Alice in Wonderland is a dark ride in Fantasyland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Based on the 1951 animated Disney film of the same name, the attraction resides next to a second ride, the Mad Tea Party, based on a scene in that same adaptation.
The ride opened in 1958; the present version opened in 1984, and was updated in 2014.
History Among the many unrealized concepts brought forth during the early stages of Disneyland's development was an intricately detailed, Fantasyland-based walk-through attraction themed around 1951's Alice in Wonderland. The attraction would have seen guests visiting physical adaptations of nearly every scene in the motion picture, each one featuring some zany gag (often reminiscent of traditional carnival funhouses) such as a forced-perspective "shrinking" effect within the corridors of the rabbit hole and rotating platforms circling Dodo's rock that would have simulated the caucus race. The idea of a walk-through exhibit was eventually scrapped, however, as it was decided that guests proceeding at too slow a pace would inevitably cause traffic hold-ups. An Alice dark ride was then considered as a remedy to this issue, but as a result of strict time and budgetary constraints, the idea was shelved, and the space originally designated to house the attraction would instead be occupied by the Mickey Mouse Club Theatre.
The Alice in Wonderland dark ride concept would resurface in late 1957, when legacy Disney artist and Imagineer Claude Coats (a chief art director of the film along with Mary Blair) was tasked with designing such an attraction. Made possible by the aid of Ken Anderson, Collin Campbell, and Blaine Gibson (all of whom had worked on the film), as well as the talent of special effects engineer Bob Gurr, the ride was finished in under a year's time and opened to the public on June 14, 1958, complete with a televised ribbon-cutting ceremony featuring Mousketeer Karen Pendleton dressed as Alice.
Alice in Wonderland differed in quite a few ways from the original three dark rides that had opened in Fantasyland along with the rest of the park three years prior. The ride space was restricted to an oddly shaped extension built onto the rear of the complex housing Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and Peter Pan's Flight, an arrangement which resulted in Alice being the first dark ride at Disneyland to occupy two floors. As the attraction's multiple-story configuration could not accommodate a normal loading queue, guests boarded their ride vehicles directly adjacent to a huge outdoor garden consisting of enormous, stylized vines and blades of grass (each constructed of fiberglass and rendered in a variety of pastel colors such as pink and purple) towering over a bed of multi-colored gravel and small shrubs, along with four looming dandelion-shaped light fixtures. Suspended over and amid this garden was a large, winding ramp constructed to appear like a gigantic vine; as guests exited the show building from the second floor, this ramp allowed their ride vehicles to descend back to the ground and return to the loading queue.
The 1951 feature film proved to lend itself well to the format of a themed dark ride. Just as Alice made her way through a linear series of distinct, largely unrelated episodes in the motion picture, guests in the attraction were shuttled through separate, clearly defined scenes by way of a rail-guided fiberglass ride vehicle. These vehicles, modeled to resemble the film's haughty, hookah-smoking caterpillar, were manufactured by Arrow Development and designed with three wheels instead of the usual four to facilitate navigation along the ride's sloping track. The iconic "caterpillar cars" have remained in use for the entire duration of the attraction's existence as of 2025. Much in the same vein as Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Peter Pan's Flight and Snow White's Enchanted Wish, Alice in Wonderland saw guests navigating boxy corridors illuminated with ultraviolet fluorescents and populated by lavishly painted plywood "flats" representing scenery and characters.
One notable trait shared across all of the original Fantasyland dark rides was the deliberate absence of each story's titular character; this was true for Alice in Wonderland as well; Alice herself was nowhere to be found within the ride. Guests were rather made to assume the perspective of Alice themselves, a concept accentuated through the use of brief "storybook-style" narrations delivered by an unseen Alice (portrayed by Kathryn Beaumont, her voice actress from the film) at the beginning of each scene. These narrations might have provided the impression of an older Alice recounting her episodes in Wonderland as guests witnessed them "first-hand" from her point of view.
Largely due to the technological limitations of the era, a number of creative liberties were taken in portraying the various scenes from the film in an attempt to make them more entertaining and madcap, with unique scenarios such as the "Upside-Down Room" and the "Oversized Room" plainly contradicting the events of the original story. Limited ride space meant that many stand-out characters and locales from the film (most notably the Queen of Hearts, Tweedledee & Tweedledum and the Caterpillar) were absent from the attraction, and even the scenes that were present were not necessarily arranged in chronological order. All of this resulted in a ride experience that could have been interpreted as unfaithful to the film (albeit intentionally) and only tangentially related to the original 1865 novel by Lewis Carroll. Much more so than the current attraction, the original Alice dark ride was largely a series of out-of-context iconography from the film presented in new and odd ways.
Very few alterations were made to the original Alice in Wonderland ride during its quarter-century lifespan. Various character props were repainted and rebuilt to appear more (or less) on-model with their film counterparts throughout the 1960s and 1970s, but the attraction received next to no considerable changes until it was closed in 1982 to make way for a drastic overhaul in accordance with the New Fantasyland project—a total re-imagining of Fantasyland in which the majority of the section's architecture and attractions were updated with richer, more intricate theming and superior technology. Although New Fantasyland opened to the public at large in May 1983, Alice refurbishment process was so extensive that it would not be ready to unveil until April 1984. This revamped version of the attraction is largely the same ride that exists today.
Among the updates made to the attraction during its excessive redesign were the omission of several sets in favor of scenes better reflecting the events of the film, the addition of fully dimensional animated figures and scenery replacing the original plywood flats, and the inclusion of various characters from the film that the original ride notably lacked. Additionally, a small extension of the ride building to the right side of the loading queue that had been used for vehicle maintenance was demolished to make way for a new ending scene, which is isolated from the rest of the attraction by the winding vine ramp. The ride also received interior soundproofing to prevent audio from bleeding through the set walls as it had previously, as well as an entirely original soundtrack featuring re-orchestrated music, new character voices, and new dialogue from Kathryn Beaumont reprising her role as Alice.
The exterior garden was given a significant overhaul as well, as the original gravel, shrubs, and colorful fiberglass sculptures were replaced with actual flowerbeds, topiary heart designs, decorative hedges, and several imported trees, including a gigantic ficus serving as a centerpiece of sorts. Oversized fiberglass leaves and flowers still remained, albeit in far more modest sizes and quantities. The masonry veneer of the ride building itself received a visual upgrade as well, with added texture and detailed mouldings.
Alice in Wonderland closed without warning on July 15, 2010, for maintenance concerning the exterior vine ramp, which was discovered to violate regulations set in place by California's OSHA department as it lacked handrails for workers. The attraction reopened a month later on August 13, now with a temporary safety platform featuring side railings installed directly underneath the vine ramp, as well as a series of tarps "camouflaged" to appear as stylized vegetation curtaining off most of the queue garden.
On March 10, 2014, the attraction closed once more to undergo mild refurbishments both outside and inside. Most obvious were the removal of the vine ramp's temporary safety platform and hanging tarps, and the subsequent widening of the vine ramp itself along with the addition of decorative, permanent railings along its left side. Interior alterations included reworked gags in several scenes, the addition of many new holographically projected animations, and several animated figures of Alice herself. The ride reopened with these changes in place on July 4, 2014.New wonders added to Alice in Wonderland dark ride as Disneyland enhances classic attraction InsidetheMagic.net, Retrieved July 4, 2014
1958 version Upon boarding a fiberglass caterpillar car, guests proceeded past the enormous vines and dandelions looming over the gravel garden before entering the grey, cavernous maw of the rabbit hole and plunging into darkness. Soon, the voice of Kathryn Beaumont reprising her role as Alice was heard through hidden speakers: "My adventures in Wonderland began when I followed the White Rabbit down the rabbit hole. All of a sudden, I fell! Down, down..."
Light returned as guests passed through a set of black crash doors into the attraction's first exhibit, the Upside-Down Room. This spacious black-light chamber, set within the home of the White Rabbit, was characterized by a plethora of stylized furniture fixed upside-down to the ceiling, with the ceiling itself painted to resemble a wooden floor decorated with patterned rugs. Upon entering the room, guests viewed their upside-down reflections in the circular mirror of a ceiling-bound dresser as Alice's voice was heard once again: "The next thing I knew, I was in the Upside-Down Room—with the floor where the ceiling should be." Passing under tables and chairs of various designs, as well as flower vases, bookshelves, gas lamps, and even an occupied fish bowl, the White Rabbit was heard singing I'm Late before swinging upside-down into a doorway at the far end of the room with his trumpet in hand. Guests' caterpillar car then performed a sharp turn into the opposite direction and continued toward a tall fireplace (the same one seen in the film as Alice descends the rabbit hole) complete with flickering fabric flames and a hanging, upside-down tea kettle.
Exiting the Upside-Down Room through the wall left of the fireplace, guests found themselves in the Oversized Room (referred to as "Through the Key Hole" on the attraction's original poster), a sixteen-foot-tall chamber set within the depths of the rabbit hole, where in the film Alice encountered the talking doorknob. This interpretation of the scene was quite different, however, as although the illusion of shrinking to a minuscule size was preserved by means of gargantuan furniture props, there was no glass table here as there was in the film—rather a giant flat of the Cheshire Cat situated atop a suitably large footstool.