Disney needs to learn from past mistakes

One of the greatest attractions in Magic Kingdom history was also one of its most divisive. ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter bragged about its intensity, brazenly warning guests in the line queue that they were moments away from an intense situation. It was an alien horror attraction that warned guests under the age of 12 that they shouldn’t even bother until they reached puberty.

The original version of the attraction was an adaptation of the Alien movie franchise. The intersection of Disney with that particular storyline is still difficult to grasp today, much less in 1994, the soft opening for ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter. Disney execs knew that they had problems with the intensity of the ride, which is why they delayed its full opening until the following summer. They brought in George Lucas to add some charm and whimsy to the script, but even his version too grim. The eventual ending of the ride wound up seeing the alien explode, after all. It wasn’t for everyone.

While ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter delivered exactly the interactive show that it promised, some Disney guests hated it. The ones who ignored the warnings lamented the fact that it was exactly what it said it was: terrifying. The strange part was that Imagineers had expected this to happen. They knew that they were constructing something too scary for many guests, yet they built it anyway.

Almost a decade later, Imagineers repeated the mistake with Mission: Space. They knew that they were crafting a gravity simulator that would recreate outer space exploration to the best of their ability. Theme park tourists could enter one of the ride carts and feel as if they’d suddenly completed their NASA training, qualifying for a trip to Mars. It sounds great in theory.

In execution, guests sit in a confined space for more than five minutes. They have little room to move, and their primary assignment is to press a button once, twice if they’re lucky. With so little engagement, the rider is all too aware of their circumstance as a glorified crash test dummy in tight quarters. The only noticeable thing other than the tiny monitor is the gravity or lack thereof. Imagineers knew this ahead of time, yet they again built an attraction that was innately flawed. Given how few new rides they construct at Walt Disney World each decade, this sort of wrongheadedness is extremely frustrating.

Thankfully, Disney’s since started planning ahead in a more effective manner, using emerging technologies to project rides years ahead of time. This type of virtual reality is an open secret, although few people outside the company get to see the simulations. What it’s accomplished quite well is preventing missteps like Mission: Space and ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter. Virtually every new ride over the past decade is a classic. Disney’s finally started admitting and learning from its mistakes.