August 5 - Adventure Thru Inner Space

Image copyright Disney

On this day, in 1967, the Adventure Thru Inner Space ride welcomed its first guests in Tomorrowland of Disneyland. A decade earlier, Walt Disney had hinted at creating an atomic themed ride for his theme park on an episode of Disneyland titled “Our Friend the Atom.” It should be noted here that the theme was along the lines of chemistry and the science of atoms rather than atomic energy or weapons. Concepts were sporadically explored and work on the attraction meandered forward until the company’s contracts to build attractions for the 1964 World’s Fair basically put all other projects on hold. Once the fair was over, the atomic ride was dusted off and approved as part of the New Tomorrowland project.

Monsanto (the company that should be reviled for many reasons today but was slightly more innocent forty years ago) already sponsored a chemistry exhibit in Tomorrowland. When they agreed to sponsor the new attraction, their Hall of Chemistry and the adjoining 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Exhibit were slated for the chopping block with that area then becoming Adventure Thru Inner Space. The ride’s name comes from the idea that guests would be shrunk down to a size smaller than an atom and would then be able to travel in the space between atoms, the inner space of everything. The shrinking was accomplished at the beginning of the ride by Monsanto’s Mighty Microscope which then beamed guests into a snowflake. After shrinking to a size which made the nucleus of an oxygen atom seem room sized, guests began growing again until they were back to normal size by the end of the attraction. A post-show area housed an exhibit of Monsanto’s modern fabric and material products (and the cast member costumes for the ride were made from Monsanto fabrics).

Image courtesy duchessofdisneyland.com

While it might be hard for today’s guests to imagine how atoms and molecules would make a fun ride, people in the late Sixties seemed to enjoy themselves. That enjoyment was helped along by a narration from the Legendary Paul Frees (who was actually kind of doing an impersonation of Orson Welles) and a jaunty tune by the Sherman Brothers, Miracles from Molecules. It also helped that, unlike the rest of Disneyland, Adventure Thru Inner Space was a free attraction, meaning you didn’t have to spend one of the tickets in your ticket book to ride it, for the first five years it was open. In 1972, Adventure was finally designated a C ticket ride and remained at that level until the ticket system disappeared in the early Eighties.

Image courtesy pinterest.com

Another advantage Adventure Thru Inner Space had was that it was the first attraction in Disneyland to use the Omnimover ride system. The Omnimover was similar to the continuous conveyor system that had been used on the Ford’s Magic Skyway Disney built for the World’s Fair with one huge improvement: individual cars could be independently rotated (or vibrated or whatever) from every other car. Attractions could now be designed with specific viewing angles on things that didn’t require major manipulations in the vehicle tracks, just twists and turns of the cars themselves. Omnimover attractions are so commonplace today, that we can no longer see the novelty in them but imagine you’re on a ride and for the first time ever, the car in front of you turns around and you’re briefly looking at the front of another guest before turning around yourself. I’m sure it was a lot more thrilling when you weren’t jaded about it.

As time went on, Adventure Thru Inner Space, like most science based things, began to look more and more dated. Monsanto ended their sponsorship deal in 1977 and all mention of them was scrubbed from the ride (except an audio line at the very end). The attraction would limp along for over eighteen years, finally closing forever on September 2, 1985. But sharp eyed guests can still catch a glimpse of it, or at least a virtual part of it, even today. Adventure was replaced by Star Tours, which opened 1987. When your StarSpeeder on that ride was diverted into a maintenance bay after taking a wrong turn, you could see the Mighty Microscope in the corner of that area. Since 2011, when Star Tours: The Adventure Continues began, you can only see the Mighty Microscope on some of the randomized journeys.  If you happen to be escaping the still-under-construction Death Star floating above Geonosis, it’s been moved there, although for what nefarious purpose we can only imagine.

January 6 - Disney-MGM Studios

Image copyright Disney

On this day, in 2008, the third Walt Disney World theme park, the Disney-MGM Studios, ceased to exist. Which sounds more dramatic than it really is. The theme park didn’t actually go anywhere, of course, it just suffered a name change to Disney's Hollywood Studios. But that is enough of an excuse to talk about a place that has become near and dear to my heart. The park opened on May 1, 1989 as a theme park, yes, but with a fully operational production studio layered on top. The concept for the park had actually started on a much smaller scale. In the mid-Eighties, Legendary Imagineer Marty Sklar had teamed up with Randy Bright with the task of creating two new pavilions for Future World in Epcot. The two lead a team that came up with plans for a health based pavilion called Wonders of Life and an entertainment pavilion known as the Great Movie Ride. When Michael Eisner became the head of the company, he looked at the Great Movie Ride and thought it might be better to make it the anchor for a third theme park. To that end, Disney signed a licensing agreement with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the Disney-MGM Studios was born, at least on paper.

Image copyright Disney

As plans for the new park grew, it was decided that included would be television and film production facilities, a functional backlot area and an auxiliary animation department to the California studio. The animation studio was the first thing to open and it promptly caused problems. MGM filed a lawsuit claiming they only agreed to a theme park and didn’t know anything about new film productions at the site. The fact that MGM wanted to open (and eventually did open) their own theme park at their hotel in Las Vegas, may have had something to do with it. Disney would file a countersuit over that theme park. In 1992 a federal judge decided that there was enough money to go around that both parks could exist. Only one still operates today, however, making the whole thing an overly expensive, not to mention pointless, spat.

Image copyright Disney

Plans for the new park were further complicated when Universal Studios announced that they were going to build a theme park in Orlando that would be similar to the one that already existed in Southern California. Construction had begun on Disney-MGM in 1987 but was accelerated in order to beat Universal’s opening by as much as possible (Universal’s actual opening was so plagued by problems it might not have mattered, but that’s a discussion for another time).

When Disney’s version of studio opened in 1989, it only had two attractions to offer guests. One was the Great Movie Ride (from the original Epcot brainstorms) and the other was the Studio Backlot Tour, which was part tram ride (through Catastrophe Canyon) and part walking tour. The Little Theme Park That Could proved to be popular, though, and it began to change in subtle ways almost immediately. Part of the backlot, New York Street, was taken off the tram tour and opened to relieve pedestrian traffic as the Streets of America. Bit by bit, pieces of the backlot tour were made into their own attractions, mainly to help with traffic control, including the theater in the Animation Courtyard area that made me love the Studios (more about that in my next post).

Image copyright Disney

The park also began expanding almost from the beginning. Star Tours debuted before the end of that first year. In 1991, the Grand Avenue area opened featuring one of my favorite attractions, Muppet*Vision 3D. The next big expansion opened in 1994 when Sunset Boulevard appeared on the map and dead ended at the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Since then all sorts of changes have happened. Actual productions stopped happening (too late to matter to MGM). The animation studio packed its bags and moved to California. The backlot tour systematically phased itself out until it was closed and the entire area was demolished to make way for an expanded Star Wars area. A Pixar street was added with the ever popular Toy Story Midway Mania ride and then even more Pixar was added as Toy Story got it's own land. And then, seventeen months ago, the Great Movie Ride itself closed its doors to make way for a new Mickey Mouse based experience.

Image copyright Disney

When the Great Movie Ride closed, the argument could be made that the Disney-MGM Studios actually did cease to exist at that point, not with the name change nine years earlier. The park has changed and evolved so much since opening day that hardly any of the original park is left. It is poised to change even more later this year with the opening of Star Wars Land (yes, I'm aware it's called Galaxy's Edge, not Star Wars Land, I'm marginal on that name) but that's okay. Change is something Walt expected his theme parks to do and I think Disney's Hollywood Studios has done the best job of embracing that change of any of them. It's gone from being a place where movies are made to being the place that brings movies to life. Will it get another name change as it moves into the future? Bob Iger once hinted as such, some really terrible names were focus grouped and then denials were made about Bob's hint, so I honestly don't know (although I'm still pulling for The Pixstar Ranch). What I do know is that the Disney-MGM Studios... I mean Disney's Hollywood Studios (some habits really do die hard) becomes more relevant and more exciting with every change.