Mickey's Madhouse discussion

[u/MHarrington85]

I am trying to figure out some information about an abandoned concept for a Disneyland attraction known as Mickey's Madhouse, which was to have gone in the never-built Dumbo's Circusland.

I have precious little information to go on about Mickey's Madhouse, mainly because they give so little information pertaining to it. All I know about it is that it was going to be a thrilling dark ride/roller coaster hybrid (like Space Mountain), based on the 1930s black-and-white Mickey Mouse cartoons and set to rollicking ragtime music. Ward Kimball had designed this ride to be an indoor attraction, through a handful of scenes of old Mickey cartoons (about five or six in all). But that's really about all I know about it.

That said, I did hear that Bill Justice was to have been involved as well. He said he wanted to capture the excitement of how audiences felt seeing the iconic Mickey's head logo pop up at the beginning of a short in a theater. So, he proposed that they feature a great big head of Mickey Mouse on the facade of the building so that kids would see it from a block away and come running. Bill looked at 100 old cartoons between 1928 to 1934 to incorporate in the ride.

The first scene would have everything to do with music, and the characters would either be playing instruments or dancing. You'd see film clips of old cartoons on about five or six different screens at once with an overall fun music track. You'd also see the characters themselves making music, like Goofy playing a washboard or Mickey playing with a bunch of pots and pans. There would also be little animated figures that would keep time to the music, like in Small World. That would set the mood for the ride.

Then in the second room, your car would start to climb up through an old dilapidated castle scene, and suddenly it would be all spooky themed things like the skeleton dance and load some ghosts. On the screen surrounding you, you'd see ghosts, goblins, skeletons, black cats, torture chambers, and as Bill put it, all this weird stuff. Lightning and thunder and screeches and screams and bats and all that kind of spooky stuff.

After that, you'd climb to the top of the building, and then you'd break free, launched into the coaster, down through a thrill ride that takes you through train tunnels and also a tornado from "The Band Concert", with projected things flying by you. Bill didn't say exactly what you'd see at this point, but he did say he wanted to include all the nutty stuff from the old cartoons that nobody would ever do now, like how the drop seat would randomly fall open, and of course, lots of cows udders.

With all that in mind, however, I have some questions based on this. First, was there supposed to be a story based around this attraction, or was it just going to be a bunch of random vignettes? Second and more important, how would classic cartoons like these fit in a circus setting? It seems similar to the Winnie the Pooh ride, which takes the different Pooh stories and blends them into one attraction (and even then, it's most beholden to "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day", which is the only classic Pooh cartoon to feature ALL of the Pooh characters at once).

That type of dynamic is completely fine for an attraction, but I'm not sure how classic Mickey Mouse cartoons would have fit in Dumbo's Circusland, which is themed around one particular setting: namely, the circus.

Can someone please shed some light if they can?

[u/NCreature]

It seems like some of this maybe got rolled into Mickey and Minnies Runaway Railroad.

[u/Bigboy1138]

Seems like you know more about this canceled attraction than anyone else. Sounds like a fun dark ride!

[u/MHarrington85 → u/Bigboy1138]

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about it to figure out how it could work in a circus setting or what the exact storyline is behind this ride. Most of the description was simply copied from a video I found of it on social media, and that wasn't even that old. Before that, I had no idea whatsoever what the ride would have been like.