Going To X-S

My mother has a very particular idea of what constitutes fun – especially in her choice of movies. (Here she is with me at Disneyland). She is a sucker for a musical, romantic comedy, or anything silly, like Chevy Chase’s Christmas Vacation. She is quite the product of the traditional Hollywood movie formula where boy meets girl, boy overcomes all obstacles to win her heart, and they all live happily ever after. For her, good must triumph, happy endings are essential, and the bad guy must get his comeuppance.

What she does NOT like is any movie theme dealing with the supernatural, the occult, satanic activity, witches and goblins, vampires and zombies, or any unexplainable phenomenon. Of course, the entire encyclopedia of horror flicks is out of the question. She has a very tender heart and finds nothing entertaining in the suffering of innocent victims at the hands of lunatics. To this end, we kids have steered Mom away from such movies as The Exorcist, The Devil’s Advocate, or any movie with the words “chainsaw” or “Friday the 13th” in the title.

A large grey area for Mom is the entire science fiction genre of films. Movies that deal with the future, like Star Wars, are generally OK with Mom, and even modern day science fiction silliness, like Back to the Future or Multiplicity, are harmless good fun. But hostile aliens from outer space intent on the destruction of earth is deeply upsetting to my mother and leaves an emotional wound of very disturbing images that she would rather avoid. She would not go near any movie like War of the Worlds, Alien, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. She even sought to keep us kids from being traumatized by shocking movie images when we were growing up. I remember when the old Vincent Price movie House on Haunted Hill came to TV, she forbade us kids from seeing it, in a motherly gesture of nurture and protection. “It will just give you bad dreams,” she warned. I managed to sneak a peek at the movie anyway, and I am no doubt damaged as a result.

I never fully understood her depth of feeling in this matter until we coaxed her to join us to see the newly released Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977. The story dealt with the whole idea of alien visitation and abduction – a big no-no for Mom. But she liked Richard Dreyfuss from The Goodbye Girl, and she felt safe in the hands of master storyteller Steven Spielberg, the director of the movie.

Big mistake! As the story unfolded on the screen, I could see Mom’s agitation grow at the depiction of rather scary UFO activities. But when the aliens abducted the little boy from his farm house despite his mother’s frantic efforts to save him, Mom wanted out of the theater. Literally in tears, she whispered, “You know I can’t stand these satanic movies.”

I vainly attempted to split hairs. “This isn’t really satanic – these are just aliens.” I could see that wasn’t much comfort. After watching the little boy get sucked out of his house amid blinding lights and vibrating appliances, Mom was beyond reasoning. She agreed to sit through the rest of the film, but she covered her eyes through most of it. Lesson learned.

By the 1990’s Tomorrowland had become a real sore spot for Disneyland. After three complete overhauls and numerous tweaks and renovations, this area of the park had Disney executives exasperated. They continue to wrestle with two major challenges: 1) keeping up with advances in science and technology so that Tomorrowland doesn’t go out of date so quickly, and 2) making the future look as interesting and exciting as it did to us in the 1950’s.

For Walt, and most of America, the future was outer space. He said:

"Tomorrow can be a wonderful age. Our scientists today are opening the doors of the Space Age to achievements that will benefit our children and generations to come."

But once we landed on the moon, shot probes at Mars, photographed the outer planets, and launched numerous shuttles to develop an orbiting space station, America’s interest in outer space cooled. While the everyday benefits derived from the space program are quite numerous, most people think of Tang, Velcro, and Teflon as our principal payoff for the multi-billions of dollars spent by NASA (although none of these items were actually developed specifically for space applications).

In addition, with nuclear meltdowns, oil spills, and chemical poisonings, growing fears about the dangers of science and technology to our planet have convinced some people that science is not the solution, but the problem to our quality of life. Go figure that one out and get back to me.

Anyway, something was needed to give the “future” a new makeover. In the 1990’s Disneyland announced a new vision for Tomorrowland that it labeled “Tomorrowland 2055”, which would coincidentally mark the 100th anniversary for the park. The plan called for a new line-up of exciting rides with a strong alien flavor. The centerpiece attraction was to be ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, a sit-down theater with harnessed special effects seats. The back story for the attraction was that a futuristic corporation called X-S was demonstrating the technology of teleportation. The company’s motto was “If something can't be done with X-S [excess], then it shouldn't be done at all.”

For those of you who have experienced this ride, be patient while I explain it to the other readers. Guests were ushered into a darkly lit stadium-style chamber for the demonstration. Each seat came with a harness needed for the ride’s special effects. At the center of the chamber was a large plexi-glass container – the “teleportation tube”, where the demonstration was to occur.

The “host” and announcer for the show, along with two X-S Tech employees, run the demonstration. Initially, you are told that a single guest is to be teleported out of the chamber. Then the host is "seized" by inspiration and decides to have himself teleported into the chamber to meet the entire group.

Here is where the ride takes an unexpected dark turn. Through some technical glitch, the teleportation signal is diverted through an unknown planet. As a result, a towering winged, carnivorous alien is beamed into the tube by mistake. As ugly and dangerous as any movie alien, this terrifying creature is on full display, with only the plexi-glass shield to protect the audience. Of course, you can guess what happens next. The creature shatters the glass tube and escapes, amidst intermittent darkness and flashes of light that reveal the empty teleportation tube. A power outage suddenly plunges the entire chamber into total darkness as guests sit helplessly restrained in their seats.

During the portions of the attraction that take place in darkness, binaural sound effects suggest that the alien is moving through the chamber, menacing the guests and even devours a maintenance man. In-seat vibration, air-blasts and other effects contribute to the illusion, with the alien appearing to be breathing and at one point licking the guests. "Blood" spattering in the dark is simulated by the spraying of water. Among other spine-tingling highlights during the encounter is a moment when a cast member shines a flashlight over the guests to ask if they are alright, only to be "ripped apart, limb-from-limb, and eaten" by the alien, using the technology of sound effects.

With assistance from the two X-S technicians, the ravenous alien is ultimately driven back into the broken teleportation device and destroyed. Guests are then released from their seats.

Of course, I had no idea what this ride was actually going to involve, or I would never have taken my mother on it. This was The Magic Kingdom, for crying out loud, full of little children. What was Michael Eisner thinking? I suppose the name of the ride (with the word TERROR in bold caps) should have given me a clue. It was probably not what Walt had in mind when he envisioned the exciting possibilities of tomorrow. No matter. Walt had been dead for almost 30 years, and there was a new team in charge. I am told that when Disney CEO Michael Eisner first sat through a dry run of the ride, he complained that it wasn’t scary enough, and ordered the fear factor ramped up. The ride was being test marketed at the Orlando Magic Kingdom, where it opened in June of 1995 amidst lots of promotional hoopla. The ride was described as “hip” and “edgy”, and “a darkly humorous science-fiction experience”. It was kind of like a dress rehearsal for the ride, which would ultimately be installed in the Anaheim park once all of the bugs were worked out of the system.

In 1995 I was living in Tennessee, and Orlando was a mere nine-hour drive away. For Thanksgiving, my wife and I decided to fly my mother out from California to spend a week with us. Knowing her affection for Disneyland, we planned a thanksgiving excursion to Walt Disney World, with a stay at the Contemporary Hotel, and plans for a sneak preview of this coming attraction for Anaheim.(Here she is with me, our two kids and a cousin at Disneyland in 1995).

As we stood in line for the Alien Encounter, we observed the warning label alerting guests that the ride was very intense, and that parents were recommended to not bring small children into the attraction. I had never heard of such a warning for a Disneyland ride. Thunder Mountain came with a warning, but that seemed more related to the physical demands of a roller coaster. The Alien Encounter warning focused on potential psychological trauma. Undaunted, we pressed on.

As we were seated in this theater-in-the-round, it reminded me of the Mission to Mars chamber. I was anticipating a pleasant virtual reality experience similar to Star Tours. Was I in for a shock.

The teleportation of the “Alien” into our plexi-glass tube was startling enough. The creature was large and menacing, and I could see that Mom was nearing her limit. I thought, please don’t let it get any more intense. No such luck. The lights flickered, the beast broke free, and we were all cast into total darkness, with only the sounds of screaming patrons, death, and destruction all around us. At one point a puff of air from our harness and the slobbering sounds of the Alien made it seem it was right behind us. I could only grit my teeth and hope for a speedy conclusion.

By the end of the ride Mom was a wreck. When I turned my head to look at her, she was gripping her harness with her eyes shut tight. I broke the silence by offering, “Well, that was fun.” I don’t think she has forgiven me to this day.

We were not the only ones to be stunned by the nightmarish Alien Encounter. Many guests complained that the ride was too frightening to be enjoyable, and refused to go on the ride again or to recommend it to others.

The ride was finally closed down in 2003 and was never installed at the Anaheim park. Compared to the lifespan of most Disneyland rides, it was a short run. While it developed a cult following among some Disney fans, it was largely criticized for terrorizing the park’s primary customer – young children. The ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter is perhaps the scariest ride in the history of the kid-friendly Magic Kingdom.

Even without the Alien Encounter, there are enough heart-stopping rides at Disneyland to prompt management finally to install cardiac defibrillators at some of its more intense thrill rides, as a protective measure, which currently includes:

• Haunted Mansion
• Splash Mountain
• Space Mountain
• Big thunder Mountain Railroad
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin

I guess Disney has decided that it will not cut back on the “thrill factor” of its rides, but if you have a heart attack, they are ready to revive you. How’s that for fun! Just to be safe, some of the non-thrill rides that lack defibrillators come with warning labels. Even Snow White’s Scary Adventure has a warning that reads “WARNING: May be too intense for young children.”

Nevertheless, I was not sad to see ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter retired. If I want a Disneyland ride to plunge me into imminent danger, I will settle for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Straddling those bumpy railroad tracks with that locomotive headlight bearing down on me is unnerving enough. And while the ride ultimately sends you to hell, it doesn’t actually try to kill you.