5 Broken Details Disney Hasn’t Bothered to Fix — But We Wish They Would

The Disney parks may be some of the most advanced and fun theme parks in the world, but even the creative minds who dreamed up some of the world’s most beloved rides can’t anticipate and keep track of all the little details that go wrong or suddenly disappear for no reason.

Expedition Everest

Disneyland, the first Disney theme park, first opened in 1955. It’s a place that’s highly detailed and always packed with people, so it’s bound to start showing its age. Walt Disney World is a little bit younger, having opened in 1971, but even little bumps, scrapes, and technological breakdowns still happen.

Here are the mistakes, errors, and technical difficulties that have existed for years at some of the parks and could use the help of one or more service techs.

The Yeti in Animal Kingdom’s “Expedition Everest” 

Let’s start by addressing the giant, immobile elephant hanging from the ceiling in the room.

Disco Yeti!

The 25-foot tall Yeti at the end of this thrilling coaster creates an impressive and intimidating presence if it’s moving or standing completely still, the latter of which best describes the animatronic since the ride opened in 2006. The roller coaster alone is a high achievement in mechanical design, creative thrills, and theming. It’s an ambitious attempt to change the game for roller coasters with its quiver-producing broken track that stops just a few feet away from a tall drop. The backward roll into complete darkness never stops being a thrill, no matter how many times you ride it. The giant 80-foot drop will send even the heartiest soul screaming all the way down at a higher octave than they thought their voices could reach.

The Yeti in Expedition Everest

Then the coaster glides into a crevice on another side of the mountain and you come face to face with the Yeti, that’s become a legend in the ride’s central story and among Disney park aficionados. You can hear the menacing roar bounce off the massive speakers hidden by the darkness, but its gigantic hand doesn’t lunge at you the way the Imagineers intended. Instead, a strobe light flashes across its once frightful frame. The Yeti looks slightly less like a menacing monster and more like a hairy guy getting his dance groove on at Studio 54 on Halloween. That’s why it’s known in Disney fan circles as the “Disco Yeti.”

The Yeti in silhouette on Expedition Everest

Legendary Imagineer Joe Rohde designed the coaster and the giant Yeti. He’s vowed several times that it will be fixed someday. It’s been long rumored that in order to fix the yeti, Imagineers would need to drill into the concrete structure of the attraction, hence the strobe light substitute.

The Chamber of Destiny in Disneyland’s “Indiana Jones Adventure” 

Indiana Jones’ first foray into theme park rides that isn’t just a well-decorated mine cart coaster was another very ambitious and unique idea for an interactive dark ride. It’s so good that we can forgive Disney for ruining Super Bowl XXIX with that weird halftime show… sort of.

Indiana Jones Adventure

One of the ride’s most impressive features ran at the very beginning of the out-of-control jeep ride through the Temple of the Forbidden Eye. The Chamber of Secrets opened with a stunning, game-changing illusion that made riders think they were driving through one of three doors picked at random by the angry gods. The effect used a moving room that slid the entryway toward the back of the room, while a voice screamed out one of three foreboding phrases about the search for, as Indy himself once put it, “fortune and glory.”

Indiana Jones Adventure

Then about 11 years ago, the room stopped pivoting for some reason and it hasn’t worked since. Park engineers replaced the effect with a projection that doesn’t look or work as impressively as a spinning room.

 

The Mermaid in Disney World’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” 

The original “Pirates of the Caribbean” rides are some of the most storied and beloved rides in the parks and possibly the world. Even after Disney wedged Jack Sparrow into the storyline, the watery dark ride is still something every human should ride before exiting the ride we call “life.”

Pirates of the Caribbean

The ride got an update in 2012 to insert characters and small scenes from the new movie Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, including a projection of Blackbeard played by Deadwood star Ian McShane on the foggy curtain at the start of the ride. The most noticeable and impressive update in our opinion was the addition of a mermaid skeleton shackled to a rotted-out boat in the dead pirate cove scene before the boat takes its dark drop. It wasn’t a mechanical addition but it was a nice surprise and a small but modern update to the ride.

Mermaid skeleton in Pirates of the Caribbean

Then in 2018, it was gone just as fast as a real-life mermaid encounter (so we’re told). No one knows why the thing was removed. Rumors circulated that it was part of the modernization of the ride’s themes, like the changing of the wench auction, because the remains of the mermaid were shackled to the boat like a piece of property.

Pretty Much All of Disneyland’s “Haunted Mansion” 

Asking the Walt Disney Company to change even the slightest detail of the original Haunted Mansion ride in Disneyland feels like asking the Louvre if they could make the Mona Lisa look she’s having a slightly better time. However, they could fix some of the small and more noticeable broken scenery and effects that a 65-year-old attraction is bound to suffer over time.

Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion

Hardcore super fans of the ride have reported tiny details like broken lights in several parts of the ride and the sometimes misaligned ghosts in the hitchhiking room at the end of the ride. Some riders reported more noticeable malfunctions like the stretching room that occasionally breaks down or the individual portraits that get stuck and fail to stretch like the rest as they should. Portraits that don’t stretch in The Haunted Mansion? Feels like they should rename the ride to “The Mansion.”

The Pterodactyl at Animal Kingdom’s “Dinosaur” 

Everyone who misses the Alien Encounter experience in Tomorrowland (which is everyone, right?) knows Disney likes to keep rides family-friendly without skimping on the theming and the stories that make them so special. One of the biggest chances they took and have still kept is the “Dinosaur” dark ride in the Animal Kingdom.

Let’s go get that dino!

The ride was one of the opening attractions with the newly unveiled Disney’s Animal Kingdom park in 1998, originally named “Countdown to Extinction.” If you went on the ride during its heyday and went on it again recently, you might notice that a lot of changes have been implemented, like the tiny, jumping Compsognathus and a lot of jostling from the time-traveling jeeps you ride, which are pretty similar to the ones in Disneyland’s “Indiana Jones Adventure.” One of the scarier moments that could make most people duck for cover happened just after the Compsognathus attack with a giant Pterodactyl swooping down over the riders from what feels like just inches from our tasty human heads.

Dinosaur Loading Area

Then after the “Dinosaur” refurbishment and renaming in 2000 to promote the tepid but profitable Dinosaur movie, the Pterodactyl stopped swooping down and just made a screeching noise as your car passed underneath the immobile model. It still kind of looks like it’s flying over your head but it loses the swoop effect.

At least they didn’t just flash a strobe light on it.

Have you noticed these broken or missing attraction elements? Are there any that we’ve missed that you’ve wondered about? Drop us a comment below!

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26 Replies to “5 Broken Details Disney Hasn’t Bothered to Fix — But We Wish They Would”

  1. when I was a kid the cemetery scene at Haunted Mansion (WDW) had these ghouls that would pop out from behind tombstones with a “whoosh” sound and scare the bejeezus out of us. Now they slowly move up, stay a long while, then slide back down. Miss the “BOO!” effect.

  2. The 3 canons all stopped moving in that amazing corridor sequence of rise of the resistance at Hollywood Studios. It really ruins that part of the ride and it doesn’t seem like they intend to fix it. Very disappointing.

  3. Let’s not forget that the Three Caballeros in the concert scene at the end of the ride are now just cardboard cutouts.

  4. The bucket at the start of the rain scene in Winnie the Pooh at WDW is suppose to fill with the falling words, but it’s empty and hasn’t worked since 2016

  5. What has happened to the piano/organ on Pirates at Disneyland? It’s been gone for months and has left a big open space!

  6. We rode the Navai River Ride just a few weeks ago and at the end a Navai is apparently supposed to be dancing and singing, instead he looks like his head got snapped and he’s not moving – its kinda eerie!

  7. I don’t know if it was broken or if it was due to the large lines that day, but when we visited HS about 2 weeks ago, they were skipping the whole pre-show for Tower of Terror…that is one of my favorite things about that ride and it sort of killed the vibe…

  8. Tower of terror in Hollywood studios used to have a flash strobe effect in the first hallway scene that used to “reset” your eyes before the appearance of the ghosts at the first crash of thunder, that hasn’t worked in ages and probably was removed for some reason or another sadly. Additionally, there used to be random steam hissing noises coming from parts of the boiler room section of queue that added another layer of effect without being too loud or intrusive, sometimes that one still functions, but RARELY.

  9. The Voyage of the Little Mermaid in HS…..just went last week. It hasn’t changed or been updated since my daughter was 17 and she is now 39. Even the film quality has an old 35 mm feel to it. So sad.

  10. Okay. First the Haunted Mansion is turning 50. And it’s an elevator so sometimes the elevators can get stuck hence the portraits. Wdw is different since theirs isn’t an elevator

  11. The spike ceiling still works in Indy. It just takes a while to reset. Now with the addition of Fast Pass, people are walking through that part of the queue so quickly they think it’s broken. When in reality someone ahead of them triggered the effect and it just hasn’t reset yet.

  12. I miss the mermaid skeleton in Pirates too. However what I miss the most in that ride was the lights and water movement that made it seem actual mermaids were swimming around your boat.

    My other big issue on a ride is the last scene of the Little Mermaid Ride in Magic Kingdom. Ariel looks high or drugged. It makes my husband and I giggle every time we see it. Good thing my 2 year old doesn’t care.

  13. Mermaid was removed at pirates to largen the escape for energency exits since guests previous has to step over or around when bosts backed up ir stopped at that point.

  14. Our family favorite has been in need of a lot of TLC. big thunder mountain seems to be falling apart. The scene at the top of the third and final lift has been broken for several years. It used to look like the mountain was about to explode, with rocks and boulders moving in and out. Now there is only one simple light and no moving parts of the scenery. The first lift had a water feature that split and fell to both sides of the train, as of late, there is no moving water here.

    1. Right. That was the best part. They just don’t give a da… anymore. They are getting their money without having to fix crap. So, why bother.

      Also, The place used to be spotless too. Now you see trash on the ground, smudges on all the windows, dead plants, gum stains on cement. I’ve even seen graffiti on stuff. Last time I was on Carousel of Progress the seats were so worn you could see the framing inside them. And it smelled musky.

      1. Trash on the ground along with gum are caused by lazy uncaring visitors. Cast members do the beat they can but they also need people to be more responsible. We are a trashy society

  15. My biggest gripe is with Disneyland’s Splash Mountain where Brer Fox once paddled a canoe over a waterspout. For at least 15 years now he is perched in the air over the waterspout with an oar in his hand and no boat surrounding him! I even complained directly to Tony Baxter about it while he was still employed at Disneyland over 10 years ago!

  16. I was thrilled when they removed the mermaid skeleton from Pirates. I think it was a particularly dark and morbid addition to the ride. I always looked in the opposite direction during that part of the ride.
    My young daughter also found it quite disturbing. To her it was Ariel’s family member. Pirates is one of our favorite rides and now we enjoy it more.

    1. The half a dozen other skeletons with swords and knives sticking in them are not also dark and morbid? ..and have you explained to your daughter that mermaids and all of the characters in disney cartoons are make believe?

      1. Omg exactly, the mermaid skeleton you looked the other way ,,, BS , my child was so upset that it was the little mermaids family wtf. The other skeletons “ you know humans that may be family members” thats ok seriously thats ok, but the make believe one that was over the line. Horrible parent.

  17. I guess my only complaint in this is the complaint about Haunted Mansion. It happens. At a certain point, they stop worrying about the ‘little things’ in a ride and let them go for a bit, then close it for 3 months and give the whole thing all the love it needs.

    This happened to Pirates sometime after 2015 – it was kind of showing age (lots of lights out, several chase figures removed from their sequence, the dry ice not working well at the ship v castle set, sound effects not too good in the shootout sequence of the powder kegs) when I saw it in April of 2015…but they had enough other projects in a hurry to get refurbished for the big anniversary (Pinocchio’s external, Peter Pan’s digital refurb AND its external, Small World’s exterior and the entire clock mechanics, and Soarin’s digital refurb that allowed for “Around The World” to open…oh, and neither Mark Twain nor Columbia were running), that I accepted that it wasn’t going to get done until some of those other projects were done AND the 60th anniversary crowds were done. Some time in ’16 or ’17, they did finally close it for a couple of months to address it.

    So too HM. With so many other rides closed because of the Star Wars construction, and the fact that Star Wars is still going, AND the Pixar Pier work, AND the dismantling of Bugs Life to make room for Marvel, AND whatever the hell they got planned for Muppets 3D’s theater, all over at DCA, AND AND AND the fact that Haunted Mansion is already closed 3 weeks out of the year for the holiday overlay…I can understand why they opted not to close it just yet for such a big project.

    I fully expect that one of these winters, they’ll keep it closed after the holiday overlay period is done in January…but not until Star Wars and Marvel are done and the attendance numbers back to what they were expecting/hoping (granted, killing APs this summer was a REALLY bad idea, but there we are).