20K Leagues Under the Sea

January 19, 2005 12:17 PM

OH MY GOOD GOD THERE’S A GIANT SQUID ATTACKING THAT SUBMARINE! A tribute to the greatest Disney World ride that ever existed. R.I.P. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
posted by _sirmissalot_ (23 comments total)

More here from Maud, where I was led to this amazing site.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 12:21 PM on January 19, 2005

Giant squid are so cool and so fucking elusive. I really did enjoy that ride. Great find!
posted by brheavy at 12:33 PM on January 19, 2005

Brings back some memories, for sure.

IMO, the pictures would be better without those stupid captions.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:54 PM on January 19, 2005

Virtual Toad: A CGI Reconstruction of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
posted by euphorb at 1:05 PM on January 19, 2005 [1 favorite]

Did I just regress back to a four year old? As soon as I hit that site I started playing with the 'water' java-applet on the main poster-image, and it struck me that I did pretty much the same thing to the windows when I first took that ride.
Best ride ever.
posted by dabitch at 1:20 PM on January 19, 2005

There were rumors going around that the currently dead Submarine Voyage ride in Disneyland, Anaheim was going to be converted into a 20,000 leagues adventure, but instead now it's getting a Little Nemo theme. WTF?
posted by afx114 at 1:23 PM on January 19, 2005

Some stories to start: The subs were sold to the Guatemalan navy. A child's skeleton (clutching some heavy souvenir) was found at the bottom of the drained lake. Five subs (Skate, Skipjack, George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Ethan Allen, all named after real US navy subs) were renamed because the names gave possible clues to the enemy. When X (some famous man) was given a special ride on the attraction, strippers in fish tails were used instead of the plastic mermaids, and he was allowed to bring one aboard to join the 20,000 leagues club, but later she called him "Captain Nogo." During early testing, one sub burst open and the crew was lost; the repaired sub was haunted, or passengers sometimes reported seeing especially gruesome-looking drowning people (or maybe a spectacular swimmer clowning with the fake mermaids) out in the water, only to discover later that they must have been seeing ghosts of the drowned crew.
posted by pracowity at 1:25 PM on January 19, 2005

Probably the most cosmically horrible thing I can imagine would be to actually come face to face with one of those giant squids. Words really fail to do justice to just how infinitesimally bad that would be.
But to pretend to be attacked by one from the comfort of a 1970s amusement park ride - good times. I only actually rode it once but the memory is strong. And now it's gone.

Boy, does that ever suck. One more reason to never go back to that sucking greedhole that is Disney. RIP cool ride. I wish I could ride you one more time...

On preview: That's horrible about the skeleton. Was this child not missed!? Assumed kidnapped??? WTF!!?
posted by stinkycheese at 1:31 PM on January 19, 2005

I loved that ride! Wow, this brings back memories.

And aren't pracowity's stories all urban legends?
posted by SisterHavana at 1:40 PM on January 19, 2005

I have a couple blurry old photos of the coral reef from that ride. Thanks for the memories.
posted by me3dia at 1:52 PM on January 19, 2005

And aren't pracowity's stories all urban legends?

Maybe not yet, but I'm hoping.
posted by pracowity at 2:00 PM on January 19, 2005

I mainly remember it being too crowded in the sub, but when you came up on that giant squid . . . sweet Jesus, the terror! "Surface! Surface!"

Some of the sites on the links page are worth checking out. Like the guy who built his own personal Nautilus and Nemosuit.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 2:08 PM on January 19, 2005

That's horrible about the skeleton. Was this child not missed!? Assumed kidnapped??? WTF!!?

The child was unliked and unmissed. Or was truant from school that day, so no one looked there. Or they looked everywhere in the park but the water was too murky in that part and no one saw the kid fall (or get pushed???) into the water. Murdered by a deranged mother. The souvenir was... an anchor from the pirate ship? A cannon, and his thumb was caught in the barrel?
posted by pracowity at 2:39 PM on January 19, 2005

I remember riding this when I was 8 or so. Scary (and cool) as hell.
posted by craven_morhead at 3:02 PM on January 19, 2005

Oh, sure, squids are cool and all, but where's the love for Adventure through Inner Space?
posted by jlub at 3:18 PM on January 19, 2005

Wow, I had no idea it had been shut down until now. When I was a kid I thought it was incredibly cool. Sorta like that applet on the main page. Thanks for posting this.

Probably the most cosmically horrible thing I can imagine would be to actually come face to face with one of those giant squids.

No need to imagine! You can watch Michael Kirk Douglas fight it! A reenactment of this scene would have been about the only thing that could have made this ride cooler.
posted by casu marzu at 4:08 PM on January 19, 2005

At one of the 24 Hour Science Fiction marathons in Boston, we had an unannounced surprise: Disney had struck a new print to make a digital copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and we were seeing the print, basically, the second machine the print ever ran through.

Now that, was a memory.
posted by jscott at 4:36 PM on January 19, 2005

Hey, you need BitPass to access the videos. Huh.
posted by jaronson at 5:27 PM on January 19, 2005

I'll never forgive my parents for not taking me to see Disneyland when I was young, in the good old days before the place was tampered with beyond recognition.
posted by evilcolonel at 9:30 PM on January 19, 2005

The greatest water-themed ride at Disney world, though Norway's ride at Epcot and Pirates of the Caribbean are right up there.
posted by cpchester at 12:18 AM on January 20, 2005

So sad.
posted by TwelveTwo at 12:34 AM on January 20, 2005

That was fun.
posted by The God Complex at 12:45 AM on January 20, 2005

It's gone?

This was the ride that made me forever painfully, paralyzingly, frightened of animatronics and automatons.
posted by jennanemone at 2:45 AM on January 20, 2005