversy. Real estate in the California park is at a premium and, once again, park officials knew that something was going to have to disappear to make room for the new attraction. Fantasyland didn't offer any options but there was a potential space over in Critter Country. This time the classic attraction that was doomed to be sacrificed was the Country Bear Jamboree. Even though a group of guests tried to band together to save the Bears, the shows low attendance figures doomed it to extinction. Just like Mr. Toad, though, the Jamboree isn't completely gone. Eagle eyed guest can spot the mounted heads of Melvin the Moose, Buff the Buffalo and Max the Buck in the ride (although they are technically the non-Animatronic heads that used to sit in the Mile Long Bar, not the heads from the actual show). Also note that the same mechanism that was used to lower Teddi Barra from the ceiling in Jamboree now bobs Pooh up and down over a whirlpool of honey. Besides some of the scenes being in a different order from the Magic Kingdom version (and stage a little differently), the ride vehicles in California are shaped like beehives rather than honeypots.

Hong Kong Disneyland and Shanghai Disneyland also have their own Pooh rides, opening in 2005 and 2016 respectively. They are essentially the same as the Magic Kingdom attraction. No controversy was connected with either of the Asian versions since they opened with their parks and therefore didn't need to displace anything else.