Defunctland: The History of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Submarine Voyage (Part 1 of 2)

ahoy my name is Kevin burger and welcome to another edition in defunct land for background slash context on this series please visit the purge comm with the link below another bit of housekeeping for today's episode I now have a patreon I know patreon czar everywhere and some of you are probably tired of hearing about them but I told myself that if I made it to 10,000 subscribers I would start one and I never thought I would get there so thank you to everyone this is just incredible I want to be clear donating to this patreon is going to help me continue to make videos regularly and work on defunct lame VR but it is not a direct donation to any specific VR project I think I have some interesting perks some of which have fairly high monetary goals that I don't expect to be fulfilled anytime soon also just because you don't donate to the patreon does not mean you cannot still contribute to the front end with your creativity it's just to help me continue to produce content and I will never turn anyone's ideas away just because you aren't donating that said if you have a few extra bucks go to the link in the description below and I'd be really thankful if you'd help me out all right back to the episode today we will be attempting to resurrect Disneyland's extinct attraction submarine voyage and walt disney world's extinct attraction 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea submarine voyage the first iteration of this attraction was found at Disneyland in 1959 but its beginnings date all the way back to the film that was released in 1954 this was suggested by a lot of you too many to name but I do want to include you all in this video so I will do that now the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea based on the 1870 Jules Verne novel was released on December 23rd 1954 the film was both a commercial and critical success for Walt Disney Productions which was still somewhat new to strictly live-action films at the time having only been making them for less than five years the film was praised for its stunning visuals and set design being nominated for three Academy Awards and winning two of them seven months after the film's release Disneyland opened to the public during its construction Disneyland ran into numerous budget cuts and Tomorrowland being the last Lane in the park to be constructed felt the impact abused the most when it opened with Disneyland it served mainly as an area for corporate showcases with companies such as American Motors and Richfield oil having their own displays on opening day tomorrow and housed Autopia the only opening day attraction to still be operating today rocket to the moon the Monsanto Hall of Chemistry the aluminum Hall of Fame Space Station x1 circa Ramah us a phantom boats and clock of the world for the most part do you seem to be hilariously mundane attractions and all of them together at once might make an interesting addition to the funk land but the main idea is that this is not what Walt imagined when he first envisioned tomorrow and in an attempt to save a large portion of the new park Disney decided to open an exhibit in this area and lucky for them they had a relevant popular and visually stunning film to display on August 3rd 1955 less than three weeks after Disneyland opened the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea exhibit debuted in Tomorrowland despite it being put together under a time and budget crunch the exhibit was surprisingly detailed and impressive it took guests through the Nautilus the submarine from the film where they got to experience its final resting place its various control rooms Nemo's Oregon which is now in the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and encounter the film's giant squid the attraction was a hit and lasted all the way to 1966 when Disney became frustrated with the design and expansions to Tomorrowland and decided to renovate the entire area with new attractions but this was of course not the end of the film's inclusion in Disney Parks four years after the opening of Disneyland in 1959 the first large expansion came to the park which greatly affected Tomorrowland the first three e-ticket attractions opened in case you weren't aware Disneyland and Disney World until 1982 you a per attraction ticket system after the expansion in 1959 there were five categories of attractions a through II a being simple rides such as carriages and the King Arthur carousel B was slightly more immersive with motor boat cruise and the Swiss family treehouse C was rides like Peter Pan's flight and mr. Toad's Wild Ride D included flight to the moon and Skyway and E was for the thrill rides of the park e ticket is now even a term used to describe an exhilarating experience and the first three e-ticket attractions to come to Disneyland all happen to be in the then mundane Tomorrowland these attractions with a Matterhorn bobsleds the monorail and submarine voyage submarines at this time were still considered a future technology they gained prominence in World War two but they were quickly evolving in the late 50s due to the Cold War Between the United States and the Soviet Union in fact the United States launched its own Nautilus in 1954 which can last underwater for four months at a time so when it came to expand Tomorrowland the Imagineers vision was clear they were already going to the skies with rocket to the moon they would go to the top of mountains with the Matterhorn glide the landscape with the monorail and explore the depths of the ocean with submarine voyage the new water attraction would replace the Tomorrowland boats in opening day attraction in which guests could drive a small boat around the Tomorrowland Lagoon there were a lot of issues with the engine heat and smoke especially when guests tried to speed up the boat in order to solve this Disney redesign these boats and added a skipper to each one so the guests would no longer be in control they were also renamed the phantom boats in 1956 but were closed shortly after this due to continued technical issues and the increased cost of employing a skipper for each boat this attraction lasted only a year being one of the shortest lived attractions ever at Disneyland and the first to be removed this left the Tomorrowland Lagoon vacant for a new water attraction but it wouldn't be until 1958 that Disney had a good idea for it Imagineers originally pictured a boat with a glass-bottom riding through the lagoon allowing guests to look down at the underwater life Walt's plan was more ambitious he wanted the guests to be underwater looking out of portholes in their very own submarine ride he even originally wanted to have life fish but this proved too difficult so the switch to animatronics was made the lagoon was drained a show building was constructed and submarine voyage was built the attraction opened on June 14 1959 with a christening by mrs. Mildred Nelson the wife of the head machinist of the USS Nautilus the submarines were modeled after those being used in the Cold War they had a very industrial feel and were painted gray eight of them were used in the attraction each holding 38 guests the fleet cost over $600,000 to make in 1959 which adjusted for inflation is a pretty heavy price tag for just the ride vehicles but it more than pleased Walt his vision of Tomorrowland was finally becoming realized and he was particularly happy with his submarines in September of 1959 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev visited the United States and was famously denied a trip to Disneyland due to security reasons what was apparently disappointed by this because he looked forward to showing Khrushchev his fleet of submarines submarine voyage had a 1365 foot trail that would guide guests through the underwater life guests would climb down into their cramped submarine where it was so tight that the chairs had to retract so guests could get in and out this was notoriously claustrophobic hot and humid at times but given the design and concept it was impressively manageable prerecorded captain narrations played throughout the attraction describing the sea life and giving nautical commands that add to the magic of convincing the guests that they were diving underwater and in case you aren't aware they actually worked the submarine was not actually submarine but a boat with a level below the waterline guess would technically be underwater but they would never go any deeper than they did when they entered the sub and if they looked up during the outside portions of the ride they could clearly see the waterline as the submarine leaves the dock a large amount of bubbles are produced at an angle to make it appear as though the submarine is diving further below the surface a simple but genius effect that was convincing enough for the general public and children despite the fact that the first set of bubble jets could actually be seen from the outside from the loading dock the guests would first experience animals such as sea turtles lobsters and clams then they were informed that a storm is approaching so to avoid it they dive deeper the effect was more convincing than the last because on top of having the angled bubbles the submarine was also entering a show building under a waterfall making it seem that the submarine had dived into the depths of the ocean and hiding the waterline above just encounter wrecked ships a shark and deep-sea divers before the captain catches word that is a polar icecap ahead they dive deeper again into darkness where they see color-changing fish and a massive giant squid and continue on their way with the captain pointing out the mermaids wondering if he is hallucinating or if they are actually real they passed by the lost continent of Atlantis and it's volcano before seeing a long cross-eyed sea serpent the captain is convinced he is hallucinating and begins to take the submarine up again the submarine coasts into the dock and guests exit the eight submarines each had a different name Nautilus sea Wolf's skate skipjack Triton George Washington Patrick Henry and Ethan Allen if one of the submarines portholes had a leak a cushion from the operator to be used to plug it the lagoon required 9 million gallons of water to be filled and if you remember the defunct land on jaws the ride that Lagoon only required five million gallons so submarine voyage needed nearly twice that amount of water every night divers would swim to the bottom of the lagoon to pick up debris and sometimes even repair the animatronics from 1965 to 1967 live mermaids inhabited the attraction along with the onride mermaid animatronics Disney paid female cast members one dollar and sixty-five cents per hour to sunbathe and swim in mermaid costumes for four hours a day during the summer this ended after mermaids experienced health issues from the chlorine in the water and exhaust from the submarines also guests taking pictures of them were blocking traffic to the Matterhorn the show building of submarine voyage was made for strength because the roof of it was landscaped and home to a large portion of the Autopia tracks a section of the monorail and part of the People Mover submarine voyage was a huge success and in the early years of Disneyland it helps solidify the power of attraction storytelling and detail the animatronics looked great especially for being underwater and the soothing narration and storytelling made for a fantastic ride twelve years after the rides opening in 1971 Walt Disney World Resort opened to the public Magic Kingdom's Tomorrowland like Disneyland was unfinished but it was even more barren with only the Grand Prix Raceway and Skyway present on opening day it would be another few years before the vision of Tomorrowland was fully seen the vision would look further into the future of technology and focused more on space travel and exploration with attractions such as star jets and Space Mountain at the same time didn't we wanted to bring submarine voyage to the florida park but the theming would not allow it submarines were no longer the future but the Imagineers had an idea if they were able to reefing submarine voyage as a fantasy adventure then they could place it in fantasy land instead of Tomorrowland and luckily for them they had just the property to do it looks like this episode is going to be another two-parter well I didn't want to do this I'd like to keep each episode under 15 minutes but I also didn't want to cut any information that I think you would have found interesting so I'll be back next episode with the opening of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea submarine voyage and the fate of both rides until then thank you for watching and don't forget to comment share and subscribe

Channel: Defunctland

Views: 1,849,227

Keywords: defunctland, kevin perjurer, theme park, extinct, abandoned, defunct, history, disney, disneyland, disney world, previous, attractions, on ride, lights on, 20000, 20000 leagues under the sea, finding nemo, submarine, disney submarine ride, submarine voyage, ide

Id: nICWXlssFQ8

Length: 11min 11sec (671 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 23 2017

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This is a great channel with a very ambitious creator. Looking forward to how it develops into the future.