Disney Theme Parks/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Not recommended for pregnant mothers or guests with heart problems.

"What chilling words?
Like shriek or killer, can spark the mind to start a thriller?

Add some more sparks like dagger, blood, and gory, and then, a mystery story."
—Dreamfinder playing an Ominous Pipe Organ in the Tales of Terror portion of the original Journey into Imagination.

Nightmare Fuel? At a Nightmare Fuel theme park? Buddy, you better believe it!

The Haunted Mansion has its own page.

  • This entire page can neatly be summarized as: every person that has ever been caught in a ride malfunction is a trooper.
  • Might as well begin this list with the most appropriate entry: Storybook Land Canal Boats were a quintessentially Walt idea to have children float in boats past miniature sets while a young hostess retold condensed versions of the stories like the most gentle mother you never had. Behind the Railroad, it's the oldest concept for Disneyland. Except that the ride begins with the boat floating through the Cave Mouth of Monstro the whale. His eyes blink and light up with doom at night and on the ride all you see is just this giant mouth and then what looks like a Womb Level inside for a few feet before you wind up in daylight (don't ask out of where.) The big problem is that Monstro has some serious teeth! It's like floating straight into the jaws a Slasher Smile!
    • Disneyland Paris replaces Monstro with the Cave of Wonders from Aladdin.
    • Tokyo Disney Sea recently reused the Monstro concept for a gift shop. He doesn't have any teeth and the merchandise stands look like shipwrecks he's eaten, meaning less nightmares and more Narm Charm.
  • On the Jungle Cruise: the part where the hungry crocodiles bob up and down before your boat enters the temple that has the tiger with glowing orange eyes. And the elephants that go into the animal equivalent of the Uncanny Valley.
    • And it is 10 times worse at night
    • Well now it's much less scary because they're making fun of the animatronics. Like for example, pointing out that one of the elephants is so wrinkled because she took a shower for 50 years.
  • Disney World in Florida had a Hell Hotel on property for a while—namely the unfinished half of the Pop Century Resort. Come take a visit. It was like this for a little over a decade, thanks to the post-9/11 tourism slowdown and then the Great Recession. Visitors who stayed within the boundaries could only see some buildings from the finished half, and cross a bridge and stare at it through an Insurmountable Fence. Anyone who went there found the place had an atmosphere somewhere between an Abandoned Playground and the Chernobyl village. But this being Disney, there was a happy ending—the buildings were retooled and completed in 2012 to become Disney's Art of Animation Resort.
  • This link lists all the accidents that have happen at Disneyland, including deaths and characters acting in a weird way.
  • On the subject of "It's Tough to be a Bug", the show does scare a lot of children (for one thing, it's loud, and for another you don't really need to be told to be afraid of things like a giant termite who spits poison at you, GiantSpiders, killer bees who sting you, or a gigantic can of pesticide). One guidebook includes this classic one-line review, "Finally this generation gets it's 'Snow White's Scary Adventures.'"
    • Muppet*Vision 3D is pretty damn tame in comparison, but the character Waldo (another herky-jerky hologram out of the Uncanny Valley) has freaked out his share of viewers.
    • Honey I Shrunk The Audience: The hologram lion, and those mice crawling up your legs...
    • Before these were Magic Journeys (1983-1994) and Captain EO (1986–94, at least at the U.S. parks).
      • Magic Journeys had some kids having imaginary adventures. It was gentle and upbeat, but the haunting score and the slow pace to savor the then-landmark 3D imagery was more unsettling than anything that actually appeared onscreen.
      • Captain EO was Michael Jackson's answer to Star Wars and whatnot, and it was probably the first theme park show to have sonic-boom volume levels. That's fine when it came to the music, but then you had all the explosions, not to mention the appearance of the Witch-Queen, which was Anjelica Huston in an H.R. Giger sort of getup with loooooong claws...with the 3D effects really invading your personal space.
  • "Snow White's Scary Adventures", for those not in the know, is a ride that strings all the most horrifying scenes from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into the space of a few minutes. They periodically try to change it so that it isn't as intense. (As a matter of fact, it was originally simply named "Snow White's Adventures". They changed the name for the purposes of truth-in-advertising when the area was remodelled in the early 1980's.) But given that the Wicked Queen/Witch still jumps out and screams at you repeatedly, it's still the scariest damn ride in the park.
    • The original Disney World ride ends with the witch dropping a huge diamond on you, cackling "Good-bye, dearie! EEE-HEE-HEE!"
    • The spooky forest sequence also counts, expecially the logs - alligators who swim up to your cart snapping at you.
    • Also, if you look closely at one of the models of the Witch look at her eyes. Her GLOWING ORANGE EYES.
    • There's even a creepy bit you don't have to go inside to enjoy. At Disneyland, watch the window over over the ride. Every so often, the curtains will part and the queen will glower down at you. This can be really disconcerting if you don't know about it, as she only appears for a few seconds.
      • In Disney World, that particular gag is at the end of the outdoor section, overlooking Snow White at the wishing well. If you spot it there, it's some foreshadowing about what's coming when the ride proper starts.
  • "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride", as much as some of us might like to. After a series of dreadful near-misses in frantic scenes inspired by the "Wind in the Willows" part of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, the ride ends with your car going into a tunnel, colliding with a train, and passing through Hell. That's right, Hell!
    • There was a serious uproar when it was replaced by a Winnie The Pooh-themed ride at Walt Disney World, but maybe this is why? (Or WDW just doesn't expect today's kids to be familiar with Mr. Toad...)
    • Granted, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh still has the "Heffalumps and Woozles" sequence. So creepy...
    • Did you know that Mr. Toad Ride was originally conceived as a epilepsy test?
  • At Disneyland, there's good reason to be scared. Big Thunder Death Mountain, anyone? That ride's been closed due to sucking chest wounds more times than I can count.
  • Disneyland's Splash Mountain? At night? MUCH scarier that the Haunted Mansion or the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. There's just something about those jerky, smiling animatronic animals... * shudder* (For a mostly indoor-ride, most of the ride is dependent on outside lighting, turning things much scarier in the dark. That Briar Patch at the end goes from clearly showing the tunnel if you look down, to not showing it whatsoever, making it look all too much like you are going to crash fatally.)
    • At first there is cheerful, happy, singing, and much carrying on about finding a Laughing Place and happiness, and it gradually grows darker, with far less light and worried small animals humming as you begin to ascend, followed immediately by a silhouette of the villain and his gleeful, mocking cackling, and two vultures in undertaker uniforms perched overhead saying: "So you're looking for a laughing place, eh? We'll show you a laughing place!" And then you hurtle downwards.
      • Even worse? There's a medley of Splash Mountain in one of the park soundtrack CDs that includes happy Laughing Place music... and then suddenly the music goes terrifying and the Vultures have their lines. "If you've found your laughing place, why aren't you laughing?" Thanks, Disney.
    • The context of the scene alone is frightening: a RABBIT being held hostage by a FOX and a BEAR...if you get the drift ( a clue: the bubbling sound of a unseen cauldron). And the two cackling vulture commenting the scene afterwards... brrrrr.
    • What about the ride vehicles for Splash Mountain at Disneyland? At Disney World in Florida, the logs have adequate row seating and a good amount handles to grip on to. At the one in California, the seating consists of straddling one beam going from the front to the back of the log, and only two measly handlebars on each side keep you from feeling like you'll fly out into the air on each drop.
  • Tom Sawyer Island (The WDW version in this context) is completely unsupervised and very old (It practically hasn't changed since it opened with the park in '71) so most of the Audio Animatronics present in the Fort are these stiff corpse like figurines (with a severe case of Uncanny Valley) that only make the slightest movements of theirs limbs if any at all.
  • The Enchanted Tiki Room was fun and tame for the most part, with cheerful singing birds and flowers. However, many a youngster was frightened by when the show briefly took a sinister turn, with the grotesque face carvings of tiki gods on the wall suddenly uttering sinister chants (depending on where you're sitting, sometimes right next to you), as more and more join the chorus. The sudden thunderstorm right after this scene didn't quite help things.
  • It's long dead, but the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter. Have some, won't you?
    • The best part of this ride was shortly after the "maintenance" person got eaten, and the monster was walking around the station...You could hear its footsteps, its breath...eventually it came by your seat and you could feel its breath and hear it right next to you (!) If you sat back in your seat (like I did), a little "alien tongue" PROBED THE BACK OF YOUR NECK! Note that this was an attraction where you were held down in your seat by hydraulic shoulder harnesses...
      • It was eventually changed to a Lilo & Stitch ride because the original version freaked so many people out so badly, especially because Disney never found a way to properly warn people what it was. The "Stitch's Great Escape" version actually uses much the same technology and special effects as a prequel to the movie, but in a more lighthearted way -- or so Disney thought. Travel guides confirm many poor tots whose parents probably never would have taken them to the old show have apparently been scared out of their wits thanks to the darkness and high volume level. Worse, due to the harness you have placed over you (largely for sound effects), the Unofficial Guide still has to warn parents "You will not be able to leave your seat to comfort your child if the need arises." That's just cruel.
  • The long-dead Submarine Ride, which would take riders in a cramped and rather claustrophobic sub through a small man-made lake, where outside the portholes were underwater scenes consisting of fake and somewhat creepy-looking plastic sea creatures... including a definitely creepy-looking giant squid that "attacks" your sub and is driven off with electric shocks. All the claustrophobic fun of the original is available in the much tamer Finding Nemo version (at Disneyland; the WDW version was completely dismantled). Luckily, the cute story takes your attention off how horribly cramped the small submarine is, and the fact that if the thing took on water, it would be a bunch of bodies scrambling desperately towards the steep, narrow staircase.
    • Even the Finding Nemo version is not devoid of scares. From "colliding" with an undersea mine (complete with an explosive boom, a sudden gush of bubbles and the submarine rocking from the impact while alarm bells and warning lights go on) to the eerie darkness right before a huge angler fish looms right in front of the riders porthole, all teeth and lifeless glowing eyes, the ride definitely has its moments of terror.
    • The WDW version, called 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, was in fact closed in 1994. However, the lagoon wasn't drained and demolished until 2004. For ten years, that giant squid was alone, motionless, down there in the dark murky water.
  • The Norway section of EPCOT's World Showcase features a boat ride to a three headed troll who casts a spell on you to "DISAPPEAR, DISAPPEAR!" Your boat is then sent rocketing backwards through an Arctic landscape with a polar bear growling at you, then starts approaching a waterfall so that you think you're about to go over it backwards. Thankfully, the ride doesn't quite go that far.
    • That ride would be Maelstrom. And the only proper response to it is "Oh my god, oh my god, get me out of here, that tree stump is STARING AT ME!"
    • Some people can get scared when the ride goes outside over the crowd briefly.
  • Toy Story Midway Mania! is a very tame ride. The closest thing to a scare is when the tanks shoot 5000 point targets at you, and they blast air in your face to simulate a projectile. The real creepy thing was the Mr. Potato Head Anamatronic in the queue. Normally, he has about an hour's worth of script to interact with guests. But when I went, it malfunctioned and all it did was laugh. Just laugh. No jokes, no cute stuff. Just laughter.
  • "Crush's Coaster" at the Studio's section in Disneyland Paris. Hoo boy. At first it's fairly nice (even though you're mostly in the dark), going through some of the movie. And then....you get to the part with Bruce and the sharks. What's worse is that if you've seen the movie, then you know exactly what's coming when you see the rusty ship pipes, and the shadows of the sharks on the wall whilst they chant "Fish are friends! Not food!". Suddenly you're propelled upwards with Bruce 'chasing' you, and a sudden flash lights up this model of Bruce sticking out through the ship, before you're plunged into the pitch black section of the ride, spinning every way known to man.
  • EPCOT's iconic Spaceship Earth is responsible for a fair amount of Nightmare Fuel. For those who have never been, you ride a neverending chain of vehicles (Haunted Mansion style) through the giant geosphere. At the top, the vehicles make a 180 rotation to descend to ground level at an angle that would be too steep facing forwards without restraints. For many years, this happened in a nearly empty planetarium dome with nothing but some tear-jerkingly epic music. Some people would become afraid that the ride would change to a roller coaster and drop them off a cliff backwards without restraint, even though that would be impossible with the ride vehicles being chained together through the entire track. Frightened riders would abandon their vehicle and stumble out into the black void of the dome.
    • This is even worse, since not only do employees have to rescue this frightened visitor but there's stuff hiding in the pitch black room that you could get hurt with. Mostly effects equipment, some maintenance tools, and a scissors lift to the hatch on the roof of the sphere, and of course the heavy duty ride vehicles themselves rolling through the room. An audio clip of a calm voice telling your that your car is going to rotate had been added to the ride, and was sort of a mood killer AND couldn't communicate with the foreign-language visitors who were most likely to abandon ship once it spins around.
  • Space Mountain? Creepy enough. "Ghost Galaxy", the Halloween version? Okay, who let Warhammer 40,000 into Disneyland?!?
  • One attraction that this troper remembers vividly is in the line for the Jungle Cruise. It is set up to resemble a trophy room/curio shop with various pieces of jungle memorabilia. One of the gimmicks is a small cage holding a "Goliath Bird-Eating Spider". Anyone who gets close to look inside is scared out out of their minds when the cage JUMPS AT THEM.
  • The Tower of Terror.
    • First, the doors open at the top, just so you can see how far off the ground you are. Then they close again, and the rest of the ride occurs in total darkness. The "elevator" is actually on a belt (rather than rigged with a counterweight like a traditional elevator), and it can (and will) push you down faster than the acceleration due to gravity. And the ride is randomized every time, so the number and length of drops is different even on back-to-back trips.
    • The Tower of Terror itself is a very creepy ride, but it was intended to be (not for small kids) but one of the scariest parts is when you're walking up to the "hotel". You're completely surrounded by lush, overgrown forestry and the walk is at least a minute or two. Doesn't sound too scary right? Well, imagine you're walking up there. By yourself. And old music from the 30s is playing around you. God... That isolation really gets to you and almost makes you feel likes something's going to jump out at you any second.
  • Many rides, mostly older dark rides, rely on By the Lights of Their Eyes for a cheap scare. This can really frighten small children. Even the Disneyland Railroad in California had little red eyes light up in the darkness at the level with your ankles when it passed into a tunnel behind the Haunted Mansion. By the time Splash Mountain opened with a window into the end of the ride, the train narrator began promoting Splash from the start and the red eyes were completely left unmentioned, making it eerier. This space is now brightly lit with a fake branch sticking out of the rock.
  • My favorite part of the Indiana Jones ride's line at Disneyland (that sadly doesn't seem to work anymore) is the fake bamboo pole in the room of spikes. Push on it and a loud grinding noise signals that the spikes on the ceiling are s l o w l y lowering onto your heads! Perfect for terrorizing the line of tourists behind you! Unfortunately the spikes haven't moved in years and the pole doesn't seem trigger the sounds.
    • It comes and goes. Anything guests are allowed—nay, encouraged—to grab and yank on is going to spend a fair amount of time broken, so it just depends upon where in the working-busted-fixed cycle you happen to find it.
    • When the ride first opened, that segment of the line was more extreme; when the pole was pushed or pulled at the right time, there was a sudden *BANG* and the ceiling with the spikes in it dropped a few inches. I assume it was altered to avoid injuring taller guests.
  • Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour at Tokyo Disneyland. That ride was all about Disney Villains, and it actually closed in 2006. And do you know why? The last villain encountered is the Horned King!
    • A member of the audience would actually be chosen to defeat him, though.
  • This troper's family made him go on Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin at 7-8. You were in this car that was spinning around like crazy, with no actual control over the vehicle itself even though you had a steering wheel. And then anthropomorphic fire hydrants and stuff would pop up in a blaze of neon light. Somehow, Disney managed to make a big, happy, anthropomorphic inanimate object the most terrifying thing in the world. And then when you spun around randomly at what felt like about 20 mph and you saw this giant stack of boxes labeled "TNT" in front of you...
    • A four-year-old kid was killed there in 2000–it's on the "incidents" link at the top of the page.
  • Let's take a look at Mickey and Minnie's original costumes back when Disneyland first opened, shall we?.
  • The windows of Disneyland's Emporium store contain figures of characters from the Disney Animated Canon. Some of these figures date as far back as their respective movie's initial release, or a re-release from the '60s. Because of the period of their creation, some browsers might find them to lack the charm of contemporary figures.
  • Yes, everyone remembers the dolls on It's A Small World. What no one remembers is the hot air balloons with creepy demented clowns that drop a few inches near your boat. This Troper's group of non-coulrophobic riders were going "What the hell?!" I pity the clown-fearing person who tries to ride that figuring "Hey, it's just dolls, right?" A member of our party also mentioned and oh-so-helpfully pointed out a bird in one section whose head spins around 360 degrees and never stops. Never has The Exorcist been parodied in a way that's so... colorful.
    • The song itself. It is forever on repeat. The ride goes slowly. My stepmother was scarred by the song, thinking as a kid that the ride was going to go on FOREVER. Oh, and a very common interpretation of the lyrics backwards is "Forever Walt's asleep." Walt Disney died in his sleep.
  • On Expedition Everest, The Yeti no longer functions. This hasn't been fixed because it has been discovered that every time the Yeti figure swings its arm, it causes damage to the rides overall structure. So now it just has a flashing light over it,which makes the thing even more horrifying.
    • When you are on the chain lift it just keeps going...And then you realize just high up you are...
  • The Dinosaur ride at Animal Kingdom. You're in the dark, the dinosaurs are randomly lit up, and then OHMYGODIT'SACARNOTAUR. Also? It's LOUD. Very, very loud.
    • On that note, the final scene where you see a immobile sculpt of the Carnotaurous is actually quite horrifying because you see it only for a split second and it doesn't even do anything.
    • This troper has never seen the Carnotaurus, though she's ridden this ride twice. Her head stays covered.
  • Sleeping Beauty ended with no indication that Maleficent survived her Disney Villain Death. However, the walkthrough at Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle includes a scene of her shadow emerging from behind a corner, accompanied by her evil laugh. When the walkthrough first opened in 1957, the shadow scared so many guests, the Imagineers removed the scene. The attraction then ended with Phillip awakening Aurora with True Love's Kiss. The current version tries to lessen the scare factor by following up Maleficent's potential resurrection with a recreation of Flora and Merryweather arguing over what color to make Aurora's dress.
  • Star Tours: The Adventures Continue has a cameo of REX from the ride's first incarnation, occasionally spouting lines from said first incarnation. Thing is, they are rather glitchy and context-free, causing a rather eerie effects in the same room as another more light-hearted event.
  • Lots of people wish that the parks would incorporate Kingdom Hearts characters and elements. They did, briefly, to commemorate the first game's launch. However, they had the brilliant idea to have Sora portrayed as a "mask" character rather than a "face" character". Enjoy meeting your favorite game hero, kiddies![2]
  • Jack and Sally are FACE CHARACTERS.
    • This troper now really wants to shake hands with the Pumpkin King.
  • Rock N' Roller Coaster at Hollywood Studios is usually a bit too loud and goes by too quickly to be scary. However, when the music stops and the lights turn on and you're frozen at the highest point in the ride, the effect that is created is a bit unnerving. Especially when you look to your right and you see a rickety metal platform and a seemingly-endless flight of stairs acting as the only thing that can bring you back down to ground level. Then you look to your left and see NOTHING. That's right, there's not even a gate put up to protect you from leaning over the side and falling over. Not to mention that once the lights are on, you realize just how cramped the building is. In this state, the coaster is just a bunch of steel tracks tied in a knot in a very faulty-looking warehouse. Now imagine being stuck here, held down by shoulder restraints, for half an hour before having to climb back down, holding onto the stairs for dear life.
  • The Pirates of the Caribbean ride, before it was refurbished for the film, was less busy and quieter, especially at the beginning, which made the earlier "rooms" quite freaky, as you were going through in the dark, with only the sounds of wind, rushing water and "dead men tell no tales" echoing around, looking at skeletons.
  1. ↑ either from Bret Iwan remotely or pre-recorded canned phrases
  2. ↑ To be fair, that's how they portrayed some other human characters, such as Captain Hook and Smee, until deciding to have them as "face" characters instead; it's quite likely that, if they still had Kingdom Hearts characters, they'd be "face" characters by now (can you imagine Axel or Naminé portrayed by someone in a creepy mascot-type getup?)
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