Growing up poor in Chicago, the idea of going to Disney World in Florida or Disneyland in California seemed like a pipe dream to me. A funny thought considering how much more expensive it is now, but back then, it was still rather daunting. It also didn’t help that I inherited my mother’s fear of planes. Back then, I equated getting onto a plane with getting onto a shuttle scheduled to enter outer space. Considering I’ve traveled by plane plenty of times since then, I can’t help but laugh at how ridiculous it all was.
So, when the DisneyQuest Indoor Theme Park opened in Chicago back in 1999, I was unhinged. Finally, I could get the Disney experience without having to get on a plane! Instead, all I had to do was hop on a train and head to the ritzy River North neighborhood (via a Red Line train to Grand Avenue).
The corporate heads at Disney Regional Entertainment had people like me in mind when starting the DisneyQuest project - people who wanted to visit Disney but may not have had the ability to travel to one of their various theme parks around the world. At first, two locations were opened - one located at Disney World and one located near the Magnificent Mile (aka Michigan Avenue, aka that street with all the stores and the hotel where Oprah housed her guests that were all suites). There were plans to open more locations in major cities across the US, but alas, that never panned out.
The City of Chicago made a very big deal about Disney Quests opening. ABC-7 Chicago aired a half hour special devoted to its opening. Anchors Janet Davies and Jim Rose talked excitedly about the grand opening as the camera cut to the sight of bodies upon bodies spilled onto the streets, waiting outside. Everybody wanted to go to DisneyQuest, myself included. I remember waiting more than a month to go because the lines would be so long, and when I finally did go with my friend, the lines weren’t as long (like, maybe 30 minutes of waiting. Maybe). The price of admission wasn’t cheap - adult admission was $34 dollars, which was lowered to $26 before closing. Cards were used as tickets for admission - you’d use these cards for the various attractions inside the park. I kinda wish I’d kept the ones I had, but considering I’d move countries five years later, it’s anyone’s guess whether it would have survived the move.
Inside, you took a golden elevator to the third floor. The lights would turn off, and an animation starring the Genie from Aladdin (voiced by Homer Simpson, er, Dan Castellaneta). The doors would open and this explosion of color, lights, and sounds awaited you. There were five floors with different rides and activities on each one. There was a restaurant too, but my friend and I never went to them as it was too expensive - one of the pitfalls of being located downtown I guess.
As many fun things to do as there were, my friend and I were only interested in one attraction - CyberSpace Mountain. A roller coaster simulator, you could design the ride of your dreams, choosing between different tracks (loops, turns, etc), fantastical locations, and speed (the fastest speed being “Hang on to your Shorts!”). If you were lazy, you could choose from premade coasters with increasing levels of intensity. Once everything is selected, you’d then go into these cylindrical red pods which would test the sanity of any claustrophobic. The large video screen shows off the monster, I mean coaster we’ve created, while the small screen outside shows the rest of the world how goofy we look or how terrified we are.
Needless to say, we didn’t leave that place until we rode on it at least twice. Because the lines for this ride were pretty damn long, a third time was not in the cards. Instead, we’d head off to the massive collection of cute photobooths (purikura) where we could take photos with various Disney characters. If we didn’t want to leave yet, we’d hit up the arcade section, playing games like Daytona USA(DAAAAAYYYYTOOOOONAAAAAAAA! LET’S GO AWAY!) to our heart’s content, until we decided to call it a day.
While the Disney World location shut down in 2017, the Chicago location shut down in 2001, due to low visitors numbers. In its place is Hotel 55, a boutique hotel owned by Mariott and home furnishing store Room and Board. But I will never forget the magic of taking that Red Line train to Grand Avenue, standing in a line for half an hour to buy tickets, and doing loop-de-loops in a red cylinder while Bill Nye cheered me on.
Rest well, Disney Quest. I’ll never forget you. And I will hang on to my shorts!
This is a super cool one! Let's see what DisneyQuest had to offer back in the day.
Cover page:
Such a cool design!
Here's pages 2 & 3:
...that is a MASSIVE building lol
Pages 4 & 5:
I'm sure these were cool to kids at the time, but to me it seems a little silly to recreate the ride experiences when presumably you could ride the rides during your trip. I like the concept for the Ride the Comix and Mighty Ducks Pinball slam though!
Pages 6 and 7:
The Inagineer stuff is soooo cool I would have loved that! And carnival games with prizes seems so generic theme park that Disney tries to distance themselves from usually but i bet those prizes were COOL.
Here's the back cover:
FoodQuest is certainly A Concept... lol. Interesting that there are height requirements! They really must have been really moving attractions rather than just buttons to press. Also I never knew there was a DisneyQuest in Chicago... but it seems it was very short lived, only operable from June 1999 to September 2001; this pamphlet must have been distributed around that time!
I can't believe that Disney Quest's expansion failed so badly that it essentially permanently cursed a plot of land in Philadelphia to never be built on.
Extinct Disney Parks and Attractions tournament round 3: Bracket AB
MGM Sorcerer's hat vs Disney Quest
MGM Sorcerer's hat
Disney Quest
Voting ended onJan 17, 2024
Reminder, you don't have had to experience any of the attractions/experiences to vote! Just read in the info and/or watch the vid,then vote for which you wish you would have experienced more/which sounds cooler!
Videos and propaganda/info dumping under cut
Sorcerer's Hat: MGM (2001-2015)
Propaganda:
YES IT WAS CHEESY BUT ONCE AGAIN, ITS FREAKING DISNEY! YOU AREN'T GOING FOR SOPHISTICATION! It was FUN, it takes you from the real world! The whole park had an overall sorcerer's mickey theme going on in that era, so it fit! It was also a perfect icon for the park! I will never forgive them for getting rid of it. Oh and it was a great spot for characters!
Disney Quest: Downtown Disney (1998-2017)
DisneyQuest was an "indoor interactive theme park". It opened on June 19, 1998 in Downtown Disney at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando
Propaganda:
So this shows just how fast technology progressed in the last 20 years! So as a kid/when it first opened, this place was the coolest thing ever and was ground breaking technology. However, as a teen in 2012, this was a portal into a 90s/early 2000's time capsule! It was charming and amazing in such a different way! I miss it every day. From the build and ride your own virtual rollercoaster (Cyberspace Mountain), tons of arcade games, make your own toy thing, this bumper cars that yeet balls at other cars themed to Buzz Lightyear ride thing, 'virtual' jungle cruise(where you are 'paddling' in a blow up river and it corresponds to the screen/your actions), Pirates of the Caribbean cannon blaster thing, to a virtual reality Aladdin carpet ride game, and so much more! And like I said, depending on when you went, it was either a technological marvel, or a nostalgic blast from the past that had you appreciate how far tech had gone!
This took longer than I thought it would because I kept on adding more to fill out the composition. Always, this is my forth piece of concept art for a potential film (or sequel in this case) based on the old Disney experience ExtraTerrorestrial: Alien Encounter. More specifically, these aliens are from a DisneyQuest arcade game called Invasion: An ExtraTerrorestrial Alien Encounter. Here’s some clips to give the gist of the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6M8UalvrNU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHz3S7Cxitw
I gave the aliens slight redesigns and even added a new one that I would describe as a Darth Vader-esque overlord. All the aliens are to scale My lore for this species is that they are warmongers who after centuries of interspecies conflict have united under a single leader and seek to expand and conquer the known universe. They have undergone significant cybernetic and biological modifications to be formidable on the battlefield, being able to survive extreme environments and heal rapidly with the consumption of matter. I also imagine these aliens and X-S tech having a history with each other that I’ll keep secret for the moment but is the reason why they feel a moral obligation to provide support against them when their invasion began (referencing the first YouTube link).
I tried depicting their homeward, which I imagine as a super earth dotted with continent sized islands contented with artificial bridges. However, I’m not fully satisfied with the design so I may refine it more. I had a lot of fun drawing these guys and plan on making more concept art featuring them.
Invasion: an ExtraTerrorestrial Alien Encounter belongs to Disney.
