Original Alice in Wonderland Ride

[Miru]

Ok, here they are. I took the pictures that you can't find online:
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I think it's interesting that the early dark rides tried to scare you as much as possible. If Frozen Ever After was an opening day dark ride it would probably be about Elsa trying to kill you while cardboard cutout Olaf's taunted your mortality, before entering Arendelle where all of the citizens including Anna and Kristoff have been frozen to death before entering Marshmallow's mouth and then the ride would end.

That’s... that’s actually hillarious. Let’s come up with more “opening day” versions of familiar dark rides!
* Pooh: Tigger is constantly trying to “bounce” you as a cardboard cutout as winds are constantly blowing alongside rainstorms, bees, falling trees, and bolts of lightning.
* TLM: Sebastian tries to cut your heads off. Triton tries to blast you with his trident. Of course Ursula gets in on the action as well.
* BATB: Beast tries to rip you to pieces, the enchanted objects taunt you, Lumiere tries to burn you, the wolves chase you around, and in the end Gaston shoots you.
Who’s with me on this?

 

[180º]

That’s... that’s actually hillarious. Let’s come up with more “opening day” versions of familiar dark rides!
* Pooh: Tigger is constantly trying to “bounce” you as a cardboard cutout as winds are constantly blowing alongside rainstorms, bees, falling trees, and bolts of lightning.
* TLM: Sebastian tries to cut your heads off. Triton tries to blast you with his trident. Of course Ursula gets in on the action as well.
* BATB: Beast tries to rip you to pieces, the enchanted objects taunt you, Lumiere tries to burn you, the wolves chase you around, and in the end Gaston shoots you.
Who’s with me on this?

Very much on board with the BATB one especially. Reminiscent of the original Peter Pan ending in which Captain Hook barks, “Fire, Mr. Smee!” and guests are shot out of the sky.

 

[Miru]

Very much on board with the BATB one especially. Reminiscent of the original Peter Pan ending in which Captain Hook barks, “Fire, Mr. Smee!” and guests are shot out of the sky.

In the 1960s, they also added a bunch of skulls laying about in the end scene of the ride, possibly a reference to David Hall’s concept art.
Roger Rabbit: Judge Doom tries to pour dip on riders as the weasels keep shooting and stabbing them. Jessica kicks you and Roger throws dynamite.
Monsters Inc: Should be obvious, every monster in the movie shows off their signature scares... and some even try to kill you. Waternoose banishes you and uses the scream extractor. The ride ends with Randall eating you (and the heroes) and you going to hell.
Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway: Mickey is trying to run you over with his train.

 

[Brer Panther]

Okay, let me see what I can come up with...

- Pinocchio: Stromboli locks you in a cage, a cardboard cutout of Foulfellow taunts you, you get trapped on Pleasure Island and sold to a salt mine before getting eaten by Monstro and taking a magical tour of a giant whale's digestive system.
- Toy Story: Andy's toys are all ticked off because they think you knocked Buzz out the window and throw you out the window and into Sid's yard in retaliation. Mr. Potato Head taunts you. Sid's Mutant Toys menace you. Sid eventually straps each ride vehicle to a rocket and blows the riders up.
- Sleeping Beauty: Maleficent's goons chase you through her castle and then Maleficent becomes a dragon and roasts you alive (might actually make for a pretty cool dark ride, minus the whole "roasting you alive" part).
- A Bug's Life: Giant cans of pesticide and fly swatters all over the place. Hopper and the grasshoppers want to... eat you, I guess? And then you get devoured by a bird.
- Finding Nemo: Like in the movie, a lot of things want to eat you. Sharks, barracuda, anglerfish, seagulls, a pelican (not Nigel, the other one named Gerald). Then you get flushed down a toilet. But don't worry, all drains lead to the ocean... where a giant net is waiting for you, and you get hauled onto a fishing boat, fried up, and served with chips.
- Aladdin: Jafar throws you into the Cave of Wonders, then becomes a snake and devours the riders.
- The Jungle Book: Shere Khan pursues you through the jungle. And since tigers can run really fast, the chances of you getting away are very slim. And also the jungle is on fire, so even if you DO get away, there's a very good chance you can wind up barbequed.

 

[Miru]

Okay, let me see what I can come up with...

- Pinocchio: Stromboli locks you in a cage, a cardboard cutout of Foulfellow taunts you, you get trapped on Pleasure Island and sold to a salt mine before getting eaten by Monstro and taking a magical tour of a giant whale's digestive system.
- Toy Story: Andy's toys are all ticked off because they think you knocked Buzz out the window and throw you out the window and into Sid's yard in retaliation. Mr. Potato Head taunts you. Sid's Mutant Toys menace you. Sid eventually straps each ride vehicle to a rocket and blows the riders up.
- Sleeping Beauty: Maleficent's goons chase you through her castle and then Maleficent becomes a dragon and roasts you alive (might actually make for a pretty cool dark ride, minus the whole "roasting you alive" part).
- A Bug's Life: Giant cans of pesticide and fly swatters all over the place. Hopper and the grasshoppers want to... eat you, I guess? And then you get devoured by a bird.
- Finding Nemo: Like in the movie, a lot of things want to eat you. Sharks, barracuda, anglerfish, seagulls, a pelican (not Nigel, the other one named Gerald). Then you get flushed down a toilet. But don't worry, all drains lead to the ocean... where a giant net is waiting for you, and you get hauled onto a fishing boat, fried up, and served with chips.
- Aladdin: Jafar throws you into the Cave of Wonders, then becomes a snake and devours the riders.
- The Jungle Book: Shere Khan pursues you through the jungle. And since tigers can run really fast, the chances of you getting away are very slim. And also the jungle is on fire, so even if you DO get away, there's a very good chance you can wind up barbequed.

And also Nemo would have a grinder before you’re caught in the net. Even crazier; what if the ship sank from a torpedo, but you were blown up with it? Then you’re served on a plate in hell.

Brother Bear: The bears would be chasing you, and at the end you fall off a waterfall.
Onward: You’re stalked by the gelatinous cube, then the junk dragon tries to step on you, the shopkeeper tries to eat you, and at the end, everything collapses on you.

 

[Okee68]

Three new views of Alice from Don Carson's "making of" video for the VR project, plus an uncropped view of one of the Tulgey Wood photos from issue #31 of The "E" Ticket and a small scan of the original 1958 blueprints. Hopefully we can find the full-resolution scan of the track plan eventually, as well as any other photos that might have been part of this backstage collection. And I think Don Carson implied that there was another audio recording he had access to as well.

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

Forgive me if this has been asked, but navigating between the layouts of Alice and Toad in their original and current incarnations, something occurs to me.

Watching Don Carson's new video today I took a closer look, and it seems like Tulgey Wood was open to the space below in a way that is no longer true. Was the original Tulgey Wood scene in Alice open all the way down through the first level?

Comparing the existing layouts of the Dark Rides against the original, slightly shorter Toad ride track seems to suggest that Toad's layout never went under Alice until the '83 refurb. Since Toad didn't travel under that version of the ride, that space would theoretically be open to be accessible to Alice, unless it was a Maintenance Area for Toad with a low ceiling or something. That information may simply be lost to time, but if it was just empty I can see why they'd have given it over to Toad in the 80's.

A while ago I photoshopped the layouts of Pan, Toad, and Alice into one document just to try to make sense of how they all fit together - Here are a few different versions of it that help show what I'm referring to. Alice is in Purple, Toad is in Orange, Pan is in Red. You can see where the colors start to overlap.


This pic shows Alice with Tulgey Wood laid over Toad:

This one shows Alice x-raying through the 2nd level to reveal Toad below, but with a Red Line that connects the existing Toad track along the path it originally traveled (approximately) before 1983. That straightaway was the Train scene, and at no other point in the layout does any Alice track actually cross directly over Toad track in a meaningful way:

Also of interest to me is that the little space in Alice's Tulgey Wood scene where the Umbrella Bird sits seems to actually pop out over the Peter Pan showbuilding. That seems also to be an add from the New Fantasyland refurb of Alice, which is funny only because of what it must have cost to add that little "shed" vs how much is actually housed in that little nook. You'd think if you're blowing out a wall you'd really make it worth the effort. I'm glad they bothered, just surprised they did!

Anyway, that's my long-winded, nitty-gritty, doesn't-change-anything question. I'd be interested to know if anyone has insight! If not, just enjoy the visual of these layouts intertwining all in one place. They certainly don't design show buildings so tightly-woven anymore.

 

[Okee68]

Forgive me if this has been asked, but navigating between the layouts of Alice and Toad in their original and current incarnations, something occurs to me.

Watching Don Carson's new video today I took a closer look, and it seems like Tulgey Wood was open to the space below in a way that is no longer true. Was the original Tulgey Wood scene in Alice open all the way down through the first level?

Comparing the existing layouts of the Dark Rides against the original, slightly shorter Toad ride track seems to suggest that Toad's layout never went under Alice until the '83 refurb. Since Toad didn't travel under that version of the ride, that space would theoretically be open to be accessible to Alice, unless it was a Maintenance Area for Toad with a low ceiling or something. That information may simply be lost to time, but if it was just empty I can see why they'd have given it over to Toad in the 80's.

A while ago I photoshopped the layouts of Pan, Toad, and Alice into one document just to try to make sense of how they all fit together - Here are a few different versions of it that help show what I'm referring to. Alice is in Purple, Toad is in Orange, Pan is in Red. You can see where the colors start to overlap.


This pic shows Alice with Tulgey Wood laid over Toad:
View attachment 521691

This one shows Alice x-raying through the 2nd level to reveal Toad below, but with a Red Line that connects the existing Toad track along the path it originally traveled (approximately) before 1983. That straightaway was the Train scene, and at no other point in the layout does any Alice track actually cross directly over Toad track in a meaningful way:

View attachment 521692

Also of interest to me is that the little space in Alice's Tulgey Wood scene where the Umbrella Bird sits seems to actually pop out over the Peter Pan showbuilding. That seems also to be an add from the New Fantasyland refurb of Alice, which is funny only because of what it must have cost to add that little "shed" vs how much is actually housed in that little nook. You'd think if you're blowing out a wall you'd really make it worth the effort. I'm glad they bothered, just surprised they did!

Anyway, that's my long-winded, nitty-gritty, doesn't-change-anything question. I'd be interested to know if anyone has insight! If not, just enjoy the visual of these layouts intertwining all in one place. They certainly don't design show buildings so tightly-woven anymore.

An absolute scholar, you are. I never thought I would see anyone bring up that hyper-microscopic bit of trivia about the little alcove for the umbrella bird. You can see in the Tulgey Wood photo I posted earlier that the track was definitely suspended to some degree over a "pit" which presumably was below under the entire scene, in the same way that the flower garden was and still is arranged. This isn't the case with the current Tulgey Wood, as hundreds of POVs all prove. Now, there's just a solid, black floor of the exact same elevation as the track. So to answer your question, I'm almost positive the Tulgey Wood scene originally would have impeded slightly more into Toad's maintenance space. I can't imagine how low the ceiling must have been in there back then, but I guess it sufficed.

And here's a related little something: The maintenance area for Toad actually wasn't as large back then; only the upper part of it existed, as much of that space was originally occupied by the Mad Hatter shop.

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

An absolute scholar, you are. I never thought I would see anyone bring up that hyper-microscopic bit of trivia about the little alcove for the umbrella bird. You can see in the Tulgey Wood photo I posted earlier that the track was definitely suspended to some degree over a "pit" which presumably was below under the entire scene, in the same way that the flower garden was and still is arranged. This isn't the case with the current Tulgey Wood, as hundreds of POVs all prove. Now, there's just a solid, black floor of the exact same elevation as the track. So to answer your question, I'm almost positive the Tulgey Wood scene originally would have impeded slightly more into Toad's maintenance space. I can't imagine how low the ceiling must have been in there back then, but I guess it sufficed.

And here's a related little something: The maintenance area for Toad actually wasn't as large back then; only the upper part of it existed, as much of that space was originally occupied by the Mad Hatter shop.

Ha! Well THAT seems to answer my question! Much of the space I'm thinking of seems to have been occupied by the old Mad Hatter shop.

Given how low the ceiling is in the current Court room and subsequent scene before the Train Tunnel, the Toad Maintenance area must have a ceiling just as low, perhaps a little lower in some places because Alice is still ramping upward at the beginning of Tulgey. I'd guess maybe it's always been that low in the space taken over by Toad and the store just made the best of it (maybe that part was a storage area?)

OG Disneyland made some pretty kooky use of its space, and low ceilings in shops weren't unheard of. The shop in the West side of the Castle still has a surprisingly low ceiling in parts, given that the path of the Walkthrough is basically sunken into it. You can see where the path runs vs. where the Dioramas sit, simply because the ceiling is raised under the Dioramas. They really didn't waste an INCH back in the day - It even slants along the underside of staircase to the third level, as visible in this photo:

That's basically the crux of why I even asked about the Tulgey Wood pit to begin with - it would be so out of character for the Imagineers of that era to leave so much space unused, especially when there was a ride right below it that *could* have used it! But I didn't know about the shop being there, it's so rarely talked about and clearly was VERY well hidden!

I really can't say enough about all the good that came with the 80's Fantasyland redo. A couple little gems were lost, but brilliant choices like moving the Mad Hatter shop to the other side of Toad, building it to look like the White Rabbit's house, and having that tucked in between the Alice Dark Ride and the Mad Tea Party to make a Wonderland mini-area just can't be oversold. Not to mention the drop-dead gorgeous facade treatments everything got, and the way they turned over available space to extend the tracks of each dark ride . . .

No shade, but WDW's New Fantasyland doesn't sparkle half as bright as Disneyland's!

 

[Clover Bailey]

Three new views of Alice from Don Carson's "making of" video for the VR project, plus an uncropped view of one of the Tulgey Wood photos from issue #31 of The "E" Ticket and a small scan of the original 1958 blueprints. Hopefully we can find the full-resolution scan of the track plan eventually, as well as any other photos that might have been part of this backstage collection. And I think Don Carson implied that there was another audio recording he had access to as well.

These are awesome, where did you find them?

 

[Okee68]

If anyone is interested, I've devised my own "ideal" version of the Alice in Wonderland dark ride on the Imagineering forum in a series of detailed posts totaling to nearly 6,000 words. https://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/ideal-dream-versions-of-existing-disney-attractions.971327/ This fictional version of the attraction re-implements a lot of features from the 1958 ride, so I thought it would be somewhat relevant to link it in this thread.

 

[Okee68]

These are awesome, where did you find them?

I don't know where they're from; I just took screenshots of them as they appeared in Don Carson's new video.

 

[fantasmicsyd]

That’s so interesting that Tulgey Wood used to be suspended like that, I wonder what the purpose was? Also makes me wonder how evacuations would‘ve worked since there’s no path to walk on next to the track, though I’m not really sure what kind of evac procedures would’ve been in place at that time to begin with

 

[Okee68]

I just rediscovered this photo of the Cheshire Cat, along with several other dark ride interior shots that were featured on the blog post it came from, all of which I had been looking for. On the original page, the thumbnails for this and the others have Ph*toB*cket watermarks on them, which miraculously go away upon opening the full versions. I've hardly thought about this before, but somebody (probably Ken Anderson) deliberately made the decision to give the Cheshire Cat a raccoon mask here, just to make the attraction that much closer to being a complete fever dream. I almost wonder if any die-hard fans of the original ride felt mildly disgruntled when he was repainted to look more on-model in the mid-to-late seventies.

 

[Okee68]

Several images which, by all means, should not exist:

 

[Clover Bailey]

Several images which, by all means, should not exist:

That image of Cheshire Cat is flipped, right? I own this issue of E-Ticket and it's the other way around.

Also that White Rabbit cutout is horrifying.

 

[Okee68]

That image of Cheshire Cat is flipped, right? I own this issue of E-Ticket and it's the other way around.

Also that White Rabbit cutout is horrifying.

It's flipped, yeah. That's why I posted it; it's so strange and disorienting to look at when you're so accustomed to the usual arrangement. It's the same with the right-side-up Upside-Down Room, which is also flipped horizontally so that the furnishings still appear in their regular locations.

 

[Miru]

I just rediscovered this photo of the Cheshire Cat, along with several other dark ride interior shots that were featured on the blog post it came from, all of which I had been looking for. On the original page, the thumbnails for this and the others have Ph*toB*cket watermarks on them, which miraculously go away upon opening the full versions. I've hardly thought about this before, but somebody (probably Ken Anderson) deliberately made the decision to give the Cheshire Cat a raccoon mask here, just to make the attraction that much closer to being a complete fever dream. I almost wonder if any die-hard fans of the original ride felt mildly disgruntled when he was repainted to look more on-model in the mid-to-late seventies.

That might raccoon mask may actually be a void representing him fading in/out of sight, given the next thing he does is jumpscare riders. Even weirder; an early print ad for the ride gave him sharp teeth similar to early concept art;

Imagine if the ride went with THIS design for him for the scene with him...

 

[Okee68]

Note also the cursedly happy caterpillar; the only thing he's missing is a double thumbs-up. There was actually another variant of this advertisement featuring on-model character designs, although I can't find it at the moment.

This just occurred to me, but how likely would you lads say it was that the first of the two Cheshire Cat flats was tilted forward slightly? Since it was situated above riders as opposed to being at eye level, I think it probably would have looked overly flat if it had been positioned totally upright. This is something I've noticed in the VR re-creation, where the Cheshire Cat definitely isn't set up at any sort of angle and looks very obviously like a wooden cutout as a result. Having him angled downward a little bit probably would have solved this, and I think this was likely the case in real life, as I have yet to see an actual photo in which the Cheshire Cat looks distinctly larger on bottom and smaller on top like he does in the VR version.

 

[Miru]

Note also the cursedly happy caterpillar; the only thing he's missing is a double thumbs-up. There was actually another variant of this advertisement featuring on-model character designs, although I can't find it at the moment.

This just occurred to me, but how likely would you lads say it was that the first of the two Cheshire Cat flats was tilted forward slightly? Since it was situated above riders as opposed to being at eye level, I think it probably would have looked overly flat if it had been positioned totally upright. This is something I've noticed in the VR re-creation, where the Cheshire Cat definitely isn't set up at any sort of angle and looks very obviously like a wooden cutout as a result. Having him angled downward a little bit probably would have solved this, and I think this was likely the case in real life, as I have yet to see an actual photo in which the Cheshire Cat looks distinctly larger on bottom and smaller on top like he does in the VR version.

The second one also seems to drop down too slowly for the jumpscare to be effective. I imagine something faster, like on contemporary Pretzel rides.