This is a list of publicly known Disney attractions that were never built; that is, rides, shows, and other
Disney park attractions which never reached the final building stage. Some of them were fully designed and not built, often due to budget cuts. Others were concepts, sometimes with preliminary artwork. Some ideas were later reused in other attractions.
A 500-room hotel to be located in
National Harbor, Maryland, intended as a national convention center and visitor area. Disney purchased 11 acres for the hotel for $11 million in May 2009, but cancelled the project in November 2011.
The partially-constructed second half of the Pop Century Resort was abandoned following a drop in tourism due to the
September 11 terrorist attacks. The Legendary Years section would have been themed to the 1900s through the 1940s. The completed structures and the land that Legendary Years would have occupied were instead turned into
Disney's Art of Animation Resort.
A Disneyland-like ski resort in the Mineral King area of California. See "Disney Ski Resort proposal, and addition to national park" section under
Mineral King entry.
Theme park lands
Disneyland
Name
Development Years
Description
Reference
Lilliputian Land
1953–1955
Intended to be located north of
Tomorrowland and east of
Fantasyland, Lilliputian Land would have been constructed on a greatly reduced scale of the fictional island from Guliver’s Travels.
A planned update and makeover of Tomorrowland with an emphasis on
extraterrestrial themes, abandoned due to budget cuts after the failure of
Disneyland Paris.
A New York-themed area where
Mickey's Toontown now sits, which would have featured a big Broadway-style theater with daily live shows. This idea became the inspiration for the American Waterfront at
Tokyo DisneySea.
An electricity-themed land, modeled after a newly-electrified city from the 1900s, planned for construction in the current location of the Plaza Inn and
Space Mountain.
A land with a 1930s-1940s theme, featuring rides adapted from the Dick Tracy and Who Framed Roger Rabbit films. A similar concept was later used for the Disney California Adventure, and
Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin rides can be found in
Mickey's Toontown at
Disneyland and
Tokyo Disneyland.
Discovery Bay
late 1970s
Discovery Bay was designed as a tribute to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Elements of the plans were later used at Disneyland Paris and Tokyo DisneySea.
A land dedicated to American folklore, featuring attractions based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Ballad of Windwagon Smith; a Paul Bunyan restaurant; and Western River Expedition.
A land modeled after Philadelphia in 1776, featuring a small harbor. Was to have its entrance off Main Street to the left of the Disneyland Opera House. A similar land named
Liberty Square was later built at the
Magic Kingdom in Florida.
An area of the park themed after the Western Expansion of the United States. It was to be located in Frontierland, where Splash Mountain formerly sat and where Big Thunder Mountain currently sits.
An Iranian-themed area, proposed during the planning of Epcot, featuring a dark ride exploring different parts of Persian history and a shopping area based on a bazaar. Scrapped after the
Iranian Revolution.
An Israeli-themed area, advertised on billboards when Epcot opened, designed to recreate ancient
Jerusalem and featuring a courtyard stage and open-air restaurant. Remained unbuilt due to budget problems and security issues.
A Spanish-themed area advertised on billboards circa 1986, with a design blending elements of
Barcelona and
Madrid, featuring a boat ride, a film on Spanish history, and a restaurant.
A replica of Disney's original Hyperion Avenue Studio, with hands-on exhibits demonstrating classic movie production. Guests would be able to create Foley sound effects, or spin projectors to see classic Mickey drawings animated. Elements of this land were used in
The Magic of Disney Animation and The Monster Sound Show, which later evolved into Sounds Dangerous!.
A miniland in the Streets of America area dedicated to the
Muppets. Only
Muppet*Vision 3D was completed before plans were put on hold after the death of Muppets creator
Jim Henson in 1990. Was to feature another attraction, The Great Muppet Movie Ride, and two restaurants: The Swedish Chef's Video Cooking School and The Great Gonzo's Pandemonium Pizza Parlor.
A "myths and legends"-themed land planned for
Disney's Animal Kingdom. It was replaced by Camp Minnie-Mickey due to budget cuts after the failure of Disneyland Paris. Much of the land designated for use by Beastly Kingdom is now used for
Pandora–The World of Avatar.
A Wild West-themed land, combining features of Disneyland Paris' Frontierland and Disney California Adventure's Grizzly Peak. Planned to have been in the park on opening day.
A much more advanced version than Toon Towns in other Disney parks, featuring a roller coaster, an animatronic show, and character houses and meet-and-greets. May have inspired
Toon Studio at
Walt Disney Studios Park.
An attraction-within-an-attraction at the beginning of
The Haunted Mansion. Suggested and named by Walt Disney after a sleepless night, it was intended to use various of Imagineer Rolly Crump's ideas, such as a chair that stood up and talked. Cancelled when The Haunted Mansion attraction was changed from a walk-through to a ride-through attraction. Several of the Museum of the Weird's designs were incorporated into the final Haunted Mansion, including the wallpaper in the "corridor of doors" scene.
A
dark ride that was planned for
Fantasyland at Disneyland, with
Marc Davis instrumental in its design. Extensive surviving concept art shows a boat ride on a river of melting ice, past naturalistic scenes of Arctic wildlife, beneath a display of the
Northern Lights, and into the realm of the Snow Queen, a fantastical land populated by frost fairies and snow giants. Later became inspiration for the
Frozen Ever After ride in the
Norway Pavilion in World Showcase at Epcot.
A Discovery Bay
shooter ride, in which guests would travel through a fireworks factory, shooting at skyrockets, pinwheels, and other fireworks. A much smaller version was placed in
Mickey's Toontown.
A nighttime pageant planned for "Tomorrowland 2055", featuring a race of aliens from a far-off mythical galaxy who had created light, and intended as a possible
Main Street Electrical Parade replacement. Eventually inspired the short-lived
Light Magic nighttime parade.
A retooling of Tom Sawyer Island based around pirate
Jean Lafitte. Guests would enter Lafitte's crypt in a graveyard across from the Haunted Mansion and travel through a catacomb themed tunnel under the river to the island, which would also feature shipwrecks and Lafitte's treasure vault. Became inspiration for the Pirate's Lair rework.
A near-clone of the Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, placing guests in the seats of actors trying to make the premiere of their newest hit film at the Chinese Theatre while dodging paparazzi and freeway traffic. Reworked at the insistence of Michael Eisner after the death of Princess Diana under similar circumstances. The final
Superstar Limo, a much slower dark ride featuring celebrity caricatures and entertainment industry inside jokes, was hated by both park guests and Imagineers, ultimately closing less than a year after it opened.
A wooden runaway mine car roller coaster through an abandoned dinosaur dig, planned for DinoLand USA but replaced by
Primeval Whirl due to budget cuts.
A
Fantasyland-style
dark ride based on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, in which guests would play the role of
Baby Herman's stunt double, riding in giant baby carriages through the scenes of the cartoon Tummy Trouble, bouncing over hospital beds and whizzing around the wards of St. Nowhere Hospital.
A madcap flight simulator in which animated screens take guests on a "hare-raising" trolley ride through a zany cartoon world with
Roger Rabbit at the helm.
A comedic animatronics show taking the form of an Awards Show for classic movie monsters, hosted by
Eddie Murphy (as "Eddie Frankenmurphy") and featuring
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark as one of the presenters. The main subplot of the show would follow
Godzilla, the guest of honor and recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award, on his journey from Japan to Walt Disney World, where he would literally bring down the house in the finale.
A possible replacement for
The Great Movie Ride, in which three-dimensional recreations of Disney's most famous fiends would menace the guests until the forces of good finally came to their rescue.
A unique variation on Disney's CircleVision 360 show. Guests would have found themselves standing aboard a vibrating recreation of the passenger compartment of a Japanese bullet train. Looking out through the oversized faux windows in this passenger car, they would have been treated to a high-speed travelogue as some of Japan's most beautiful scenery whizzed by the windows. The attraction was planned for the Japan Pavilion at Epcot.
A roller coaster, similar to Disneyland's
Matterhorn, planned to be built inside a mountain behind the failed Switzerland pavilion. It went through two different iterations before being scrapped.
A cruise down Germany's most famous rivers, including the Rhine, the Tauber, the Ruhr and the Isar. Detailed miniatures of famous landmarks would also be seen, including one of the
Cologne Cathedral. The ride entrance and the building that would have housed it are still visible at the Germany pavilion.
Designed as part of the UK pavilion, this full-scale water ride would visit key London landmarks. Concept art from 1986 shows the Tower of London, Victoria's Tower, and the Houses of Parliament.
A ride themed after the 2001 animated movie
Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Set in 1916, two years after the film, the story of the attraction would focus on Preston Whitmore seeking to make Atlantis's existence public and offer expeditions to visitors in newly developed vehicles. However, due to mishaps, the vehicles would be forced to make a detour through the lava-filled caverns of the volcano. This ride would be cancelled as a result of the underperformance of the film and the downturn in tourism after the 9/11 terror attacks.
The second of Disney’s three different treatments for the Geyser Mountain proposal, this version was planned as a second-phase expansion for the park’s Grizzly Gulch area, with the ride’s backstory telling the tale of a local inventor trying to use the steam trapped underneath the town as a power source. Instead of building two large lands with a full-sized Grizzly Gulch and Adventure Point areas, the second attraction and land expansion were cut from Grizzly Gulch, Adventure Point was reworked into Mystic Point and given one dark ride and a restaurant, and the land meant for the indoor Glacier Bay sub-area was given to Toy Story.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Curse
A hybrid of a traditional log flume and a boat-based dark ride in the vein of the original rides at other parks, this take on the Pirates formula featured both indoor and outdoor segments winding their way through and around the fortress of Port Royal as the Black Pearl launches its attack from the first film. The ride was planned to feature at least one large outdoor drop, many indoor drops of varying heights and steepness, and state of the art projection and special effects technology.
Muppet-themed restaurant; the Great Gonzo and Rizzo the Rat's version of a pizza parlor. This concept was later retooled in 2016 when the park's Pizza Planet restaurant was converted to PizzeRizzo.
^Strodder, Chris (2012). The Disneyland Encyclopedia: The Unofficial, Unauthorized, and Unprecedented History of Every Land, Attraction, Restaurant, Shop, and Major Event in the Original Magic Kingdom. Santa Monica Press.
ISBN978-1-59580-068-8.
^
abFlower, Joe (1991).
"Time and the Kingdom". Prince of the magic kingdom : Michael Eisner and the re-making of Disney. New York NY: J. Wiley. p. 279.
ISBN0471524654.
^“The Disney MGM Studios Expansion.” Magic Journey: My Fantastical Walt Disney Imagineering Career, by Kevin P. Rafferty, Disney Editions, 2019, pp. 129–134.
