One day I hope to be as brilliant a writer about Walt Disney World as Foxxfur. Today she takes on the memory of Mr. Toad’s Wild ride which is rapidly approaching the 10 year anniversary of its fateful shuttering.
Over the last few days I’ve been finding my brain doing circles
around Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, over and over again. Of course, I rode it
when I was young and was utterly terrified and fascinated all at once
at this totally irrational flow of images which was, along with
Orlando’s Snow White’s Adventures pre its’ 1993 incarnation, probably
one of the most brilliant and subversive things ever to rattle along on
an electric drive track through “crash doors” ever put into operation
by Disney.The only attraction in history to entice riders with the prospect of donning the persona of a crazed
amphibian, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride is a true anormality. Of the original
1955 “Fantasyland Three” dark rides, Mr. Toad has only been constructed
twice – half the number of incarnations Peter Pan’s Flight and Snow
White’s Adventures have received. And overall, it is not too surprising
– while Snow and Pan told something like their original stories, Mr.
Toad spun off on a weird alternate reality that relied on your
familiarity with a not-heavily-publicized postwar short feature to even
understand the basic elements of what was going on. All that being
said, it’s then not too surprising that Orlando eventually declared open season on Toads in 1998.
Do yourself a favor and go read the conclusion of this excellent analysis.