Disneyland's Forgotten Motorboats | HISTORY

for those of you who have wandered through fantasyland on a hot summer day looking for a decent place to sit and enjoy your popcorn or turkey leg then you know the despair and disappointment of realizing there are none but perhaps some of you have wandered close enough to the matterhorn to find this peaceful oasis you immediately fall in love with it not just because it has plenty of shaded tables and seating but because this little corner of the park is surprisingly serene for being so close to the major pedestrian arteries of the park you look around and marvel at the quaint surroundings lush blooming flowers large shade trees and of course the whole thing is surrounded by a beautiful green pond not to mention every few minutes you get great views of the disneyland monorail winding its way around tomorrowland and fantasyland maybe you're a frequent visitor to this little seating area some of you take for granted its placement assuming disneyland installed this pier over the water simply because they needed a nice place for people to relax but the truth isn't so exact you may be surprised to hear this pier used to be the loading area of a fantasyland ride that lasted about three decades and it was called the motorboat cruise to tell you the story of this attraction i have to take you back to the year 1955 just after disneyland opened its gates for the first time the date is july 20th and the place tomorrowland a new attraction had opened at disneyland it wasn't quite ready for the park's grand opening on the 17th much to walt disney chagrin they had to delay it the attraction was called the tomorrowland boats and it was little more than a lagoon that predated the placement of the submarine voyage lagoon guests boarded these plain looking boats near the entrance to autopia and you could navigate a little gasoline-powered vehicle between the islands in the lagoon eventually having to make your way back to the dock when you got bored which would be very soon after leaving it the tomorrowland boats had many mechanical issues and the boats would break down frequently stranding people in the middle of the lagoon castenburg would have to drive out on a small craft and tow the boats back to the dock in an effort to improve the ride and make it more attractive and easier for cast members to operate they decided to close the attraction within a month after it had opened and then proceeded to upgrade it when the lagoon reopened on august 16th 1955 it featured new boats with fiberglass tail fin designs created by bruce bushman and the ride was now called phantom boats the new boats had a reworked engine that was air-cooled to keep them from overheating as the old ones did however this didn't matter since the engines were enclosed in a small space at the rear of the boat the engine compartment would heat up preventing the engine from cooling itself so the lids to the compartments were removed leaving the engines exposed to the elements but there were more problems than that due to the inefficient design of the propellers the engines often over-revved during use adding wear and increasing the engine's heat so the boats were modified to allow a cast member to ride with the guests to provide aid when the engine began to overheat or even break down there were 14 boats in total this meant the ride would have to be staffed by 14 cast members for two shifts per day not to mention the employees working at the dock to manage the load and unload of the guests the costs of operation on this attraction were becoming astronomical and the problem of breakdowns still wasn't solved so by the end of 1955 the ride closed again imagineers were at work redesigning the boat ride to emulate driving a fan boat like the ones used in the florida everglades an advertisement for the new attraction was placed out front of the dock and they even built a test vehicle to try out the idea but there were too many issues with the concept so by mid-1956 the phantom boats returned to tomorrowland offering their mechanical troubles to park guests of all ages by the end of that year walt had had enough of the ride's issues and requested that admiral joe fowler lead a team to redesign and reconstruct a better version of it this is where imagineer bob gur comes into the story fowler asked bob to design the vehicles to look like speed boats using the elongated bow to increase legroom for the passengers since the boats themselves couldn't be elongated bob simply rearranged the engine compartment and move the pilot seats further back meanwhile the ride would be relocated a few hundred feet north in fantasyland to free up space in tomorrowland for potential expansion with attractions that were actually futuristic compared to the modern looking boats that bob was designing the ride opened in 1957 as the motor boat cruise to create a more consistent ride time the boats were placed on a track similar to what you see on pirates of the caribbean today where there is a big rail on either side of the boat just beneath the surface of the water this allows the boat to go in one direction without deviating from a predetermined course but to allow people the feeling of being able to steer the boat the two rails were spaced far apart so there was a bit of wiggle room for riders but this feature in itself was a problem from the get-go this is because the boats were triangular shaped basically the bow was pointed and had a wheel at the front acting as a bumper against the rails of the course and the stern was wide with a wheel on either side serving the same purpose this meant if a person was not properly steering the boat it would drive sideways through the course rolling against one of the rails and slowing it down another boat behind it would catch up to it and try to go around but the riders didn't know that the hidden track wasn't wide enough for two boats so instead the two boats would get wedged and stuck cast members were lucky if the boats got wedged close to the mainland because they could easily push them apart but if the boats got wedged closer to the islands or the big open lagoon then the employee would have to jump into the water and rescue the boats and according to kasombers there were no rubber waders to put on they had to deal with getting their costume wet and soaked some areas of the water were deep enough that the water came up to the employee's chest furthermore having the propeller at the front of the boat created an unusual strain on the engine since the bow changed direction before the stern but despite all these issues the ride proved to be a success especially since riders had amazing views of the autopia and tomorrowland's short-lived liner train [Music] by the year 1959 disneyland underwent its most extensive expansion since the park opened walt disney was removing the view liner and replacing it with the new alweg monorail system as well as the matterhorn bobsleds and the submarine voyage through liquid space other attractions that had opened within a year from the expansion were also being advertised as part of it such as the new alice and wonderland ride the expanded fantasyland autopia and the newly reworked tomorrowland autopia because of all the changes to the autopias and the addition of the monorail the motorboat cruise was also rerouted and its capacity was doubled when they created two separate tracks for the ride a new high-capacity loading dock with automatic gates to stop the boats was constructed at the foot of the monorail track and to solve the issue of boats getting wedged together the track was redesigned the final version resembled what you see at it's a small world today where each boat has a wheel positioned at both the bow and the stern of the underside the wheels extended into a trough carved out of the bed of the canal this meant the boats followed the exact same path and were kept in line negating the ability to steer the boats also to prevent unnecessary wear on the engines the propeller was placed at the stern and was always spinning at a constant speed the gas pedal you pressed down on was just as fake as the steering wheel and to create excitement for the younger pilots as they pretended to navigate imagineers installed artificial rapids on the waterways as well as obstacles like boulders and bridge supports the attraction continued for three decades unchanged but once the 1990s came around the little boat ride couldn't compete for popularity with the other exciting adventures at disneyland the new generations coming to the park weren't going to waste precious time on this ride when they could be waiting in line for star tours haunted mansion or any other popular park attraction so in an effort to draw children onto the ride it was re-themed to motorboat cruise to gummy glen a storyline based on the popular children's show the gummy bears as strange as that sounds the even stranger thing was that the rethame consisted of plywood cutouts painted as the characters for the next two years the ride suffered a slow and agonizing death its maintenance budget declined along with a few other attractions in order to offset the costs of construction on mickey's toontown and in anticipation of the opening of the new land disney finally decided to close the motorboat cruise for good in january of 1993. the massive footprint of this ride was too large and expensive to fully remove so minor disassembly of the unloading dock was done in order to turn the pier and its surrounding pond into fantasia gardens a wonderful place to relax and take a breather [Music] the eastern side of the pond was reduced in size by the year 1997 for the construction of a new and expensive tiered viewing area for the new nighttime parade spectacular light magic which barely lasted one season ironically the massive viewing area constructed next to the old motorboat cruise would remain even to this day in the early 2000s the motorboat cruise pier at fantasia gardens was used as a smoking area since it was off the beaten path of a major walkway when the park's last smoking area was moved to big thunder trail the pier was once again useful as it now provides a seating area to eat your tasty treats from the nearby snack stands [Music] i know some of you are probably wondering if the old motorboat cruise was chemically treated like the submarine lagoon was but actually the waterways of the motorboat cruise have always been natural fresh water a large flow pipe connected the waterways to storybook land which in turn connects to big thunder pond and the rivers of america and so on the future days of the motorboat cruise dock and its surrounding fantasia gardens are numbered the pond takes up nearly an acre of space not accounting for the dried up canals of the old ride that wind beneath the autopia and monorail tracks in time the future will reveal the fate of the motorboat cruise the once peaceful b-ticket attraction that allowed boat pilots of all ages and sizes to journey on a delightful adventure through this corner of the park previously unreachable by foot many adults remember with childlike fondness that this is the first and also in some cases the only boat they've ever driven we can all appreciate this facet of the park one of many which no longer exists and admire what it was like to visit disneyland and have the time to take things slow and when the day comes that the final remnants of the attraction are removed i feel pleased that at least with this video those little boats will continue to sail on through the memories and imagination of us all [Music] you

Channel: Alex the Historian

Views: 24,158

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Id: L3d9keqJkMs

Length: 11min 59sec (719 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 09 2021