Long before the Disney Cruise Line sailed the seven seas, there were plans for another kind of Disney ship planned – it even got to the model stage! The project was called the “S.S Disney,” a theme park at sea!
My good friend Alain Littaye interviewed Mark Hickson, who managed the Imagineering development team almost 30 years ago. Mark started his career at Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) working on the Splash Mountain project for Disneyland, and then became part of the Tokyo Disneyland project office. Mark contributed to over 30 Disney projects that included Tokyo’s version of Splash Mountain, Toon Town, Spaceship Earth retheming, the 3-D film “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience,” EPCOT Interactive Fountain, Innoventions, and more. He also worked on other Disney projects like the Broadway production of Beauty and the Beast, Disneyland’s 35th Birthday and Tokyo Disneyland’s 5, 10 & 20-year Master Plan before moving to Honolulu to head up their light rail project.
In development in 1993-1994, the idea was to make a floating theme park out of a supertanker – a huge ship that normally brings oil from the Middle East to other countries.
Imagineering grows their ideas from the most random of places. In the early 90s, Jim Cora, then President of Disneyland International, was at a fund-raising dinner with a U.S. Navy Admiral, who joked that he had an extra aircraft carrier and that Disney should build a theme park on it.
It may have been a joke, but the next day Cora was asking if there was anybody at Imagineering who knew about ships. This is where Mark Hickson came in. Hickson said that it would be more feasible to build it on a cruise liner, cargo ship or oil tanker. Cora met with Michael Eisner, former Chairman and CEO of Disney, and then Marty Sklar, late head of Imagineering, and the project got the go-ahead.
Hickson helmed the project due to his shipbuilding and theme park master plan experience, and nine months of Imagineering followed, with dozens of people from different specialties working on the project.
WDI was very enthusiastic about the idea; they loved finding new ways to create entertainment, especially seeing what they could do with something as totally out of left field as an oil tanker.
Long before Shanghai or Hong Kong Disneyland, the idea was to bring the Disney experience and promote the Disney brand in countries where the company would never consider building a theme park (at least they thought so at that time).
They gave a lot of thought to what kind of attractions they could put on a floating theme park that would make an experience that everybody would truly enjoy. They looked at Europe, at South America, South East Asia, Australia, and the Mediterranean. Later they decided to focus on the West Pacific which included the port cities of Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai and Canton, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Manila, Djakarta, and Singapore. They also investigated ports in Australia like Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Dubai, Cape Town, and even Honolulu. They looked at various maps of the different ports to see if they could “park” a supertanker there and if it was in an area where it was possible for guests to get to. They also had to ensure that the areas were not full of real supertankers!
The ship would have to stay approximately two and a half months in each port and then travel for a week or two to the next destination. The ship would not return to the city for four or five years, so they would not over-saturate the market.
They also had a very innovative design for the entrance area. On the dockside, they would create a “portable main gate” with a ticketing plaza using themed shipping containers. They would arrive on a container ship and be assembled in port before the S.S. Disney’s arrival. Here guests could also buy souvenirs and food. As such, the theme park experience would have started on the dock.
Transforming a supertanker into a floating theme park would have been really doable, thanks to the supertanker’s architecture. The cavernous volume inside the ship gave them the opportunity to put four to five decks of attractions inside plus more attractions on the top deck. There was a downside: supertankers are so large, they don’t usually come into port. They’re just too big. An oil tanker (not super) takes the oil from the supertanker to the port.
Anatomy of the S.S Disney Theme Park at Sea
On the top deck guests would have found a Carousel under a glass dome, Casey Jr. Circus Train, Dumbo, it’s a small world, the Orbitron (Astro Orbiter) and Tea Cups. it’s a small world would be at the stern end, serving as the theme park’s “castle”.
Guests would enter into a huge, glass-covered atrium. To the right, they would find Fantasyland and to the left Tomorrowland and Adventureland.
Because of technical issues, they decided to not have any water rides inside the ship. For example, “It’s a Small World”, which is traditionally a water ride, would instead utilize an Omni-mover system like Adventure Thru Inner Space and the Haunted Mansion or bus-bar track vehicles like the ones in Snow White and Pinocchio’s Daring Journey.
Other attractions included Aladdin and The Little Mermaid dark rides; the Little Mermaid would have been a hanging gondola ride like Peter Pan. There would also be attractions like Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin, ToonTown area with Mickey’s house, Indiana Jones mine car wild mouse roller coaster, Star Tours, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea walkthrough, a 3D movie theatre, and more! The fact is the ship was so big and deep that they could actually put an iron roller coaster like Space Mountain inside down below the decks. Since there was no mountain, they would probably have to name it something different, not unlike Lotte World’s Comet Express, a space-themed roller coaster that was underground (my all-time favorite roller coaster).
The Ferris wheel had exterior armatures that would be stowed while sailing to the S.S. Disney’s next port. The Orbitron would have been on the bow. Under the Orbitron, guests would find a futuristic multi-story restaurant.
The Casey Jr. Circus Train would loop around a glass-enclosed Carousel ride, just in front of the entrance to It’s a Small World. The ToonTown area would have Mickey’s house, a central fountain and the entrance to Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin. A major fantasy-themed theater with an inside balcony would be nearby. Shows proposed for the theater ranged from The Muppets 3D to The Lion King. The spinning tea cup ride was located nearby. There was also a Treehouse and interactive areas.
The 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea area would have had an interactive area and walk-through exhibit – with Star Tours simulator nearby, Captain Nemo’s laboratory with his submarine, and a giant aquarium with live divers. There would also have been a themed seafood restaurant.
To bring guests from level to level, there would have been giant escalators and elevators. There were also emergency elevators and stairs.
As guests arrived on the third deck, they would find Eric’s Village from The Little Mermaid, with carved rockwork and a Little Mermaid ride. Nearby they would find Aladdin’s flying carpet ride like at Walt Disney World.
There would be an Indiana Jones wild mouse coaster, with giant temple serpents guarding the entrance. Or there would have been the aforementioned Space Mountain. Eisner was really hot for Indiana Jones at the time, so Imagineers were leaning toward the runaway ore car idea.
Since the ship could hold about half the rides of a full Disney theme park they decided to divide the opening and closing of the park into two half days at 8 hours each. That would be 10,000 guests in the morning/early afternoon and another 10,000 guests in the late afternoon/evening.
The total number of attractions would have been around 16 to 18. The final choice depended on their capacity per hour, wait time, etc… They needed to make sure that there were minimal wait times so people could do and see everything in eight hours.
There would have been six restaurants. Most of them were fast food because they didn’t want people to sit and eat for an hour when they only had 8 hours to spend on the ship, but they did have one Disney-themed table service restaurant (I’m not sure if it would have been a character experience like Chef Mickey’s at Walt Disney World or like Walt’s, a Restaurant at Disneyland Paris). There also would have been Fantasyland and Tomorrowland-themed retail shops, a Disney Store and a Disney gallery too. Most of the restaurants and retail would have been located around the entrance hub, under the glass dome in the atrium. The ship was not only a box full of attractions, it was a completely integrated city with maintenance shops, a central kitchen, waste treatment plants, storage areas and more!
Imagineers had a clever idea to ensure the pilot house and the bridge wings would have been incorporated into a themed facade so that the ship’s crew could see everything but not take over the view of the guests. Also, at the front end of the ship, in front of the Orbitron, they had a secondary pilot house specially designed for docking the ship. There would have been windmill-themed bridge wings.
Also on board was an entertainment division with singers, dancers, costuming, and the “zoo crew” – the people who are “friends” of Disney characters. The “senior” staff would have been permanent and the “junior” staff would have been hired and trained in the location where the boat would have docked. They did some surveys at a few of the ports and found young people in those areas would have high interest in working for Disney. They would be hired for about three months which included two weeks of training before the arrival of the ship. There would have been a 50/50 split with half of the cast members, management, maintenance and technical people permanent and the other 50% would have been local people who spoke the local language.
A fireworks show was originally planned, but they soon realized that it was not safe back then to launch fireworks from the ship, so they started looking for an auxiliary ship or a barge that could be used to launch the fireworks in a safer location like in the middle of the harbor.
Because of safety issues, “permanent” cast members would not be allowed to travel at sea or sleep on board the supertanker so they considered buying a small used passenger ship to bring them from port to port and to give them a place to live. Otherwise, all the “Disney” cast members would have to fly from city to city and reside in local hotels. That would have meant THREE ships, a Disney navy!
Michael Eisner and Frank Wells both loved the project, but after Frank’s death, things changed within the company, as most Disney history buffs know. The strategic planning group at Disney corporate didn’t want to do a floating theme park. They wanted to do a cruise ship. Eventually, they convinced Michael that a cruise ship was easier to do. And that’s how the Disney Cruise Line was born from the idea of the S.S.Disney. I love Disney Cruises but would have loved to see S.S.Disney come to reality.
Hickson says it was a wonderful concept and every Imagineer who worked on it did an excellent job. But now that Disney has parks in Hong Kong and Shanghai, the time for this project has probably passed for good.
but no good idea ever really dies at Disney, and some of the things developed for S.S.Disney found their way to Disney Quest, another location-based entertainment venue from Disney (I’ve got an article in the works about this topic I can’t wait to share with you!).
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Let’s Hear From You!
What do you think folks? Would the S.S. Disney have been a success? Would you have liked to have seen it? Could it still be a success in other locations perhaps?
I’d love to hear from you!
My deepest thanks to Mark Hickson and the dearly missed Alain Littaye for this wonderful interview and to Noe Valladolid for the beautiful ship renderings.
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