4. Frozen Ever After

Several attractions stir strong feelings among theme park tourist for what was lost as much as what they are. Were Stitch’s Great Escape in daily operation, it would qualify for this list for two reasons. One is that it’s terrible, and the other is that it replaced a genuinely great attraction, ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter.

Frozen Ever After shares a similar story. The ride is great, which is why the lines for it are constantly long. It’s controversial for a reason utterly beyond its control. In order for the Norway Pavilion to gain this ride, the housing had to repurpose another great attraction, Maelstrom. In addition, one of the coolest aspects of Maelstrom, the indoor-to-outdoor section, was ditched for Frozen Ever After. While the consensus is that the Frozen ride is a definite improvement for the World Showcase, people will always miss Maelstrom.

3. Hall of Presidents

What happens when the most patriotic attraction in theme park history becomes a lightning rod for controversy? That’s the shocking turn of events that happened at Walt Disney World in 2017. The Hall of Presidents, the celebration of democracy and leadership, found itself in the middle of a media firestorm.

Historically, when a new President of the United States takes office, Hall of Presidents shuts down for a while. This downtime is necessary so that Imagineers can add a new Audio-Animatronic (AA) of the new leader of the nation. Plans were in place for the same thing to happen after the 2016 Presidential election. There was just one problem. While most major polls including ones done by both political parties indicated that one candidate would win, an upset happened. On the night of the election, Donald Trump upset Hillary Clinton to win the highest office in the land.

Ignoring the politics of the situation, rumors behind the scenes indicated that Disney had a Hillary Clinton AA ready to go. They hadn’t prepared one for Trump, who actually won. This caused multiple delays in the re-opening of the attraction. Since we live in an age of political division, speculation arose about whether Disney wanted to have Trump in the Hall of Presidents. Those fears were clearly unfounded, but the company faced a lot of negative press due to what was basically an oversight. They chose to make a single AA rather than one for each candidate. Disney’s unlikely to make that mistake again given what transpired.