The Wild Ride Ends: The Closure of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disney World

Today a look back more than twenty-five years ago to the 90s, when the prospect of an amphibian being kicked out of a theme park set the ancient internet by storm.

Note that this text is adapted from an earlier writing of mine, published elsewhere on the internet a few years prior.

When Disneyworld opened in Florida in October 1971, it was full of classic attractions that took guests on wonderous adventures. One could ride the iconic Jungle Cruise down the rivers of Africa, soar to Neverland on Peter Pan’s Flight, or get spooked exploring the depths of The Haunted Mansion. Alongside these rides, on the edge of Fantasyland, was a quaint but beloved attraction. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, based on the 1949 Disney animated film The Wind in The Willows, took riders on a madcap journey as they help J. Thaddaeus Toad steal a motorcar and go on a crazed joyride before crashing into a train, dying, and ending up with Toad in a cartoon version of Hell.

It was strange, but the ride’s oddness and quirks are precisely what made it so beloved by the Disneyworld fandom. There wasn’t anything else quite like at the park, thus Toad and company developed a great deal of fans as they continued to entertain the millions who boarded the attraction throughout the decades.

However, theme parks aren’t stagnant. They're always evolving. Often this means a ride being completely rethemed or torn down and replaced with a newer one. This is fairly common at Disney, the company constantly shoving its most popular IPs onto attractions that previously had no IP tie-ins or tie-ins to more obscure properties. Disney purists have bemoaned the loss of the originals and questioned if this practice even draws more people into the parks. Disney has always used its parks to cross-promote their films and vice versa, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride itself is a day one example of this. Nevertheless, changes to attractions understandably bring up strong emotions in those who've grown sentimental about them. This creates the paradoxical love-hate relationship certain Disney fans have with the company. You know the ones, the people who don’t see it as something more than a casual holiday getaway, but as a place of history and culture that they fear is being erased by greedy corporate overlords.

But the times are always changing, and soon that change would hit the abode of a certain manic batrachian.

On October 22, 1997, The Orlando Sentinel reported that Disney was considering replacing Toad with a Winnie-The-Pooh ride. It certainly makes sense on paper. Disney’s version of The Wind in The Willows is a fine cartoon, but how many people have seen it or remember it? Compared to the omnipresent commercial juggernaut that is Pooh and company, Toad’s place in Disney history is rather obscure.

While many fans who heard these circulating rumors thought that a Pooh ride would be a charming addition, they questioned if it was necessary to build it at the expense of another attraction, especially one that had existed since opening day. They wouldn’t sit by. Disney fans were preparing an attack hoping to save their beloved ride just as Toad and friends had saved Toad Hall in the movie.

Toad’s days looked numbered, and fans decided that the best way to save him would be to attract the attention of Disney, demonstrating their adoration of the ride. On October 23, a day after the Orlando Sentinel article, a website devoted to the cause launched. Run by John Lefante and Jef Moskot, the site served as a hub for all who wished to defend their anuran hero. It provided a mailing list updating readers on news and gave contact information so that one could directly voice their disdain to the Disney executives. Moskot was not above using a little emotional manipulation when he contacted Disney guest relations. He claimed that Toad was the favorite ride of his children, in actuality he had no offspring. There was even an attempt by somebody to infiltrate Disney headquarters to see how valid the rumors were. “He didn't get far because he was dressed like a tourist," Moskot said in an interview, "Next time he's going to wear a suit."

Letters to the editor were published, some of them a tad comedic as can be seen with this excerpt from a Fort Lauderdale mother’s message:

    “SEVERAL WEEKS ago, we received a frantic message on our answering machine to call our son who is currently attending the University of Central Florida. Immediately the "parent panic" caught hold of my husband and me as we fumbled through the numbers on our phone, anticipating the gruesome possibilities of illness, accidents, or test failures.

    When we finally heard his voice, its tone foreshadowed that his news was of epic proportions. "What's the matter? Are you all right?" And then came his horrible response.

    "They're going to close Mr. Toad."

    Certainly, this was worse than we possibly could have imagined. The Magic Kingdom -- to which we had made a yearly pilgrimage (all right, maybe tri-annually) -- was actually considering removing an important source of sustenance for our son. After he paid for tuition, board, and books, his next purchase was his Florida-resident, all-year Disney pass. It preceded food, even pizza.”

On December 6, 1997, the “Save Toad” movement was the front page of the Miami Herald and the story was picked up by the Associated Press. The following day, the first “Toad-In” occurred. Toad fanatics, many from out of state or even out of the country, showed up to protest outside of the ride. Toad-Ins soon became regular events, attracting dozens of “activists”, curious and supportive onlookers, and of course local media attention. In the following months, at least eight other “official” Toad-Ins occurred. Protestors wore frog-green shirts saying “Ask Me Why Mickey Is Killing Mr. Toad” and handed out flyers reading “Tell Pooh to Go to Hell”. They even hired a plane to fly a pro-Toad banner above the park, all in the name of saving a little cartoon salientian and his world from peril.

Winter changed to spring and spring into summer. With the change in weather, the movement chugged along, getting seemingly more powerful with every day. But their aspirations couldn’t sway the hearts of Disney executives.

On September 1, 1998, Disney confirmed that the ride would permanently close on the 7th. The Toadies had lost, but they would have one final celebration. The finishing Toad-In was held on the final day of the ride’s operation, with fans showing up to enjoy it one last time. The same day, Jef Moskot published a special op-ed in The Palm Beach Post, going over his crusade against The Mouse. Recollecting, he wrote:

    “Every day, I check my inbox and get angry all over again. Every day someone hears about this for the first time and is just as upset as I was back in October. Every day I read messages filled with words like "heartbroken", "travesty" and some other words that aren't very polite.

    Every day I read stories of those who experienced their first kiss or their last happy days with their grandparents on The Ride. Stories of the wonder they experienced when they went on The Ride for the first time with their parents and the reflection of that joy in their own children's eyes 20 years later.

    Crude letters from little kids who can barely type and desperate letters from people who were moved to tears when they heard the news.

    Letters from Disney employees who can't believe what their bosses have done, thanking me profusely for stepping up and trying to do something about it.”

On June 22, 1999, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh opened at Disneyworld. Badger, Mole, and Rat had been evicted, and Eeyore, Owl, and Piglet had moved in. Fittingly enough, a small statue of Toad was erected at the Haunted Mansion’s cemetery.

What makes the controversy over the ride's closure all the more fascinating for me is how this was one of the first instances of the use of the internet as a means to display mass protest and outcry, particularly regarding fandoms. The "Save Toad" movement is the grandfather of more recent clamorings involving rethemeings and revisions to Disney Parks, such as the many changes to Pirates of the Caribbean or the closure of Splash Mountain. Beyond Disney, of course, communities of all sorts use the internet as a way to express their opinions and demands, often to unhealthy extents. Surely this aspect of the internet was inevitable given enough time, but the fiasco involving Mr. Toad's Wild Ride nonetheless stands out as an early, particularly prehistoric, example of how the public would use and abuse the World Wide Web as their soapbox. In a sense, we're now all living in one giant digital Toad-in. Let's hope then that we don't find ourselves dragged to the inferno below by it.