Disney's Black Hole Attraction: Never Built Disneyland Part 3

Never Built Disneyland

Disney often begins to design attractions for their films before they even come out. Sometimes this is good as it allows them to quickly build a ride based on a hit new movie. But it can also lead to rides never getting built when a new film flops.

Welcome to Never Built Disneyland where we explore attractions designed but never built for the original Disney theme park. Today we are exploring an attraction Disney started designing based on their film The Black Hole. For previous entries in this series be sure to go here.

The Black Hole was meant to be Disney's answer to the science fiction franchises of the 1970s. Their version of Star Trek or Star Wars, ready to build off of the original film with merchandise and sequels. Disney even allowed it to be their first film to get a PG rating. The problem was the film really wasn't seen as being that good.

It suffered from reviews highlighting uninteresting characters and an overly complicated plot that moved at a snail's pace throughout the film. The world itself is interesting but the story told inside it is just not that good.

But Disney really wanted this to be their next big hit. It had many side projects planned connected to it ready to go once it took off. But that never happened.

One of these would have been a shooting omnimover attraction located in Disneyland's Tomorrowland.
Although the exact location was never confirmed it is easy to guess that this would have replaced Adventures Through Inner Space and reuse the basic ride system with new vehicles. At the time of the film's release, the ride had just lost its sponsor and it was declining in popularity. It would also be removed by another attraction a few years later, showing that Disney was looking to replace it.

The ride would have featured circular ride vehicles that from the concept art that we have look like the droids from the film.

As for where this ride would have been taking you to, the concept art looks like the ride was taking you inside the black hole, not the ship from the movie.

This also would have been an interactive ride, where you had to attack mini-robots with lasers.
This ride would never be built. Although an official reason for its cancelation was never given, it is almost definitely due to the failure of the film at the theatrical box office.

It is probably good this ride never made it to Disneyland, as its cancellation made way for Star Tours to open in its place as a science fiction ride at the park later on. This partnership between Disney and Lucasfilm would eventually lead to future developments like Indiana Jones Adventure, Galaxy's Edge and even Disney purchasing Lucasfilm.

Sometimes one project being canceled opens up a whole other world of possibility that would never be there otherwise.

This ride likely later helped inspire Buzz Lightyear attractions around the world. You can easily see similarities between this attraction in the concept art and any of the Buzz Lightyear attractions. No good idea ever dies at Disney Imagineering and it seems the best parts of this design later contributed to a ride we continue to love all around the world today.

Thanks for reading and we hope you enjoyed this article. Be sure to come back every Tuesday for more Attractions From Neverland articles exploring never built Disney attractions. Be sure to check out more Never Built Disneyland here.