After-Action Report: Matterhorn Bobsleds

The Matterhorn has come up several times since I started this blog. I've examined its role in the sub-themes of Fantasyland, pegged its 1978 upgrades as an important Disneyland milestone, unraveled (some of) the secrets of the heraldic shields in its queue area, and even suggested a tongue-in-cheek idea for a holiday overlay. The one thing I haven't done yet is devote an entire post to the ride itself. With large swaths of the country currently resembling the Matterhorn's upper slopes, now seems like a good time!

First things first: I love the Matterhorn Bobsleds. It was the first roller coaster I, as a small child, ever mustered the courage to ride, and it might be my favorite coaster in Disneyland to this day, thanks to its fanciful theming. For some reason—probably the rarity of my encounters with the real thing—I have always found snowscapes and ice crystals absolutely enthralling.

But my quirks aside, there's definitely a lot that's special about the majestic Matterhorn.

Groundbreaking Technology

The Matterhorn Bobsleds was not just Disneyland's first roller coaster, but the world's first roller coaster with a steel-tube track. This much is common knowledge among Disney theme park fans. What seems to be less known is what this innovation did for the ride. The tubes could be bent more severely to create tighter turns and sharper drops than the conventional wooden tracks, making possible the winding trip around and through the mountain. We Disneyland aficionados sometimes treat the technology and the theming of an attraction separately, as if they existed on perpendicular axes, but in this case the technology directly enabled the theming.

Equally impressive, if not more so, is the feat of engineering moxie that accompanied the construction of the mountain itself. Everyone knows the Skyway used to travel right through the middle of the Matterhorn, and most people know the former came first, with the latter literally built around one of its support pylons. But something I found out only recently is that the Matterhorn went up without interrupting Skyway operations one bit! Since the bobsled track was located entirely below the Skyway's path, they were able to install the mountain's skeleton around pylon, cables, gondolas, and all, giving Skyway riders a great view of the entire process.

A Disneyland Exclusive

The Matterhorn is one of the few attractions to have debuted at Disneyland and never been duplicated, literally or in spirit, at any other Disney park. It might be the only thrill ride* so distinguished. Yes, Animal Kingdom has the similarly-themed Expedition Everest, but the aesthetics and execution of the two rides are so different that I consider Everest to be its own beast rather than an adaptation of the Matterhorn.

It's well worth wondering why our first and tallest mountain never made the jump to Orlando, when most of the rides we had as of 1971 did in some form, as did many of the ones that came later. Perhaps Florida's high water table wouldn't allow the right sort of foundation for such a big structure. That's the boring possibility I came up with. A more interesting one involves the very fact that the Matterhorn is Disneyland's first and tallest mountain.

1959 was a long time ago. Disneyland itself was only four years old when the Matterhorn was built, and there was a lot they were still figuring out. Such as...where to fit things they wanted to add to the park, and how to arrange them so as to preserve their themes. The Matterhorn is so huge and so centrally located that it's visible from almost anywhere in Disneyland...which many consider to be to the park's detriment. I don't, for a couple of reasons,** but maybe its sore-thumb quality was much on the minds of the Imagineers who planned Magic Kingdom. FoxxFur of Passport to Dreams Old and New has noted, at some length, that Magic Kingdom is much more elegantly laid out than Disneyland, which couldn't and can't help but be awkward in some ways because it was so experimental. In other words, maybe the Matterhorn was left out of the Orlando park because its inherent intrusiveness was deemed a mistake that they didn't want to repeat.

Eh. Their loss.

Harold Still Doesn't Like Any of This

And now we come to what is surely the most memorable aspect of the Matterhorn Bobsleds—the ferocious Yeti!*** “Harold,” as he is affectionately nicknamed, is one of the unsung heroes of Disneyland's collection of audio-animatronic characters. Or maybe that should be one of the unsung villains, since his role has always been an antagonistic one and last year's upgrade has only made him meaner. Once content to snarl at you when your bobsled burst into one of his caverns, he now chases you through the mountain, roaring all the way. That he has mayhem on his mind is clear from this display, which replaced the glowing crystals:

Brrrrrrr...

Besides being a touching tribute to the 55+ year history of the mountain and the various vehicles that have passed through its interior, this is proof positive that the Yeti is one nasty piece of work. He put that stuff here—those are his footprints in the surrounding snow! Those are his claw marks in the sadly unidentifiable bit of debris (a Skyway gondola roof?) near the center! Bobsledders, Skyway travelers, innocent alpenhorn players...none shall escape the wrath of Harold! He'd go harass people eating lunch in the Village Haus if walking past the Teacups didn't make him dizzy.

Whoops, I drifted into fanfiction for a bit there. Can you blame me? The addition of “Harold's hoard” to the Matterhorn creates a sense of backstory where previously there was only setting. In this iteration, the Yeti has clearly been giving visitors to the mountain a bad day for a long time,**** and the fact that he heaps the wreckage up in one particular cavern adds an especially sinister vibe to his menace. Before 2015, it would have been reasonable to interpret Harold as a wild animal angry over the violation of his territory...but trophy-collecting suggests human-like intelligence. This cranky cryptid has been upgraded in more senses than just the technological, and the value thereby added to the ride more than makes up for the loss of the crystals.

Gorgeous, yes, but no substitute for a good story.

The Downside of the Icy Slope

So is there anything about the Matterhorn Bobsleds that I don't like? Of course there is.

I do, after all, miss the crystals. Harold's hoard is a far superior display, but the crystals were a nice little fantasy touch, and it would be pretty sweet if they re-installed some in strategic locations throughout the ice caverns.

I also miss Harold's original, iconic roar. So throaty and resonant...and the first one, when his eyes suddenly glowed red in the dark, never failed to make me jump. I would cover my ears every time because it was so loud and startling. The new roar sounds more like he's got a bit of a cough. Fortunately, a lot of people seem to agree with me, so maybe they'll change it back. It's hard to imagine this being a difficult fix—just swap out one sound effect for another.

And maybe while they're at it, they'll restore the howling roar that you used to be able to hear from the ground. Why did they ever get rid of that?

The new bobsleds are pretty darn uncomfortable. For the longest time, I had no idea what everyone was going on about. Then one day I did something I don't typically do—boarded the ride on the Tomorrowland side of the queue. I normally prefer the Fantasyland side because it affords a better view of the crystals/hoard. The Tomorrowland side is known for giving a bumpier ride, which is why it tends to be more popular with fans...but the same jolts that were thrilling with the previous sled model are now just bone-jarring. All the more reason to stick with the Fantasyland side whenever possible, I suppose.

You'll notice that none of the above complaints is anything that can't be readily fixed, once the higher-ups deem it worth the expense. And maybe that's the real miracle of the majestic Matterhorn: Even as old as it is, it holds up. It's got some room for improvement, but its faults are nowhere near as grievous as those of other upgraded attractions such as Pirates of the Caribbean or “it's a small world.” It's just a really high-quality themed experience that has well withstood the test of time.

Fitting that it should be not just the tallest mountain, but the tallest structure of any kind in Disneyland. It stands head, shoulders, and snowy cap above most of its competitors. And there's nothing like it anywhere else.

* Not “E-ticket,” please...we don't say that here anymore.

** Firstly, a tall rocky mountain with a snow cap could reasonably be slotted into the skyline of a lot of different area themes. Secondly, I'm just used to it.

*** Officially he's an Abominable Snowman, but guess what? “Abominable Snowman” is just another term for a Yeti anyway...and one based on a mistranslation to boot.

**** Longer, paradoxically, than there has even been a Yeti in the Matterhorn, judging by the style of some of those artifacts.