Delta Dreamflight
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Delta Dreamflight, renamed Dreamflight and then Take Flight during its final two years of operation, was an attraction located in
Tomorrowland Tomorrowland is one of the many themed lands featured at all of the Magic Kingdom styled Disney theme parks around the world owned or licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Each version of the land is different and features numerous attractions t ...
at the Magic Kingdom inside the
Walt Disney World Resort The Walt Disney World Resort, also called Walt Disney World or Disney World, is an entertainment resort complex in Bay Lake, Florida, Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, Florida, Lake Buena Vista, Florida, United States, near the cities of Orlando ...
, and was sponsored by
Delta Air Lines Delta Air Lines, Inc., typically referred to as Delta, is one of the major airlines of the United States and a legacy carrier. One of the List of airlines by foundation date, world's oldest airlines in operation, Delta is headquartered in Atla ...
. Dreamflight replaced an attraction called
If You Could Fly If You Had Wings was an attraction at Walt Disney World. It was a two-person Omnimover dark ride in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom, sponsored by Eastern Air Lines. It featured travel destinations throughout the Caribbean and elsewhere, all ...
(originally
If You Had Wings If You Had Wings was an attraction at Walt Disney World. It was a two-person Omnimover dark ride in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom, sponsored by Eastern Air Lines. It featured travel destinations throughout the Caribbean and elsewhere, all of ...
), sponsored by
Eastern Air Lines Eastern Air Lines, also colloquially known as Eastern, was a major United States airline from 1926 to 1991. Before its dissolution, it was headquartered at Miami International Airport in an unincorporated area of Miami-Dade County, Florida. Ea ...
.


Overview

Dreamflight used the same basic
Omnimover The Omnimover is an amusement ride system used for Disney theme park attractions. Roger Broggie and Bert Brundage developed the system for WED Enterprises, which patented Omnimover in April 1968. The term was coined by Imagineer Bob Gurr. Outsi ...
ride system that other Disney rides utilize today. It was a dark ride that showcased the history of flight using simplistic sets, some
Audio-Animatronics Audio-Animatronics (also known as simply Animatronics, and sometimes shortened to AAs) is the registered trademark for a form of robotics animation created by Walt Disney Imagineering for shows and attractions at Disney theme parks, and subsequent ...
and projection effects. Riders passed through scenes of barnstormers, an M-130, Tokyo and Paris in the 1930s, the jet age, and the future of air travel, and appeared to enter a working jet engine.


Scrapped Disneyland plan

After Delta Dreamflight at Magic Kingdom closed in 1998 to be replaced by Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin which opened in November of that same year. Disney was making the plan of replacing the
Circle-Vision 360° Circle-Vision 360° is a film format developed by The Walt Disney Company that uses projection screens which encircle the audience. Circle-Vision 360° developed from the Circarama format, which uses eleven 16 mm projectors. The first Circarama ...
theater which was showing
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at the time and Disney hoping for their new ride to be an
Omnimover The Omnimover is an amusement ride system used for Disney theme park attractions. Roger Broggie and Bert Brundage developed the system for WED Enterprises, which patented Omnimover in April 1968. The term was coined by Imagineer Bob Gurr. Outsi ...
dark ride like the
Haunted Mansion The Haunted Mansion is a dark ride attraction located at Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, and Tokyo Disneyland. The haunted house attraction features a ride-through tour in Omnimover vehicles called "Doom Buggies", and a walk-through show is displa ...
in
New Orleans Square New Orleans Square is a themed land found at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California. Based on 19th-century New Orleans, Louisiana, the roughly three-acre area was the first land to be added to Disneyland after the park's opening, at a cost of $ ...
and due to Delta Dreamflight just meeting the space requirements for it. But the plan was scrapped due to multiple reasons such as not being to able to make a plan with Delta and changes with the
Tomorrowland Tomorrowland is one of the many themed lands featured at all of the Magic Kingdom styled Disney theme parks around the world owned or licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Each version of the land is different and features numerous attractions t ...
2055 plan. This was mainly due to a new ride that
Walt Disney Imagineering Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development, Inc., commonly referred to as Imagineering, is the research and development arm of The Walt Disney Company, responsible for the creation, design, and construction of Disney theme parks and attra ...
was making for the new Tomorrowland overhaul known as Tomorrowland 2055, which would involve using the
Circle-Vision 360° Circle-Vision 360° is a film format developed by The Walt Disney Company that uses projection screens which encircle the audience. Circle-Vision 360° developed from the Circarama format, which uses eleven 16 mm projectors. The first Circarama ...
Theater and the old
PeopleMover The PeopleMover, sometimes referred to as the Goodyear PeopleMover and WEDWay PeopleMover, was a transport attraction that opened on July 2, 1967, in Tomorrowland at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. Guests boarded small trains that ran ...
track for a new thrill ride known as
Rocket Rods Rocket Rods was a high-speed thrill attraction in Tomorrowland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. The ride, meant to evoke a futuristic rapid transit system, opened in 1998 on the existing PeopleMover infrastructure as part of the New Tomorrow ...
.


Ride description

Guests entered the building into a small queue designed to look like an airport boarding terminal. The front-end nose and cockpit of an actual Delta 767 was situated on the left entering the queue, "passengers" appearing as though they were actually boarding a jetliner. The Delta jet was marked as "The Spirit of Delta" in bright gold. As guests made their way into the queue opposite the jet, they entered a terminal gate with posters on the wall that included many exciting and exotic destinations of the world. Eventually, the guests would make their way back up the terminal gate and enter the side of the jet into a mirrored hallway with bright blue, green, red and yellow neon lights. As guests walked up a ramp they entered the boarding area which was set up in a very similar fashion to the
Haunted Mansion The Haunted Mansion is a dark ride attraction located at Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, and Tokyo Disneyland. The haunted house attraction features a ride-through tour in Omnimover vehicles called "Doom Buggies", and a walk-through show is displa ...
. As the bright blue "cars" rode past one would walk onto a moving escalator ramp and "board" the "flight". Guests first encountered a giant mural depicting the golden era of aviation in America, adorning the wall in the first room. The next room that guests entered on the attraction had a giant, pop-up book style spinning room which had a hot air balloon and other flying contraptions spinning by them as the "Dreamflight" song played. Then guests entered the second room of the "flight" which was designed to look as though they were in a giant crop field of the American mid-west in the roaring 1920s. Biplanes, stunt planes and barnstormers were flying all over the ceiling above a flying circus air show. The pilot of a plane had crashed through a barn and was stuck in the rafters on the ceiling of the barn. The third room was just a big screen with a film clip of an aerial stuntman standing on top of a prop plane while it performed dizzying stunts in the air. Next came the era of air travel, where commercial flights started taking passengers all over the world. Passing by a sign with a rotating globe that advertised air travel, guests would hear an announcer notifying them that their Dreamflight was about embark for the era of air travel and that their flight would span the world, making brief stops in Tokyo, Japan, and Paris, France. Guests would then emerge onto a dock in the San Francisco Bay and into the fuselage of Boeing 314 Flying Boat. Inside, they could briefly see the elegant first-class dining area. Then, guests would find themselves in Tokyo, where a gentleman in a suit stood on the guest's left in a garden where he was being greeted by the Japanese locals. Coming up on the right hand side below the guests were the rooftops and the skyline of Paris, France. Guests "flew" past the rooftops of a Paris street and could see quaint little shops and tourists sitting below on the patio of a French cafe. As the guests moved ahead, they would encounter a rotating sign saying, "Jet Age". and a male or female voice said, "Ladies and Gentlemen. Your Dreamflight will depart immediately for the future. Please prepare for supersonic takeoff". To the immediate left on the wall was a giant painting of a jetliner taking off towards the sky. As the guests made their way forward, a giant spinning light along with fog and fans gave the impression that they were about to actually enter the inside of a turbo jet engine and quite literally entering the Jet Age. The sounds of an engine roaring to life and taking off then blasted out over the sound system. As guests entered a gigantic film projection room, they saw footage of a plane taking off a runway to simulate their flight's departure, eventually lifting off and flying through the clouds in the sky. The next room was another film clip on the right which showed computer-generated clips of the guests above the earth, flying in a canyon above water and eventually flying in a futuristic city with fireworks exploding all around them; the first theatrical-format 70mm computer animations ever produced. The final room of the attraction was a giant pop-up book with destinations spread out on huge pages, while a little projection of a Delta jet flew by above the display into the clouds. As guest rode past, the book's pages would turn to show off different destinations. The exit area was a room with the Delta logo painted on the wall and with more posters of destinations from around the world to visit.


Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover dioramas

If You Had Wings If You Had Wings was an attraction at Walt Disney World. It was a two-person Omnimover dark ride in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom, sponsored by Eastern Air Lines. It featured travel destinations throughout the Caribbean and elsewhere, all of ...
had diorama windows that allowed riders on the
Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover The PeopleMover is an urban mass transit PeopleMover system attraction in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida just outside of Orlando, Florida. Designed as an urban mass-transit system of th ...
to look down into the ride. When If You Had Wings was replaced with Delta Dreamflight, the dioramas on the
Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover The PeopleMover is an urban mass transit PeopleMover system attraction in Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida just outside of Orlando, Florida. Designed as an urban mass-transit system of th ...
changed. One diorama window was removed in the process: *The first window was replaced with backlit panels depicting the ride's barnstormer scene. *The second window looked into the Parisian Excursion scene, from a viewpoint which heavily distorted the tableau's
forced perspective Forced perspective is a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. It manipulates human visual perception through the use of scaled objects and the correlation ...
. *The third window would have had riders looking directly into an extremely bright light and so was completely obscured with plywood and black fabric.


Sponsorship ends

Delta sponsored the ride from its opening in 1989 through the end of 1995. The decision not to continue sponsorship was made in part due to the costs of sponsoring the
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in
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. From January 1, 1996 to June 4, 1996 the attraction was renamed simply "Dreamflight" while its future was being determined. On June 5, 1996 it reopened as Take Flight. It was only a slight refurbishment; all references to Delta were removed and the attraction's popular theme songs were rerecorded. Take Flight closed its doors for good in January 1998, ending the dynasty of flight-based attractions to occupy the space. It was replaced by the interactive dark ride
Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin (also known as Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters at California, Tokyo and Hong Kong, Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast at Paris and Buzz Lightyear Planet Rescue at Shanghai) is an interactive shooting dark ride attracti ...
, which was inspired by
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/
Pixar Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californi ...
's ''
Toy Story ''Toy Story'' is a 1995 American computer-animated comedy film directed by John Lasseter (in his feature directorial debut), produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The first installment in the '' Toy Story ...
'' films.


Attraction facts


Delta Dreamflight

* Opened: June 23, 1989 * Sponsor: Delta Air Lines (sponsorship ended on January 1, 1996) *Special note: After the attraction lost sponsorship it was simply known as Dreamflight between January 1, 1996 and June 4, 1996).


Take Flight

* Opened: June 5, 1996 * Closed: January 5, 1998


See also

* ''
Magic Kingdom attraction and entertainment history The Magic Kingdom is a theme park located at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. Below is a list of the current attractions found therein, arranged by "land" and with brief descriptions. Main Street, U.S.A. Current attractions * Main Str ...
''


References


External links

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx0hC-s_iQo Video clip of the ride. {{Disney rides Amusement rides introduced in 1989 Amusement rides that closed in 1996 Amusement rides manufactured by Arrow Dynamics Former Walt Disney Parks and Resorts attractions Tomorrowland Audio-Animatronic attractions Omnimover attractions Delta Air Lines Aviation attractions Amusement rides using motion pictures 1989 establishments in Florida 1998 disestablishments in Florida