Disney Canceled 7 BIG Projects in Disneyland

Over the last 7 decades, hundreds of projects have been pitched to add to Disneyland. For every one that’s been built, dozens have gone unrealized for one reason or another, relegated to Imagineering’s blue sky files.

From full-scale lands to freestanding E-Ticket attractions, each and every one of these projects would have changed the face of the “Happiest Place on Earth” forever. Instead they remain sometimes frustrating reminders of what might have been.

Candy Mountain

One of the earliest recorded unbuilt Disney attractions is also one of the most bizarre. Candy Mountain (sometimes called Rock Candy Mountain) was planned to be a massive mountain in Fantasyland themed to look like gigantic candy. It would feature the Casey Jr. Circus Train weaving through it and the Storybookland Canal Boats sailing underneath. In fact, it would have served as the finale for the latter ride, with an interior featuring dioramas of scenes from L. Frank Baum’s Land of Oz books.

Initial plans had called for the mountain to look like translucent rock candy, but that eventually changed to a concept of a mountain made up of a smorgasbord of candy including licorice, gumdrops, candy canes, and fudge. According to Imagineering legend John Hench, the model made Imagineers feel ill just by looking at it. Hench described it as “unappealing plus sickly, a tummy ache waiting to happen” and eventually the whole concept was scrapped. Decades later, Disney would include a reference to the model in a window on Buena Vista Street at California Adventure.

Discovery Bay

Despite never being built, Discovery Bay is arguably one of the most influential projects in Imagineering history. Envisioned by Imagineering legend Tony Baxter in the late 1970s, the land was planned to occupy the space where Galaxy’s Edge currently sits.

The plan called for a space inspired by steampunk and the worlds of author Jules Verne, with a backstory based around fictional inventor Jason Chandler. In Baxter’s mind, the land would feature several attractions themed to inventors, including an early version of a simulator ride-system, a park ride inside a fireworks factory, a version of the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and a show starring a character named Professor Marvel and his pet dragon.

However, the failure of Disney’s 1970s live action film Island at the Top of the World put the kibosh on the land according to Tony Baxter. The Disney Legend shared years later: “Executives in Disney management were so skittish that instead of saying ‘We did a bad Jules Verne movie’, they thought ‘Well, people just aren’t interested in Jules Verne’. We were banking on the movie but it was an unsuccessful film. We would have been on the leading edge of the entire Steampunk phenomena.”

However, that was not the end of the Discovery Bay story. Baxter and his fellow Imagineers would include elements initially planned for the land in other projects over the years, specifically the Discoveryland section of Disneyland Paris and the Mysterious Island area of Tokyo DisneySea.

Oh, and Professor Marvel and his pet dragon? They heavily inspired a certain other inventor and his dragon who would appear in EPCOT several years later…

LucasPort

Decades before Galaxy’s Edge was built in Disneyland, Imagineering had plans for a previous Star Wars-based attraction tentatively called LucasPort. The massive project would have transformed Tomorrowland with the addition of a massive new glass structure that would have partially used backstage land and partially integrated preexisting architecture like the Carousel Theater, Peoplemover and Monorail tracks, and even the Rocket Jets into one massive complex.

LucasPort’s primary attraction was planned to be a Star Wars-themed roller coaster that would have begun on Dagobah — the planet where Yoda spent his exile as seen in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi — where Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi would “lift” rider’s vehicle with the Force and position using a clever launch stem utilizing moving track pieces. The coaster would zoom through a “greatest hits” of scenes from the then-three film Star Wars saga including encounters with Stormtroopers, AT-AT Walkers, a lightsaber dual between Darth Vader and a Jedi, near-misses with meteorites reminiscent of the Millennium Falcon in Empire, and experience the destruction of the Death Star.

In addition to “three points strategically placed along the track where guests could choose to either participate in a dog fight with the Empire or flee.” According to some sources, this would indicate the difference between choosing the light side or dark side of The Force, while others seem to indicate that “fleeing” would simply lead to a more family-friendly portion of the ride.

That final portion of the ride was a major part of dooming LucasPort (which was also called VentrurePort in some concept art) as the coaster’s multiple paths was way too advanced for the time (and frankly would be hard to execute now. Eventually, Star Tours was added to Tomorrowland instead.

Hollywood Land

Announced in the early 1990s, this land off of Main Street would have then incorporated elements from the then-new Disney MGM Studios theme park, including rides themed to Roger Rabbit and Dick Tracy that were planned for that Disney World park. However, legal battles over ownership of the former and the relative box office failure of the latter led to the rides being mostly scrapped on both coasts.

In Disneyland, the project did morph into the more Mickey-centric Toontown (which does at least have the Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin attraction). A version of Hollywood Land was eventually built in California Adventure, though it was very dumbed down from the initial plans.

Tomorrowland 2055

Tomorrowland 2055 was a planned early 1990s massive refurbishment of the opening day Disneyland land that would have solved the “Tomorrowland problem” by changing the theme of the land considerably. Tomorrowland 2055 would have been themed around being an active spaceport set in the year of Disneyland’s 100th Anniversary, featuring new attractions including Plectu’s Intergalactic Review (an animatronic show in the former Carousel of Progress/America Sings theater) and a West Coast version of the ExtraTERRORestial Alien Encounter, as well updated versions of Space Mountain and Star Tours.

However, the financial failure of EuroDisney had a massive effect on Imagineering budgets across the company, and led to the project’s cancellation in 1994. A “new” version of Tomorrowland did open in 1998, but it contributed little to the park’s legacy outside of a temporary inexplicable bad paint job on Space Mountain and the removal of the Peoplemover for the legendarily flawed Rocket Rods.

Indiana Jones and the Lost Expedition

While Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure is one of our favorite rides in the Anaheim park, it objectively pales in comparison to what might have been…

Initially, Imagineers had planned for the ride to be part of a larger overall attraction complex known as Indiana Jones and the Lost Expedition. The plan called for Disney to build a massive show building that would feature two brand new experiences: a “jeep ride” similar to the current attraction and a “mine car roller coaster” inspired by the iconic chase scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In addition, the Jungle Cruise and Disneyland Railroad would have been rerouted to travel partially through the structure as well, with all four rides converging at one point as part of a grand scale set-piece in a lava chamber. Unfortunately, the aforementioned Disneyland Paris-related budget cuts scaled down the plan to the single Indiana Jones attraction.

Geyser Mountain

During the late 1990s Disney Imagineers began work on a project known as Geyser Mountain for Disneyland’s Frontierland. The ride would be themed to a “huge drilling machine” at the center of a geyser, which would catapult guests to the surface using a version of the Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror ride system. Plans were drawn up, and excitement was high for the E-Ticket. So what happened? The short answer is California Adventure.

Part of the reason Geyser Mountain was designed in the first place was because Disney believed a new attraction would be needed to lure guests back to Disneyland once the then-under-construction California Adventure theme park opened in 2001. You see, Disney believed the new park would be so successful that it would siphon guests from Disneyland.

As many of you reading this likely know, that… wasn’t the case. iN FACT, California Adventure was such a relative failure that the proposed budget for Geyser Mountain was shifted to that park, where it was used to construct a version of the Tower of Terror (now Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout).

These are just some of the unbuilt projects that could have completely changed Disneyland as we know it. Stay tuned to AllEars for more deep dives into Disney history!

UNBUILT: Disney’s ORIGINAL ‘Star Wars’ Land Almost Took Over Tomorrowland 40 Years Ago!

Which of these attractions do you wish would be built the most? Let us know in the comments below.