3. Discovery River Boats

Image: Sam Howzit, Flickr (license)

Dates of operation: 1998 – 1999

Replaced by: N/A

Disney hasn’t always given the boot to fan favorites. Sometimes, the lack of guest enthusiasm for a particular attraction directly led to its removal from the parks.

Nowhere was this more evident than at the newly-opened Animal Kingdom in 1998. Disney’s newest park was scarce on rideable Opening Day attractions, offering guests a choice of DINOSAUR, Kilimanjaro Safaris, Wildlife Express Train, and Discovery River Boats. While DINOSAUR was a dark ride similar in scope and special effects to Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure, the other rides were primarily focused on showcasing the wildlife around the park rather than delivering the thrill-ride experience guests had come to expect at modern-day theme parks.

Discovery River Boats was neither a thrill ride nor a vehicle for highlighting animal habitats. It was originally designed as a whimsical adaptation of the Jungle Cruise, where guests would board boats for a tour of the fantastical animals around the Tree of Life, including an ethereal unicorn, a vengeful Kraken, and a fire-spitting dragon.

Image: Sam Howzit, Flickr (license)

That’s not exactly what guests got from Disney on Opening Day. Thanks to budget restrictions, there was little Disney could do to make their dreams of boat-rocking, flame-breathing Audio-Animatronics come to life. Instead, Discovery River Boats became a much milder transportation attraction, with the primary goal of transporting

Instead, Discovery River Boats was reduced to a transportation attraction with the primary goal of ferrying guests from docks in Safari Village to Asia and back again. Early versions of the ride featured a splashing Iguanodon animatronic, a unicorn statue, and a fire effect emanating from a “dragon’s cave” (with the dragon nowhere to be seen), but within several months, even these had been removed from the experience. Gone, too, were the very real lizards and spiders that cast members would sometimes display to guests in the hopes of drumming up more interest in the ride.

Within its brief year-and-a-half lifespan, Discovery River Boats was rebranded as the Discovery River Taxi and the Radio Disney River Cruise. The latter involved moderate retheming as guests no longer used the boats as transportation between docks, but instead were treated to a one-way ride and a recorded broadcast from Radio Disney DJs “Zippy” and “Just Plain Mark.”

It’s certainly possible that Disney could have waited out the initial dry spell and continued to make modest upgrades to the attraction over the years, but they didn’t want to risk alienating their guests any further. The ride officially and permanently shuttered in the summer of 1999, leaving the river serene and unpolluted as Disney focused their attention on bringing true “E” ticket experiences to the rest of the park.

4. Maelstrom

Image: Lisa Jacobs, Flickr (license)

Dates of operation: 1988 – 2014

Replaced by: Frozen Ever After

Few changes, it seems have inspired more heated debate than Disney’s decision to replace Maelstrom with a Frozen-branded attraction in the fall of 2014. While Future World had seen its fair share of rotating attractions, upgrades, and replacements over Epcot’s 32-year history, World Showcase remained largely unchanged from decade to decade. The cultural films and occasional ride (along with Norway’s Maelstrom, guests could hop on El Rio del Tiempo—now the Gran Fiesta Tour—in the Mexico Pavilion or catch an Audio-Animatronic history lesson over at the American Adventure) started to feel stale after a while, but no one could complain that they weren’t representative of their home countries.

Maelstrom was a unique, if somewhat disjointed attraction nestled in the back corner of the Norway pavilion. Guests entered a long queue designed to mimic a Norwegian fishing village, then boarded Viking ships for a long and complicated voyage through mythological Viking towns, troll and Nokken-infested marshes, and a stormy North Sea. After surviving the spell-casting trolls, polar bears, and a near-collision oil rig, they were returned to their loading dock with an optional epilogue presented in the form of a five-minute film on Norway’s culture and history. While not among the fan favorites at Epcot, especially compared to some of Future World’s thrill rides, it captured the spirit of Norse mythology and adventure in a way that no other park attraction had done before.

Image: Sam Howzit, Flickr (license)

After 27 years, however, Disney spied an opportunity they felt was too good to pass up. Frozen had seen unprecedented success at the box office following its debut in 2013, raking in staggering profits of $1.276 billion at the box office as the best-selling animated film of all time. To the delight of many children (and generating almost-equal distaste among adult fans), Disney capitalized on the Frozen mania at every turn, with character meet-and-greets, sing-a-longs, and parades designed to infuse as much of the Arendelle sisters’ presence in the parks as possible.

When Disney inevitably turned to the Norway pavilion as a potential landing spot for Anna and Elsa, the public reaction wasn’t overwhelmingly positive. Disney characters roamed World Showcase, sure—you could reliably find Mary Poppins gracing the streets of the UK pavilion, while Snow White took to Germany and Aladdin, to Morocco—but replacing a culturally-appropriate attraction with a piece of Disney fiction was something else altogether.

Still more insulting was the way Disney pretended that the transition to a Frozen ride was not motivated by a need to capitalize on the film’s commercial success, but rather driven by a desire to draw attention to Scandinavian culture. “If the goal is to give people a taste of something like Scandinavia with the Norway Pavilion, then ‘Frozen’ would only increase the extent to which people would be drawn to it,” COO Tom Staggs told the Wall Street Journal. “To me it doesn’t seem out-of-character at all.”

Frozen Ever After first opened to parkgoers in 2016, and there’s no question that it’s become one of the most popular attractions in Epcot (if not the whole of the Walt Disney World Resort) ever since. While few have shed tears for Maelstrom in the wake of its removal, Frozen Ever After’s addition to the pavilion raised two important and yet-unanswered questions: Might it have better served Disney in the Magic Kingdom? What kind of precedent was Disney looking to set after displacing an important cultural attraction—and what ramifications might their decision have for the future of World Showcase?

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This is just a sampling of the rides and shows that Disney has put out to pasture over their long history in the theme park industry. Which of the Disney Parks’ abandoned attractions would you add to the list?