Pocahontas dark ride notes.

At the beginning of the summer, my sister and I brain-stormed a Pocahontas dark ride. Tonight, my friend Tim (who will either run Imagineering or build bombs that kill brown people) and I discussed it further. Here are our notes.


The loading dock is themed like a colonial London dock. We’re setting sail with the Virginia Company, and spend the ride (as / with) John Smith. The ride vehicles are modeled after the Discovery, the Susan Constant, and the Godspeed.


Our first room emulates the tumultuous, hellish, gray time at sea...leading up to a reveal of the new world--serene, verdant. Tonally, picture the reveal of Neverland in Peter Pan’s Flight.


The settlers do the “Mine, Mine, Mine” scene; excavating, cutting down, and generally molesting this natural setting. This will be one of few scenes where the focus is placed upon animatronic characters--by and large, this is a ride about the splendor of an undeveloped land.


We enter the bulk of the ride, greeted by an animatronic Pocahontas, and launch into a “Colors of the Wind” exhibition. Impressionistic colors and images would be projected upon a series of (mist / smoke) screens.

These screens might replace walls, separating rooms.

Perhaps, if we have a number of angled (mist / smoke) screens, we can create some sort of multi-plane effect.


The “Colors of the Wind” sequence is not just a series of movies. Physical effects will be incorporated in with the (mist / smoke) screens. For instance, during the lyrics “How high does the sycamore grow?” wall panels shaped like sycamore trees could scroll up from the floor, like the buildings in the ‘falling’ scene in the Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man. If the ride vehicle moved a certain way, the guests could feel like they were flying.

Using the same effect, but in the reverse, perhaps the ride vehicle could fall down a waterfall.

Perhaps there are other uses for animatronic landscapes. It’s a notion that’s been hinted at, but not really explored. The scrolling wall panels in Spider-Man, the occasional door that’s painted like a landscape, the trees that close in on guests in Snow White’s Scary Adventures. In theory, a ride about 'the splendor of this new world' should emphasize its landscape--and if the landscape were animatronic, it could emulate camera movements and enhance forced perspectives.

Tim swears he’ll think further about current technologies that would support this.


We have a running debate about the necessity of synopsizing the ride.

TIM’S SIDE: it would be awesome to represent the whole of the film. The Fantasyland dark rides have a precedent of synopsizing their respective films.

Guests boarding a Pocahontas ride would expect a proper ‘native vs. settler’ showdown, capitalized by Pocahontas’ noble stand to save John Smith’s life--and since the first part of the ride is pretty faithful to the early film, it may be jarring to hit them with that, and then kick them out without fulfilling their expectations.

Physically, there would be a dichotomy: the natives’ side is misty and colorful, while the settlers are characterized by fire and smoke. At the culmination, they would either switch, or maybe be indistinguishable from one another, showing that their hatred has made them indistinguishable from one another. Also, it would have a smell similar to Pirates of the Caribbean.

IAN’S SIDE: there are two major themes in Pocahontas--‘appreciating natural beauty,’ and ‘the dangers of xenophobia.’ “Colors of the Wind” is firmly about the former. We wouldn’t be able to do ‘the effects of xenophobia’ justice in such a small space, and if we tried, it would only detract from our “Colors of the Wind” centerpiece.

It may not be important to synopsize a story that guests already know. What’s important is a unique ride experience, and since it’s Fantasyland, it makes sense to link that into a story. But the ride should take priority, not the synopsis.

THIS COMPLICATES THINGS WAY TOO MUCH, but one way to address the ‘xenophobia’ plot is to have two separate dark rides that join in the middle, in the vein of Dueling Dragons. Guests could choose whether they wanted to start from the natives’ ride, or from the settlers’. The scenes would be phrased around their respective side’s perspective.

THE ANSWER MAY LIE in Peter Pan’s Flight, which spends most of its time exploring innovations with miniatures beneath a suspended ride vehicle, and then tacks on a few rote synopsis scenes.


Either way, the last room sees an animatronic Pocahontas waving to us, as we sail away from the new world...and return to our colonial London loading dock.


Ideally, this would be located on the border between Fantasyland and Liberty Square--where the Skyway queue used to be. The attraction, itself, would segue between the lands of "storybook Disney films" and "colonial America."