Snow White's Scary Adventures

From The Unofficial DisneyWiki

Snow White's Scary Adventures is a dark ride at the Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, Tokyo Disneyland and Disneyland Paris theme parks. Located in Fantasyland, it is one of the few remaining attractions operational on Disneyland's opening day in 1955. The ride's story is based on Disney's animated film version of the classic story, its very first animated feature film.

History

Snow White's Scary Adventures opened on Disneyland's opening day as Snow White's Adventures. The problem was that Imagineers had designed the ride so that guests felt like they were the main character of the story; in this case, guests were Snow White. Few people understood this and wondered why Snow White wasn't in the Snow White ride. During 1983, all of the Fantasyland dark rides were redesigned slightly, as part of the big Fantasyland overhaul, to include the main characters of the films the attractions represented, and this one was no exception. Thus Snow White is in the attraction today. Also, Tony Baxter, Senior Vice President of Creative Development at Walt Disney Imagineering, was so afraid of messing everything up that he asked for all dark rides to be 25% longer. In this way, he could claim that even if they were not better, they would at least be longer.

Walt Disney World's original take on this ride, like their early version of Peter Pan's Flight, also suggested the guests be Snow White herself. But that version of the ride scared preschoolers. Around Christmas of 1994, a kinder, gentler version of the ride emerged, specifically aiming to reduce these complaints, as well as add the princess Snow White to make it fancier. Additionally, that version of the ride took some cues from the version at Disneyland Paris, including increasing the ride capacity of each ride vehicle from four to six passengers.