The Scariest Ride of All

Walt Disney may have called it “The Happiest Place on Earth,” but to a small kid, parts of it can be very scary. I’ve seen kids shriek in terror when placed beside a gigantic costumed Goofy that their parents thought would make a lovely photo. And I can tell you that some of the rides to a five-year old are anything but funny. I asked my daughter, now grown-up, which ride was scary to her as a child. She recalled that the Pirates of the Caribbean terrified her.
She saw nothing funny in the near-miss cannon fire, live skeletons at the helm, scenes of torture, attempted rape, selling women into slavery, and the looting and burning of an entire town. While Disney’s imagineers sought to turn a scene of 18th century terrorism into a comical ride, the humor of it was entirely lost on my daughter.

My son, on the other hand, was intrigued with the Pirates ride but held dark thoughts of foreboding as he stood in line for the first time at Space Mountain. . When it was introduced to Disneyland in 1977, Space Mountain was the only ride in the park that came with a warning. Guests with a heart condition, back or neck problems, and expectant mothers were advised not to ride. That is enough to give anyone pause. You have to wonder about a ride that cautions people to stay away. For my son, riding a standard roller coaster was a test of nerve, but the thought of doing it in the pitch dark, like Space Mountain, was a little too unsettling.

Actually, I thought that Space Mountain was quite a departure for Disneyland. Up until then, the closest thing to a thrill ride was The Matterhorn. With its track-bound toboggans, it only rolled along at 18 miles per hour. Actually, the Monorail was the fastest ride in the park, reaching 35 mph on the straightaway. Most every other ride in the park moved at a snail’s pace, and several floated on water to boot (Jungle Cruise, It’s a small World, the Mark Twain Steam Boat, and Story Book ride).
I don’t think Walt intended Disneyland to be a thrill zone with Ferris wheels and roller coasters, and, interestingly enough, Space Mountain did not appear in Anaheim until eleven years after his death. I think that Space Mountain, and other thrill rides that came after it, like Thunder Mountain, were an attempt to appeal to the Magic Mountain crowd. Even Knott’s Berry Farm had abandoned its pastoral roots and was adding a battery of thrill rides, including The Corkscrew, the world’s first looping coaster.

The Matterhorn never struck me as a scary ride. I guess if you count fatalities it is one of the most dangerous. All totaled, nine Disneyland guests have died on various rides over the years. Two have died on the Matterhorn (one in 1964 & and the other in 1984). Both unbuckled their seatbelts and stood up for a more thrilling ride – need I say more. Two guests died trying to swim from Tom Sawyer’s Island to the mainland (1973 & 1983). Not exactly the English Channel, but obviously more than they bargained for. Two have died falling from the People Mover (1967 & 1980), one of the slowest rides in the park – go figure. One was fatally struck by the Monorail while trying to sneak into the park along the Monorail tracks (1966), one died from some rigging that fell from the Columbia sailing ship (1998), and one died in a partial derailment on Thunder Mountain (2003). So, I guess danger lurks around every corner of the Magic Kingdom and demands a healthy dose of common sense to survive a full day at The Happiest Place on Earth.

Now, my brother Brad was scared of the submarine ride. The cramped confined seating under water triggered his claustrophobia. My sister Carol dismissed his feelings by reminding him that all he had to do was look up through his portal window to see the water’s surface right above his head. “We are not even really submerged,” she explained. But somehow the view of the waterline offered little consolation to Brad’s mortal dread of this metal death tube.

As a kid, I took self-preservation seriously, and if something scared me, I believed it was nature’s way of warning me to proceed with caution. I remember being afraid of shots – you know, the medical kind with syringes. It seemed clearly an unnatural act to permit someone to stab you with a needle, even those with good intentions. This bothered my dad to no end. As a physician, he gave shots to patients all day long, and most of them were quite stoic about it. I saw him give a shot to a friend of his in his shoulder while they were chatting with each other. To my amazement, they kept right on talking through the procedure without skipping a beat. If it had been me, the sight of that needle would have been a guaranteed conversation stopper.

One night I was sick with the flu and needed a shot, so my Dad casually came into my bedroom with syringe in hand. I took one look at the size of the needle and freaked. I started screaming and squirming like he was approaching me with a poison snake. My Dad tried in vain to talk me into it, but I would have none of it. He became impatient with my hysterics, and with a frown he made harsh demands that I get control of myself, to no avail. I felt ashamed of myself, but my fear of pain robbed me of my dignity. I flailed my arms and legs until he gave up, and returned to my room later that night after I had gone to sleep to do the deed.

Two rides at Disneyland triggered my fear of heights as a kid, and I could not seem to overcome them. This fear of heights may have come from my Dad, who was also afraid of heights. The condition haunted him all his life, despite his becoming a licensed pilot to help him get over the fear. In his retirement years he had a home in Las Vegas, but I could never get him to the observation deck of the Stratosphere (the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River). As an adult, I fought back my own fears to make the ascension, but as a kid, that kind of determination would have been impossible.
The first ride that had me unnerved as a kid, believe it or not, was the Peter Pan ride. For some reason, my sister Carol shared my dread of this ride. The first time I rode it, I didn’t know what to expect. The moment we flew out of the childrens’ bedroom, we were sailing over London. The forced perspective achieved by the ride’s designers made me feel like my tiny ship was miles over the city, and I feared for my life. I had heard rumors that a kid had fallen out of the ride and his body was never recovered – obviously an urban legend, but frightening to a little kid like me. I could not get back on that ride for a long time.


The other ride that stopped me dead in my tracks was the Skyway ride. Call me crazy, but I was scared to death of climbing inside one of those little gondolas and trusting that the cable would not snap.

I remember it was a typical Southern California summer day at Disneyland, and Grandpa had joined us to lend Mom a hand with us kids. I was under Grandpa’s supervision, and had been giving him fits all day long. Earlier in the day I had to go potty. Mom ordered Grandpa to escort me into the men’s restroom and to offer any help necessary. It had been years since Grandpa had such an assignment, and the whole thought of it irritated him. He ushered me into the nearest restroom, full of customers, and found an empty stall for me, then walked several yards away to stand watch from a distance. In a few minutes a loud voice rang out from within my stall: “Somebody come wipe my bottom!” Everyone in the room froze, waiting to see who would claim me. Grandpa closed his eyes, grit his teeth, and answered my plea for help.

Now we were standing in front of the Tomorrowland Skyway, and my primal fear gripped me. I told Grandpa, “I don’t want to ride it. I can’t go. I am not going to do it.” He was in no mood for this. Like my Dad with a syringe in his hand, Grandpa tried to reason with me, but to no avail. He tried to bribe me with candy, to shame me, and then to threaten me. He was under some delusion that he could outsmart me and talk me into it. How does anything a 60-year old says make sense to a 5-year old, anyway? He gave up and we sat on a bench and watched the crowds boarding and unboarding the Skyway for several minutes. I watched with a mixture of dread and excitement. I could see that no one was dying, the cable didn’t break, the towers held fast. Did I dare to try? It was time to man up. I turned to Grandpa and said, “OK, let’s go.”

He held my hand through the line and into the next gondola. I thought if I was going down, I was going to take Grandpa with me. At the funeral all the relatives would weep, and my epitaph would read, “See, I Told You!”

As the tiny gondola lifted off the platform, I felt totally exposed and vulnerable. These little buckets had no windows, no seat belts, no safety apparatus at all. What was I thinking? This was insane. Why did I agree to this? As we swung from the cable, I prayed for traveling mercies. I could hardly gaze at the view. I just wanted it to be over. The three-minute ride seemed to last forever, and the Fantasyland terminal was a speck in the distance. I was about to surrender my soul to the universe, when the door to the bucket opened and the Fantasyland attendant invited us to get out. The ride was over. I took inventory. No pain. No blood. Just a long line of people waiting to fill our vacating seats. The sight of everyone standing in line for my seat just upped its value to me. All of a sudden I didn’t want to get out so fast.

Grandpa comforted me, “It’s over.”

I smiled and boldly said, “Let’s go again.”

I was sad to hear that the Skyway ride was removed from the park in 1994 and the holes in the Matterhorn where the gondolas passed through were filled in. The ride just got too old and too expensive to maintain. For almost 35 years the Skyway was on my “must ride” list. The scariest ride had become one of my favorites, and a signature ride that deserved better. I only hope they don’t remove me when I become too old and too expensive to maintain.