Delta Dreamflight
| Delta Dreamflight | |
|---|---|
| Park | Magic Kingdom |
| Land / area | Tomorrowland |
| Type | Omnimover dark ride |
| Opened | June 23, 1989 |
| Closed | January 5, 1998 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering
|
| Status | Closed |
Delta Dreamflight was an Omnimover dark ride in Tomorrowland at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, sponsored by Delta Air Lines. It opened on June 23, 1989 in the show building first built for If You Had Wings, and the attraction — under the later names Dreamflight and Take Flight — closed on January 5, 1998, when it was replaced by Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin. Where its predecessors had sold a single airline's destinations, Delta Dreamflight told a pop-up-book history of flight itself.[1]
History
The building's flight lineage began with If You Had Wings, sponsored by Eastern Air Lines, which opened on June 5, 1972. When Eastern ended its sponsorship, the ride closed on June 1, 1987 and reopened five days later, stripped of branding, as If You Could Fly. That interim version closed on January 4, 1989, leaving the building available for a new sponsor.[2]
Delta, which also became Walt Disney World's official airline, took over the space and funded a thorough rebuild on the same Omnimover track. Delta Dreamflight opened on June 23, 1989 after a refurbishment of a little over five months. Guests entered beneath the nose of a Delta 767, named The Spirit of Delta, a far more explicit piece of sponsorship theatre than the ride that followed it.
Delta ended its sponsorship at the end of 1995, a decision linked in contemporary reporting to the cost of the airline's sponsorship of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. From January 1, 1996 the ride ran simply as Dreamflight. On June 5, 1996, after the remaining Delta references were removed or covered and the songs re-recorded, it reopened under a third name, Take Flight — in substance, the same 1989 ride.[3]
Experience
Dreamflight kept the Omnimover system and basic route of If You Had Wings but replaced its travelogue with a chronological story. After the entrance hall, riders passed early dreams of flight and the barnstorming era, staged as flat, brightly lit vignettes in the style of a pop-up book, with simple animated figures, projections and a small number of Audio-Animatronics rather than fully dimensional scenes.
A spinning room effect suggested the disorientation of aerobatics and parachuting. The story then climbed through commercial aviation: a passenger cabin of an early airliner, the expansion of air travel, and a sequence evoking a modern jet, before a projected finale looked ahead to the future of flight. Riders on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority could once again glimpse into the ride, as they had in the If You Had Wings era, although the diorama views were changed for the new show.
The tone was deliberately light and educational, and the ride's admirers remember it as one of the last of the gentle, sponsor-funded Tomorrowland attractions: no height requirement, no thrills, and a history lesson carried by scenery and song.
Closure and legacy
As Take Flight, the attraction ran through 1997 without a sponsor and with Tomorrowland moving around it — the land had been rebuilt in 1994–95 in a more dramatic science-fiction style that left a 1920s-and-jets history ride looking increasingly out of period. It closed on January 5, 1998, ending more than 25 years of flight attractions in the building, counting the If You Had Wings lineage from 1972.[4]
Its replacement, Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, which opened later in 1998, reused the same Omnimover track and ride system for an interactive shooting dark ride — so guests still travel Dreamflight's route today, at a different speed of attention. The Delta name is the part that has vanished: the attraction is remembered under three names for what was, after 1989, essentially one ride.
See also
- If You Had Wings
- Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin
- Tomorrowland (Magic Kingdom)
- List of defunct Disney attractions