The Worst Theme Park Rides Based on TV Shows

While most big-ticket theme park rides are inspired by blockbuster movies, some of the very best Disney and Universal attractions are instead inspired by television shows, like Walt Disney World’s Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Universal’s The Simpsons Ride and the underrated Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls at Islands of Adventure.

This article is not about any of those rides.

Instead, the 15 attractions below are examples of attractions that adapted television shows to theme parks with less success, either because they brought little to nothing from their source material to the ride experience, or because they just flat-out weren’t any fun. They hail from parks all over the country and while most have long since closed, a few are still in operation, disappointing people every day of the year. Next time, just ride the Tower of Terror or The Simpsons Ride instead.

The American Idol Experience

Disney-MGM Studios park was designed to operate as a tourist attraction and a functioning film and TV studio. But within a few years of its opening in 1989, the actual productions at the facility had dwindled to next to nothing. Disney promised tourists a trip to a working studio, and with less evidence of that all the time, they began adding attractions that mimicked the look of popular TV shows, including a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? show and an American Idol “experience,” where tourists participated in a staged recreation of the popular reality competition show, complete with judges who acted like Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, and Simon Cowell. Guests could audition for a spot on a performance, and then compete against other tourists; the winner of each day’s American Idol Experience finale got a “Dream Ticket” which allowed them to skip the line at an actual Idol TV audition.

But that came at a cost; namely you had to be willing to sacrifice up to six hours of your day at a pricy theme park to keep showing up to auditions and performances. If that’s what you wanted — and if by some small chance, you actually won — then it all worked out. If you didn’t win, well, you spent a lot of money so a fake Simon Cowell tell you how much you sucked instead of riding Toy Story Mania.

The Battle of Galactica

With sci-fi spectacles hot properties in the late 1970s thanks to Star Wars, Universal followed suit with Battlestar Galactica, a glossy TV series about the battle between human space colonists and a race of robots known as Cylons. The show was one of the more expensive television productions of its day — so expensive, in fact, that it wound up getting canceled after only 24 episodes. During Galactica’s short-lived initial run, Universal added it to its Studio Tour in Hollywood, in a short animatronic and visual effects setpiece known as “The Battle of Galactica.” Tourists were “captured” by the Cylons, brought into a show building, and then, after a brief skirmish, freed by a human actor dressed as an outer space warrior. The area where the Battle of Galactica once stood was demolished in the early ’90s to make room for Back to the Future: The Ride, which is now The Simpsons Ride. Still 12+ years is actually a pretty good run for a laser battle inspired by a long-canceled TV show.

Chip ‘n’ Dale Gadgetcoaster

The final episode of Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers was already three years old by the time Disney added a junior roller coaster loosely inspired by the show to Disneyland. Known as Gadget’s Go Coaster for most of its history, the now 30+ year old ride was recently named the Chip ‘n’ Dale Gadgetcoaster. The ride itself has remained basically the same — and it still holds the dubious distinction of being the shortest ride at the Happiest Place on Earth. A trip on the Gadgetcoaster lasts just 45 seconds. If you wait for any appreciable amount of time for this extremely underwhelming experience you will surely want to (gadget) go somewhere else with your children afterwards.

Doug Live!

The animated TV series Doug endured all through the 1990s, first on Nickelodeon and then on ABC. Disney even released Doug’s 1st Movie in 1999. That same year, they also added a stage show to Disney-MGM Studios called Doug Live! While a lot of ’90s kids would have been delighted to see the characters from Doug in person, you need to remember that the cartoon featured highly-stylized animation — and Doug Live! mostly involved live-action performers dressed to look like Doug Funnie and his pals (including his dog Porkchop). The bizarre stars of this musical are nothing less than undiluted nightmares made flesh. Doug Live! played from the spring of 1999 into the summer of 2001. Honestly, when you see what Roger looked like in this show, you’ll be amazed it lasted that long.

The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera

The left side of Universal Studios Florida’s main thoroughfare has housed a series of big simulator rides throughout the park’s history. The very first was called The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera, and it featured a variety of characters from the Hanna-Barbera catalogue trying to rescue a kidnapped Elroy Jenson from the villainous Dick Dastardly. It was essentially a tamer and less technology sophisticated version of Back to the Future: The Ride geared toward younger kids. As a result, the illusion that you were zooming around in your own personal flying car was a lot less convincing than BTTF:TR. No surprise, then, that Universal replaced it with another TV-inspired simulator, Jimmy Neutron’s Nicktoon Blast, after about a decade of operation.

Garfield’s Nightmare

This notoriously low-rent amusement park ride at Pennsylvania’s Kennywood park slapped some vaguely spooky theming and a bunch of blacklight images of the popular comic strip and cartoon cat Garfield atop an ancient Old Mill attraction that first opened way back in 1901. The venerable ride was given a variety of overlaps and updated themes through the years; in 2004, it was transformed into “Garfield’s Nightmare.” As detailed in a Very Local history of the attraction, the ride’s designers initially had “big plans that involved 3 effects and CGI and animatronics.” But because the Old Mill was, well, old, with limited rider capacity, the creative team recalled being explicitly told by management “We can’t make it too great because too many people would want to ride it.” As it turns out, this is not a creative strategy that results in a good theme park attraction.

Hercules and Xena: Warriors of the Screen

Universal Studios Florida’s opening overlapped with the heyday of syndicated television programming, none of it bigger than the two-headed adventure show hydra of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess. When the previous subject of Universal’s attraction all about TV production, Murder, She Wrote, was canceled in 1996, they re-themed the show to be based around the two popular series. But then Hercules was canceled in 1999 too. Wizards of the Screen was performed for the final time in early 2000, meaning it operated for less than five years, making it one of the less successful attractions in Universal history. When you watch clips of the show, it’s not hard to see why.

Mike Fink Keel Boats

Believe it or not, in the mid-1950s, Disney launched a full-blown pop-culture phenomenon with a series of episodes of their Disneyland anthology television series about famous American pioneer Davy Crockett. One was called “Davy Crockett’s Keel Boat Race,” and saw Crockett square off with another famous historical figure, boatman Mike Fink. According to legend, Walt Disney had the idea for a Mike Fink Keel Boats attraction during production of the film; the original Disneyland attraction repurposed the two actual boats from the production of “Davy Crockett’s Keel Boat Race.”

Which is both an interesting bit of trivia and a not especially thrilling attraction, as the small boats simply took guests on a leisurely tour of the park’s Rivers of America. Disney added Keel Boats to the Magic Kingdom and then to Disneyland Paris (in the early 1990s!), but all were gradually phased out by the end of the 2000s after one of the boats capsized at Disneyland. Mike Fink and his boats might be gone, but Davy Crockett remains; you can still ride his Explorer Canoes around Frontierland.

Motor Boat Cruise to Gummi Glen

From the late 1950s to the early 1990s, the eastern edge of Disneyland was home to something called Motor Boat Cruise, which was essentially the watery equivalent of the park’s Autopia. Only instead of miniature cars zooming around a racetrack, guests piloted small boats as they glided through a man-made waterway. Like Autopia, guests controlled their craft’s speed and direction — but only to a point. A hidden rail under the water kept the boats from straying too far off course.

As the attraction aged, Disney tried to reinvigorate it by re-theming it to the then-popular Disney cartoon Adventures of the Gummi Bears. Enter ... “Motor Boat Cruise to Gummi Glen.” But instead of the typical level of Disney magic (and high-tech animatronics), the “new” ride amounted to little more than some plywood illustrations of the Gummi Bear characters around the same boats and track. Bouncing here and there and everywhere? Not these Gummi Bears! Plywood don’t bounce. The updated Motor Boats were sent to dry dock by 1993.

Nickelodeon Slime Streak

The American Dream mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, boasts its own indoor theme park, Nickelodeon Universe, where every ride is inspired by television series ranging from Paw Patrol to SpongeBob SquarePants to multiple Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles roller coasters. And then there is Nickelodeon Slime Streak, a tame coaster with zero loops that runs a single brief circuit around the park in a little over one minute. What does this have to do with Nickelodeon or its famous slime? Uh ... the track is orange like the Nickelodeon logo? And the sign at the entrance is green? Think of all the incredible theme park attraction that could be inspired by Nickelodeon — remember Nickelodeon Studios? — and then compare it to this video of a coaster gliding through a mall for 75 seconds.

The Outer Limits: Flight of Fear

Once upon a time, Viacom tried to compete with fellow media conglomerates like Disney and Universal by forming its own theme park division, which acquired several popular theme parks around the United States and added Paramount and Viacom branding to their attractions. That’s how Virginia’s Kings Dominion and Ohio’s Kings Island both wound up with a roller coaster named after The Outer Limits, the famous 1960s sci-fi anthology show that was then in the midst of a revival on Showtime.

Flight of Fear is a launching indoor coaster that supposedly brings guests into a restricted military hangar to view a recovered UFO. After Paramount sold their parks to Cedar Fair, the ride continued on as just Flight of Fear, with all references to The Outer Limits removed. In other words: As a coaster, this was totally fine. As an Outer Limits ride ... uh ... I guess you could say that the track layout meant they controlled the vertical and the horizontal? Look, I’m trying here...

Superstar Limo

There may not be a more infamous attraction in the history of all of Disney’s theme parks than Superstar Limo. In the words of one Disney executive, it was initially imagined as “a paparazzi ride and you're catching celebrities.” There was just one problem. (Technically there were many problems, but there was one catastrophic problem.) During the ride’s development, Princess Diana was killed in a car crash while her vehicle was trying to sneak way from a pack of paparazzi.

It was too late to cancel the ride outright, so Disney had to completely reconfigure it. Now guests were celebrities themselves, arriving in Hollywood for the first time and then taking a slow-moving dark ride through sparsely decorated show scenes filled with stiff animatronics of other celebs. Although not linked to any one specific television show, the ride’s animatronic “stars” were mostly ABC (and therefore Disney) talents of the time like Tim Allen, Regis Philbin, and Drew Carey. Superstar Limo opened with Disney California Adventure in the winter of 2001 and closed less than a year later. The track and vehicles were re-themed to Monsters Inc. and dubbed Monsters Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue, a ride that has, somewhat improbably, survived at California Adventure to the present day.

The Swamp Thing Set

These days, nobody goes to Universal Studios Florida expecting to watch the production of a TV show. But when the park first opened, they not only expected it, they practically demanded it. In the park’s early years you could watch a TV taping at Nickelodeon Studios, or take the park’s tram tour through its backlot. One part of the park was home to the standing sets from the Swamp Thing television show that aired on USA Network from 1990 to 1993. You can probably guess where this is headed; when the show was canceled, the sets were worthless. Nobody wanted to see where a middling TV series used to get made. After the sets were torn down, Universal used the area as the home to its Men in Black shooting gallery ride.

The Walking Dead: A Walk Through Attraction

Universal has carved out a very successful niche in the theme park world with their annual Halloween Horror Nights events and their elaborately themed haunted houses. Attempts to translate that success into a year-round attraction have proven to be a bit trickier. One example is a sort of permanent HHN-style house that appeared at Universal Studios Hollywood in 2016, inspired by the long-running Walking Dead TV franchise.

Halloween Horror Nights caters to an older fanbase, but the rest of the year, Universal is mostly a place for families with kids. So the Walking Dead attraction (which, yes, you literally walked through, encountering actors in makeup designed by the same team that created the show’s zombies) had to satisfy horror enthusiasts without being too scary for a general audience. That’s a tough needle to thread, and the results wound up frustrating members of both camps, who either found it too tame or too disturbing. The attraction shuffled its last visitors through in early 2020.

Woody Woodpecker’s Nuthouse Coaster

It’s just a rule: Any upscale theme park that caters to families needs at least one extremely underwhelming and only vaguely themed roller coaster inspired by a nonthreatening and widely recognizable animated character. Disneyland has its Chip ‘n’ Dale Gadgetcoaster, and for almost a quarter of a century, Universal Studios Florida had Woody Woodpecker’s Nuthouse Coaster, a similar (and, at 45 seconds in length, similarly short) “thrill” ride for small children. And what did it have to do with Woody Woodpecker? So little that a few years ago Universal was able to repaint the track, refurbish the trains, and rename it the Trolls Trollercoaster after the popular film series. [insert manic Woody Woodpecker laugh here]