Mr. Toad's Wild Ride

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Mr. Toad's Wild Ride was an attraction in Fantasyland at the Magic Kingdom

History

History

Like many of the Opening Day Magic Kingdom attraction, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride had originally opened in Disneyland. Drawing its source material from the 1949 Disney package film Ichabod and Mr. Toad, the attraction followed the titular Mr. Toad, as he recklessly drove through London and the English countryside, before eventually dying and traveling through hell. Although immensly popular in California, Disney initially did not want to simply copy Disneyland's dark rides. Instead, plans were drawn up to replace Mr. Toad's Wild Ride with a new dark ride attraction that would have showcased the battle of wizards in The Sword and the Stone, with Madame Min and Merlin in the middle of their magical duel.

Plans for Walt Disney World's Fantasyland changed however, when Roy O. Disney mandated that the Disneyland dark ride be duplicated for the Magic Kingdom. Chief Operations Officer of WED Enterprises Richard Irvine then tapped Imagineer Rolly Crump to spearhead the Magic Kingdom's Fantasyland attractions, including Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Based on the attraction's popularity in Disneyland, Dick Nunis told Crump that he should build two identical Mr. Toad rides right next to each other. Crump disagreed and would later recall:

"Well I thought that was a dumb idea...I told him to let me think about it for a while, and I'd come up with something even better.

I went home that night to try and hash it out. What I came up with was eventually put into the Park. I had two Mr. Toad rides, but they were two completely different rides in the same building".

True to his world, Rolly Crump designed the Magic Kingdom's Mr. Toad's Wild Ride with two seperate tracks. Both tracks would begin in Toad Hall, before going their own ways. Along the way, if dispatched correctly, the cars would also meet up in the One Way Street and Town Square scenes. No matter which track guest ended up on, their adventure ended up with a trip through Hell.

As previously mentioned, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride opened with the rest of the Magic Kingdom on October 1, 1971.

Description

Fun Facts and Trivia

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