DisneySky - COMPLETE & RESTORED

[D Hulk]

Flight to the Top of the World
E-ticket thrill dark ride

A dirigible flight sends you to a lost world in the North Pole where strange animals and great dangers await

[HEIGHT REQUIREMENT]

With advances in modern, 19th-century ballooning, new parts of the world suddenly opened up! Man was free to explore previously undiscovered corners of the globe, all from the airborne safety of rigid airships. But exploration into new places proved fraught with peril! Sailing in the sky towards the proverbial “Top of the World,” flying over the impassible glacial peaks of Mt. Helios and into the Arctic Circle, a land of great beauty and great danger awaits. Are you bold enough to take that flight?

Captain Nemo, may he rest in peace, was the first member of S.E.A. to propose this astounding Flight. He anticipated the technological destruction of modern civilization - as in Verne’s novels, Nemo basically foresaw WWI - and he hoped to locate an oasis where the greatest scientific minds could remain safe. Discovery Glacier was merely the first outpost in his quest.

Professor Blauerhimmel and his Zephyr airships

In his final days, Nemo supervised the creation of the spectacular Hyperion airship, meant to make the Arctic voyage. It proved too large for the venture. After Nemo eventually succumbed to old age, his dream unfulfilled, S.E.A.’s Professor Rudolph Blauerhimmel continued the project. Blauerhimmel constructed a fleet of smaller “Zephyr” airships, sleeker heavier-than-air vessels able to navigate the tight alpine passages due north. Only some of Blauerhimmel’s scouts who have flown ahead of us have returned. Those who have bear bizarre tales, telling of verdant oases, of monsters in the snow, of a mythical “Winter Giant” spoken of in hushed tones by the local Sami people...

Flight to the Top of the World sends guests on a fabulous mission into the inhospitable frozen norths, to a land never before seen by human eyes. This is a major headlining E-ticket dark ride built into the eastern slopes of Mt. Helios. Flight to the Top of the World boasts the immersion, scale and thrills of Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure and DisneySea’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, with an entirely new suspended version of Indy’s motion base vehicles! While Disney’s 1974 adventure film The Island at the Top of the World provides a spark of inspiration - much as it would have for Disneyland’s proposed Discovery Bay expansion - this ride is no IP adaptation, but rather a wholly original adventure the likes of which only Disney can do!

Mt. Helios’ frozen glacier and waterfall serve as weenies, instantly visible from all three of Discovery Glacier’s entries. The maroon airship Hyperion sits moored in a steampunk hangar nearby, the mighty hangar encased within slowly drifting glacial ice...This particular iconic sight comes from Tony Baxter’s Discovery Bay concept art. The hangar doors are open, providing views partway into the shed. The hangar’s distant rear, realized with rather extreme forced perspective, purportedly shows the rigid airship’s gangway and cabin. A smaller semi-rigid dirigible - one of the Jeep-sized Zephyrs which we’ll be riding in - sits at the base of its bigger brother, its gold-and-maroon balloon encased in netting. Located near the waterfall queue entrance, a ride marquee on Zephyr's envelope reads “Flight to the Top of the World” in shimmering icy fibre-optics.

Access to the Zephyrs’ secret hangar is hidden away within ice caverns accessed from behind the frozen waterfall. A few rivulets of melting water still trickle down the frozen cataracts. A rocky outcropping overhead provides a cavernous space behind the waterfall. Here in the shaded “backside of frozen water,” FastPass distribution is handled by an array of steampunk furnaces (heavily inspired by Journey to the Center of the Earth’s FastPass machines). Alongside these machines is an eternal flame and a stack of large stones like a Viking grave...this is Captain Nemo’s final resting place.

Opposite from Nemo’s memorial, encased in frost and icicles, the nose of Nemo’s Nautilus submarine pokes out from the cold blue glacier wall. (This is Harper Goff’s riveted proto-steampunk design from Disney’s 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.) Alongside the metal hulk, a freshly-bored tunnel - note the piles of nearby ice shavings - leads deeper and deeper into the glacier’s mysterious core. Overflow queueing occurs alongside the Nautilus, following Mt. Helios’ perimeter southwards.

Queue - Within the Glacier

Guests queue up within the ice tunnels, which bear the telltale groove patterns of large industrial drills. Pathways move subtly, slightly upslope, like a reverse of the Splash Mountain queue. Lanterns dot the chilly ceiling, strung together on 19-century electrical wire. There are three steampunk drinking fountains in an alcove, two of them still functional and the third semi-buried in snow and with water frozen in an arc from the spigot.

More and more ice cave rooms carry the queue inwards and upwards, towards a hidden hangar. Wall-mounted illustrations show cutaway views of the hangar buried underneath the glacier. For now, guests reach a large hollow chamber where the glacial cliffs meet the smooth, ice-carved mountain ridgeline. A bottomless chasm spans the gap, filled with lingering mist and inky blackness. The Nautilus’ rear hull juts out above from the glacier, crossing the pit. An escape ladder dangles from the submarine’s tailfin, wedged up against the mountain cliffs, and a makeshift steampunk catwalk spans the chasm and grants guests a way across. An unseen pipe organ - maybe echoing within the Nautilus, or obscured in the pitch black crevice - eerily plays Bach’s Toccata & Fugue.

More man made tunnels proceed ever upwards through the mountainside, where granite and ice freely mix. Reclaimed Nautilus mechanisms keep the passage from collapsing. Further and further into the mountain, the darker it gets. Whale oil lamps provide scant, flickering light in the cold emptiness.
​

---

Tomorrow, the queue concludes and we load our airship ride vehicles!

And @Suchomimus, sorry but I cannot determine the origin of that frozen waterfall image.

 

[D Hulk]

Continuing with the queue for our E-ticket Flight to the Top of the World.

Nemo’s Office

The queue peers through relocated Nautilus portholes onto Captain Nemo’s final private quarters and office. Open notebooks and handmade maps clue in attentive guests to the ride’s story. Nemo has charted a course for the North Pole, with a route passing underneath Mt. Helios. Scientific sketches depict Mt. Helios’ slopes, and foreshadow its verdant Lost Worlds. Compartments overflow with arctic exploration equipment, with nautical charts and discarded ice drills. An early cloud atlas book sits prominently on Nemo’s desk.

A sharply angled ridgeline walkway separates the office overlook from one final icy chamber. Again we are entirely within the glacier, and very near its top, as only a thin ceiling of ice separates guests from the moonlit night sky above - with this lighting effect we establish the ride’s perpetual nighttime Arctic setting. Guests walk along metal catwalks - more scavenged Nautilus machinery - which leads downwards. Below is the oxidized bronze rooftop of the hidden Zephyr hangar, complete with a windsock frozen solid. The catwalk stairways pass down through a skylight panel and into the hangar interior from above.

The Zephyr Hangar

Guests descend into the hangar’s upstairs office, which much like the Indiana Jones Adventure queue crosses over the ride’s final stretch. This is where the FastPass and standby lines merge.

A bank of convex windows looks out onto the hangar’s main chamber beyond...or actually onto a forced perspective illusion of the chamber. Above is the ribbed steel ceiling, and below is the top of a Zephyr airship balloon.

The carefully-staged office, located past queue fencing, serves as Blauerhimmel’s design space. There are blueprints and vintage photos of the Zephyr flying machine, and even a scale model of the airship inside a case. Sketches & illustrations & maps all over the walls and desks visually spell out more ride backstory, with more foreshadowing: Architectural plans of Discovery Glacier, topographical maps of Mt. Helios, watercolors of a snow-capped shipwreck graveyard, sketches of a shadowing Winter Giant. A furnace serves as the lone heat source, with the room increasingly frosty the further away it is. A framed note sits prominently on the wall for guests who are passionate enough to read it. “Captain Nemo - Final Message,” it begins, before laying out Nemo’s quest to locate an “Eden to the North” to serve as Man’s refuge from war.

Stairs on the hangar’s far side lead down from the office, beneath dangling chains pocked in icicles. Down we go to a pre-loading platform within the main hangar bay. Unseen workers can be heard hammering away, readying us for flight. Tools and canisters of hydrogen neatly line the edges. Victorian windows peering outside reveal that the hangar is half-buried in a snowbank. Beyond is a vast expanse of Arctic wasteland. A howling snowstorm bathes in eternal northern twilight.

Loading Sheds

Oxidized golden switchbacks wind towards two corrugated metal sheds. These sheds block complete views of a Zephyr airship, with only its stately balloon towering over the sheds.

These sheds actually serve as a pair of loading rooms, small in scale and sealed by doors on both sides. There is just enough room inside for 12 guests and one dedicated cast member, part of Blauerhimmel’s flight crew. Sounds heard outside the shed imply that workmen are finalizing work on the airship. Black-and-white photographs of the craft in mid-flight line the bare metal walls.

Loading shed interior, and an impression of the Zephyr cabin

Guests never directly see ride vehicles arriving on their tracks; rather, once the inner doors open, guests directly board the Zephyr’s suspended cabin. Actually two airship cabins board at once, from two side-by-side shed chambers...somewhat like the Indiana Jones Adventure loading setup, minus the split-track. However, care is taken to fully immerse each group of 12 guests into their own one-of-a-kind dirigible voyage.
​

RIDE STATS
Ride type: Suspended EMV dark ride
Capacity per cabin: 12 (3 rows of 4)
Hourly capacity: 2,160
Duration: 3:38
Height restriction: 46”​

Ride Vehicles - Zephyr Airship Cabins

The ride vehicles are suspended EMVs (Enhanced Motion Vehicles). Visually they resemble an airship’s gondola cabin, complete with ceiling. Tiered seating provides three rows with four seats across, with individual lap bars. The gondola is tall enough to stand in. Like a Star Tours starship, there are great views from every seat. Open air window frames line the sides and front. The front window in particular resembles the Nautilus’ circular “eye”. For now the eye is sealed shut by a metal frame bearing Nemo’s seal, which blocks views of other airship gondolas ahead.

Mechanically, these suspended EMVs combine a few preexisting ride systems. A motion base within the vehicles allows for flight simulator-style motions, to complement the physical set pieces. Suspended from an overhead track, a scissor lift above the ceiling is able to both A) simulate hair-raising drops, and B) lower gently to the ground level in case of evac. The trams on Universal’s original Kongfrontation are an old school example of a similar ride vehicle, and can be used as a substitution in case our proposed “Suspended EMV” system doesn’t work.
​

---

Tomorrow, the ride begins!

 

[D Hulk]

We now return to Flight to the Top of the World, as the ride itself begins and our airship takes flight!

Ride Experience - Takeoff

Doors seal shut, and the ride begins. Console lights within the cabin go dark. The gondola rises upwards, as though coming unmoored...as though floating suspended from an unseen balloon above. The Zephyr floats forward, past the empty black gaps between the loading sheds. A new gondola dispatches every 20 seconds.

Darkness bathes riders. Overhead dials add life, measuring pressure and altitude. The forward-facing metal frame opens. Our captain - Professor Blauerhimmel himself - issues orders across onboard speakers, initiating takeoff.

Aurora Borealis

The Zephyr continually rises within total darkness, following the overhead track, sailing out of the hangar and upwards through a layer of cloudy mist. The gondola narrowly dodges a blinking radio tower hidden in the fog. The cabin shakes as it careens off the tower, providing the first hint of motion base thrills to come.

The Zephyr crests through the cloud layer, emerging into a dome-shaped Aurora Borealis sky room. The twinkling of twilight stars creates a stark, crisp, beautiful sight. The dancing, ghostly-green Northern Lights are a sight to behold; Blauerhimmel comments with hushed awe. Opposite from the polar lights, projection effects depict the Zephyr airship’s shadow on the clouds below.

A cold Arctic wind blows. AC fans chill riders through the cabin windows. Blauerhimmel and his copilot on the speakers mention dangerous turbulence ahead - and the gondola immediately drops, air pressure plummeting, as unholy winds suddenly pummel the craft!

Darkness hides unseen tracks ahead. Like a roller coaster, the Zephyr performs a spinning downwards spiral, out-of-control back through the cloud layer…!

Sea of Whales

“Pull up!”

The Zephyr rights itself just above the Arctic oceans. The gondola bounces off of ice floes, shaking wildly.

With danger passed, the Zephyr glides in tranquil, uneasy silence over the frigid waves. A salty smell of sea air permeates the skies. A smoke machine cloud layer above hides ride tracks and filters through a heavenly Aurora Borealis lighting package. Animatronic Walruses huddle together for warmth on a floe. Blauerhimmel commiserates about “the land of perpetual twilight.”

There is the sound of whale song. Projections of whales appear under the water’s surface below. Blauerhimmel explains how their cetacean migration leads to the Northern Passage.

A simple animatronic narwhal bursts from the seas directly ahead! The airship swerves to dodge its horn, which comes almost within arm’s reach of riders. Redirected, the Zephyr floats around a nightmarish iceberg.

Shipwreck Graveyard

We find ourselves within a shadowy, foreboding shipwreck graveyard. Physical shipwrecks stretch to the room’s edge, then matte paintings of further shipwrecks continue on framed by icebergs, stretching seemingly to the horizon. Cold winds blow, like on Test Track. An otherworldly crackle of “thundersnow” breaks the cloud layer, shakes the cabin, and illuminates the deathly expanse!

Passing precariously close to an old wooden schooner, animatronic Puffins sleep in the rigging, emitting icy breaths. A mast buckles and twists as the Zephyr physically pushes past it. The gondola quivers.

The Zephyr in its entirety passes through the skeletal supports of a rigid airship frame...the remains of Hyperion's sister ship, Theia. As Blauerhimmel tells it, she was Nemo’s first attempt at exploring the Arctic. This is now the furthest north that any human being has traveled...

The Arctic Wilderness

Otherworldly ice walls press against Theia’s frame. Once they part, the vast mountainous Arctic wilderness opens up in all directions. More strange icy arches and crystal formations block the way. They shatter (crack projections on their surfaces) as the Zephyr lazily smashes against them on its voyage.

A great many animatronic Arctic animals regard us with curiosity. Polar Bears look up from the fields below; a Polar Bear Cub even pokes its head out from a snow pile. Arctic Hares peer at us from eye level ice ledges.

Tank treads half-hidden under fresh snowfall lead to a wrecked steampunk tundra buggy, callsign Theia. Two human skeletons sit in the cab. A Snow Leopard prowls the buggy, glaring with glowing eyes. Blauerhimmel explains that the Theia’s survivors must have attempted continuing further north by land...but why?

The copilot mentions that thermal gauges indicate a heat pocket in the slopes ahead. Blauerhimmel plots a course. The Zephyr turns upwards ascending through an ice canyon, past oozing, active tar pits which emit a rancid sulfuric odor. We fly past Ice Age fossils, such as a mammoth skeleton bedecked in icicles.

A Lost World

The air is noticeably warmer to riders now. The airship sails over a lush jungle valley hidden within the mountain ridges, protected under a cloudy inversion layer. Hot springs geysers pump out warmth from the Earth’s core. The geysers bubble and steam. Rainbows of color line the rich soil. Giant ferns - plantlife thought extinct for millennia - thrive here.

To Blauerhimmel’s audible astonishment, this is a Lost World of Ice Age fauna! Countless animatronic creatures graze on the ferns or drink from the springs. A Giant Sloth hangs upside down in a conifer. Two Giant Armadillos appear amidst similarly-shaped stones. A herd of huge Wooly Mammoths trumpets at our arrival. There are even ancient Arctic insects the size of house cats, much larger than thought possible, insects like a nest of two-foot wide Reindeer Warble Flies. Branches teem with Woolly Caterpillars.

The Zephyr glides peacefully past this unexpected scene. Riders struggle to take in the gorgeous sights, perhaps surprised to find such beauty when they expected thrills. Could this be the paradise Nemo was seeking?
​

---

Tomorrow, the thrilling conclusion to Flight to the Top of the World...

 

[Suchomimus]

A Snow Leopard prowls the buggy, glaring with glowing eyes. Blauerhimmel explains that the Theia’s survivors must have attempted continuing further north by land...but why?

He should also look to inquire about a Central Asian animal being in the Arctic.

A Giant Sloth hangs upside down in a conifer.

So it’s Hapalops? This is what Hapalops looks like compared to other giant sloths. So either you have the biggest conifer trees or the small giant sloth.

P.S. There's a reason why giants sloths are also ground sloths.

Two Giant Armadillos appear amidst similarly-shaped stones.

I know you're probably referring to glyptodonts but there is an actual giant armadillo that still exist. https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Priodontes_maximus/

 

[D Hulk]

And now...the climax to Flight to the Top of the World!

Mt. Helios’ Forbidden Slopes

Sulfur-smelling geysers fire off! Caught shaking in the turbulence of a heat vent, the airship rises spiralling violently inside another thick cloud!

The Zephyr recovers along the high frozen slopes, like the tallest elevations of Mount Everest. Any sense of tranquility or safety is now shattered! Massive monstrous pawprints in the snow lead riders’ eyes to a wall of porous hardened magma above - a projected blurry shadow of the “Winter Giant” vanishes the instant riders see it. There is distant growling...then a brief drop as the Winter Giant seemingly uses the Zephyr’s balloon above as a stepping stone.

A break in the ice arches reveals the distant Mt. Helios mountain range in its full glory rising above the cloud layer, seen beyond a snowstorm scrim effect. After just a moment to comprehend the view, a distant volcanic peak erupts! Clouds burn red with smoke! The slopes rumble! The cabin shakes!

Avalanche!

The snowbank directly ahead crumbles into an avalanche! Ice machines hidden in the ceiling above send genuine ice chunks tumbling down - repurposing an effect once intended for Indiana Jones Adventure. This effect is mixed with animated snow walls collapsing like Big Thunder Mountain’s old earthquake effect, mixed with projections, mixed with fresh “melting” waterfalls. We’re pulling out all the stops!

With a rush in the dirigible’s engines, the gondola rushes in a panic ever upwards struggling to navigate the collapsing environment! Red lights flash from the distant unseen eruption! Powerful wind bursts drive the airship still further upwards!

The Winter Giant

Riders find themselves flailing amidst jagged mountain peaks. The mightiest peaks of Mt. Helios. The mountains feature curlicue tops and horizontal ice spikes formed by gale force winds. An avalanche on one side distracts riders...just as something emerges from underneath the snow on the other side…

The Winter Giant!

This is a Saber-Toothed Tiger the size of a mammoth! The Winter Giant is a terrifying full-scale animatronic monster, drenched in ice and snow, its steamy, foul-smelling breath hot in riders’ faces!

The Zephyr twists away as the Winter Giant lunges! Shadows project onto a distant forced perspective peak: The Winter Giant sinks its fangs into Zephyr’s balloon, puncturing it!

“Brace yourselves!”

Spiraling Beyond Control!

The Zephyr deflates, and loses all control! Riders propel from the mountaintop and into the dark, stormy night sky!

This entire time, the ride has been building up elevation. Now we use that height, as vehicles plunge into a sort of roller coaster section spiraling downwards. The motion base and the scissor lift go into overdrive.

Down a dark, foggy chamber of icy minarets with horizontal spikes! The clouds are so thick, riders barely glimpse obstacles before they hit. Aurora Borealis lighting gives everything a sickly glow.

Blauerhimmel announces over the speaker that he is separating the gondola from the balloon.

A final terrifying downwards dive crashes our gondola through a freshly-bored ice cavern!

The gondola comes swaying to a halt encased in darkness. Sound effects outside - and Blauerhimmel’s reassurance over the speaker - suggests that Nemo’s crew is affixing our deflated craft to overhead winches. Then...

Winched to Safety

The gondola emerges into a cool, blue-lit ice cavern, with the ride’s tracks only now visible overhead where they’re presented as a winch cable system. Nearby is the steampunk drill machine which carved this cavern, and beside that is a new Zephyr dirigible under construction with unseen workmen clanging away.

As the gondola glides mere inches from a catwalk floor along the winch system, Blauerhimmel assures riders that a new Zephyr is being built for another journey into the northern unknown. Perhaps next time we will have better luck on our flight to the top of the world...
​

---

Unload

As the metal screen again seals off the front window, the gondola returns to the loading hangar. Riders unload in the opposite direction from the loading sheds, passing through a similar pair of sheds on the opposite platform. (ADA guests load from this side.) The deflated canvas balloon, torn to ribbons by the Winter Giant, lies crumbled in a corner.

A sealed door is marked “Hangar Main Floor.” Guests do not pass through it, but rather head left into a mossy cavern of stone and ice and lichen held up by riveted arches. This is a rather swift exit route downwards to Discovery Glacier outside, down brief switchbacking ramps. One alcove bears a makeshift darkroom photography studio built into the icy crevice. Here, black-and-white photos dry on a clothesline, still developing, depicting blurry images of the mammoths and monsters seen on our flight.​

 

[D Hulk]

The Time Machine
C-ticket theater show

Travel across time with a pair of comical robot tour guides

DisneySky is all about using human ingenuity to explore new realms, whether it be soaring through the skies, climbing forbidden mountains...or even traveling through time. Our time machine awaits, and soon we shall shatter the very bonds of the here-and-now!

Disney’s Imagineers have long revered the 19th-century science fiction of author Jules Verne. Now, for the first time, they turn their attention to Verne’s contemporary H.G. Wells. The Time Machine - based on Wells’ timeless novel of the same name - plunges guests countless millennia into the future, and to the Earth’s very birth, with a very “Disney” sense of humor and adventure. This is the latest iteration of Disney’s CircleVision 360 theater concept, updating ideas from Paris’ defunct Timekeeper for a new generation!

The Time Machine is housed in the mansion of Dr. Huxley, Discovery Glacier’s foremost chrononaut. We are gathered here today to witness Huxley’s latest experiments in the field of time. Huxley’s mansion is built into the limestone southern slopes overlooking Lake Verne. The building is a wild mixture of architectural styles spanning the centuries, befitting its time travel motif.

In overall shape, Huxley Mansion most resembles a steampunk version of Kuwait’s kitschy Villa Akbar. Different tiered levels are adorned with statuary and busts from all eras...and from all of Imagineering’s prop warehouses. Like the Winchester Mansion, there is little rhyme or reason to this. The only common element are the clockworks. Clocks appear all over the facade, from the orange-bricked clock tower above which ties into the Skyway, to the main gable’s clockface with projection shadows of gears & cogs within. Even the pedestals flanking the entry gates are miniature clock steeples.

Guests initially gather outdoors within the gates, shaded by conifers. A massive Victorian dome - the CircleVision 360 theater - crowds in from the left. It is a beautiful structure, with its clunker brick base, its sweeping azure panels framed in golden girders, and its elegant Swiss clock centerpiece. (The overall building footprint for The Time Machine can be converted in the future into a smaller-scale dark ride akin to Buzz Lightyear’s Astro-Blasters, should the need arise.)

Pre-Show Lobby - Huxley’s Parlor

The Time Machine screens every 15 minutes, with a runtime of 10 minutes. For up to five minutes prior to every screening, gathering guests congregate within the Huxley Mansion’s salon & library. This is a cozy & masculine space, like a parlor in an Agatha Christie mystery. Flames crackle quietly within a grand fireplace, under a Rembrandt-style oil portrait of Huxley looking quite anachronistic in Medieval Spain. A calendar, prominently set by a leather fireplace chair, shows that today is December 31st, 1899. A great banner stretched between alabaster plinths declares “Time Travel Symposium: Starts Today, Ends Yesterday.”

Naturally, clockworks & timepieces fill up absolutely every conceivable space in the library! There are cuckoo clocks, grandfather pendulum clocks, and alarm clocks. Pocket watches tick away in a display case. Sand pours through hourglasses. Water clocks drip. Japanese clocks ring. Ornate astronomical clocks spin. The gears rotate within an astrarium.

Pre-Show - Time Machine Model

With five minutes to go, a Cast Member Lab Assistant climbs onto a tabletop stage to welcome the gathered guests. The Cast Member apologizes for Huxley’s tardiness, then produces a wax cylinder to play in his absence. The Cast Member cranks the contraption. Huxley’s voice echoes distorted across the vintage recording machine. He begins “if you’re listening to this,” then proceeds to explain how he took one of his two Time Machines on a little test drive. Huxley is now trapped in the far future, unable to return. It is his guests’ solemn duty to board Huxley’s second, incomplete Time Machine and undergo a rescue mission. Two of Huxley’s most trusted automaton companions will assist us.

The Cast Member unveils a tabletop model of the CircleVision-shaped domed Time Machine - shades of George Pal’s 1960 Time Machine film, homaged but not directly referenced. The Cast Member winds up the model. Its inner clockworks tick loudly. The device seemingly suctions power from the library. A light show plays out, with oil lamps flickering and the countless timepieces going haywire. With a flash, all illumination is gone!

When the lights return, the Time Machine model is gone...vanished into thin air...lost in time.

Guests will forever ponder how the model disappeared from its central table location. In actuality, this is an old magician’s trick which does date back to the 19th-century, a simple trick involving a drop platform and mirrors hiding a compartment under the table. The Shiriki Utundu effect on DisneySea’s Tower of Terror pre-show works similarly.

The Time Machine Theater

A row of salon doors swing open - out into empty floorspace behind velvet ropes. At the Cast Member’s behest, guests pass through the doorways into their Time Machine.

This CircleVision 360 Theater surrounds guests in all directions, with circular walls and a darkened dome above. The floors bear a clock face and calendar visual motif. Window screens (the movie screens) are shuttered presently, behind patterned Art Nouveau shades. Whereas earlier CircleVision attractions had guests stand, to their discomfort, The Time Machine provides guests with comfortable mahogany chaise lounge seating. These seats are actually effects chairs, a bit like those on Universal’s Shrek 4D, able to rumble or shake or release scents as the show demands.

There is a stage in front of the seats, like the stage from Timekeeper. On stage is a pair of animatronic steampunk automatons. Disney attractions benefit from strong original characters, and in that spirit I introduce…

H.G. (voiced by Jermaine Clement) - Short for “Humanoid Gizmo,” H.G. is a dapper, top-hatted boiler on tank treads. H.G. is exceedingly fussy and by-the-books, making him easily-flustered by the slightest mishap.

Wells (voiced by Bret McKenzie) - Welles is a smaller prototype movie camera who flies around on a miniature blimp with fans. Wells is the overcranked Artoo to H.G.’s rusty Threepio, full of boundless inquisitive energy as he whizzes in aerial circles.

The Cast Member cranks both of these merry machines to life, and lights dim…
​

---

Tomorrow, the show commences.

 

[D Hulk]

Welcome back to The Time Machine. And now on with the show!

---

Show - To the Far Future & Across the Eons

H.G. and Wells bicker with each other over the time machine controls which rise up in front of them in a puff of steam. The ornate brass time device includes a lever control and an analogue chronomat spinner which lists the current date: “1899 C.E.”

As the automatons struggle over the lever, guests’ seats rumble and the entire theater dome seems to ascend. Window screens lower, and the chamber seemingly “telescopes” upwards to overlook snowy Mt. Helios and icy Lake Verne. (Both daytime and nighttime versions are rendered.) The Time Machine’s film depicts the world directly outside our chamber, realized without screen seams like Epcot’s recent China Pavilion refurb.

H.G. yanks the lever, and the chamber propels forward in time towards Huxley’s futuristic time signature. The world outside appears in a time lapse, one-day-per-second at first, then increasingly faster. The sun rises and sets, clouds gather and clear around the mountain, stars in the nighttime sky shift positions as the year moves on. The seasons wane, with glaciers receding on Mt. Helios and springtime seedlings sprouting. H.G. calmly describes all this while Wells zips about in astonishment.

Faster and faster we go, many months per second now, as the architecture of Discovery Glacier evolves with the passing decades...taking on the styles of upcoming DisneySky lands, then onwards into a cyberpunk futuristic metropolis. The mountain’s glaciers permanently melt away. As time grows ever-swifter, the cyberpunk skyscrapers crumble into dust. Lake Verne dries up. Mt. Helios itself eventually smooths out into rolling hills. The entire region transforms over millennia into a thick deciduous forest.

Eventually we stop in the year “802,701 C.E.” The world outside is now a strange far future jungle, watched over by a minimalist sphinx monument. The peace is shattered by a sudden pounding on the Time Machine’s outer metal skin! Over H.G.’s objections, Wells unlocks a door and in rushes Dr. Huxley, in the flesh and in a panic! Outside, vicious Morlocks - blind albino troglodytes, an evolutionary branch of mankind - pour over the sphinx pursuing Huxley in a blind rage! H.G. swiftly grabs the lever and thrusts the Time Machine escaping backwards in time.

Huxley embraces his faithful robots...when a live Morlock emerges from behind some seats. The Morlock lunges after Huxley! This flings Wells smack into the lever, tilting it to the floor. We travel backwards in time at ludicrous speeds - the view outside even resembles plaid! - quickly passing 1899 as we move backwards hundreds of millions of years every second!

H.G. conks the Morlock out with a burst of sleep gas, while Wells lifts the lever back up to its neutral position. Huxley recovers as the Time Machine pauses in an unexpected new era…

“4,800,000,000 B.C.E.” The Hadean Era. As H.G. pontificates, this is a time before life began. The Earth is a steaming volcanic hellscape; warmth and mist sprays pierce the theater. Sulfuric clouds part in the skies overhead, and a meteor shower pummels the planet! Explosive impacts strike the horizon, and seats rumble. A few meteorites even strike the roof of the Time Machine itself, denting the ceiling with StormRider-style in-theater effects! A shock wave of molten ash rolls towards the chamber! “We’re not gonna make it! We’re not gonna make it!” screams Wells. Huxley commandeers the time lever. The Time Machine rushes forward in the nick of time!

The Morlock comes to and once more throws itself onto Huxley. Another struggle breaks out, with even the animatronic automatons getting involved. The time lever shorts out and sparks in this melee, causing the Time Machine to pause in a succession of time periods while traveling forward…

“380,000,000 B.C.E.” The Devonian Era. A deserted shoreline laps against the chamber. The seas recede, revealing a beached anomalocaris, and a tidal wave rushes in. Forward!

“270,000,000 B.C.E.” The Permian Era. A rockier sea coast abounds with fungi and moss. Giant dragonflies and millipedes instinctually emerge from crevices and rush the Time Machine when ocean tentacles grab them away. Forward!

“210,000,000 B.C.E.” The Triassic. Chicken-sized Coelophysis dinosaurs rush out from a ferny coastline, pursued by a bus-sized Thalattoarchon Saurophagis leaping from the waves! This 30-foot ichthyosaur terror bites into the Time Machine. Physical teeth pierce the steel frame and actually enter the theater. Forward!

“155,000,000 B.C.E.” The Jurassic. A herd of mighty Brachiosauruses gallops down the non-coastal grasslands. Some of them awkwardly crash into the side of the Time Machine. Forward!

“85,000,000 B.C.E.” The Cretaceous. Paused in a golden prairie, a Tyrannosaurus Rex abandons a Triceratops and attacks the Time Machine, spinning it. Physical T. Rex jaws reach in through the doorway!

The spinning disorients the rampaging Morlock. Caught off guard, Wells sprays water into the troglodyte’s face. The future ape-man stumbles backwards into the dinosaur’s jaws. The T. Rex yanks the Morlock outside of the theater. Next they are seen outside on the screens in mid-battle. Huxley regains control of the sparking lever and speeds the Time Machine forward towards human civilization.

The plains outside ice over, becoming the wintry Discovery Glacier we know today. Mt Helios grows from the flats. The Time Machine “recedes” downwards back into Huxley Mansion as it returns to 1899, our adventure complete. Huxley chats with his automatons. Sympathetic Wells ponders whatever became of the Morlock they abandoned in the Cretaceous, while H.G. expresses concern for the T. Rex. They have a back-and-forth debate over the Morlock’s fate as Huxley powers down both automatons and bids his guests farewell.

Guests exit on the far side of the CircleVision 360 theater. Guests pour into a limestone fossil cavern, one dating back 85 million years. There is a T. Rex fossil in the stone wall, collapsed in a heap with a triumphant fossilized Morlock standing over it. Lascaux-style cave art made by the Morlock depicts victory over the dinosaur. This is a curiously tragi-comic final note for guests as they exit the dome structure to Discovery Glacier.​

 

[D Hulk]

Spark Gap Hover-Coaster
C-ticket family roller coaster

Restore power to the outpost while riding upon a magnetic hover-car

[HEIGHT REQUIREMENT]

The brilliant inventors who founded Discovery Glacier made fantastic advances in several fields of knowledge! There was flight, robotics, even time travel. One of their number, Professor Wonder, made his name revolutionizing the fields of electricity and magnetism. His masterpiece is the Spark Gap Power Plant on Discovery Glacier’s northern outskirts, where Professor Wonder was able to harness latent electrical energy in the very air itself to power the outpost.

The only problem is collecting the wireless energy from Professor Wonder’s stupendous steampunk towers. To that end, Wonder created his fleet of magnetic hover-cars. Technicians are required to ride the hover-tracks, manually connecting their cars’ batteries with the tower’s nodes. This is a hair-raising task, not unlike a modern roller coaster, which only the boldest guests dare undertake!

Spark Gap Hover-Coaster takes substantial design inspiration from the Spark Gap Loop coaster proposed for Disneyland’s never-made Discovery Bay land. This modern version is a family-friendly Vekoma Junior Coaster...on its own not exactly a headliner. Yet Spark Gap Hover-Coaster is among the world’s first interactive roller coasters, employing a “slideboarding” concept where riders must collect electricity as they ride. This “plussing” of a standard amusement park attraction makes the Spark Gap into something special, something that is just as much fun to ride as it is to watch!

The entire attraction is visible from Discovery Glacier’s walkways. An array of huge oxidized, turquoise Tesla coil-esque Wonder Towers rises up like demigods from a fir tree river canyon. The Wonder Towers’ rooftops are bedecked with electrical antennae and windmills and plasma globes, all collecting static electricity from the mountain air. Steampunk tracks of gold & bronze twist around the Towers, while bronze magnetic hover-cars zoom down the course. At night, the whole complex bedazzles onlookers with a pulsating light show of neon-colored electricity rampaging down the antennae and encircling the structures!

Queue - Wonder Tower Canyon

A wholly outdoor queue follows a cobblestone mountain trail around the towers’ foundations. The tallest Wonder Tower acts as a weenie. Icy waters flow out of its rusted base and tumble down small stepped waterfalls. Electrical wires dangle from the Tower and touch the creek, creating an iconic visual of bubbling waters and flashing lights. Two scaled-down Moon Towers flank the waterways.

Entry is alongside a genuine, honest-to-goodness hoverboard, which attracts riders by magnetically levitating from a base. The marquee title appears carved into a mounted rusty electrical panel. Fastpass distribution happens nearby in a thicket of fir trees. Reservations are made using electrical transformer boxes.

The meandering queue winds under the coaster tracks and around melting snowbanks. Across a glacial creek, the trail curlicues through a sunken exposed-rock canyon. A geometric array of oversized glowing lightbulbs dots the ground, like the famous Nicola Tesla wireless experiment seen in The Prestige. Mounted posters feature an illustrated Professor Wonder constructing his inventions.

A brick-lined bunker tunnel leads beneath the coaster’s brake run (the lowest track segment), into a dome-roofed steampunk shed of tin and stone. These are Professor Wonder’s laboratories, filled with a panoply of 19th-century electronic experiments like cathodes, tubes, electrodes and converters. Seen from outside, the shed is dominated by an antennaed Wardenclyffe Tower. Within, guests interact with a huge central plasma globe. Overhead wire netting provides open-air views of the coaster roaring above. A row of brick alcoves contains several interactive Tesla coils. These devices provide simple “Simon” games of color memorization...which actually prepare guests for the ride to come!

Loading - Electrical Station

Another brick tunnel leads upwards to the loading platform, set within a Victorian train station lit by Tesla coil lanterns. More invention equipment lies scattered about. The ceilings are barely visible through a tangle of sparking cables and batteries. Spinning AC discs. Oscillator tubes. Mural friezes over the entry and exit passageways feature Astrape & Bronte, the Greek goddesses of lightning & thunder, emitting fibre-optic sparks from their fingertips.

A ride operator oversees from a Frankenstein-style control panel. Hover-car trains, shining visions of riveted bronze, await their technician riders...
​

RIDE STATS
Ride type: Vekoma Junior Coaster
Capacity per train: 16 (8 cars of 2)
Hourly capacity: 960
Duration: 1:06
Height restriction: 36”​

Spark Gap Hover-Coasters is at its core a fairly typical family coaster. It is an off-the-shelf Vekoma Junior Coaster, the same 335-meter model used by Universal’s Flight of the Hippogriff, albeit a mirrored layout. (Disneyland’s Go-Coaster and Magic Kingdom’s Barnstormer are the 207-meter model.) Two trains run at once to improve capacity. This is a good entry-level roller coaster for young thrill-seekers, with its short duration, visible tracks, and tame elements.

What makes the Spark Gap special is the interactive feature, where riders collect electricity from Professor Wonder’s coil towers to power Discovery Glacier. This unique interactive coaster concept comes from a rather unlikely source: “Slideboarding” water slides, where guests ride high-tech mats through colored tubes. The idea here - as with slideboarding - is to match up the on-ride colors with buttons on your ride vehicle.

It all boils down to a rideable game of Simon! The coaster tracks pass through several electrical arches, each arch showing a randomized color along its frame - red, green, yellow or blue. While passing through the arch, riders must hit the corresponding color on their specialized high-tech lapbar. Each coaster seat contains one unobtrusive, interactive lapbar. On-ride speakers swiftly explain the game, and chime out when riders successfully match their colors. The speakers also play “Flight of the Bumblebee” to match the ride’s frenetic pace.



Ride Experience

The ride begins with a left hand turn through an enclosed wind tunnel. Hover-cars much like our ride vehicles seemingly float in the tubular updrafts - actually held wavering in place by metal arms hidden behind. Professor Wonder appears on the ride speakers to quickly explain how we collect electricity by matching arch colors.

The color-collection begins on the lift hill, as trains slowly ease through a series of light-shifting archways. The first half of the 43-foot lift hill is indoors, in a tunnel like the inside of an electrical cable. The second half is outdoors, climbing upwards towards the tallest Wonder Tower through more ring-shaped archways. Icy Mt. Helios looms in the far distance, unmovable grand and silent.

The chain lift disengages, and the brief coaster begins! Trains spin in a rightwards helix around the tallest tower, which holds the Skyliner above. Then a straightaway rushes trains back towards the copper-roofed station building, passing through color-collection conduit arches along the way. Trains reach the rooftop and bank turn to the left, rounding the second tallest tower.

Another brief straightaway hurtles trains through two more electrical archways. Trains then perform a helix turn left around the next-tallest tower, zooming past the walkways of Discovery Glacier. These lower sections propel trains through the forest floor, where nearby sights create the illusion of speed. Trains rush past oversized tube electronic and oil-based circuit breakers amidst rugged rockwork.

Geyser steam blankets the tracks in a thick fog, distorting the electrical colors. A quick S-turn brings trains to a bank turn right around the fourth and shortest tower. Electrical rings appear on the turn sections now, materializing more quickly and demanding swifter gameplay reflexes for the ride’s finale.

The brake run slows trains as they approach the Victorian station. Colored spotlights shine down from the station’s eaves, illuminating the winning train car(s) which successfully matched the most colors and collected the most electricity! Triumphant fanfare plays on the winners’ train speakers.

Professor Wonder congratulates riders over the speakers, as kinetic electrical generators whir to life along the track’s perimeter. One last slow turn left traverses the backside of Tinkerer’s Workshop, before depositing riders back in the loading station. Guests unload on the platform’s far side, then follow an outdoors trail past the queue’s outer edge and back to Discovery Glacier.​

 

[D Hulk]

Tinkerer’s Workshop
B-ticket playground

Find interactive fun in the laboratories of this age’s greatest minds

Above all else, Discovery Glacier was founded to be a playground for scientists. To be a place where S.E.A.’s boldest and brightest can freely explore their own inventions, experiments and obsessions. It can be a playground for guests too, in a more literal way. The Tinkerer’s Workshop is where Discovery Glacier’s great thinkers go to pursue their personal manias, and it’s where guests go to relax, to play, and generally to learn. Tinkerer’s Workshop is part playground, part walkthrough, part interactive exhibit, all done with DisneySky’s standard of immersive theming.

The facility’s primary facade is a great brick steampunk factory in the style of Victorian London. Perpetually smoking chimney stacks appear in distant forced perspective. Smaller vintage industrial structures sit around the main factory at odd angles, suggesting an eclectic scientific community and a lifetime of changes. There are assorted towers and smokestacks and pipes arranged haphazardly throughout.

The central entrance to Tinkerer’s Workshop is rather palatial, like Paris’ Grand Palais - all white Beaux-Arts columns and ornate steel framing. Victorian false storefronts and workshops extend in both directions, providing a peek at Discovery Glacier’s experiments. For instance, one window reveals part of Professor Blauerhimmel’s ballooning labs. Another workspace belongs to an archaeologist obsessed with the ancient China of Mythic Realms, where vintage books sit alongside recreations of Lu Ban’s inventions.

The Grand Palais entry leads to The Grand Hall. A massive spinning celestial globe sits in the center. This vaulted chamber is a central hub leading to the other exhibit rooms - the Contraption HQ and Explosives Bunker straight ahead on separate levels, Assembly Station to the right, and The Engine Room to the left. Vaulted brick hallways lead to the adjoining chambers, with invention blueprints lining their walls.

The Assembly Station is a wooden workshop where inventors create their blueprints. All manner of gewgaws and tools and machine parts collect dust on the shelves.

The Station’s centerpiece is a magnificent touchscreen blueprint. One-by-one and supervised by a cast member, guests commandeer the blueprint screen where they use modern 3D technology (rendered in a steampunk vernacular, naturally) to combine various Industrial Age machine parts into a singular invention. An early Théâtre Optique cinema then animates their creation on a large wall-mounted projection screen. Think of this as the 19th-century version of exploring a 3D mockup in VR.

The Engine Room is a large industrial boiler room made of darkened, flame-hardened bricks. This is a children’s play area built around a massive, kinetic Corliss steam engine - safely behind mesh like its Crystal Palace counterpart. The Engine Room is a simple interactive space for our youngest guests, yet still realized with thematic care...
​

• Kiddie crawl tubes appear as calming steampunk pipes. ​
• Furnace consoles provide levers for children to pull and rollers for children to spin. ​
• A water play area is made from the busted steam engine of a Peugeot Type 26 prototype horseless carriage. ​
• Rope bridges overhead let children scramble while parents supervise seated in a repurposed train bench.​

Contraption HQ is a converted vaulted attic and living quarters located upstairs. This U-shaped space hugs the Grand Hall’s second level. It serves as a repository for all manner of interactive exhibits…
​

• Hand-cranking a Victrola machine creates music.​
• Pulling on ropes which lead through the floorboards creates sounds below like spilling metal tools.​
• Pulling other ropes connected to rafter pulleys lifts and lowers boxes full of workshop supplies held overhead in fishing cargo nets.​

Additionally, there is a wide assortment of limited motion animatronic flying machine prototypes, all of them historical and non-functional pre-Wright devices. These contraptions include Chanute’s Gliding Machine, Goupil’s Sesquiplane, Ritchel’s Flying Machine, Moy’s Aerial Steamer, Le-Bris’ Artificial Albatross, and Ader’s ludicrously inventive Bat Plane.

Guests can animate every one of these devices using a wide array of inputs: rotating gears, cranking ratchets, pedaling a stationary velocipede (bicycle) attached to belts, or working a fireplace bellows.

The Explosives Bunker is a hardened concrete bunker located downstairs beneath the Contraption HQ. This is where Discovery Glacier’s munitions experts test experimental dirigible fuels and new forms of gunpowder.

In practice, the Explosives Bunker fuses the practical interactivity of Tokyo Disneyland’s Paint ‘n’ Play House with the thematic concepts of Discovery Bay’s Fireworks Factory. Guests queue up, and under cast member supervision they enjoy two minutes apiece at one of several flare gun stations. They fire their flares at a pile of TNT & dynamite sticks & fireworks and all manner of pre-modern explosives. Like a sort of stationary Toy Story Mania, guests cause digitally-rendered explosion projections, while airgun sprays and heat blasts and the smell of gunpowder all add to the fun interactive experience!​

 

[Suchomimus]

Spark Gap Hover-Coaster
C-ticket family roller coaster

Restore power to the outpost while riding upon a magnetic hover-car

[HEIGHT REQUIREMENT]

The brilliant inventors who founded Discovery Glacier made fantastic advances in several fields of knowledge! There was flight, robotics, even time travel. One of their number, Professor Wonder, made his name revolutionizing the fields of electricity and magnetism. His masterpiece is the Spark Gap Power Plant on Discovery Glacier’s northern outskirts, where Professor Wonder was able to harness latent electrical energy in the very air itself to power the outpost.

The only problem is collecting the wireless energy from Professor Wonder’s stupendous steampunk towers. To that end, Wonder created his fleet of magnetic hover-cars. Technicians are required to ride the hover-tracks, manually connecting their cars’ batteries with the tower’s nodes. This is a hair-raising task, not unlike a modern roller coaster, which only the boldest guests dare undertake!

Spark Gap Hover-Coaster takes substantial design inspiration from the Spark Gap Loop coaster proposed for Disneyland’s never-made Discovery Bay land. This modern version is a family-friendly Vekoma Junior Coaster...on its own not exactly a headliner. Yet Spark Gap Hover-Coaster is among the world’s first interactive roller coasters, employing a “slideboarding” concept where riders must collect electricity as they ride. This “plussing” of a standard amusement park attraction makes the Spark Gap into something special, something that is just as much fun to ride as it is to watch!

The entire attraction is visible from Discovery Glacier’s walkways. An array of huge oxidized, turquoise Tesla coil-esque Wonder Towers rises up like demigods from a fir tree river canyon. The Wonder Towers’ rooftops are bedecked with electrical antennae and windmills and plasma globes, all collecting static electricity from the mountain air. Steampunk tracks of gold & bronze twist around the Towers, while bronze magnetic hover-cars zoom down the course. At night, the whole complex bedazzles onlookers with a pulsating light show of neon-colored electricity rampaging down the antennae and encircling the structures!

Queue - Wonder Tower Canyon

A wholly outdoor queue follows a cobblestone mountain trail around the towers’ foundations. The tallest Wonder Tower acts as a weenie. Icy waters flow out of its rusted base and tumble down small stepped waterfalls. Electrical wires dangle from the Tower and touch the creek, creating an iconic visual of bubbling waters and flashing lights. Two scaled-down Moon Towers flank the waterways.

Entry is alongside a genuine, honest-to-goodness hoverboard, which attracts riders by magnetically levitating from a base. The marquee title appears carved into a mounted rusty electrical panel. Fastpass distribution happens nearby in a thicket of fir trees. Reservations are made using electrical transformer boxes.

The meandering queue winds under the coaster tracks and around melting snowbanks. Across a glacial creek, the trail curlicues through a sunken exposed-rock canyon. A geometric array of oversized glowing lightbulbs dots the ground, like the famous Nicola Tesla wireless experiment seen in The Prestige. Mounted posters feature an illustrated Professor Wonder constructing his inventions.

A brick-lined bunker tunnel leads beneath the coaster’s brake run (the lowest track segment), into a dome-roofed steampunk shed of tin and stone. These are Professor Wonder’s laboratories, filled with a panoply of 19th-century electronic experiments like cathodes, tubes, electrodes and converters. Seen from outside, the shed is dominated by an antennaed Wardenclyffe Tower. Within, guests interact with a huge central plasma globe. Overhead wire netting provides open-air views of the coaster roaring above. A row of brick alcoves contains several interactive Tesla coils. These devices provide simple “Simon” games of color memorization...which actually prepare guests for the ride to come!

Loading - Electrical Station

Another brick tunnel leads upwards to the loading platform, set within a Victorian train station lit by Tesla coil lanterns. More invention equipment lies scattered about. The ceilings are barely visible through a tangle of sparking cables and batteries. Spinning AC discs. Oscillator tubes. Mural friezes over the entry and exit passageways feature Astrape & Bronte, the Greek goddesses of lightning & thunder, emitting fibre-optic sparks from their fingertips.

A ride operator oversees from a Frankenstein-style control panel. Hover-car trains, shining visions of riveted bronze, await their technician riders...
​

RIDE STATS
Ride type: Vekoma Junior Coaster
Capacity per train: 16 (8 cars of 2)
Hourly capacity: 960
Duration: 1:06
Height restriction: 36”​

Spark Gap Hover-Coasters is at its core a fairly typical family coaster. It is an off-the-shelf Vekoma Junior Coaster, the same 335-meter model used by Universal’s Flight of the Hippogriff, albeit a mirrored layout. (Disneyland’s Go-Coaster and Magic Kingdom’s Barnstormer are the 207-meter model.) Two trains run at once to improve capacity. This is a good entry-level roller coaster for young thrill-seekers, with its short duration, visible tracks, and tame elements.

What makes the Spark Gap special is the interactive feature, where riders collect electricity from Professor Wonder’s coil towers to power Discovery Glacier. This unique interactive coaster concept comes from a rather unlikely source: “Slideboarding” water slides, where guests ride high-tech mats through colored tubes. The idea here - as with slideboarding - is to match up the on-ride colors with buttons on your ride vehicle.

It all boils down to a rideable game of Simon! The coaster tracks pass through several electrical arches, each arch showing a randomized color along its frame - red, green, yellow or blue. While passing through the arch, riders must hit the corresponding color on their specialized high-tech lapbar. Each coaster seat contains one unobtrusive, interactive lapbar. On-ride speakers swiftly explain the game, and chime out when riders successfully match their colors. The speakers also play “Flight of the Bumblebee” to match the ride’s frenetic pace.



Ride Experience

The ride begins with a left hand turn through an enclosed wind tunnel. Hover-cars much like our ride vehicles seemingly float in the tubular updrafts - actually held wavering in place by metal arms hidden behind. Professor Wonder appears on the ride speakers to quickly explain how we collect electricity by matching arch colors.

The color-collection begins on the lift hill, as trains slowly ease through a series of light-shifting archways. The first half of the 43-foot lift hill is indoors, in a tunnel like the inside of an electrical cable. The second half is outdoors, climbing upwards towards the tallest Wonder Tower through more ring-shaped archways. Icy Mt. Helios looms in the far distance, unmovable grand and silent.

The chain lift disengages, and the brief coaster begins! Trains spin in a rightwards helix around the tallest tower, which holds the Skyliner above. Then a straightaway rushes trains back towards the copper-roofed station building, passing through color-collection conduit arches along the way. Trains reach the rooftop and bank turn to the left, rounding the second tallest tower.

Another brief straightaway hurtles trains through two more electrical archways. Trains then perform a helix turn left around the next-tallest tower, zooming past the walkways of Discovery Glacier. These lower sections propel trains through the forest floor, where nearby sights create the illusion of speed. Trains rush past oversized tube electronic and oil-based circuit breakers amidst rugged rockwork.

Geyser steam blankets the tracks in a thick fog, distorting the electrical colors. A quick S-turn brings trains to a bank turn right around the fourth and shortest tower. Electrical rings appear on the turn sections now, materializing more quickly and demanding swifter gameplay reflexes for the ride’s finale.

The brake run slows trains as they approach the Victorian station. Colored spotlights shine down from the station’s eaves, illuminating the winning train car(s) which successfully matched the most colors and collected the most electricity! Triumphant fanfare plays on the winners’ train speakers.

Professor Wonder congratulates riders over the speakers, as kinetic electrical generators whir to life along the track’s perimeter. One last slow turn left traverses the backside of Tinkerer’s Workshop, before depositing riders back in the loading station. Guests unload on the platform’s far side, then follow an outdoors trail past the queue’s outer edge and back to Discovery Glacier.​

I thought that the coaster would've been a launching coaster from the artwork itself until this came out. That could be because of the hoops remind me of SDD.

 

[D Hulk]

Discovery Glacier - Dining​

 

[D Hulk]

Salon de Hyperion
Table service restaurant

A-la carte and full-course meals
[ADULT DRINKS]

Dine in the finest Victorian splendor aboard the Hyperion airship. Salon de Hyperion, one of DisneySky’s finest dining establishments, simulates all the luxury and adventure of a bygone age. Haute French cuisine and wines are served a-la carte and full-course, prepared to exacting standards.

The dirigible Hyperion airship moored in its hangar bay serves as Discovery Glacier’s main “weenie.” This ship ties into both Salon de Hyperion and Flight to the Top of the World. Restaurant check-in is found in the hangar’s side shed to the right, realized in ornate riveted steel like Crystal Palace. The interior lobby is within this industrial shed, which has been redressed with a fancy red carpet, curtains, and an oak check-in desk. This stylization is meant to recall first class entry onto a steamer ship.

Passage from the shed to the dining room is carefully staged to maintain immersion, transporting guests from ground level to what feels like an airship in mid-flight. Guests “board” the Hyperion airship through a tarp-covered metal gangway, from there entering the ship’s wood-paneled hallway. By the time guests reach the central dining room, set high up in the clouds, they’ve gone through enough turns to make for an effective transition.

This main dining room is set in the Hyperion’s gondola ground hall. There are fisheye window screens like on the Nautilus, both port and starboard, with projections to simulate flight. Outside is the wild blue yonder, with puffy pink cotton candy clouds and a gorgeous eternal sunset. The faint hum of turbine engines strengthens the illusion.

The grand hall is decorated with classy patterned red carpeting. The hall is populated with mahogany and maroon upholstered chairs and carved oak tables. Around the room’s edge are inlaid bookcases, all bearing history’s greatest scientific treatises. The hall is divided into two levels, with diners on the upper balcony circling the central clear-story space. Guests reach this upper level either by riveted spiral staircases, or by an inner elevator. Upstairs, there are no viewing windows, but rather velvet curtains and oil paintings which document the era’s S.E.A. members (such as Blauerhimmel, Nemo, Hightower, Oceaneer and Mystic). Overhead, wood paneled ceilings.

Servers, clad in nautical attire, provide guests with S.E.A.-branded menus. For entertainment, off in one corner is Captain Nemo’s astounding mechanical piano, which plays itself with moving keys and no visible pianist. (Inspiration for this comes from Hollywood’s Magic Castle.) The piano is able to take guests’ requests. For period’s sake, not all songs are possible; guests may choose era-appropriate tunes from a list provided by servers. Such Victorian aural ambiance helpfully accompanies delicious French meals. Note also our carefully curated wine list, with the same labels available at Carthay Circle at California Adventure.

The private dining room is located forward. A secret bookcase passageway leads to the gondola’s central hallway, which is flanked by private crew quarters on either side. To the front is the airship’s control cabin, where fortunate guests dine in seclusion. Forward-facing window screens show the passing clouds. All of the airship controls are on fully-animated autopilot, full of dials and steam-powered flashing lights and the casually rotating nautical ship’s wheel. There is a nearby table with navigation charts and a globe stand.

Lastly, Salon de Hyperion’s private restrooms are located off from the airship entry hallway. Visually, restrooms continue to vintage airship style, while functionally they offer all the modern conveniences guests expect.
​

---

Steammaster’s Grill
Counter service restaurant

New England-style seafood and other dishes
[ADULT DRINKS]

Enjoy New England-style seafood and other dishes in a wooden boathouse overlooking Lake Verne. High-speed counter service stations allow for a multitude of Discovery Glacier’s guests to feast while looking out over the land’s sights from lakeside dining decks.

Steammaster’s Grill is located across from Tinkerer’s Workshop along Lake Verne’s glacial shores. With the waters frozen over, and with ships half-stuck in the ice, this boathouse has been repurposed into a restaurant. The structure is an eclectic combination of wood and brick, resembling London’s St. Pancras Station crossed with Fowler’s Harbor at Disneyland. Icicles hang from oxidized metal roofs. Rooftop chimneys emit steam. A windsock flaps in the breeze. The main entry is marked by a steepled clock tower alongside a converted ship’s mast. Double door entry is flanked by bowsprits.

The covered ordering area is located upstairs on the main walkway level - generally the layout is like Disneyland’s Hungry Bear Restaurant. This space is rather unabashedly industrial, all concrete and metal, with the order counters made from converted metal shipping containers. Nautical netting above provides shade and shelter. The kitchen is visible past the counters, set around a steampunk boiler. New England food dominates the menu, with options including fish ‘n’ chips, clam chowder, and bisque in bread boules. Beer is also available.

The upstairs dining deck is set underneath intricate metal Victorian rafters, with panoramic views of Mt. Helios’ eastern glaciers. There are ice-covered nautical wheel chandeliers and ceiling fans designed like 19th-century gliders. Wintry equipment sits scattered all around, from barrels of “Salt” to ice blocks and era-appropriate ice harvesting gear. A central mural shows S.E.A.’s founding of Discovery Glacier, featuring luminaries such as Captain Nemo and Rudolph Blauerhimmel.

The lower wooden dining deck is located right alongside the hulls of the iced-over derelict sailing ships. These craft include a rowboat and a small Nantucket-style S.E.A. whaling vessel, the Albatross. Heating stoves, fueled by canisters of whale oil, struggle to combat the frost. The deck’s decor consists of S.E.A. aviation maps of the icy northern region.

A “one man band” performer dutifully patrols both decks, entertaining guests. Imagine a steampunk version of Bert from Mary Poppins, armed with knee cymbals, accordion, harmonica, backpack drum, bicycle horn, everything! Between this entertainment, the quality food, and the great views, Steammaster’s Grill is a grand dining option!
​

---

The Freeze Station
Snack counter

Ice cream and sundaes

How better to appreciate the shaded, wintry realm of Discovery Glacier than with a nice, cold treat? Carved into the glacier walls near the land’s Runway One entrance, The Freeze Station serves guests a tantalizing selection of ice cream and sundaes.

Victorian avalanche barriers hold up the entrance to the ice cave. The frigid interior is formed from ice sheet walls and exposed basalt columns inspired by Fingal’s Cave in Ireland. S.E.A.’s technicians have made a valiant effort to inhabit this unforgiving space: A relocated steamer ship’s furnace provides warmth and melts the nearby ice. A sort of Corliss Engine device, all kinetic steampunk whirligigs, appears as the centerpiece serving counter. This device is implied to be a steampunk ice cream maker.

In addition to the standard ice cream cones and soft serve, The Freeze Station features a rotating menu of specialty sundaes and milkshakes. Get your ice cream served on top of piping hot brownies or bread pudding! Get your milkshake in a souvenir cup featuring Disney characters in Victorian dress!​

 

[Parker41056]

The Base of this mountain has to be large on a epic scale. The rides, restaurants, shows, ands shops it will hold is incredible!

 

[Pi on my Cake]

I have been absolutely loving Discovery Glacier so far! It's amazing!

 

[Suchomimus]

The Base of this mountain has to be large on a epic scale. The rides, restaurants, shows, ands shops it will hold is incredible!

As Doug would tell you as he told others, he’s thought of everything.

Mt. Helios is incredibly practical too, with enough space inside the structure to house several attractions, restaurants and shops across four different lands.

 

[Arctic-Xodus]

I have been absolutely loving Discovery Glacier so far! It's amazing!

Same here, Pi. Same here.

Discovery Glacier is so far my favorite part of the whole park.

 

[D Hulk]

The Base of this mountain has to be large on a epic scale. The rides, restaurants, shows, ands shops it will hold is incredible!

Mt. Helios is indeed epic & huge! Within its slopes (or in buildings directly abutting the mountain) are 4 D/E-tickets, the same number of restaurants, and assorted support facilities.

I'll use DisneySea's Mt. Prometheus as an example for realism. While the central 199'-tall volcano peak only holds one E-ticket, the surrounding slopes (which from throughout the park look like part of the mountain structure) hold an entire land, Mysterious Island. By basically replacing this land square footage with 5 or so large 100'-tall show buildings, and by building the 199'-tall Mt. Helios at their center, I believe that the central mountain range of DisneySky is incredibly ambitious but still entirely realistic.

 

[D Hulk]

Discovery Glacier - Retail​

 

[D Hulk]

Galerie des Automates
Merchandise store

Confectionary, apparel and more

In place of a single centerpiece shop, Discovery Glacier instead features two moderately-scaled stores flanking either side of the Copper Arcade. To the left side and nearest to Tinkerer’s Workshop is Galerie des Automates, a quaint little place themed around Industrial Revolution era robotics. Theming aside, for guests it is a casual spot to collect some sweets or clothing or other merchandise.

The shop’s exterior boasts a black-painted facade like a Victorian London pub. An interactive window display on the corner serves to entice guests. Behold “Jack” the card-dealing automaton, a modern mechanical marvel! Guests can hit “Pass” or “Go” buttons and engage Jack in a simple game of blackjack. Picture the automaton from Hugo, with a DisneySky twist!

The interior, meanwhile, is designed after the 1889 Exposition Universelle’s Galerie des Machines, a huge pavilion with vaulted iron rafters. Fake skylights overhead provide light. S.E.A. uses this space as an automaton museum; indeed, “Galerie des Automates” translates to “Gallery of Automatons.” Glassed Victorian cabinets display all manner of historic early robots, ranging from the Digesting Duck, the Mechanical Turk, the Difference Engine, and possibly even recycled early Disney audio-animatronics. Guests are invited to press control buttons on the display cases, causing these devices all perform simple movements. Checkout counters are highly-themed to resemble a vintage department store, like McDuck’s at DisneySea.
​

---

Time Flies
Antique store

Original items made here

On the arcade’s right corner is Time Flies, sited to compliment the nearby Time Machine attraction. This is a steampunk clockworks factory, specializing in the history of telling time. The exterior facade is mostly modeled after London’s Harrods with just a bit of Burlington Arcade. Window displays show off a grand assortment of timepieces from throughout history. There are also blueprints for both H.G. and Wells, Huxley’s automatons, providing a neat attraction tie-in. A nearby Victorian glass shed, shaped like a miniature Crystal Palace, juts out into the walkway area and draws crowds. Inside is a performance to counter Jack over at the Galerie: Live glass blowers create exquisitely delicate products which can be purchased here.

Within, we continue the Harrods architecture style. Every available space is filled to the point of clutter with an assortment of timepieces and clockworks and other gewgaws. Steampunk clock & dirigible hybrids hang from girders. All available wall space is coated in Victorian invention sketches, mostly of screwy impossible airplanes, but also of clocks, submersibles, really any sort of hairbrained contraption. The cashier corner bears a triumphant wall-sized kinetic display: A gigantic cuckoo clock shaped like The Time Machine’s house, defined by exposed, mechanically-accurate innards and moving automaton figures. At every quarter hour, the cuckoo clock rings out with a clamorous din of literal bells and whistles.
​

---

Aerial Outpost
Wagon cart

Wagon offering hairbands, sun protectors and more

An eye-catching red dirigible sits moored in the canyons near Spark Gap Hover-Coaster. This is a Montgolfier design, a fanciful vertical balloon called the Gyro-Evac which features small gravity-bombs and kinetic counter-spinning rotors. Some Disney fans might recall a similar balloon which featured in Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Thick iron chains hold the aircraft moored to the ground...actually, they are its supports.

A “Water-Vat” tanker truck sits at the craft’s base...this vehicle is also familiar from Atlantis. It appears in Discovery Glacier as a modified tundra buggy. It functions as a simple merchandise wagon offering basic impulse purchase items like hairbands and sunglasses.
​

---

Tomorrow, another day, another land: Pioneer Fields, where early 1920s airplanes conquer the Andes Mountains.

 

[Suchomimus]

Same here, Pi. Same here.

Discovery Glacier is so far my favorite part of the whole park.

Same here. It's been my favorite land since it was called Discovery Fjord.

The Pioneer Fields is actually my least favorite land from the original, so I can't wait to see how Doug has improved this iteration.