Space Mountain

• 1. Introduction

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  Space Mountain stands at five of the six Disneyland-style Disney parks, and at every one of them a conical façade rises above the grounds as a landmark. Behind each cone is an indoor roller coaster themed around space travel. Only Shanghai Disneyland went without.

  Yet the five rides are not copies of one another. Each is different in nature, and some have been rewritten again and again. So why do five rides share a silhouette but not a design? Who paid for the very first one? How does a ride built around one story end up retold with ghosts, rock music and Star Wars?

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• 2. The Florida Original

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  The Matterhorn Bobsleds opened at Disneyland in 1959, and its success convinced Walt Disney that thrilling rides had a place in his park. Space Mountain descended from that first Disney mountain.

  WED partnered with Arrow Development Company, which had already helped engineer the Matterhorn's coaster systems. The first concept called for four separate tracks. The technology of the day, and the limited room inside Disneyland, made that design impossible.

  By 1969 the concept had moved to Walt Disney World. Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom offered enough land, and computing technology had improved significantly since the early design work. Even so, the mountain was built outside the park, across the train tracks that mark its perimeter.

  Paying for it fell to Card Walker, the CEO of Walt Disney Productions. He persuaded Robert Sarnoff, the chairman of RCA, to sponsor the ride. RCA already held a contract to supply communications hardware for the resort. That contract promised US$10 million toward an attraction of interest, and Space Mountain was the one Disney offered.

  Space Mountain opened on the 15th of January 1975. Riders could choose between two tracks inside the mountain, named Alpha and Omega.

  On the 23rd of March 1975, NBC's Wonderful World of Disney aired a musical-variety episode celebrating the opening. Actor Lucie Arnaz starred in it. It was the first Walt Disney World network special, since the one before it had been syndicated.

  The sponsor's mark showed in the post-show, which displayed new home technology from RCA. One innovation was a laser disc home video system. It played a clip of Kurt Russell singing the Archies hit "Sugar, Sugar", taken from the Haunted Mansion preview episode of The Wonderful World of Disney. Russell had also recorded the song for his own LP on Capitol Records.

  RCA's mascot Nipper, the dog listening to a gramophone, originally sat inside a spaceship as part of the ride. After the sponsorship ended, Nipper became a robot dog. Meanwhile, the success of the Florida ride sent designers back to their original plan for California.

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• 3. California Opening Day

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  Six of the original seven Mercury astronauts came to the opening of Space Mountain at Disneyland on the 27th of May 1977. They were Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Senator John Glenn, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton. Gus Grissom was the lone exception. He had died in the Apollo 1 fire ten years earlier.

  Construction took two years and cost $20 million, because the opening was a whole complex rather than a single ride. It included the coaster, a 1,100-seat Space Stage, a 670-seat fast food restaurant called Space Place, and Starcade.

  A Memorial Day attendance record was set that weekend, with 185,500 guests over the three-day period. The opening of Space Mountain was part of the reason.

  Bill Watkins of Walt Disney Imagineering designed this version, which used a tubular steel track. Space limits allowed only one track here, against the two in Florida. The layout is completely different from the Magic Kingdom's.

  Decades later, this same California ride would be wrapped in rock music at night and in ghosts at Halloween.

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• 4. Tokyo and Hong Kong

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  Space Mountain at Tokyo Disneyland opened with the park on the 15th of April 1983. It was the first version to open on the same day as its park. Until late 2006 it was an almost exact clone of the Disneyland ride.

  In late 2006 the ride was redesigned with a more futuristic science-fiction look, similar to the refurbished Florida version. It gained new effects and a new spaceport, where a futuristic spaceship hangs from the ceiling. As in Florida, no audio plays to the seats.

  On the 27th of April 2022, The Oriental Land Company announced that this attraction would close on the 31st of July 2024. It is to be completely rebuilt as part of a wider redevelopment of the park's Tomorrowland area. The new version is expected to open in 2027.

  Hong Kong Disneyland took the refurbished Disneyland ride as its base, with the same layout and a similar soundtrack. It added show elements the California ride lacked, such as a hyperspeed tunnel.

  Its boarding area is unusually small. There is no space station like the ones at Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland. Instead, a dark queue is decorated with neon planets in earth-tone colors and with star patterns. Colored neon light bars line the station walls for lighting and decoration.

  A later overhaul of that queue kept those planet models and star patterns in place.

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• 5. Paris and Jules Verne

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  Disneyland Paris opened its Space Mountain on the 1st of June 1995, three years after the park itself. Its original name was De la Terre à la Lune.

  Designers framed space travel from a Jules Verne-era perspective, drawing on his novel From the Earth to the Moon. The track is significantly different from the other four. It alone has a launch and three inversions, named Sidewinder, Corkscrew and Horseshoe.

  The ride drew praise for its storytelling and theme, its cutting-edge visual effects, and its tribute to Verne's legacy. It was also the first roller coaster with music synced to the ride. Walt Disney Imagineering later used the same system on rides such as Rock 'n' Roller Coaster.

  The ride's success gave Disneyland Paris its first profits. The company had run into financial troubles shortly after opening the park.

  Modifications in 2005 produced Space Mountain: Mission 2. That journey carried riders beyond the Moon, to the very edge of the universe. In January 2015 the ride closed for another refurbishment and reopened in August 2015.

  On the 8th of January 2017 it closed temporarily. On the 7th of May 2017, Star Wars: Hyperspace Mountain replaced it.

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• 6. Hyperspace Mountain

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  On the 16th of November 2015, Disneyland debuted a Star Wars overlay of Space Mountain. It arrived with the Season of the Force event, which celebrated the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

  The changes begin in the queue, which plays special Star Wars lore and safety videos. In the launch tunnel, voiceovers of pilots speak over a projection of stars. At the end of the tunnel the car accelerates to simulate entering lightspeed.

  Music by John Williams from Star Wars plays throughout the ride. A projection shows a journey to the planet Jakku, where riders meet TIE fighters and X-Wings.

  At Disneyland the overlay is seasonal. The park re-themes the ride to Hyperspace Mountain for a select few days each year. It returns with every Star Wars movie since The Force Awakens, and for special events such as Disneyland After Dark: 80s Nite.

  Hong Kong Disneyland followed Paris, and its Star Wars overlay, originally meant to be temporary, became permanent. The queue was fully refurbished with a full-sized replica X-Wing, a character meeting area and a grey and white Star Wars theme. The storyline is identical to the Paris version.

  The idea of re-theming Space Mountain was older than Star Wars, and it began at private events closed to the public.

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• 7. Rockin and Ghost Nights

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  In 2007, during the Year of a Million Dreams celebration, Disneyland unveiled Rockin' Space Mountain. The ride transformed from the original version at night only. The concept came from Disney Grad Nites.

  The soundtrack switched to "Higher Ground" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Colored, flashing lights ran along the track. "Uncle" Joe Benson, a radio disc jockey from the Disney-owned station 95.5 KLOS, welcomed riders.

  Space Mountain: Ghost Galaxy was a seasonal Halloween overlay. It first premiered at Hong Kong Disneyland in 2007. At Disneyland it premiered on the 25th of September 2009, reusing effects from the Rockin' overlay.

  Inside the space station, the planet screen was changed to fit the theme. A green storm appeared over the planet and interrupted the video feed. Static followed, then a blue screen reminiscent of the Windows Blue Screen of Death. It read "LOSS OF SIGNAL...", "SEARCHING..." and "SIGNAL ESTABLISHED".

  Outside, five projections played on the dome. In the first, the dome turned dull grey, cracked, and crumbled into nothingness. A green grid then appeared at the top, with a loud humming sound. In the second, an alien arm resembling that of the nebula ghost pushed against the dome from the inside.

  The third projection showed yellow scratch marks appearing on the dome. In the fourth, lightning bolts shot up the left side, then the right, then the middle, and finally across the whole dome. The last turned the dome into a bluish-purple radar, with explosions resembling nebula ghost activity.

  On the track itself, the red lights atop the first lift hill turned an eerie green. The flashing blue light tunnel between the first and second lift hills went pitch black. A giant ghost nebula electrified the second lift in place of the spinning galaxy, and wisps appeared before the final lift.

  Ghosts popped up unexpectedly. At a steep drop near the end, trains narrowly avoided being "clawed" by an unseen arm. After the onride photo, as the train made its final right turn to reenter the station, a ghostly head popped out of the wall.

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• 8. Screen and Page

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  Screenwriter Max Landis wrote a feature film based on Space Mountain, and Disney developed it for a short time. It was set in a 1950s Jetsons-esque retro-future, with no internet or cell phones. Instead, large contraptions and robots powered everything.

  One key plot point sent people into hyperspace. On their return, they found their souls had gone missing, and they would eventually transform into terrifying monsters. The film was ultimately scrapped.

  On the 9th of October 2020, Disney announced a new film adaptation. Joby Harold would write and produce it, alongside Tory Tunnell under the Safehouse Pictures banner. Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich of Rideback would also produce. Unlike the earlier idea, it was described as a family adventure.

  On the 19th of April 2024, Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec were announced as the writers of a script for a Space Mountain film.

  The building has also slipped into other films as an easter egg. It appears in Meet the Robinsons, alongside Rocket Jets, and in Tomorrowland.

  In November 2013, Disney Publishing Worldwide revived Disney Comics as a US imprint. Its first publication was the Space Mountain graphic novel, its first original graphic novel, released on the 7th of May 2014. The book presents Space Mountain as a research station orbiting a black hole, harnessing its power to travel through time.

  In a darker timeline within that story, the mountain takes on the form of its Parisian version, giving the Paris ride an unexpected cameo.

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