Ok, here's the story, courtesy of Jim Hill. I have confirmed this account with several people who were there and involved at the time.
Okay. In order to properly appreciate this story, you have to understand that, while WDW visitors may have loved the Magic Kingdom's "20,000 Leagues Under the Seas" ride, the park's operations staff absolutely HATED that attraction. Why? Because the subs were a maintenance nightmare. Each year, the ops crew would have to pour tens of thousands of dollars (and devote hundreds of hours of back-breaking labor) into the upkeep on that attraction. They'd spend weeks scraping scum out of the bottom of the lagoon, repainting the coral, repairing the fish, etc. And they had just grown tired of dealing with this annual headache.
So - when Disney's CEO Michael Eisner put out the word out in the summer of 1994 that the theme parks really had to start toeing the line, cost-wise - WDW ops staff finally saw their chance. By shutting down this single Fantasyland attraction, they could automatically save the company beaucoup bucks (as well as shine in Team Disney Burbank's eyes for moving so quickly to honor Eisner's wishes), not to mention putting an end to their enormous annual maintenance headache forever.
What these WDW ops guys hadn't counted on was that the public would get so upset when they found out that "20K" had quickly and quietly been closed back in September 1994. Within weeks of the attraction's closure, calls and letters began pouring in to company headquarters in Burbank - insisting that Disney immediately re-open this Fantasyland favorite.
Of course, the news of this uproar didn't sit well with WDW ops staff. Here they had finally found a way to close "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and they intended to keep this Fantasyland ride closed. No matter they had to do.
So they were ready in early 1995 - when then-president of the Walt Disney Company Michael Ovitz came through the Walt Disney World resort on a corporate familiarization trip. Of course, while Ovitz was touring the Magic Kingdom, he brought up all the guests' complaints about "20K" being closed. In response to this, the ops staff insisted that they had only shut down this Fantasyland attraction because the ride was in such awful shape. Not to mention being unsafe.
Ovitz then said "Well, I'd still like to personally take a look at the attraction. Judge for myself whether or not the ride can be repaired and then re-opened." The WDW ops staff said "Well - okay, Mr. Ovitz. But we'll have to do this early tomorrow morning before the other guests enter the Magic Kingdom."
Which is why the following morning at 7 a.m. Mike Ovitz found himself standing in the queue at "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" as a sub that was loudly belching smoke came rumbling up to the dock. The Disney Company President then climbed down the stairs and found a quarter inch of water sloshing around in the bottom of the boat. When Mike pointed this out, the WDW ops staff said "Well, you have to understand that a lot of our subs are over 20 years old, Mr. Ovitz. So many of them have developed small pinhole leaks over time."
The sub then lurched away from the dock and took Ovitz & the ops crew on a somewhat jerky trip around the "20K" ride track, with the attraction's soundtrack barely audible through the ship's crackling loudspeakers. As you might imagine, once the boat pulled up to the dock, Michael quickly climbed out of the mildewed interior. He then turned to WDW's ops staff and told them that they had made the right decision. That - given the shape that "20K" was currently in - the safest and smartest thing to do with this Fantasyland attraction was keep it closed. Permanently.
Now I don't have to tell you smart people that WDW's ops staff had sandbagged Ovitz. That they had deliberately picked out the "20K" sub that was in the worst possible mechanical shape for him to ride in. That they recruited a ride operator that they could trust to give Michael the roughest ride imaginable. That they had even thrown a few buckets of water down into the bottom of the boat to simulate a pinhole leak. All in an effort to leave Ovitz with the impression that WDW's subs were beyond salvaging
