Stitch's Great Escape

This is far more fun than anyone has ever had on this ride.

I figure since I’m planning on writing about every ride and attraction at Disney that I will occasionally have to discuss something I don’t really like. There aren’t many of them around, but here and there Disney does create a dud.

Stitch’s Great Escape is indeed a dud.

The saddest thing about it, is that once upon a time, the ride was known as “ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter” and it was legitimately one of the scariest, most insane attractions Disney has ever created. The premise was that you were at an intergalactic space convention at the “Convention Center” and while watching a demonstration of some new teleportation technology, something goes horribly wrong and a bad, scary alien is teleported into the demo room. At different points the lights would go out, you’d feel it stalking you, breathing on you and generally menacing you.

It was actually really scary.

As it turns out, it was too scary for most kids, and the parents of these kids, who complained that their kids had nightmares and refused to ride other rides once they departed from Alien Encounter, because they were afraid something like that would happen on Buzz Lightyear or something.

Personally? I loved it. It was creative, and fun, and provided scares of the type I could get behind (the non-roller coaster variety).

Unfortunately, Disney bowed to the pressure and shut down the ride in late 2003, and not having a fully formed alternate plan (the same site had housed some of the classic early Tomorrowland attractions such as “Flight to the Moon” and “Mission to Mars”), so they hastily patched together a new ride.

Now, let me be totally clear. I don’t begrudge Disney closing down a ride that was largely unpopular with their number one fan demographic. As much as I’d like to think I’m a priority, I know that 10 year olds are far more important to keep happy.

Anyway, in 2004, the ride re-opened with the new, and incredibly popular Stitch from Lilo and Stitch as the main character. The general ride mechanics weren’t really adjusted much. The premise is that you were visiting a space prison instead of a convention, and the “teleportation tube” is now a “containment unit”. Instead of a terrifying alien creating breaking out of the teleportation tube, adorable and hilarious Stitch breaks out of the containment unit and wreaks all kinds of havoc. The lights still go out, you still feel him stalking around, and you can even feel his breath (and smell it too, as Disney has developed a truly disgusting scent that represents Stitch’s breath.)

It’s just… It’s not that good. It’s kinda boring, and anyone who liked the original attraction leaves disappointed that it isn’t as scary. The kids are still kind of scared (there was a kid who sat next to me and freaked right out when Stitch tries to lick your neck. As a result, it remains one of the least popular attractions at the park. Theme Park Insider has it rated as a 3 of 10, which is the lowest rated attraction or ride at Walt Disney World.

I wish Disney had taken the time funny conceptualize something else instead of slapping this revision together so hastily. It just reads as being a bit under-developed. The thing is… I believe it has potential.

Stitch is one of the funniest recent characters, and from what I’ve read/am told, he’s the 2^nd most popular character at Disney World these days (after Mickey). There’s no reason this couldn’t be a really cool experience.

I’ve read that they’re working on making the ride better, and more Disney-level immersive, by adding some additional animation and voice work. I’m just not sure that it’ll ever really do much good. One of the biggest flaws in the attraction in that of the 8 minutes you spend in the main chamber, a full 3 of them are in complete darkness. You’re deprived of the cool animations and animatronics that Disney could be busting out.

The Stitch figure is really really cool, actually. When you do see him, that is. Too much of it involves Stitch menacing you from above (there’s a point where he presses down on your restraint that feels pretty claustrophobic, and was the point where the kids totally bailed. )

I just think they need to shut it down, think it through a little better, rewrite the script, and work on creating a more visual show. It even feels a bit shabby for Disney, which isn’t what I’d say about almost any other attraction in the whole dang place.

So, while I have nostalgic feelings about a lot of attractions, even the marginally bad ones like “El Rio del Tiempo” (I prefer not to call it The Gran Fiesta), I don’t have any real fond feelings for Stitch’s Great Escape. For me, it’s one of the only examples of Disney making a clear downgrade in quality due to public reaction catching them off-guard.


Coming up later this week, I will be posting my ranking from Worst to Best of all Pixar feature films. I’m looking forward to the outrage from my 3 readers about my number one choice.

The Carousel of Progress

Muchacho’s Attraction Reviews is a recurring series for Beefy Disney where I discuss and break down the individual attractions at Walt Disney World. They’re usually an unfocused, rambling collection of impressions and memories.

As I learned more about Walt Disney, I began to realize just how fascinated he was with the future. He created Tomorrowland as an homage to that fascination, and one of the true centerpieces of Tomorrowland is an attraction called The Carousel of Progress.

The Carousel of Progress initially debuted, along with the vexing “It’s a Small World” at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. It was designed by WED Enterprises (now known as Imagineering) to represent the
progress of technology starting at the turn of the 20^th Century. The attraction was popular enough that they brought it to Disneyland in 1967, and then moved it from there to Walt Disney World where it opened in 1975. The original song “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow”, written by the Sherman brothers, was replaced when it moved from DL to WDW, but was reinstated in 1994 in the great “redesign” of Tomorrowland. Initially, as with most attractions at the World’s Fair, the attraction had a sponsor. General Electric sponsored The Carousel of Progress from its inception to 1985 when they let the sponsorship lapse.

The attraction is a giant circular theatre with 6 scenes. Each scene is set on a center hub and the audience rotates around in front of each scene. It’s actually pretty incredible, because if you think about it… when the ride is at capacity, it’s moving about 1400 people at all times. (I’ve never seen it at capacity).

The first and last scene are basically the same, and are more of those "Time Killer" areas that help with loading and unloading. Each of the other scenes represent an era of technology where audio animatronic figures (primarily narrated by a middle aged man and his dog) talk about the amazing technology of the day, and always cap it with their opinion that technology has peaked and can’t get any better. This, of course, is the running joke of the piece, because the entire audience obviously knows that the Ice Box wasn’t the apex of food preservation technology.

I love this attraction.

It’s simple, and kind of silly, and definitely cheesy, but I don’t care. It's a wonderful peek into how, Walt Disney, one of the great visionaries in American history believed the future would be. He made a whole Tomorrowland where his fantasies of the future and the future of technology could come to life. It’s really a wonderful nostalgia piece, and one of my favorite diversions from the heat of Florida as I make my way through The Magic Kingdom.

Each scene focuses on a slice of life in a different era in America.

The first takes place on Valentine’s Day close to the start of the 20^th Century (1904 based on references to the St. Louis World’s Fair). The years of each scene are never explicit, but there are always contextual clues. This one focuses on the current state of “modern” conveniences, in this case all pre-electric. This scene ends with “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” (all of them do), and the audience rotates to the next scene.

The second scene takes place around 1927 (Lindbergh’s flight) and the 4^th of July. The third is Halloween time, and takes place in the 1940s, and the final scene is Christmas time around the year 2000. Featured in all of the scenes are various members of the man’s family. His wife, who’s usually the unwitting victim of the man’s ineptitude with technology (using an electric mixer to stir wall paper glue, blowing fuses by plugging too many things into one outlet, burning the Christmas turkey by accidentally setting the oven temperature too high). There’s a son who’s always getting into some sort of mischief (The biggest laugh in the show almost always is when you realize the kid is looking at a view finder with nudie pictures in the first scene), the daughter who’s perpetually embarrassed by her father, and Uncle Orville, who gets No Privacy At All.

It’s really a fun show, and lovely little slice into the nostalgia of the 1960s, and it offers such a bright and positive view of the progress of technology.

I love how the scope of it is so small. They really just care about the little home conveniences and technologies that make our daily lives better. ( I think that this was probably the influence of long-time sponsor General Electric.) It does make mention of larger scale achievements like Lindbergh’s flight, but for the most part it keeps the focus small and personal. I like that. It's the view of technology from the point of view of the common man.

Of course, my favorite thing about the show is the legendary song by the Sherman Brothers “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow”.

It plays at the start and end of every scene. The lyrics are fairly simple, so it’s almost begging you to sing along by the end. For many years at Walt Disney World, there was another song in its place called “The Best Time of Your Life”. As I mentioned before, this song was in use from the move to WDW in 1975 until the “Redesign” in ’94, and I don’t remember it, but I can’t imagine why they’d ever want to use a song other than “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow”. It’s so lively, and full of joy.

There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of ev'ryday
There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow's just a dream away

Man has a dream and that's the start
He follows his dream with mind and heart
And when it becomes a reality
It's a dream come true for you and me

So there's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of ev'ryday
There's a great big beautiful tomorrow
Just a dream away

LISTEN TO IT HERE!



How can you not love a song with a sentiment like that? Sure a little cheesy, perhaps, but it fits wonderfully into the context of the show, and the idealism that accompanied it from its start at The World’s Fair, and has stuck with it up until today.

The show isn’t without its’ flaws. They were doing so well at the start by having a scene take place about every 20 years, but now they’ve got a 60 year jump from scene three to four. And of course, scene four, which is held out to be all about the best technology of today and the future, is painfully, horrifyingly outdated. Almost to the point of being laughable. They did change up a few small things (like adding a flat screen TV) a couple of years ago, but I think it’s time to re-imagine the final scene again. I’m kind of shocked that with the connection to Steve Jobs and Apple, there wasn’t a big overhaul of the last scene to feature all kinds of crazy Apple products.

That’s really my only complaint, though…

I highly recommend checking it out on a hot or rainy day, or if you have a day where you’re not clamoring to get onto ever single fancy ride in Fantasyland (The day will come soon where it’s even crazier than ever). You know… you should check it out anyway. It’s one of the last bastions of Walt’s vision of Disney World (along with The Tiki Room and a couple of others.) Just go. It’s fun.

There have been many rumors in recent years that Disney plans to shut down The Carousel of Progress. For a while after 9/11, when crowds were small, they closed it briefly, and then only re-opened it for seasonal service. This, of course, only exacerbated the rumors. I remember going in 2008, convinced it’d be the last time I’d ever get to ride. Of course.. 4 years later, she’s still going strong, and Disney says they have no plans to close her down. I hope they stick to that, because while it’s a little old fashioned, and certainly very corny, it’s a fabulous reminder of Walt Disney’s own imagination and ideals. It's pretty hard not to get behind that.

The Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover

 Muchacho’s Attraction Reviews is a recurring series for Beefy Disney where I discuss and break down the individual attractions at Walt Disney World. Usually an unfocused, rambling collection of impressions and memories.

Originally it was just called “The PeopleMover”. Then the name was changed to The Tomorrowland Transit Authority in 1994 during the “New Tomorrowland” expansion. . The current name, made official in 2010, combines both to make it “The Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover”.

This is one of only a couple examples where Disney bowed finally to the pressure of the people, who basically just ignored the new name, and kept calling it The PeopleMover.

I’m one of those “people”, though in my case it wasn’t because of some protest. PeopleMover is just what my Step-Mom called it every time we ever visited, and since it’s her favorite ride in the whole place, I guess it just stuck with me.

The thing about The PeopleMover…

I guess the first thing to mention is that it’s not exciting. I’ll probably mention this more than once, actually. There are no restraints. No inclines or declines. No loops. It tops out at maybe fifteen miles per hour. It just simply propels itself along a track, and sort of tunnels through some of the other Tomorrowland attractions. So, you know… if you’re looking for a thrill, Space Mountain is that way… 

I should say, though, that the lack of thrill is at the center of the charm of The PeopleMover. Walt Disney World isn’t a place that shoots for the one-time thrill. Disney strives toward creating an ambient, immersive experience.

The concept behind Disney World is that there are themed “lands”, and The PeopleMover is housed dead-smack in the middle of Tomorrowland. Tomorrowland is a “vision of the future”, and The PeopleMover is Tomorrowland’s vision of future transportation. It’s all very pleasant and light and breezy, in fact. Passengers don’t really wait in any sort of queue line, because like a couple of other attractions at Disney World (Peter Pan’s Flight, Spaceship Earth), PeopleMover is perpetually moving, and it’s sort of up to the riders to catch up to the cars. Fortunately, it’s not going very quickly.

So anyway, passengers line up only to the extent that you have to wait to board. There’s no 30 minute queue line, or broad theming or whatever. The theming of The PeopleMover’s line is essentially comprised of all of Tomorrowland itself. And that’s sort of the point, right? It’s like… in Tomorrowland’s reality, you’re basically lining up for the bus or subway. It’s not really even there for entertainment. When you’re in Tomorrowland, you’re a citizen of Tomorrowland… I kind of love that aspect of The PeopleMover. Maybe that’s why, more than anything, I wanted to discuss the PeopleMover first, among of all attractions for this ongoing series.

The PeopleMover is a symbol of the blurred reality that Walt Disney World loves most. On the one hand, it’s treated as a real mode of transportation in that place, where there aren’t glossy waiting lines, and there’s a sterility to the cars and the track and all of that. On the other hand, all of that sterility is intentional, and has just that slight twist of awareness that allows you to step into the reality of Tomorrowland, and also observe it as an outsider. It’s a ride full of puns, and views, and of course… as opposed to a real subway train… you de-board at the same place as you boarded, and you’ve gone everywhere and nowhere at once.

But I digress…

You line up and enter the ride via a graded moving sidewalk leading up to the loading platform. You board a train car with your party… Don’t worry… no need to sit with strangers. The demand is low enough that you aren’t going to be squeezed in.

Then you… you know… sit.

You’ll notice that the breeze is pretty nice. You’ll notice that the ride offers some pretty cool views of Cinderella’s Castle, and Spaceship Earth, and the Tomorrowland Speedway, and you know… the gift shop (if that’s your thing).

It’s arguably got the highest “Ride time to Wait time” ratio of anything at Disney World. I’ve rarely waited for more than 2 minutes, and the ride is a solid 10. My Step-Mom and I would ride it two or three times consecutively while we waited for my Dad and Sister to ride Space Mountain. Nobody minded that we didn’t even get off the ride. We just told them we’d like to ride around again, and they just shrugged and let us keep going.

I’ve ridden PeopleMover as a way to avoid the rain. I’ve ridden it to remind myself of the lay of the land. I’ve ridden to kill time. I’ve ridden for nostalgia.

All of those are totally valid reasons to ride The PeopleMover, but I’ll tell you… My favorite reason to ride is the excellent opportunity to take photos. There’s hardly a better shot to be had of The Astro Orbiter. You can get some great photos of much of Tomorrowland, and of Cinderella’s Castle, and of Space Mountain.

There’s something uniquely interactive about The PeopleMover. There are rarely rides where you’re encouraged to take pictures, and also where the photo opportunities are so varied. The only one I can think of at the moment is Kilimanjaro Safari, and you know… as much as I hate when people call Animal Kingdom “a zoo”, I have a hard time avoiding the reality of that particular ride being pretty darned zoo-like. The PeopleMover provides an experience and environment that is unique only to itself.

It’s not a traditionally exciting ride, by any means, but I still highly recommend The PeopleMover for simply being, by way of it being so unique, quintessential Disney. To me, if you want to see why Disney is magical, go ride The PeopleMover. It’s a simple ride. Maybe even boring, on its face, but the charm that Disney manages to squeeze out of such a concept is one of the truly great representations of the Disney Experience.