Ask about “Fantasia Gardens”
and Disneylanders will point you to an out-of-the-way rest stop that took
over the old Motor Boat Cruise dock 10 years ago. Inquire at
Walt Disney World (WDW) and you’ll be directed to a Fantasia-inspired
miniature golf course that opened near the Swan and Dolphin hotels in
1996.
But, question a veteran Imagineer and you might find yourself digging
through beautifully detailed concept art at Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI)
archives of never-built attractions. You see, Fantasia Gardens got its
start in the mid-1980s as a full-scale, D-ticket attraction that would
be severely pruned by the time it appeared as a forgettable backdrop for
Disneyland’s Fantasyland.
The idea to fuse Fantasia with Gardens came from Claude Coats,
the legendary artist who began as a background artist for Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs and provided much of the atmospheric concept
art for the Mine Train’s Rainbow Caverns, Pirates of the Caribbean,
and the Haunted Mansion. Coats initially envisioned guests walking through
a colorful garden populated with dozens of flowering topiaries, fountains,
waterfalls, and statues.
Walk-throughs, though, are typically less popular and lower in capacity
than ride-throughs. But rides usually take up a lot more room. Where could
WDI fit—physically and thematically—a ride-through garden? Thoughts
soon turned to the Plaza Swan Boats, which used to sail the canal around
the hub of Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom.
The Swan Boats had been Orlando’s version of Anaheim’s Storybook
Land Canal Boats – except for the storybook part. Passengers at WDW
viewed no special scenery as their swan-shaped ships circled the Hub,
took a quick detour into Adventureland by the Swiss Family Treehouse,
and passed Cinderella’s Castle – just the general sights of
the park itself.
For 11 summers, the Swan Boats plied the WDW waterways, until management
finally decommissioned the fleet in August 1983. They cited the usual
excuses: the ride had limited capacity. It was expensive to maintain and
temperamental to operate. It wasn’t all that popular. It was only
seasonal, anyway, so no one would really miss it. But, just as importantly,
management thought the park looked better without a bunch of bird-headed
boats.
Yet, by the mid-1980s, with Epcot Center firmly establishing WDW as a
multi-day vacation destination, the Magic Kingdom—as the Resort’s
top draw—needed all the attractions it could get. The now-empty Plaza
canal seemed, at least to the Imagineers, to be the perfect spot for an
all-new attraction.
So, Coats adapted his initial designs to the waterway at the end of Main
Street. Coats, show producer and writer Mark Eades, and vice president
of Concept Development Randy Bright divided the ride into six show scenes,
each themed to a sequence of Fantasia. The first section, coming
clockwise off the load area, was going to be a simple, beautiful, colorful
garden based on “Toccata in Fugue.” There would also be sections
devoted to the “Pastoral Symphony,” the “Rite of Spring,”
the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” and two for “Dance of
the Hours.” The Sorcerer’s Apprentice section, for instance,
would feature fountains shaped like giant broomsticks that dumped buckets
of water in the path of the oncoming boats – drying up just as each
vessel passed.
By today’s standards, the project wasn’t a gigantic investment
– a dozen off-the-shelf boats, scenery, fountain equipment, a bubble
machine. In all, about $20 million.
To pitch the ride to park management, WDI borrowed two rafts from the
Seven Seas Lagoon and set up easels on board to hold Coats’ designs.
That way, management could be pitched in “real time” as it puttered
along the canal. Eades, who delivered the presentation, knew it would
be an uphill battle. It was known that Bill Sullivan, then-head of the
Magic Kingdom, didn’t want their ride or anything else going into
the canal. “Sully liked his clear water, with no track,” Eades
said.
The verdict returned: no go, unless you can find a sponsor willing to
foot the bill. “At the end of the presentation, the marching orders
were, build it if a sponsor could be found to fund it,” Eades said.
“That said, Sully would have welcomed it, as long as the cost to
the park was zero. He would have had no choice. Unfortunately, Pete Clark,
the person in charge of obtaining sponsors at the time, only had one thought:
National Car Rental.” A car company for a frilly boat ride –
not a chance.
To this day, the Swan Boats’ canal remains “clear water, with
no track.” One of the boats has been converted to a vacuum vehicle
to keep the canal clean. The rest of the fleet has long vanished.
The loading dock, a green-roofed pavilion on the water’s edge between
Cinderella Castle and Tomorrowland, does still stand – a lasting
reminder of a ride that once was and another that never will be.
[For further details on the Swan Boats and other discards from Disney
World, see Mike Lee’s great Widen
Your World Web site.]
