DISNEYLAND 1979 Commercial (Big Thunder Mountain Railroad)

This is a commercial produced in 1979 for the Southern California theme park Disneyland to advertise the opening of its' newest thrill ride: a mine train roller coaster ride entitled Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

The original version of the ride opened at Disneyland on September 2, 1979. Three additional versions of that ride opened at three Disney parks worldwide between 1980 and 1992. The second version of BTMRR opened at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida on November 15, 1980. The third version opened at Tokyo Disneyland in Japan on July 4, 1987. The last one oto date, and probably the most expansive, opened at Disneyland Paris (fka Euro Disneyland) on the day of that park's opening: April 12, 1992.

Along with Space Mountain and Splash Mountain, it is also acknowledged as a descendant of Disney Parks' first "mountain" attratction, the Matterhorn Bobsleds, which opened at Disneyland in 1959.

Although the details of the backstory vary from park to park, all follow the same general story arc. Sometime in the late 1800s, gold was discovered on Big Thunder Mountain in the American Southwest. Overnight, a small mining town became a thriving one (Rainbow Ridge in Disneyland; Tumbleweed in Florida; Thunder Mesa in Disneyland Paris). Mining was prosperous, and an extensive line of mine trains was set up to transport the ore. Unknown to the settlers, the mountain was a sacred spot to local Native Americans and was cursed.[1]

Before long, the settlers' desecration of the mountain caused a great tragedy, which, depending on the park, is usually depicted to be an earthquake (Disneyland and Disneyland Paris), a tsunami (Tokyo Disneyland), a flash flood (Walt Disney World), which befell the mines and town, and the town was abandoned. Some time later, the locomotives were found to be racing around the mountain on their own, without engineers or a crew. The Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was founded in the old mining camp to allow wanderers to take rides on the possessed trains.

The detailed backstory, while present in park literature and training materials, is not communicated to park guests directly. The station buildings on all four versions of the ride are themed to appearance of a mining company office from the mid to late 19th century. In the Disneyland park, there is music and laughing in one of the saloons of Rainbow Ridge, and a typewriter is heard from a newspaper office. The mountains themselves are themed to the red rock formations of the American Southwest. The rock work designs in the Disneyland version are based on the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. In the Florida, Tokyo and Paris versions of the ride, the rockwork designs are based on the rising buttes that are located in Arizona and Utah's Monument Valley. Special care was taken by the Imagineers to make it appear that the rocks were there originally, and the track was built around the rocks, unlike a number of earlier mine rides, which were built the other way around (by sculpting the rocks around the tracks). There is also a dinosaur skeleton that the train passes by in all versions of the ride except the Paris version. A cracked eggshell is nearby, and there is a pleasant lake with water that is shot up while the train passes on the warmer days. Sound effects of a typical locomotive operation are piped into the surrounding scenery to add realism to guests viewing the ride from observation platforms, including the steam whistle sounding, even though there is no whistle displayed on the locomotives.