5-7. Plaza Swan Boats, Mike Fink Keelboats, Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes (Magic Kingdom)

Image: Disney

Interestingly, all three of the Magic Kingdom’s lost spieling attractions were narrated boat rides. Departing from the foot of Main Street USA, the Plaza Swan Boats were a quaint throwback to a more genteel age, while Frontierland’s Mike Fink Keelboats were a rough and tumble tribute to the Old West. Also located in Frontierland, the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes combined spieling with heavy interactivity. Park guests paddled the canoes during their guided tour.

8. Listen to the Land (Epcot)

Epcot never relied heavily on spielers, as Future World focuses on up and coming new technologies, while most of the countries of the World Showcase tell their stories through film or live performances.

However, the boat ride in the Land pavilion opened as a spieling attraction called Listen to the Land. At that time, a narrator on every boat provided a loose spiel that could change on a moment’s notice to reflect the latest projects or experiments taking place in the greenhouses. The extemporaneous nature of the spiel was more personalized, and in some cases more accurate, than the recorded narration of today’s Living With the Land.

9. Backstage Studio Tour (Disney’s Hollywood Studios)

For most of its life, Disney’s Hollywood Studios (formerly Disney-MGM Studios) was half theme park and half working production facility. The 1990s Mickey Mouse Club, Let’s Make a Deal and Wheel of Fortune are just a few of the productions that made a permanent or temporary home at the Studios. Consequently, the Backstage Studio Tour was an actual tour that took guests behind the scenes of those productions.

Originally, the tour was two hours long, encompassing both an extended version of today’s shuttle tour and a long walking component that taught park guests some of the behind the scenes magic of moviemaking. During the walking portion, guests also traversed a glassed-in balcony that overlooked the soundstages. If your timing was good, you were rewarded with a birds-eye view of the latest project.

Such a complex tour required a highly knowledgeable tour guide. In addition, the spiel was dynamic and ever-changing, based on what was happening on the backlot that day. After the bottom fell out of Florida’s film industry, however, the tour was gutted. The bulk of the soundstage space was filled in with Toy Story Midway Mania, and virtually all of the walking portion of the tour was closed. Nonetheless, the renamed Studio Backlot Tour remained a spieling attraction until 2009, when an automated narration track ensures that every ride was exactly the same as the next. Then the ride closed forever in 2014. 

Spielers once played a special role in the theme park industry. Not quite actors and not quite ride attendants, spielers were the best of both worlds. Responsible for both the performance side of an attraction and its actual operation, they arguably knew their attractions better than anyone. Spiel crews formed tight families, and often had good-natured rivalries with other spieling attractions. For the guest, the spieler’s encyclopedic knowledge of the attraction and ability to adapt on the fly created a dynamic and ever-changing experience that simply isn’t possible when everything is automated. Today, the spieling attraction is a dying breed, but a few attractions shine on.