Once Upon a Time in Tomorrowland: A Rocket Rods Story

Since Disneyland opened in 1955, Disney has been the gold standard of the themed entertainment industry, and likely always will be. That hardly means the parks have been free from blemishes, however. A month after Disneyland opened, the Phantom Boats made their debut in the Tomorrowland Lagoon. Plagued by poor design, the watercraft often overheated, leaving guests stranded until the motor could cool down. To help curb that, a pilot was added to each vessel (up to 14 per ride), which was not at all cost-effective. The boats closed just after Christmas, making it the first-ever attraction to be “retired.” It was also the first-ever attraction to be “resurrected,” albeit briefly. The boats were brought back for the busy summer season in 1956, then found a permanent home in Yesterland.

Walt himself championed an even shorter-lived attraction. The Mickey Mouse Club Circus debuted on Thanksgiving Day, 1955. But since guests didn’t seem interested in going all the way to Disneyland to see a circus, it played to tents that were rarely more than a quarter full. Walt loved the show, but he was persuaded to shut it down less than two months after it premiered. Head of park construction Admiral Joe Fowler declared, “If I never see a circus again, it will be twice too soon!” 

Over the years, there have been several misfires by the immensely talented folks at Imagineering, in every Disney Park across the world. And many Disney fans will be quick to tell you that the Rocket Rods attraction belongs on that list.

But this Disney fan is here to tell you, not so fast (pun intended).

For you kids who just said, “Rocket Rods?” in your head, a little primer: In the spring of 1998, an approximate $100 million renovation of Tomorrowland opened at Disneyland. The centerpiece of the revamp was a high-speed thrill ride that inhabited the old PeopleMover track. But where the PeopleMover took guests on a leisurely 16-minute trip above (and in some cases through) Tomorrowland, the Rocket Rods made that same trip in less than three minutes. Sounds awesome, right? So, what happened?

Money. Money happened. Or to be more accurate, didn’t happen. 

But let’s circle back to that. On May 22, 1998, New Tomorrowland opened to the public (mostly—Innoventions would open a few weeks late). Thousands of guests cheered during the opening ceremonies, eager to experience the future. They came from all over the world—some as far as Australia—to enjoy Tomorrowland’s first makeover in nearly 21 years. And some visitors even called in sick at work to be there. “I think standing in a four-hour line will make me feel better,” an (obviously) anonymous local schoolteacher proclaimed. “I just couldn’t miss this.”

One of the greatest race car drivers of all time, Mario Andretti, joined Mickey Mouse for the Rocket Rods’ first “official” spin around Tomorrowland (Mario had gotten to experience it the night before). Upon returning to the station after one of his multiple rides that day, he was asked, “Mario Andretti, you have raced some of the fastest cars in the world. What did you think of the Rocket Rods?” A smiling Andretti responded, “This is pure excitement. I wanna do it again.”

The attraction appeared to be a hit, and Disney was bubbling with optimism. The Imagineer in charge of the land’s renaissance, Tony Baxter, was on hand that day and provided a glimpse into the thinking behind the redesign. “The dreams stay valid, and the innovations become museum pieces,” he said. “Reality overtakes a lot of the technological stuff, so we wanted to show the spirit. This is how they dreamed of space when space was a dream.”

Only this dream wouldn’t last.

Not long after its debut, the Rocket Rods began experiencing multiple mechanical issues. In July, Disney shuttered the attraction in an effort to address those issues. The closure was only supposed to last five weeks, but it ended up being closer to thirteen. In the months that followed, the ride was besieged by frequent breakdowns, long lines, and unhappy guests. In September of 2000, Disney announced the attraction would be closed for an extensive refurbishment, with Guest Relations informing folks it would be down for about seven months. 

Seven months later, Disney announced it would be down permanently.

“The high-speed attraction was never able to perform to its designed show standards,” then Disneyland President Cynthia Harriss said (via statement) on April 27, 2001. According to the Los Angeles Times, she acknowledged that the problem was the budget-conscious decision to run the high-speed Rods on the PeopleMover’s unbanked track.

We have now circled back.

“The Rocket Rods was destined to be a giant E [Ticket] attraction for Disneyland,” Baxter recalled years later, “but right at the last minute our sponsor backed out.”

The original plan for the attraction that ultimately became the Rocket Rods was to be a General Motors-sponsored thrill ride called “Fast Track.” According to Baxter, it was designed to be three times the budget that they ended up receiving. “Rocket Rods was a wireframe vehicle, at night they were all to glow, and one of them did,” he said. “We had one on the track and it looked so great. It looked just like a dimensional wireframe design come to life.” Guests would visit a “design center” where they could customize their vehicles, and the attraction would capture a photo of them riding in their design. General Motors was even going to receive all of the data indicating guests’ preferred vehicle colors/shapes. “But all that went away,” Baxter lamented. “It fell back to being whatever we could afford to do.”

The unbanked track doomed the attraction before it even opened.

“We all knew the track needed to be banked in order to keep the speed up,” Baxter said. “Once you made the reduction to go with the level of the PeopleMover track, it had to slow down to take each curve. That was to keep you from flying out!” The reduction in speed did a lot more than muzzle the ride’s fun factor. The constant braking and accelerating took its toll on the ride vehicles, as well as that poor track.

So why am I hesitant to throw the Rocket Rods into the “misfire” category? Well, a few reasons. 

The Queue: The first half of the queue was pretty enjoyable. Blueprints of Tomorrowland ride vehicles old and new adorned the walls, denoting their membership to the newly created “Tomorrowland Rapid Transit” system. Many full-size vehicles were also on display, each painted to glow under black light. Vehicles exhibited included a Space Mountain rocket, a row of PeopleMover cars, and the front of a Mark III Monorail.

Beyond the vehicles, there were multiple screens that featured fun, retro-future Disney cartoons. That room gave way to the Circle-Vision Theater, which also projected film clips to distract us from the wait. While I didn’t care for many of the clips shown (some were slapstick depictions of people riding “futuristic” concept vehicles), they did manage to do something that no other attraction queue had ever done, and hasn’t done since: feature Walt himself on the big screen. That was the highlight of the queue for me.

The Music: One of the feelings many Disney fans share is the adoration of an “optimistic future.” It’s why so many of us love the pre-98 Tomorrowland, or clamor for the return of Epcot’s Horizons. The music featured in the Rocket Rods queue captured that feeling. That was probably because the ride’s main tune, “World of Creativity,” was actually a re-working of a Sherman Brothers song (“Detroit” from the film The Happiest Millionaire). Interestingly enough, the gentleman who remixed the song, Steve Bartek from Oingo Boingo fame, had no idea. “I did not know it was based on a song from The Happiest Millionaire,” Bartek said. “I was given a demo of the song with these lyrics and tried to destroy it as much as they would allow.” He destroyed it well.

The Ride: When the ride was working, it actually was fun! Contrary to popular belief, there were a few decent stretches where your XPR (Experimental Prototype Rocket) hit the gas and didn’t immediately slow down. Zooming over the Autopia was particularly exhilarating. And for those who complained that the ride was still too slow, at 35 MPH, it remains one of Disneyland’s all-time fastest. Basically, it was just fun zipping over Tomorrowland.

I grew up going to Disneyland. I mean since before I was even a year old. I adored the PeopleMover. But if you want to blame someone/thing on its removal, it can hardly be the Rocket Rods. The PeopleMover began living on borrowed time almost immediately after Michael Eisner took over as CEO. On that same ‘98 Tomorrowland opening day, Eisner was asked what he’d been most interested in updating. “As a type-A person,” he boasted, “I wanted something faster than the PeopleMover.”

It’s a shame we didn’t get the ride as originally conceived. It’s a shame the ride we did get broke down all the time. And it’s a shame we no longer have the PeopleMover. I miss it as much as anybody. However, that doesn’t prevent me from also missing the Rocket Rods. 

The ability to “Ride the Road to Tomorrow” may have been short-lived, but it was fun while it lasted.

 

Let’s Hear From You

It’s been quite some time since the Rocket Rods were a part of my life, but now they exist only in my memory. Do you remember going on the Rocket Rods at Disneyland? Are you hoping that the defunct PeopleMover/Rocket Rod tracks get revitalized for another attraction? Share your thoughts and memories about Rocket Rods in the comments below. 

Editor’s note: We would like to thank Keith for his work researching and remembering the PeopleMover and Rocket Rods. We would also like to extend an extra gracious thanks to Werner Weiss from Yesterland, and Marc Marcuse and Frank Anzalone for allowing us to use their photos of the PeopleMover and Rocket Rods in this article.  

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