Top 5 Abandoned Theme Park Effects

For Your Amusement: A Theme Park Podcast

In this episode, hosts Ryan Bergara and Byron Marin rank their top five abandoned theme park ride effects that have been discontinued due to

Key takeaways

• The 'Disco Yeti' animatronic at Expedition Everest has been non-functional for nearly two decades.
• Disney recently announced plans at D23 to potentially bring the Yeti back to life.

Main topics

• Abandoned animatronics
• Theme park maintenance challenges

Notable quotes

Basically, this is just an effect that used to exist on a ride that is now removed for whatever reason.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a nostalgic tribute to the era of high-risk, hig

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:03) Welcome to For Your Amusement, a theme park podcast that aims to exhaustively evaluate the world's most popular theme park attractions to determine if they are world-class. I'm Ryan Bergara. I'm Byron Morin. And for today's episode, we're ranking the top five abandoned theme park effects. So what do we mean by abandoned theme park effects? Basically, this is just an effect that used to exist on a ride. that is now removed for whatever reason. You know, maybe it broke down too much or it was too expensive. But the key here is that these effects were actually operational at one point, which is different than ride effects that were conceived or conceptualized rather, but then never actually realized. These effects actually did make it onto the attraction. And like I said, for whatever reason, they have now been abandoned. You Speaker 3 (0:50) were given an opportunity to fall in love with them. And Speaker 2 (0:52) then they were taken away from you. But basically... Each of us is just going to list off our top five. No aggregate. No aggregate. We all get our say. Just because we didn't think there'd be a lot of overlap here. And as always, please like and subscribe to keep the channel alive over at youtube.com slash at FYAPod. Or if you're listening, rate the podcast five stars and subscribe and leave a review over an Apple podcast. It helps quite a bit. Also, it does help to support us over on our fourth wall, which is a different version of Patreon at FYAPod.com. And then you'll get bonus shows there. You'll get extended vlogs, early releases on vlogs, ad-free main episodes, and our merch store is there as well. But without further ado, top five abandoned ride effects. I enjoyed looking these up. There were some I already had in mind, but how was this for you? Kind of painful to relive. Not too painful. Then again, I'm sure there's some obvious ones that I missed. But I was actually surprised that I remembered a few. That could make sense. Because I was Speaker 3 (1:50) worried at first. I'm like, are these all going to be Speaker 2 (1:51) Disney? No, no. There definitely are some other ones that I want to talk about that are not Disney. But a lot of them are Disney. I will say that because Disney has a lot of effects. A lot of effects. I guess without further ado, why don't we just go ahead and start off with your number five? Speaker 3 (2:07) This is the low-hanging fruit. I didn't want to put it any higher because I actually don't know how much it impacts the ride, but it's probably the most popular one. It's Disco Yeti. And Speaker 2 (2:17) I'm just going to go ahead and reveal my number five, which is also Disco Yeti. Okay. Speaker 3 (2:21) And Speaker 2 (2:22) we're not talking about Disco Yeti from our Discord in our fourth wall. That's a different person. We're talking about the actual Yeti animatronic that's been frozen in place for the better part of almost two decades now, huh? Speaker 3 (2:34) 2006, it probably was down for good by 2007. Speaker 2 (2:38) I feel Speaker 3 (2:39) like 2010 was already a goner. Upwards of 20 years. Probably about 20 years, though, because I don't think it went much later than 2006. This Speaker 2 (2:46) is probably the most well-known broken effect on all of rides, to be honest, to the point where the nickname Disco Yeti not only served as the username for one of our members over at FYAPod.com, but it also is something that is regularly referenced now by Disney officials and was in their official D23 show where they made fun of themselves. by having Disco Yeti there shortly before revealing that they are going to fix Disco Yeti. And if you don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about the enormous animatronic of the Yeti in Expedition Everest over an animal kingdom. It used to be functional in that it used to move. At the time, I think it was at the time the biggest moving animatronic in the world. Speaker 3 (3:29) Using like jet Speaker 2 (3:29) engine caliber kind of stuff, Speaker 3 (3:31) right? Speaker 2 (3:31) They used jet engines to actually move this enormous robot. Speaker 1 (3:35) The Yeti's powered by a 3000 PSI hydraulic thruster that can be recharged in 20 seconds to fit the storyline. Speaker 2 (3:42) And then it broke. And there's been a lot of theories as to why it broke. Some have said that the it's connected to the actual foundation of the mountain itself. So in order to fix it, they'd have to redo the whole mountain. Some people have said it has something to do with just a maintenance bay. All that being said, it seems that they have committed to fixing this thing. But I don't know if by fixing they mean just outright replacing. I Speaker 3 (4:06) think the line was, we're going to bring the Yeti back to life. So that could be like... Is that in a thematic sense? Is that that literal Yeti that is sitting there dormant? Or Speaker 2 (4:17) are they going to actually have a completely new animatronic, much like they did with Harold back in the day for when they replaced our Harold animatronic, the old one, with the new Harold, which... You know, it's more expressive, the new one, but I prefer the old one. Speaker 3 (4:32) You know what I just realized? What? How they could easily go the projection mapping route, kind of like the Pirates guy. Speaker 2 (4:39) Oh, my God. If they projection map the Yeti, people will lose their fucking minds. There's no way they would do that. Especially after making such a big. shtick about it in D23. I still think it's really funny that one of their major announcements at D23 was to fix something that shouldn't be broken in the first place. It's for the fans. I guess. I was happy to hear it. It's kind of interesting that it got the loudest reaction of all the announcements. Speaker 3 (5:05) Is that a good thing? Apart from maybe like Tomorrowland, but... Speaker 2 (5:08) The poor maintenance of one of your attractions is so well known that an announcement is like, hey, we're going to fix it. Speaker 3 (5:14) Well, I think it was... unlike anything done before and i obviously had its drawbacks yeah but Speaker 1 (5:21) i mean it's hard it's hard that's 20 years ago yeah Speaker 3 (5:24) i think ultimately they realized that it's just like half a second worth of ride time and sure is that worth closing this thing down and spending the millions of dollars and well Speaker 2 (5:34) Yeah, I think for Speaker 3 (5:35) the Speaker 2 (5:35) prices that you're charging, that I think it should be worth that because you're paying a premium to go to a premium theme park. And I think that if you're going to reference maybe indirectly or sometimes directly the quote unquote Disney difference, then you should, I don't know, do the fucking Disney difference. Hey, Speaker 3 (5:55) look, they've accumulated enough Lightning Lane sales to pay for it. Yeah, I'm sure they have. Speaker 2 (6:00) But yeah, they are going to fix this. Apparently, we don't know the details. We don't know if it's going to come back in its original form. So I felt okay listing it, but I didn't want to list it too high, which is why it ended at five for me. So we were simpatico there. I did have some honorable mentions, by the way, that I wanted to talk about. Do Speaker 3 (6:18) we Speaker 2 (6:18) want to Speaker 3 (6:18) do them now? Speaker 2 (6:18) Might as well, because it's not an aggregate list. Yeah, let's do it. Let's hear some of your honorable mentions before we get into number four. I'll Speaker 3 (6:24) go lower down the list and work my way up. Yeah. Cali River Rapids, they went a little harder back in Speaker 2 (6:30) the day. on the deforestation oh Speaker 3 (6:32) and it was like the steaming trees yeah because like when i went like when i was eight years old back yeah it was like the year 2000 i think they had they had real fires like a loud chainsaw effects and that kind of bit Speaker 2 (6:44) it was they were really going hard on it it was a much more intense scene much more metal now it just kind of seems like an aftermath Speaker 3 (6:50) yeah of the deforestation so Threw that one in really quick. That was my number nine. Number eight, staying in Animal Kingdom, the Kilimanjaro safari. I was just about to bring this up. It used to have like a bit of a plot about the poaching and like saving the, was it a baby rhino or an elephant? Speaker 2 (7:07) It was a baby elephant and its mother. And I believe if I'm not mistaken, there used to be the carcass of either the dead mother or the dead baby elephant. Speaker 3 (7:14) And you Speaker 2 (7:16) would see it. Speaker 3 (7:17) And there was a time, well, actually this was up until like more recently, I think, where they had like the shaking bridge. They just didn't operate it that often. But now I think it's gone for good because I have never seen it, or at least not in recent years. So Speaker 2 (7:29) they used to have this storyline about Big Red, which was like the name of the matriarch elephant in a pack. And then Big Red was later then seen dead at the end of the ride with Speaker 3 (7:39) the baby standing nearby. Speaker 2 (7:42) Very much like the body discovery scene that... is Mufasa and Simba. They used to have this on a ride. Mind you, this is on a ride that featured real animals and elephants. They had a plot. And so like for a kid to see like, oh, these are real alive elephants and then see a dead elephant prop that looks real. Pretty effective stuff there. Definitely hammers home the dangers and awful truths about poaching. But I guess it's too much for a modern audience. I don't understand why they need to take that out, to be quite honest. I don't. Why do they need to take Speaker 3 (8:17) that out? Probably because they wanted it to stay as just all real animals and not to say people misconstrued it, but I don't know, just let it be a tour of real animals. What's there to misconstrue about? And not be- Speaker 2 (8:31) Conservationism and poaching. Speaker 3 (8:34) They still have Speaker 2 (8:34) that in the queue. Yeah, but it's like an afterthought. It's a bullet point. I think sometimes to like- sell a conservation message something that's more in the edutainment more education space you kind of need to hit people over the head with it and i feel like showing a dead elephant pretty good like i understand some of the changes that came in like to other rides like pirates you know obviously you can't have sell a winch that's crazy uh like that's there are things that need to be changed for politically correct reasons just times have changed in terms of like so Speaker 3 (9:05) there's some things you could kick under the rug but then there's other things you don't but Speaker 2 (9:08) But a dead elephant has nothing to do with political correctness. That's a real thing. But Speaker 3 (9:12) you're Speaker 2 (9:12) showing Speaker 3 (9:13) a child. Oh, yeah, we might have killed an elephant here at Animal Kingdom. Speaker 2 (9:16) It happens. It's real. But they don't know that. They should know that. Speaker 3 (9:19) What? I'm not going to tell a kid on Pirates of the Caribbean. Oh, yeah. Like, well, what they actually did to those women there. Yeah, it's real. It happened. Yeah. But the difference between that and Speaker 2 (9:27) now is they don't sell a wench. There's no pirates. And you don't think they still don't do Speaker 3 (9:32) that crap to animals? Speaker 2 (9:34) They do. That's what you need to show them. It's Speaker 3 (9:35) just weird to Speaker 2 (9:36) be in a Disney park. No, I'm saying like there's a difference between showing something that's of the times. Like before they used to have the pirate men chasing the women and pirates, which you could put two and two together of what's going on there. Obviously now they switched it to the women are chasing the men. That doesn't mean that didn't happen in the past. You could play tag at any age. That doesn't mean it didn't happen in the past because it did. But what I'm saying is it doesn't happen now. 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I Speaker 2 (11:44) think the Speaker 3 (11:45) kids should Speaker 2 (11:45) see that. You Speaker 3 (11:45) should have Speaker 2 (11:46) to explain to your stupid kid like, hey, they shot this elephant in the head. Speaker 3 (11:49) I think it's more so a thing of, oh, like, okay, so this is real and like this is not. I don't know if it's much of like the message of as much as it is blending like narrative slash. Okay, this is also like a real animal tour. I Speaker 2 (12:01) feel like if you can't. effectively explain the difference between an animatronic elephant and a real elephant to your child that's crazy if i'm gonna have a kid soon I'm about to have a daughter. And if she's like, I don't understand the difference. I'm gonna be like, well, you're stupid then. That's a robot. And I could be like, look, they shot that elephant in the head. They do that in real life. It's really sad. Like this couldn't have been that expensive to keep, right? No, it definitely has nothing to do with the expense. I think some parents were angry that they had to explain to their kid that poaching is real, even though it is real. And same thing with the deforestation thing. It's something that's real. We're destroying the planet. Just because you don't show it on a Disney ride doesn't mean that we're not destroying the planet still. I just feel like the hand-holding here is crazy. You Speaker 3 (12:46) know, whatever. Speaker 2 (12:48) Go off again. Kick it under the rug. But yes, no, there's no one selling wenches anymore in Pirates. Like, that's just, that doesn't happen anymore. There's Speaker 3 (12:57) no more Pirates. Speaker 2 (12:58) No, exactly. So, but if you show a fucking rainforest that's been devastated or an elephant that's been shot in the head, yeah, those things both still happen. So I think you should be able to show them. Maybe I'm wrong here. I could be wrong here. I could be wrong. But you know what I'm going to do when I get on that ride and I'm bringing my little daughter in there and be like, they used to have a dead elephant right here. I just want you. I'm gonna show you a picture of it. That's big red or was big red dead now shot in the head. Anyways, moving on to some more honorable mentions. Oh, did you want to take a couple? I have more. No, I want to. Let's go through yours and we could go through mine. Speaker 3 (13:31) This is number seven. This one was so brief. We never really got to experience it because it probably lasted like