A little TLC is all it should need. Maybe update some of the lighting effects and smooth out the ride to how it once was, but much of its charm lies in its being a classic original.
There's the problem right there; the word "
charm" was never supposed to be attached to an E Ticket attraction concept like Space Mountain. It's not the horseless carriage or
it's a small world or the Tiki Room (although the cynical and loud 1990's revamp of the Florida Tiki Room made it anything but charming).
Space Mountain is a cutting edge, high adrenaline, thrilling roller coaster ride with high-tech special effects and modern showmanship. It's a thrill ride that was designed to rely on modern technology to tell it's story to riders. Or at least it was that when it opened back in 1975. Since then it has sat there and remained in a deep freeze, with just some corporate sponsorship changes and routine maintenance on the 30+ year old facility. No new technology of any significance to the rider has been installed since it opened. Gerald Ford is no longer in the White House, Chrysler no longer makes Cordoba's with white vinyl roofs and opera windows, and spinning disco balls and panels of blinking lights are no longer impressive special effects to modern Americans. Times have changed, and a ride like Space Mountain should have changed with it.
WDW has disco balls and blinking lights and soundless vehicles and Kodachrome slides of cookies flying on the walls. Disneyland has high-def plasma screens and digital starfields and computer video projections and the latest on-board audio with four speakers and a subwoofer
at every single seat. No wonder WDW's Space Mountain is now considered "charming", although that could be considered a euphemism for less flattering words like "outdated" and "tired".
The problem is that WDW management never attempted to go in and change anything over the last 30 years. Disneyland's Space Mountain was opened in 1977, but they went in and did a massive makeover on it back in 1996 and added on-board audio and redid a lot of the effects and queue plotline. Then in 2005 they redid Space Mountain again, and gave it all new on-board audio and redid the effects and technology all over again. So while Disneyland's version has been around for a shorter number of years, it's still received two full makeovers while the WDW version has remained essentially the same for a longer period of time. WDW's Space Mountain should at least be on its third major makeover at this point, rather than frozen in 1975.
That was a mistake, and an example of WDW management neglecting the aging E Tickets like Space, Haunted Mansion, Pirates, Jungle Cruise etc. in favor of new rides in other parks, or new theme parks entirely. But now it sounds like WDW management realizes the mistakes it has made in the last 10 years and wants to get on the updating bandwagon like Disneyland has had for the last several years.
The end result is that "cutting-edge" rides like Space Mountain have been left to rot for so long that they are now considered "charming", and people are going to resist change because they have a completely different relationship with these old rides than what the designers had originally intended. I can see an emotional attachment to the charm of the old Plaza Swan Boats. But to hear that people now consider something like Space Mountain to be "charming" tells me WDW management is about 10 years behind the curve on updating these aging E Ticket attractions that are supposed to depend on modern technology to tell their story.
