As any Disney fan knows, over the years MANY attractions have closed at Disney World.
Some have become iconic to fans, still moving merchandise and sparking outrage over their closures to this day. On the other hand, others have become footnotes in history, remembered only by longtime fans and small easter eggs dropped by Imagineers. Either way, these experiences will never be experienced again. These are some of the ones we miss the most.
Great Movie Ride
Let’s start with Hollywood Studios’ original main attraction, the Great Movie Ride. Originally planned as an EPCOT pavilion, the concept of the ride actually inspired the development of the Disney-MGM Studios park. This slow-moving opening day attraction took you INSIDE the movies, with scenes based on classics like Singing in the Rain, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Wizard of Oz, and Alien… not to mention the part where your ride was RUDELY hijacked by either a gangster or old west bandit. The ride sadly closed in 2017 to make way for Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, which opened in 2020.
Why Disney’s Hollywood Studios’ Iconic Great Movie Ride Is Still Beloved Almost a Decade After Its Permanent Closure
Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith
The latest ride on our list, Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith, first opened in 1999 and was immediately beloved by fans. This high-flying ride shot you off from 0mph to 57mph in 2.8 seconds, sending riders through inversions all set to the music of the “Bad Boys of Boston.” The ride closed forever in March 2026 to make way for Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster Starring the Muppets, which is exactly the same ride experience, but now with Muppet theming and music from Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.
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Studio Backlot Tour
When the then-Disney-MGM Studios was built, it was supposed to be more of a film studio than a theme park, with the Backlot Tour serving as its main attraction. Once the studio work dried up, however, the Tour was continuously cut down to the point that the version that closed in 2014 was near unrecognizable from its original incarnation.
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Muppet*Vision 3D
Of course, the reason the Muppets needed to take over the coaster is that the entirety of the Muppets Courtyard – – including Muppet*Vision 3D – – closed in June 2025 to make way for the upcoming Monstropolis Land. This iconic 3D show took you inside the Muppet Labs to see what Beaker and Dr. Buson Honeydue have created all while going through several different sequences starring the Muppets. It was glorious, and you will have to pry those purple 3D glasses from my cold, dead hands before I give them up.
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World of Motion
This opening day EPCOT attraction, which was sponsored by General Motors, was a whimsical Omnimover attraction that took guests on a 15-minute journey through the history of transportation before closing in 1996. The ride featured the catchy theme song “It’s Fun to Be Free” and was hosted by legendary voice actor Gary Owens. Instead of a dry historical lesson, the ride used roughly 140 audio-animatronics to depict humorous scenes, such as prehistoric foot power and the world’s first traffic jam. It sadly closed in 1996 to make way for Test Track, which itself has gone through a few different iterations, with its latest update – – Test Track 3.0 – – paying homage to elements of World of Motion.
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Horizons
Considered by many to be the greatest attraction in EPCOT’s history, Horizons took all the elements of the park’s original mission statement and synthesized them into a brilliant ride that’s still beloved by many fans to this day. The ride took guests into the future of what Earth might be like based on scientific advancements.
The first portion of the attraction was titled “Looking Back at Tomorrow”, which explored different ways that we have envisioned the future. This included Jules Verne and his book “From the Earth to the Moon,” a fanciful futuristic city full of flying machines as envisioned by French artist Albert Robida, a futuristic Art Deco apartment with a robotic butler, tanning machine, and a malfunctioning robot chef, and a Neon City showcasing science fiction films and television ranging from 1927’s Metropolis to Disney’s Magic Highway, U.S.A. The vehicle then entered one of the two giant OmniMax IMAX screens, known as the Omnisphere, where a very brief view of the present was portrayed, showcasing advances in computer technology, the study of DNA, and leading up to a space shuttle launch and space station docking, foreshadowing Brava Centauri.
After leaving the Omnisphere, we enter “Tomorrow’s Windows”, where we visit the future world our narrators come from. We begin with a visit to their apartment in the city of Nova Cite. While the grandfather plays a motion-sensing musical synthesizer instrument, the grandmother is in the midst of a holographic phone call with their “agricultural engineer” daughter in Mesa Verde.
Entering Mesa Verde, we travel through the futuristic desert farm, where large irrigation robots help take care of crops, supervised by the daughter. We pass through her home, where her husband and son are preparing a birthday cake in the kitchen, and her daughter is in a video chat with her marine biologist boyfriend at the floating city of Sea Castle.
Seeing the other side of the conversation, we journey through the marine base, seeing a diving classroom and an underwater restaurant looking out at the seafloor, where robots are harvesting kelp for biomass energy projects. A submarine goes by and transitions into a spaceship as we finally approach Brava Centauri, home to the narrator’s son. Going inside, we see various activities in the station, such as crystal growing and zero gravity exercise machines, as well as a newly arrived family adjusting to the zero gravity.
Finally, we go to their grandson’s birthday party, where everyone comes together through holographic teleconferencing, singing “Happy Birthday”. The two narrators left the guests briefly while another announcer stated that they would be returning to FuturePort very soon.
Unlike any other attraction, Horizons allowed guests to choose their own ending in a segment called “Choose Your Own Tomorrow.” In it, riders selected one of the lit-up designs on a keypad in front of them. The winner (majority rules) got presented with a 31-second clip of high-speed motion before returning to one of the docking bays of FuturePort. Riders then were told, “If we can dream it, we really can do it” before disembarking.
The ride closed in 1999 after its sponsor, GE, decided not to renew its contract. This ride was replaced with Mission SPACE, which is easily one of the least popular rides in the park
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Journey Into Imagination
The first version of this ride debuted in 1983, and it was called Journey into Imagination. It starred Figment and Dreamfinder, and guests traveled with them and their Dreamcatcher vehicle through different realms of art, literature, and science. In 1999, Disney and the sponsor decided to try to modernize the ride, refurbishing it into a brand new attraction called Journey into Your Imagination.
Their choices – – including removing Dreamfinder and Figment and replacing them with Nigel Channing and Imagination Institute tour hosts were… not popular. People hated this ride so bad that only a few years later, they redid it again. That brings us to today’s version, which opened in 2002, called Journey into Imagination with Figment. This version brought Figment back to the forefront and is better than the 1999 version, but doesn’t come close to the original.
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Maelstrom
Before Elsa was letting it go in EPCOT’s Norway, the mysterious Norwegian Trolls were taking people on journeys. This boat ride in the Norway Pavilion was classic EPCOT: Weird, educational, and memorable. The ride first took guests back to a mythological version of Norway’s Viking days, traveling up a waterfall. The boats passed through scenes of seafarers and Vikings. The boats then entered an enchanted swamp where they were forced backwards down a waterfall by angry trolls. The boats then floated rapidly past scenes of polar bears and a troll hidden in a fjord before coming to a stop on the edge of another waterfall, exposed to the Norway pavilion’s main thoroughfare.
After rotating back to a forward-facing position, the boats plunged forward into a depiction of the stormy North Sea, complete with crashing waves. The boats passed dangerously close to an oil rig, and the ride came to an abrupt end in a calm harbor. After the ride, the guests disembarked and had the option of watching a 5-minute film highlighting the history and folklore of Norway. This ride closed in 2014 to make way for Frozen Ever After, which opened in 2016.
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Ellen’s Energy Adventure
Outside of the future and three-headed trolls, Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Nye were also staples in EPCOT. This 90s take on the Universe of Energy dark ride was a slow-moving dark ride that starred Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Nye as well as a few other faces like Alex Trebek and Jamie Lee Curtis. It took a light-hearted look at various energy resources, how energy was produced, the history of energy production, and the search for new energy resources. In particular, it focused on the origins of fossil fuels, such as petroleum, coal, and natural gas. It also mentioned renewable sources, such as solar and hydroelectric power. This ride also took guests back in time to see massive dinosaur audio animatronics AND even an animatronic of Ellen (which was actually gifted to her at one point, and it’s scary). It closed in 2017 due to declining popularity, to be replaced by Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind.
To Say This EPCOT Pavilion Is ABANDONED Is an Understatement
Alien Encounter
Arguably the most infamous ride in Disney history, ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter had a short run at the Magic Kingdom. Guests were ushered into the “Tomorrowland Interplanetary Convention Center” (mentioned as such in the Tomorrowland Transit Authority narration) for a demonstration of new technology from an alien corporation known as X-S Tech. Guests proceeded into a second area where they were introduced to an X-S robot known as Simulated Intelligence Robotics, or S.I.R. for short, voiced by Tim Curry (originally called T.O.M. 2000, short for Technobotic Oratorical Mechanism series 2000, and voiced by Phil Hartman).
He proceeded to demonstrate the company’s “practically painless” teleportation technology using a cute little animatronic alien named Skippy. The creature’s charred and disoriented appearance after being teleported a short distance across the room suggested the technology was flawed. While teleporting Skippy back across the room, S.I.R. paused the process, demonstrating how the technology could be used to suspend subjects in teleportation indefinitely. Finally, guests were seated in harnesses within a circular chamber surrounding an enormous plastic cylinder, the “teleportation tube”. Clench and two bumbling X-S Tech employees, Spinlok (Kevin Pollak) and Dr. Femus (Kathy Najimy), communicated “live” from across the galaxy via video screens. Initially, a single guest was to be teleported out of the chamber for a meeting with Clench. Instead, Clench was “seized” by inspiration and decided to have himself teleported into the chamber to meet the entire group.
Clench’s impatience and the change of plans caused the teleportation signal to be diverted through an unknown planet. As a result, a towering, winged, and carnivorous alien was beamed into the tube by mistake, as chaos and confusion ensued, and the technicians panicked. The creature quickly escaped, however, as intermittent darkness and flashes of light revealed the shattered and empty teleportation tube. A power outage then plunged the chamber into total darkness as guests sat helplessly restrained in their seats. A maintenance worker was fatally mauled, and as the Alien’s shrieks resounded throughout the room, a spray of fluid flew out into the audience, hitting the guests’ faces. The fluid (which was actually water) was presumably the saliva of the escaped Alien creature, but since it was never officially specified, it was left open to the audience’s individual interpretations and imaginations. Other common interpretations included blood from the mauled staff member or snot from the Alien creature.
After the spray of fluid, the guests felt their seats rumble and shake as the Alien made its way swiftly through the crowd, during which time the guests also felt the “breath” of the Alien on the back of their necks. With assistance from the two X-S Tech technicians, the ravenous alien was ultimately driven back into the broken teleportation device and destroyed. Guests were then released from their seats while the two technicians resumed their search for the misplaced Clench. This attraction took place in total darkness for a majority of the ride, and it was SCARY! It didn’t last too long and closed in 2003 before it became Stitch’s Great Escape, which has also since closed. Today, no ride or attraction occupies the building, and you can still see remnants of the attraction signage.
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20,000 Leagues under the Sea
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Submarine Voyage was an opening day attraction at the Magic Kingdom, which was open from 1971 to 1994. Modeled after the 1954 Disney film, it took guests on a 20-minute, track-guided journey through a massive, 11.5-million-gallon lagoon in Victorian-style submarines. Accompanied by narration from Captain Nemo himself, the tour guided passengers through underwater wonders and hazards, simulated sea life, giant clams, an aquatic shipwreck, mermaids, and the sunken ruins of Atlantis. Because the attraction required massive amounts of water maintenance, air conditioning, and a large crew to operate, it was incredibly expensive to run. Disney closed the ride for “maintenance” on September 5, 1994, but it never reopened and was officially retired. The area was eventually repurposed for the New Fantasyland expansion, featuring the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.
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Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride
Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride was an opening day dark attraction at Magic Kingdom. Operating from 1971 to 1998, the beloved, chaotic ride took guests through the whimsical story of J. Thaddeus Toad, famously ending with a runaway train crash, a trip to “Hell,” and a fiery climax. The ride was controversially replaced with the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 1999, though the Disneyland version is still operational.
These are just some of the many attractions that have closed at Walt Disney World over the last 50+ years. Stay tuned to AllEars for further dives into Disney World’s history.
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What’s your favorite closed Disney attraction? Let us know in the comments below.
A wonderful look back at some wonderful WDW rides! There are a couple of common themes: long dark rides, and audio animatronics. I miss those characteristics greatly. Replacement rides are shorter, with many having a focus on thrills; and a reliance on screens. NOT an improvement!