Fantasyland was designed to feature a brand-new slate of dark rides.

Image: Sam Howzit, Flickr (license)

The Imagineers had a tough assignment in the Magic Kingdom. Somehow, they were expected to continue pioneering new, inventive attractions while also retaining the fan favorites that had made Disneyland such an in-demand vacation spot. Walt Disney World couldn’t be a carbon copy of its West Coast sister resort, but it still needed to look, sound, and feel familiar enough that guests recognized the Disney brand throughout the parks.

No one was more aware of the intersecting need for innovation and recognizable branding than Roy. As Korkis told AllEars in 2011, Roy was adamant that Imagineers borrow liberally from Disneyland’s design—particularly when it came to the large swath of (Fantasy)land tucked behind the 189-foot Cinderella Castle. Comments from Imagineer Tony Baxter suggested that Roy did so in order to align the feel of the park with Walt’s original vision for Fantasyland. It didn’t hurt, either, that guests would be naturally drawn to the rides and characters that they first fell in love with in Anaheim.

Image: Josh Hallett, Flickr (license)

Had Roy trusted the Imagineers to steer Fantasyland in a different direction, however, we would have seen some truly unique attractions set up shop under the castle’s shadow. A Sleeping Beauty dark ride was planned in place of Snow White’s Scary Adventures, and would have thrust its young riders into the fray alongside some of Maleficent’s goons before they came face-to-face with the enchantress’s dragon-self for a climactic cliffside battle.

In keeping with the general themes of the existing dark rides, an airborne Mary Poppins attraction was intended to supplant the whimsical Peter Pan’s Flight. It appears that different iterations of the ride were drawn up, including one where riders were lifted into the air by way of magical umbrellas and another where they leapt into animated adventures by way of carousel horses.

A third Fantasyland dark ride would have replaced the frenzied Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, though there are contradictory reports as to the nature of the never-built attraction. Korkis alleges that a Sword in the Stone dark ride was in the works and would have featured the various stages of the wizards’ duel between Merlin and Madam Mim, while fellow Disney historian Stephanie Barczewski describes an intended Legend of Sleepy Hollow ride, presumably one in which the Headless Horseman rode in furious pursuit of the gangly-limbed Ichabod Crane (or an unlucky guest).

Disney’s Imagineers may have been limited in their interpretation of the Magic Kingdom’s most iconic land, but they got another chance to reinvent the wheel several decades later: first, with the construction of the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 1999 (the chosen replacement for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride), then with the full-blown expansion of New Fantasyland from 2010-2014, which introduced a Little Mermaid­-based dark ride to the area and saw Snow White’s Scary Adventures retired to make room for the E-ticket Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Whether or not the concepts for their original dark rides will ever be put to use remains to be seen.