One of the Boardwalk Resort’s most endearing attractions is the Keister Coaster, a water slide that looks very much like the kind of classic wooden roller coaster you’d find at any beachside town. There are elements of Atlantic City in New Jersey and Brooklyn’s Coney Island sprinkled throughout the resort, which opened in 1996.Įven the pool, called Luna Park, was a carnival-themed area which featured a carousel pool bar and a herd of playful elephant statues spraying water from their trunks. The area in and around Disney’s Boardwalk Resort is reminiscent of a typical resort along the Atlantic seaboard. The infamous Scary Clown at the Boardwalk’s Luna Pool has become a piece of Disney lore. Mission: SPACE replaced Horizons in 2003. Horizons enjoyed a long run, closing permanently in 1999. There’s even a “hidden Winnie” floating with them, left.Īt the end of the Horizons journey, guests were given a choice to experience what life might be like in the future in three different environments: Under sea in space and in a desert.
The woman in the scene looks up as her son, her husband and their dog grapple with being weightless above Brava Centauri’s entry portal. In the photo above, the life-size scene showed space travelers arriving at Brava Centauri, a free-floating space colony where weightlessness created a few check-in problems for arriving guests. Three-dimensional settings, Audio-Animatronics figures, computerized special effects and cinemagraphic techniques were used in each scene. The ride showed future communities located on land, sea and in outer space. Guests boarded small ride vehicles and were shown a variety of scenes depicting visions of the future. The Horizons attraction utilized Disney’s Omnimover ride system. In fact, Horizons was considered a sequel to GE’s groundbreaking attraction, which had its origins at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair. The pavilion was sponsored by General Electric, which also sponsored the Carousel of Progress in the Magic Kingdom. 1, 1983, one year to the day after Walt Disney’s World’s second theme park opened to the public. The Horizons pavilion in EPCOT’s Future World debuted on Oct. The entry portal at Brava Centauri as seen during the Horizons attraction in EPCOT. Allan Grant | The LIFE Picture Collection via GettyĮnjoy the next edition of Disney Memory Lane, Vintage Photo Edition.Ī FREE-FLOATING SPACE COLONY WAS ON THE HORIZON We decided to reach into our collection again and came up with seven more photos from Disney’s days gone by. In the last edition of Still Goofy About Disney, we featured seven vintage photos from Disney’s “very historic past,” as Walt once said … press photos that were, on average, at least three decades old.