Disney Attractions Series: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, part two

With the success of Walt Disney World’s Space Mountain in 1975, Disneyland decided that it just had to have a version of its own, which it got two years later. But even before that ride's official debut in May, the Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland was closed. Still in dire need of attention, Disneyland considered that the Mine Train was just not worth the cost of upkeep. Tony Baxter then stepped in to provide Disneyland with an iron horse of a different speed – his Big Thunder project.

However, as the Mine Train was situated on the right side of the Rivers of America and not the left, as in Florida, Disneyland's take on the wild mine train trip would have to be augmented so as to blend carefully with Fantasyland right behind it. Originally, Baxter had designed his mountain to look something like Monument Valley, with its rugged, angular buttes and wide open spaces. For Disneyland, however, given its proximity to Fantasyland, Baxter opted to theme Big Thunder more like Bryce Canyon, whose rockwork was more eroded-looking. As such, to quote the Imagineering Field Guides on Disneyland and WDW's Magic Kingdom, "the Bryce Canyon rock work is used to create something of a candy mountain back drop."

After two years of construction, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad opened at Disneyland on September 2, 1979, at a cost of $16 million, counting the authentic gold-digging equipment decorating the ride. As a nod to history, the ride has elements of the old Mine Train ride, most notably the first section going through caverns chock full of stalagmites and colorful phosphorescent pools. And like the original Mine Train ride, Big Thunder began and ended in the town of Rainbow Ridge. From its opening, Big Thunder was a smash hit.

Back in Florida, even before Big Thunder was completed in California, it was clear that they had a winner on their hands and decided to finally go forward with their own version of the ride. However, there were some significant modifications, not the least of which was the revision to theme it to Monument Valley, as was the original intention. It was also located on the exact opposite side of the Rivers of America, right along the western end of the park. The layout was literally flipped from California, creating something of a mirror image. It was also somewhat longer. Whereas the California ride is 2,671 feet long, Florida's ride is 2,780. Also, the Florida mountain was significantly larger: where Disneyland's version rises only 104 feet, in Florida, it's 197 feet, which made it the tallest mountain in the whole state (at least it did until Expedition Everest opened at the Animal Kingdom, which came in at just a hair under 200 feet). It also covers two-and-a-half acres of land, to California's two acres even.

Above all, the town seen in the ride was not Rainbow Ridge, but a different town called Tumbleweed, which had fallen victim to a flash flood. It is also found during the ride itself, not used as a point of departure and arrival as it is in California.

On September 23, 1980, a little over a year after Disneyland, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad opened at Walt Disney World. And it did succeed in its original mission to provide a sweeping backdrop for Frontierland, just as the aborted Western River Expedition, with its original mine train coaster companion piece, had intended to do.

Since then, Big Thunder, or variations on it, has been added to other Disney parks worldwide. Some four years after the opening of Tokyo Disneyland in Japan in 1983, Big Thunder opened there in its Westernland section (their equivalent of Frontierland) on July 4, 1987, and was called simply Big Thunder Mountain. It was largely the same as in Florida, but with a few slight differences, the most significant being the removal of Tumbleweed.

Then on April 12, 1992, a fourth Big Thunder Mountain opened, this one opening with the rest of the park: this was Disneyland Paris in France. This was a departure from others that came before it. Here, Big Thunder is largely the same, again, as Florida. But where the center of the Rivers of America – in France, called the Rivers of the Far West – was home originally to a Tom Sawyer Island, it is now home to Big Thunder itself. To get to and from the island, the trains depart from the station on the mainland and travel through tunnels that travel underneath the river! Also, Tumbleweed is once again as the mountain is surrounded by water.

Big Thunder was a centerpiece for France's Frontierland and a central to a storyline surrounding the mountain in which a boomtown called Thunder Mesa (after the proposed subsection of WDW's Frontierland where Western River was to have been placed) has appeared after a land baron named Henry Ravenswood discovered gold in the mountain there and started a mining business there. Ravenswood also owned a manor house overlooking the river. But the Ravenswood family mysteriously disappeared, and the mine went bust while the manor became haunted.

In Hong Kong Disneyland, on July 14, 2012, a ride called Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars opened. This is located in its own special land called Grizzly Gulch, which is themed to a boomtown that opened on August 8, 1888, the luckiest date of the luckiest month of the luckiest year.

Big Grizzly Mountain is a variation on the Big Thunder ride, with mine cars racing through a mine inside a mountain. However, it also takes inspiration from the California Adventure's Grizzly Peak, with a mountain in the shape of a bear's head, and Expedition Everest from the Animal Kingdom, with tracks running backwards and forwards. The storyline also involves going through mineshafts numbers 8 and 4 (Chinese culture signifies 8 as representing good luck, while 4 means death). But bears have somehow invaded the mine and inadvertently send miners through both mines, forward and backward.

Big Thunder Mountain, the wildest ride in the wilderness, is, in any form, one of the best examples of Disney attractions there are. It is one reason why that is one of my most favorite of all Disney rides ever. The other is that it is just plain fun!

Anyway, that ends the first of many Disney attraction articles to come. I hope you enjoyed it!