Originally opened on 1st June 1995,
Space Mountain at Disneyland Resort Paris has a long and interesting story
to tell…

Space
Port of Tomorrow

The first Space Mountain attraction
originally opened at Walt Disney World�s Magic Kingdom on 15th January 1975,
but the origins of this attraction actually began back in the 1960s, at
Disneyland, when Walt Disney was still alive.

Tomorrowland had always proved a problem
for the Imagineers, since the lack of funds for the land during the park�s
initial construction meant that, upon opening on 17th July 1955, the land
consisted mainly of promotional space for the park�s corporate partners.
Despite this, the exciting vision of the future the Imagineers created
quickly became the most popular land of the park, and with the success the
Disneyland project achieved, money was soon available to expand it. It is
true to say that Tomorrowland is without doubt the most developed of all the
Disney lands, with countless renewals, additions and replacements over the
years.

The original land finally got on its
feet with the opening of the Submarine Voyage, Matterhorn and Disneyland
Monorail in 1959. After a spark of imagination from Walt Disney himself, the
Imagineers at WED Enterprises were soon discussing blue sky ideas for an
E-Ticket attraction on the same scale as the ‘Haunted Mansion’ and ‘Pirates
of the Caribbean’ attractions in development at the time, an attraction that
would allow guests to experience a futuristic flight into deep space using
the tubular steel roller coaster technology developed for the Matterhorn.
The project became known as ‘Space Port’, and in 1965, legendary Imagineer
John Hench drew a concept sketch of the building to house the attraction
that bears an almost uncanny resemblance to the finished product, from the
sweeping curved roof to the sharp central antennae.

As the late John Hench described in his
book �Designing Disney: Imagineering and the Art of the Show�,

�Walt wanted to build a roller
coaster-style ride, but in the dark, which no one had ever done before. He
wanted to have precise control of the lighting and to be able to project
moving images on the interior walls.�

The Space Port was originally envisaged
as a key element of the 1967 New Tomorrowland project for Disneyland, but it
was infact not until eight years later, eight years after Walt Disney’s
death, that his Space Port project would finally open under the name ‘Space
Mountain’, at the more spacious Magic Kingdom of Walt Disney World.

This original version of the attraction
features two almost identical, mirrored tracks intertwining with each other,
with guests sat single file in their rockets. Disneyland�s 1977 version of
the attraction featured just one track, with guests sat side-by-side, a
design that was re-used for the 1983 Tokyo version. The Disneyland
attraction closed for an extensive refurbishment in 2003 and re-opened in
2005 with a brand new track system, albeit in exactly the same layout as the
1977 original, plus new effects and a new soundtrack by Michael Giacchino.
This version of the attraction was used as the basis for Hong Kong
Disneyland�s almost identical version.

De La
T�rre � La Lune

Disneyland Park in Paris opened on 12th
April 1992 with state-of-the-art versions of many classic Disney
attractions. The park took Imagineering to a new level with its sumptuous
design and intricate details, and attempted to connect the stories and
dreams of Disney with European heritage. This was evident more so than
anywhere else in Discoveryland, a new twist on the classic Tomorrowland
theme. The Imagineers working on the project knew that, in developing the
new park, they had to address the problems caused by the Tomorrowland theme
at other magic kingdom parks. Every ten or so years, the attractions,
themeing and visions of the future would become wildly out of date as
technology advanced faster than they could renew the attractions. They were
also aware that the ultra-clean-cut American optimism and loud, bold white
designs of Tomorrowland might not wash too well with European tastes. And
so, the �Discoveryland� concept was born. A land that would present visions
of the future from throughout the ages, with the classical European
visionaries such as Jules Verne and Leonardo Da Vinci taking centre stage.

Unlike Disney�s most recent magic
kingdom park at the time, Tokyo Disneyland, Space Mountain was not one of
the grand opening attractions for Paris. Instead, it was planned as the
ultimate E-Ticket, a grand, world-beating attraction that would help Euro
Disneyland pull back crowds from a newly-opened Disney-MGM Studios Europe
next door. Led by Tim Delaney, the project team envisaged a huge, rugged
mountain that would use the largest floorspace for any Disney attraction yet
and feature not just Space Mountain but other attractions, all enclosed
within the huge �Discovery Mountain� dome. Half real, rocky mountain and
half mechanical, Victorian creation, guests would have entered the mountain
by ascending a curving ramp. Once inside, they would have been confronted
with a huge indoor cavern, housing

Discovery Lagoon and the Nautilus and
nestling under a ceiling of stars.
There were even plans for a thrill attracted based on Jules Verne�s �Journey
to the Centre of the Earth�, using an elevator-based ride system similar to
that in development for Tower of Terror at Disney-MGM Studios Florida at the
time. The space would also have featured a restaurant, housed inside the
Nautilus itself, with glass windows giving views of passing fish and giant
squid. The Space Mountain roller coaster itself would have been housed
mainly in the top floors of the mountain, with some elements visible to
guests and a darker, grittier theme than the final attraction. Even at this
early stage, the attraction was planned as a modern thrill roller coaster,
with inversions, and a theme based on Jules Verne�s classic novel �De La
T�rre � La Lune�, �From the Earth to the Moon�.

In planning for the construction of this
enormous attraction at the opening of the park, a long, tall line of
conifers simply surrounded the future construction site. Unfortunately for
those working on the original Discovery Mountain project, the attraction
which eventually appeared behind the temporary berm was significantly
different. As EuroDisney Resort opened in 1992 to unstoppable bad press and
series financial troubles, it became clear that a project such as Discovery
Mountain would simply never be possible. With the park still reeling from
the huge amounts spent on its original details and exuberance, Discovery
Mountain immediately moved from being a viable future project to pure
Imagineering blue-sky. Planning for the original Discovery Mountain project
can still be noticed today, however, at Videopolis Theatre. As you stand in
line to enter the theatre, look upwards and you�ll notice two large, round
windows. With the Imagineers aiming to shelter guests as much as possible
from the more harsh Parisian weather, Discovery Mountain was planned to use
overhead tunnels to link directly to both the Cin�Magique Captain EO
building (now Honey, I Shrunk The Audience) and the massive Videopolis
theatre and restaurant complex.

In late 1992, all future attractions for
the park were put on hold or downsized considerably. It was not until early
1993 that it was decided the Discovery Mountain project must go ahead, as
the only way to save the resort would be to continually bring in more guests
through the opening of new attractions. The major financial restructuring of
1994 ensured that the project could be completed successfully. It would have
to be smaller in size, and it wouldn�t feature an indoor lagoon nor a
�Journey to the Centre of the Earth� drop-ride attraction, but Space
Mountain would at last blast off at the newly-renamed Disneyland Paris.

Tim Delaney spearheaded the redesign of
the mountain, with his keen eye for detail having to balance with a eye for
the budget. Despite this, the vision he presented was a true piece of
classic Victorian exuberance. The 16-sided mountain rises 141 ft from ground
level, with angular metal roof elements, back-lit top windows and two wide,
glowing antennae. New to this version of the design, the massive Columbiad
cannon extends 72 ft up the side of the mountain at an angle of 32 degrees,
with a unique recoil mechanism and opening and closing barrel effects.
Trains are launched using a thick metal cable attached to a catch car under
the track, which, when activated, thrusts the train up the cannon in a
similar style to an aircraft carrier launch system, pulling 1.5G of force on
riders. This was an unprecedented innovation for both Disney and the roller
coaster world at the time. The cannon support features impressions of the
sun, the moon and an archer firing into the sky, surrounded by shooting
stars. All three of these features are enhanced with 24 kt gold leaf
colouring. The name of the cannon, �Columbiad� is prominently featured,
along with the engraving of the �Baltimore Gun Club�, where the idea of
catapulting a rocket to the moon is first born in Jules Verne�s novel. This
theme was further enhanced in the pre-show of the attraction, with guests
passing through two rooms from the gun club before entering the boarding
area, a separate building to the mountain with a detailed metallic red
canopy.

The roller coaster track system of the
attraction was designed by Walt Disney Imagineers and built by Vekoma, a
well-known roller coaster manufacturer and long-time partner of Disney. In
the 1960s Walt Disney envisaged an indoor roller coaster with lighting and
show elements all precisely controlled. In 1995, Space Mountain: De La T�rre
� La Lune, as the Discovery Mountain project eventually became known,
utilised as many computers as NASA to launch its rockets. A key element in
the computer control of the new attraction was the ride�s on-board
soundtrack. For the first time, a major roller coaster was pre-fitted with
speakers at every seat and an on-board computer at the rear of the train.
Steve Bramson wrote the attraction�s original score and was faced with the
task of ensuring the music matched perfectly with the ride experience. Not
only did every element of the ride have to match his soundtrack cue, but the
whole music track had to start and stop perfectly in synchronisation with
the train. Bramson soon realised that, depending on the number of guests in
the train, the vehicles moved faster or slower through the ride, meaning his
score became out-of-sync with even the slightest change in conditions. The
soundtrack was therefore loaded onto modern flash cards as numerous
instrumental sections. As the train passes from one section of track to
another, the computer crossfades into the next piece of music. This means
that, should a train have to wait 20 seconds to launch rather than 10, the
computer will continue playing the same section of music, only switching to
the next piece once the train has entered the second section of the ride.

The attraction opened on-schedule and
on-budget on 1st June 1995. It was accompanied by a wave of press and
advertising for the park, with TV advertising proclaiming the attraction as
�the greatest ride in the universe� and the attraction becoming an immediate
Disney classic. Previews were held from as early as late April 1995, with
resort partners, travel agencies, Cast Members and local communities invited
to experience the new attraction over the weeks that followed.

A lavish grand opening ceremony took
place on 18th May, with the intention to grab as much media attention as
possible to help the new attraction – and the resort. If having Jules Verne
emerge from a replica of his �rocket to the moon� wasn�t enough, invited
guests could see a �Rocket Man� soar around the attraction using a jet pack
attached to his back, as well as a marching band, acrobats and one of the
park�s biggest ever firework and laser shows. Celebrity guests who
experienced the attraction in its first weeks of operation range from Jean
Reno, Claudia Schiffer and David Copperfield to Peter Gabriel and Michael
Jackson. At the end of its 1995 season, the operating company of Disneyland
Paris, Euro Disney SCA, announced its first ever annual profit and a strong
surge in attendance. The future finally looked bright for the Parisian
resort, and Jules Verne�s optimistic words were never more appropriate…

�All that is within the limits of the
possible can be, and will be, achieved.�

A New Chapter

De La Terre � La Lune… A vision
created by Jules Verne and brought to life as a historic, groundbreaking
attraction by Tim Delaney and countless other talented individuals from Walt
Disney Imagineering. Over nine years the mission had been more than
perfected and the Imagineers began looking for a new challenge for the
future, a way to get the unique effects of the ride working again whilst
bringing it up-to-date with modern special effects techniques and other
Disney attractions created since 1995. At the same time, Disneyland Resort
Paris’ operator, EuroDisney SCA, was facing serious financial difficulties,
which eventually led to the decision to not simply refurbish the attraction
but to completely relaunch it as a whole new experience and a major new
attraction for the park. Being the attraction that practically saved the
resort from bankruptcy in the late 1990s, the management knew the popularity
of Space Mountain and the power it could have to once again bring the guests
flowing back through the park gates.

Throughout 2004, Space Mountain received
a huge exterior refurbishment and was almost totally repainted all over. The
metal roof overlay regained its startling blue/turquoise paintwork which had
been gradually lost since 1995, and the boarding area (station) also
received a total repaint to bring back the magic of one of the most
beautiful Disney “show-buildings” ever created and get the mountain ready
for its new mission in 2005. As a hint to the future, the base of the
Columbiad Cannon was also changed from a rusted iron colour scheme to a
harsher dark metallic grey and the windows which used to allow a view into
the cannon were covered over. A very late change to the attraction was the
installation of the new projection screen for the Supernova effect in early
January. This gave some of the last lunar Exploranauts an excellent final
view of the moon as well as a tantalising glimpse at the high-quality
projections to come. After a special “Last Chance Space Mountain” event on
15th January 2005, at which Disney Imagineers answered questions about the
ride and presented rare videos from its history, the last direct lunar
excursions took place on 16th January 2005. Jules Verne’s revolutionary
vision of sending a rocket to the moon had been brought to life and
accomplished with an historic attraction that was about to change forever,
as an exciting new chapter was about to written in Verne’s epic science
fiction dream…

In creating a follow up to this modern
Disney milestone, the Imagineers knew they had a tough job on their hands.
Just how could they make “the greatest ride in the universe” (as the
attraction’s 1995 marketing campaign claimed) even better? The decision was
made to thankfully keep the Victorian Jules Verne theme of the attraction
but to expand upon this and allow more creative freedom by changing the
destination of the journey from the moon to “the edge of the universe”. Not
only did this allow for a larger array of effects and greater narrative
freedom, but it also allowed the story of the new attraction to follow on
from the original ride. The original missions to the moon had been perfected
over ten years and now a whole new journey of discovery was about to begin,
to the edge of the universe, towards an explosive Supernova! Indeed, for
over a year the working title of the attraction was ‘Space Mountain:
Supernova’.

It was decided that to take Space
Mountain to an even higher level, it needed to be more modern, more exciting
and more visually spectacular. A major complaint with the original version
of the attraction for many guests was the lack of things to see and things
going on once “in space”. This was highlighted even more with the opening of
Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith at Walt Disney Studios Park next
door, which features a stunning light show with smoke effects to wow its
riders. It became clear that to succeed in bringing Paris’ Space Mountain
up-to-date and for it to continue to go beyond the expectations of riders in
the future, it would need a stunning show of visual and lighting effects of
its own. The new effects would infact hark back to Walt Disney’s original
vision of synchronised projections surrounding guests in the mountain. They
would feature such wonders as the impressive new ‘Starscape’ that surrounds
riders once ‘in space’, whilst other effects and projections, such as
planets, asteroids, etc, would add a greater sense of speed to the ride and
provide much more of a sensory overload to heighten the thrill of the
journey.

Some of the most major changes to the
attraction outside the actual ride experience were alterations to the
attraction’s queue. No longer would guests get a view into space before
being blasted up into it (an element that admittedly always affected the
story of the old attraction), since the sides of the indoor walkway through
the ride would be covered over and decorated with images of star and planet
formations. The queue line itself would also be slightly re-routed to use
the entirety of the walkways through the attraction that used to form the
‘Star Way’ – an old viewing area which allowed an exciting glimpse inside
the mountain to those afraid to ride. In the second Mission, guests enter
the queue line not knowing where they are headed, with only the rumblings of
space craft, the pounding of the passing trains’ sub-woofers and the screams
of exploranauts to prepare them. A new concept for the attraction which
never came to fruition was the planned addition of a “Victorian space
station” to the ride’s boarding hall. This ornate and visually impressive
feature would have been hung from the ceiling, but it was decided quite
early in the project that it would not be financially viable, nor would it
fit into or add to the storyline in any way.

With the concepts complete, the planning
for the attraction changeover could begin. The Imagineers needed to change
the attraction over to ‘Mission 2’ in under three months – shorter than the
time usually needed to simply test Disney’s new attractions. Many of the
effects and new decorations for the attraction were produced before the
first mission ended, which meant the changeover would be completed much
quicker, but the team still faced the challenge of installing countless new
effects, new signage, new decorations, new music, repainted trains and more
in an unbelievably short space of time. Not only this, but once installed,
the effects and music would all need to be synchronised together to create a
truly seamless Disney attraction experience – it’s perhaps fortunate the
Imagineers had the optimistic words of Jules Verne on their minds…

At 8pm on 16th January 2005, as the last
lunar excursion blasted off into the great unknown between the Earth and the
Moon, and the park was closing down for the night, the queue railings in
front of the attraction had already been removed. Some of the most intensive
work ever seen in a Disney Theme Park was about to begin. Throughout this
work, the general public were unaware of what was going on inside the
mountain and the only exterior construction work which could be seen was the
installation of the new attraction signs and various exterior refurbishments
which weren’t completed during 2004. If the public had had the opportunity
to see the inside of the mountain during those months, they would have
experienced the attraction with full work lights on and only a few asteroids
to suggest the theme of space travel. Since the effects in the new mission
would comprise mainly of projections, the majority of additions inside the
mountain were simply new digital projectors and projection screens. To
enhance their visibility so that they would add more to the ride experience,
the asteroids from the first mission were painted gold for Mission 2. The
MOM (Mother of Meteorites) was refurbished aswell, with new improved smoke
and lighting effects to make the train’s passage through it’s core even more
exciting.
One of the most popular additions to the ride is without doubt the new ‘red
vortex’ or ‘hypergate’ effect towards the end of the ride. This relatively
simply effect of red neon-style lights engulfs your train and makes it feel
like you are swirling and spiralling back down to Earth. This is achieved by
curving the twisting the red lights more than the track itself, so as the
train speeds through the banked turn towards the ‘Electro de Velocitor’ the
rider has an intense feeling of disorientation.

Due to the complexity of the original
‘rocket trains’, they were not replaced as many had expected. They were
instead upgraded and repainted, with a completely new sound-system identical
to that of Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster’s trains installed throughout, giving
five speakers for each seat including a stronger subwoofer to add more power
to the music. For the second mission, Michael Giacchino (The Incredibles)
composed a fast-paced score full of sharp strings and pounding drums. As
with the first mission, it took a great deal of time to correctly align the
on-board audio with the ride itself. There were also new effects to line up
and time correctly, which meant there were many ‘test missions’ spotted by
guests in Discoveryland throughout March 2005. These test missions also gave
the guests a chance to see the newly refurbished and modified Columbiad
recoil and smoke effects for the first time, two effects not seen working
for countless years, but which made a welcome return for the new mission.
For the original version of the ride, the trains were painted with colours
and types of paint that would make the trains glow under the UV lights
inside the mountain. In Mission 2, however, being able to the see the trains
from the viewpoints in the mountain was no longer necessary, meaning that a
brand new colour scheme could be created for the ride vehicles. The final
colours chosen were silver, gold, bronze and blue, with a blue ‘Mission 2’
logo replacing the old ‘DM’ (Discovery Mountain) logos on the sides of the
trains. In the boarding hall, the control booth was repainted in similar
colours to the ride vehicles, with ‘Space Mountain: Mission 2’ logos adoring
the dark blue sides. New hydraulic gates were added to both platforms to
ensure complete safety and, around one week after the official launch of the
attraction, the new ‘Mission 2’ banners were finally hung from the ceiling.
The final change outside the mountain, after the addition of new signage,
was a new attraction poster. The poster is certainly very different to its
predecessor, with a simple view of a flight through space replacing the old,
ornate poster advertising ‘lunar excursions’. Once in place on the side of
the mountain, however, the poster does give the sense of a window into the
mountain… and towards the edge of the universe.

The final pieces of this exciting new
space adventure had been put into place and the time had come to launch the
most daring space mission yet. The incredible journey to the edge of the
universe was only just beginning for many, but for the team of nearly one
hundred people who worked on the attraction their journey was finally
complete. Before its official public opening on 8th April 2005, the
attraction enjoyed a spectacular nighttime inauguration ceremony on 6th
April 2005, with DJ Tiesto performed a live set to a backdrop of lasers and
fireworks over the mountain. Despite the huge challenge of creating
something new from something historic, the Imagineers had succeeded. In the
words of Jules Verne:

“It’s not impossible, simply
improbable.”