Why were these rides removed from the parks

[icarus]

Does anyone know why the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Ride and the Sky Ride (don't know what Disney called them) were taken down? I have been wondering about the 20,000 . . . ride for years, but since looking at a recent thread showing older images of Walt Disney World, I noticed that there was a Sky Ride as well. It seems to me that the Sky Ride would still be pretty popular, as many parks still have these in service, and our kids love them. The 20,000 . . . ride looks like it was pretty awesome as well. It seems like it may have been pretty hot inside the sub at times, but definitely a interesting ride.

I also remember when the Mr Toad ride was around, and then taken down, people complained about it. I've also heard similar rumors about the Small World ride, almost being dismantled, with park visitors expressing their concern with this as well.

Just wondering if anyone knows what the reason was to dismantle those rides?

 

[mdhkitten]

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was pretty boring IMO, and I love the classics like Carousel of Progress. I think it costs too much money to keep up some of these attractions (not to mention the cost of staffing them) that just aren't that popular any longer. It seems that there was talk at one point of doing something else where 20,000 Leagues was. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride was replaced with the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, but Mr. Toad is still part of the ride.

 

[Bob P]

Try here:

http://waltdatedworld.bravepages.com/id26.htm

 

[Shorty82]

The Skyway was removed due to the cost of maintainance and for safety, the only way to evacuate in an emergency would be to bring fire trucks into the middle of the park. No Disney park has Skyways anymore and haven't for years.

I don't know why they removed 20,000 Leagues or Mr. Toad. It wasn't because of maintaince costs seeing how Disneyland still has them (though 20,000 was refurbed into a Nemo ride).

I've never heard of them even thinking about removing it's a small world. I hope they don't, to many of the original classics have been removed as it is.

 

[CanadianGuy]

IASW in DisneyLAND will have the water canal dismantled and replaced in 2008. This will result in the ride being closed for rehab for most, if not all of the year. They will also be replacing the boats during this rehab.

I have never heard any credible information that IASW-Orlando was ever under any threat of closure in recent memory.

Knox

 

[DarkwingDuck1979]

20,000 Leagues was incredibly costly to maintain. I've heard that was the biggest reason why they nixed it. Other factors include low hourly capacity and no wheelchair access for the submarines. Where the bottom line is concerned, costly rides like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea are always the first to go.

The Skyway also had maintenance and capacity issues. But the biggest issue was safety, especially after a handful of accidents involving it.

They're both gone. And Fantasyland is a mere shadow of it's former self.

 

[Brian_WDW74]

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was pretty boring IMO, and I love the classics like Carousel of Progress. I think it costs too much money to keep up some of these attractions (not to mention the cost of staffing them) that just aren't that popular any longer.

FYI: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was one of the most popular attractions in MK up until the day it closed, and its popularity had nothing to do with its closing.

 

[Got Quattro?]

IN the mid 90's, there were some very public problems with safety.

There were 3 or 4 deaths inside 2 years at other NON DISNEY parks with similar type rides. Rising maintenence costs and insurance costs forced the shut down. In fact, the last 2 years, it was rarely running. If a fat uy farted in fantasy land, the and it got too windy, they had to shut it down.

20,000 leagues, along with what was posted above...the boats leaked. They needed to be replcd and the cost was not worth it.

 

[mdhkitten]

I found the following site and it's very interesting, especially the photos of the subs after shutdown:

http://www.20kride.com/home.html

 

[La2kw]

20,000 Leagues was incredibly costly to maintain. I've heard that was the biggest reason why they nixed it. Other factors include low hourly capacity and no wheelchair access for the submarines. Where the bottom line is concerned, costly rides like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea are always the first to go.

The Skyway also had maintenance and capacity issues. But the biggest issue was safety, especially after a handful of accidents involving it.

They're both gone. And Fantasyland is a mere shadow of it's former self.

Disneyland's subs were closed for years for the same reasons. It finally reopened last summer with a Nemo overlay. Wheelchair access was resolved with an alternate experience. The waits were as long as 3 hours over the summer. Popularity was not a problem, but Disney was more concerned with cost cutting.

Unfortunately, WDW demolished their lagoon, so there's no hope of it ever reopening there.

A welcome sight at Disneyland.

 

[DarkwingDuck1979]

It's so nice to see submarines still on the go at Disneyland. They're not as majestic as the Disney World subs, but I'm glad they're back either way.

 

[Shorty82]

The Skyway also had maintenance and capacity issues. But the biggest issue was safety, especially after a handful of accidents involving it.

Actually the Skyway was very safe and the accidents had nothing to do with the closures. The only accidents on the Skyway happened either due to people being where they shouldn't be or by someone working at circumventing the safety systems.

I can only think of two accidents on the Skyways. One at Disneyland where somebody climbed out of the bucket and fell into a tree. It was impossible to fall out of the buckets, he had to climb which he later admitted to doing. The second was at the Magic Kingdom when a CM was cleaning the platform inside of a CM only area and got knocked out when somebody started the ride unexpectedly.

It was the cost, maintainance and capacity issues along with the lack of wheelchair access (WC users had to take a round trip) that caused Disney to shut them down in all their parks.

 

[flyinglizard]

icarus- Always keep in mind that the parks are a business and they are expected to make profits. There were several reasons the subs closed in Disneyland- and they all became a problem at about the same time...

First, new laws regarding pollution emisions came into effect. The subs were deisel powered and had no modern pollutant reduction systems. Plus they were costly to operate and there was no way to retrofit other cleaner power plants.

Probably the biggest factor though was a law that was, I think from Orange County, that when attractions underwent a major rehab, the new version had to comply with then recent laws regarding equal access for persons with disabilities. There was no way a wheel chair was going down the steps of the subs, and at the time, no one wanted to commit to making an investment of the needed magnitude to make the attraction compliant with all the new ordinances. Budgets for park attractions were being slashed, even for those already under construction. It was more important that the top exec to make an absurd bonus.

I do not know why the subs in WDW were closed, but I would guess the contributing factors were similar to the ones in DL.

The Skyway had similar problems. To work smoothly, Skyway needed to run continuously. Stopping the cables presented mechanical problems, so as the new laws came into effect in regards to people with disablities, everyone realized that this "ride" was not one that would be able to be stopped every so often for disabled access.

But an even more serious problem that received almost NO public press was the issue of "projectiles". There had been many complaints about youths spitting from the gondolas. There had also been reports of people dropping things onto people below. A "reckless prank by a teen" could easily turn into a danger and further, into a liability if someone on the ground was struck by an object tossed from the sky.

You always hear that the Skyway was closed because a CM at WDW died when he held on to a gondola and fell to his death. However, although this excuse was spotlighted in the press, the decision to end the attraction had been made before this ever happened.

I'm sorry I don't remember more exact details, but the important thing to understand is that both these attractions were engineered and built in the 50's, and that was a totally different time. Laws change, park guests change, new mechanical technologies evolve, and attractions like these become dinosaurs.

Now... on to "Mr. Toads Wild Ride" at WDW! The attraction was based on the Disney short, "Wind in the Willows" which was a relatively minor Disney hit. Back then, there was a major push to make Winnie the Pooh, a bigger merchandise money maker than MICKEY MOUSE! I know, you are thinking I'm nuts, but I heard a top merchandise exec say it and she was even excited about it! Although very popular, W. T. Pooh never reached that plateau... but the kiddies know Pooh, they didn't know the "frog"! Although I have never seen the Pooh attraction, I have seen the lines! I'm guessing that was a good corporate decision...

I hope you now have a better understanding of what really happened. It's just a business...

 

[JamesLynn]

20,000 also closed due to the fact that Disney could no longer get replacement parts for it. And it was very costly for them to make their own.

 

[Eeyore's Pal]

I have never heard a rumor of IASW closing at WDW. They just completed a 9-month rehab in 2006.

 

[goofyernmost]

IN the mid 90's, there were some very public problems with safety.

There were 3 or 4 deaths inside 2 years at other NON DISNEY parks with similar type rides. Rising maintenence costs and insurance costs forced the shut down. In fact, the last 2 years, it was rarely running. If a fat uy farted in fantasy land, the and it got too windy, they had to shut it down.

20,000 leagues, along with what was posted above...the boats leaked. They needed to be replcd and the cost was not worth it.

Not only was that remark not funny, it was also incorrect, on both counts. It did have to be shut down when it was exceptionally windy but it was lawyered out of existence due to the "possible" legal liabilities of having an over head ride with no containment precautions. They figured it was just a matter of time before someone fell from it and headed for Disney's pockets. A CM was killed while working on it, maintenance, if I remember, but that was just a coincidence and only served to show how easily that could happen. So in the end it was closed.

If the boats had leaked they could have been easily repaired. It was really a cost factor coupled with diesel engines and the low capacity of the ride that spelled it's end. It is a puzzlement why it was reincarnated at Disneyland but I think that DL probably has a smaller crowd in general and could handle a slow loading ride a little better.

 

[labattblue]

skyway...Provided great views, but I can understand why it was removed.

20k...Completely outdated and slow loader. I had no problem with them getting rid of it, just the fact that they are doing nothing with the space other than a playground on a very small part of the 20k footprint.

Toad...carnival dark ride that was nothing special. Never understood why anyone would be upset that they used the space for something better.

 

[cabanafrau]

Thanks for the question & the discussion. I have seen this discussed here before, but I did learn some things here that I haven't known before.

Many thanks to La2kw for the pics of the Disneyland subs. It is cool to see, although I agree w/ a PP, they don't seem quite as magical?-looking as the originals -- although I would dearly love to be able to take my own children for a ride on them in WDW!

 

[SueM in MN]

Lack of handicapped access always gets mentioned in these threads, but has very little (probably nothing) to do with anything being closed. The ADA does not require that every older attraction be made accessible, just things that are technically feasible to do.
And, even then there are some loopholes; many of the renovations are considered 'cosmetic' and don't 'trigger' any requirements for increased accessibility.

If they were required to close down things that are not handicapped accessible, there would be no teacups, no Dumbo, no Pirates, no Swiss Family Robinson House, no Peter Pan, no Splash Mountain (among other things).

We rode on the Submarines a few times between 1987 and when they closed. They always had a long line because they were a slow loading ride with very little capacity. In the last few years, they were closed more than they were open. CMs told us the main reason they were closed was that if anything broke, parts had to be made, which was expensive and time consuming.

We rode the skyway many times and it is true that guests using wheelchairs had to make a round trip, but that didn't really affect the ride all that much. One of the things we noticed was how many CMs it took to work that attraction. There was one point near Tomorrowland where 2 CMs had to physically push the car to get it past a point. CMs on that attraction said they had a lot of back injuries because of the physical work involved in 'manhandling' the ride cars. It was another slow loading, low capacity attraction that needed a lot of CMs to run it. And, if the winds were too high or there were any thunderstorms within 10 miles, the attraction was shut down because of the potential danger of lightening strikes (again, according to CMs who worked there). Also, if it closed, there were 'extra' CMs who had no assignment until it could be opened again. So, along with all the other things people mentioned, it got to a point where it just was not godd business sense to keep it open.

 

[pixiemel]

Hi OP, thanks for asking these questions, as I have often wondered about them too! I always enjoyed those attractions and am glad to know the reasons behind them being closed!