BIG THUNDER MOUNTAIN – A new “train” of thoughtWalt Disney World opened in 1971 in Orlando, Florida but for many visitors the fact that there was no “pirates of the Caribbean” ride was a great disappointment, (this would follow in December 1973), but Marc Davis (Imagineer)was not into repeating himself. Marc’s plans were of a Western River Expedition which would be the centrepiece of Thunder Mesa with a runaway mine train running through its hills and valleys.
Taking inspiration from Lewis and Clark and their adventures, concepts had been developed as far back as 1963 for a Disney “Riverboat Square” which was to be an indoor theme park in St Louis. Sadly, the plan had been abandoned. It would have had cowboys and Indians, masked bandits, high kicking can- can girls, a raging burning forest and a huge waterfall into the Rivers of America.
Roy O. Disney had assumed control of Walt Disney Productions after Walt’s death. Together with Dick Irvine (WED(Imagineering) President) he gave the assent for Marc to develop a scale model of this dream attraction which would feature a huge mesa. Work on the newly developing Walt Disney World was putting strain on both finances and human resources and a plan of such magnitude could not go ahead. It would not be included for the opening day line-up. However, it would be developed for the 5th anniversary of WDW and the Bicentennial celebration of the United States. Fate was still to take a hand. Roy O. Disney passed away in 1971, a mere two months after the Vacation Kingdom had opened its gates and Marc was suddenly without his main supporter. Guests complaints kept on mounting about the lack of a Pirates ride and thus a smaller version of the attraction was sanctioned by Card Walker, the new CEO, for the Florida park.
Imagineers tried hard to sell the Western River Expedition idea but Walker wouldn’t hear of it. When Pirates finally opened it would further it slowed the momentum of the new project all together. Had the Thunder Mesa gone ahead Disney would have been looking at a layout of $60 million! (Over $317 million in current terms!)
The energy crisis of the 1970s was having a bad effect on tourism and attendance figures at WDW in particular. The newish Chief executive had to implement some cost cutting exercises to prove Walt Disney Productions could weather the economic storm. (Sound familiar?) To add more fuel to the fire some executives were not happy with Davis’s cartoonish portrayals of native American Indians because they were not “politically correct”. Imagineers were told to abandon cowboys and Indians and look to more futuristic thrill rides.
OFF THE TRACKSTony Baxter (who had once been an ice cream scooper at Disneyland) had joined WED in 1970. He was apprenticed to Claude Coats on the installation of the Fantasyland attractions at Magic Kingdom. Tony worked in the model shop where he developed scale replicas for Space Mountain and, encouraged by Marc Davis, a runaway mine train to fit in to Marc’s Western River Expedition.
When he returned from installing “Snow White” he was officially given the task of breaking down the “Expedition” into a train ride and a water ride. The train thrill ride would come first as the park had nothing of this kind. The river ride could come later. Engineers had come up with a rudimentary track layout but it was suited more to a rolling hill than the geography of mesa country. By the spring of 1974 gas (petrol) prices were starting to fall and visitors were coming back to WDW. Projects that were on hold could begin to be developed or be shelved forever.
Card Walker responded favourably to keeping the train and river ride ideas envisaged in the Baxter models. Tony Baxter wasn’t so sure.
He felt it had no story. It was just a train rolling along a hillside. He strongly believed that a thrill ride should be just that and that the minute the train left the station it should build a thrill right to the stunning climax. A journey through a bat cave to a cavern experiencing an earthquake was sold to the veteran Imagineers and the CEO. Walker gave Baxter the go ahead to develop his Big Thunder Mountain Railroad as a stand alone “E” ticket ride and not as part of a Thunder Mesa land. It would give Frontierland a much needed first thrill ride. Tony Baxter would produce his very own Disney attraction – a chance of a lifetime!
STORYTIMEMonument Valley, Arizona would be the crags and gorges that this train would career through. The story would centre on the discovery of gold on Big Thunder Mountain in the 1850s just shortly after the discovery of the same mineral at Sutter’s Mill in California. Locals believed that Big Thunder was sacred ground and that spirits deep within the earth would protect it from those who would seek to pillage its natural treasures. As the miners blasted deeper and deeper into the mountain depths strange noises started to be heard coming from below. Cave - ins became common occurrences and the train would roll out of the station with no one at the controls whilst packed with passengers who would race, driverless, through the canyons. The miners came to believe that their mine and the mountain were cursed. Big thunder became another ghost town dotting the West.
The fact that this story could be told by a roller coaster was a new innovation. It built on what the Matterhorn Bobsleds and Space Mountain had touched on but took the guest even further into a tale of mining, curses and natural phenomenon. This would later be built on to create the likes of Splash Mountain and Expedition Everest. Tony Baxter would completely revise his models. Computer predictions had been based on known physics of roller coasters. Tony would bend the rules and every time a hitch was predicted he would work around it. Whereas the computer made the landscape fit the track, Tony made the track fit the landscape!
Yet another hiccup came along to delay the project. America was in the throws of a Space Age. Tony explained:”We had just been to the moon and there was so much energy behind space exploration that a dilapidated train in the West couldn’t hold a candle to the marketing potential of a Space Mountain which would become the Magic Kingdom’s first thrill ride.”
THE OLD WEST HEADS WESTOver at Disneyland another Space Mountain was under construction. “The Happiest Place on Earth” had been taking a back seat whilst the fresh new “World” had been growing over in Orlando. Disneyland needed yet another new ride to replace the old and difficult to maintain “Mine Train through Nature’s Wonderland”. Its ridership had been falling off for a while despite being a beloved Disney classic in former years. Tony said:”Disneyland had been struggling with the Nature’s Wonderland area of the park. It was a foregone conclusion that it had to go and so they asked me about the ride I had been working on for Magic Kingdom and would it fit in at Anaheim?” Some tweaking to the geographical setting would be needed and he decided that Bryce Canyon would suit nicely sitting in next to Fantasyland. He got the idea whilst flipping through an old copy of National Geographic. The coyote scene of Disneyland’s Big Thunder would be only 25 feet away from Pinocchio’s Daring Journey. It was a tight constricted site. It would also be located at the exact opposite side of the Rivers of America to its sister in Florida thus creating a mirror image. Tony remarked: ”I’ve hit pay-dirt here. I think this is what we are going to do!”
And so the sharp, more rugged red peaks of Monument Valley were softened into the rounder “hudus” rock formations of the muted coloured Bryce Canton of Utah.
The Imagineering team scoured auctions, flea markets and “ghost” gold rush towns for authentic mining equipment from the 1850s. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad would be the most convincing and detail rich environment ever created for a Disney Park. The ride opened officially at Disneyland on September 2nd 1979 to the delight of guests at a cost of $15.8 million.
WEST GOES EAST
Baxter was now convinced the Big Thunder had to appear at WDW’s Magic Kingdom. It would be bigger, brighter, grander and more realistic and it would be back to the Monument Valley theme. It’s debut would be September 23rd, 1980. Baxter was to remark: “Big Thunder didn’t come to Florida until 1980 even though I’d “finished” it in 1974.”
Although not quite as elaborate as Marc Davis’s grand Western River Experience it provided a sweeping backdrop for MK’s Frontierland at 197 feet it became the tallest mountain in Florida – even Expedition Everest doesn’t beat that despite what you might have read.
The acreage was 25% bigger too than Disneyland’s version. It took two years to construct. Little did Marc Davis know that one day Thunder Mesa would return from the dead but in a much altered form and an ocean away from its intended site at Walt Disney World.
WEST GOES L’OUEST
When Disneyland Paris opened its park on April 12th, 1992 it was the first Disney park to feature a Big Thunder Mountain Railroad on opening day. (A “Monument Valley” version had been added to “Westernland” at the Tokyo park on July 4th 1987).No Monument Valley or Bryce Canyon for Paris though. Baxter returned to the original idea that it should be a Thunder Mesa and that it’s western ideals would be based on not what Americans thought about “the west” but what Europeans envisages it as being: “We knew going in that Europeans have a penchant for the American West, particularly Grand Canyon and native American culture. Tom sawyer and Mark Twain are not “big” in European culture and so Big Thunder could take a more prominent role in the new Frontierland. Even the Haunted Mansion – renamed to Phantom Manor – would be part of the story in this mining [REMOVED] cowboy town. The Mesa would be slap bang in the middle of Frontierland with the river running around it.
It was the ultimate “wienie” as Walt would have called it (an item that draws the eye) but it would be the narrative focus of the land as well. The whole area would get a new background story. Ravenswood was the ruthless gold mining baron who plundered the mountain in search of wealth. He lived in the old Manor up above the Rivers of the Far West looking down on the town and across to Thunder Mesa. A young girl named Melanie had been planning to marry but Ravenswood had murdered her one true love. After Ravenswood’s death she had gone to live at the Mansion still wearing her wedding dress, but was never to be seen again and stories of the house being haunted started to emerge amongst the townsfolk. A whole new Western experience had been created. The train itself was said to be haunted. Just like the trains at the other parks it would have no driver as it hurtled through the abandoned mines, gulleys and dried river beds of Thunder Mesa. To make this experience even more thrilling the train starts at the station in Frontierland but to reach the tracks on the Mesa it has to plunge into the ground and mines underneath the river in order to reach it. Likewise it has to return via a similar sub-fluvial route.
Trivia:
The Paris park’s Rivers of the Far West can often freeze over in winter months because of the cold European temperatures. That’s also the reason why there is no Splash Mountain or Jungle Cruise.
The little mining town at Disneyland’s version is named Rainbow Ridge, an homage to the original point of departure for the Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland. At Magic Kingdom the flooded prospector’s little town is called Tumbleweed.
Goat trick – there used to be a goat chewing on dynamite at the DL version. As the train plunged down its first hill you were supposed to fix your eyes on the goat. The effect on the brain was a sense of an increased G - so they say!
Each of the six trains on the Big Thunder Mountain railroad have names: I.M. Brave, I.M. Fearless., I.B. Hearty, U.B. Bold, U.R. Daring, and U.R. Courageous.
At Walt Disney World’s MK - Listen to the safety spiel as you board your train... Does that voice sound familiar? If you visit the American Adventure in World Showcase, it should. It is that of Dallas McKennon, who also provides the voice of Benjamin Franklin.
Take the Ride:
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