Disneyland Guide Spotlight: Big Thunder Mountain

Each week we’ll spotlight a popular attraction from our extensive Theme Park Guides. Every attraction in every Southern California theme park is reviewed in-depth, complete with Attraction Type, General Description, Will’s Review, Touring Tips and Family Info. This week we’re dipping into our Disneyland Guide (the most comprehensive Disneyland Guide on the web or in print), and spotlighting Frontierland’s signature mine-train adventure, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad!

Disneyland Guide Spotlight: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

Attraction Type: Mining car-themed steel roller coaster.

Location: Can’t miss this attraction – the queue begins on the northern side of the Frontierland Plaza.

General Description: Hop aboard Big Thunder Mountain Railroad for an exciting ride on a runaway mine train through and around Big Thunder Mountain.

Will’s Review: A western mine-train ride has been a part of Disneyland since 1956. Originally developed as the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train, the slow-moving scenic mine train attraction rolled through the Living Desert, a large plot of land bordering the Rivers of America and the western side of Fantasyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. The Living Desert was also home to the Rainbow Mountain Stagecoach (1955-1960), Conestoga Wagons (1955-1960) and the Rainbow Ridge Pack Mules (1955-1973). A large feature of the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train was a ride through Rainbow Caverns – a colorful, stalagmite-filled cavern.

In 1960, additions were made to the Living Desert to transform a large section of it into a lush, lake-filled forest, and the whole area was renamed Nature’s Wonderland. Two major additions were Cascade Peak (a towering waterfall-inducing mountain that remained until 1998 along the Rivers of America) and Rainbow Ridge Mining Town, where the trains loaded at. The year of 1979 witnessed a major change to Frontierland, however, and Nature’s Wonderland was to be no more. A large new pathway was cut through the heart of the area, providing a direct link between the Frontierland and Fantasyland Plazas. The area just north of this walkway was converted to Big Thunder Ranch (the Window Rock replica featured since 1956 can still be seen at the Ranch), while the area to the west of the walkway was largely untouched, leaving various thematic elements in place along the river banks. This included Cascade Peak, a pond, and an abandoned mining tunnel which can easily be seen from the walkway even today. In addition, guests aboard any of the Rivers of America attractions can easily spot an old abandoned mine train that was “wrecked” sitting alongside some torn-up tracks; these tracks and train vehicle are left over from the old attraction. The centerpiece of this new development, however, were the towering peaks of Big Thunder Mountain. Designed after Utah’s Monument Valley, the brown rock towers immediately evoke the American Southwest.

The new theme departed from the Living Desert/Nature’s Wonderland theme, and the official back story of the attraction is one of those storylines that doesn’t translate too well to the average guest experiencing the attraction with no knowledge of its history. According to Disney legend, the old mining town of Rainbow Ridge was founded at the base of the ore-rich Big Thunder Mountain. The volume of valuable ore inside was so much that a special mining train was set up to easily haul the gold from deep inside the mountain. Unknown to the miners, however, Big Thunder was a sacred Native American site; the continual mining angered the Native American spirits to the point that they caused a large earthquake to strike the mining camp of Rainbow Ridge. Initially, the miners fled in terror. When they returned to gather their belongings they discovered that the spirits had possessed the trains and were running them wildly at high paces throughout the mountain. In an entrepreneurial effort to do something at Big Thunder under the mine, they decided to invite tourists (you) to ride on the runaway mining cars.

Guests board one of four runaway mine trains, and then make their way past the old mining town of Rainbow Ridge (the same mining buildings from the previous attraction) and then into a breezy bat cave that leads to an indoor cavern full of colorful boiling pools of water (the old Devil’s Pots from the previous attraction). Up past the main lift and under a waterfall, the adventure begins as the mine trains wildly race through, in, and around Big Thunder Mountain. Three different lift hills power this attraction; the last one features an earthquake effect as boulders begin to tumble down and the walls shake. Just as one of the main boulders give way, the train drops through a break in the mountain and then around the final pond and through a partially-exposed excavation site before pulling back in to Rainbow Ridge.

As a point of trivia, the Big Thunder Mountain runaway mine train concept was originally developed by famed Imagineer Marc Davis as one part of a massive multi-attraction complex intended for Walt Disney World’s Frontierland. For a complete description of this story, including the involvement of then-up-and-coming Imagineer Tony Baxter, read the Splash Mountain review in the Critter Country section of this guide (the connection between this attraction and Splash Mountain is examined in full there).

Touring Tips: This is one of the park’s most popular attractions, and while long lines can easily build, they move fairly quickly thanks to large capacity trains and relatively rapid arrivals at the station. Try to visit before 10am or later in the evening.

Warning: Guests with heart, back, or neck problems are urged not to ride; as are expectant mothers and other guests with conditions which could be aggravated by this adventure.

Family Info: Guests of all ages love this fun-filled attraction, although small children may be frightened. By theme park standards, it is a relatively mild coaster, but like Space Mountain it incorporates several thematic elements which make it seem much more intense than it actually is. Guests must be at least 40” tall in order to ride.

Variations: With minor thematic variances, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad can be found at every Disneyland-style park except Hong Kong Disneyland.

Explore Our Disneyland Guide!

Visit other exciting Frontierland attractions, or visit these other popular Disneyland mountains: Splash Mountain, Matterhorn Bobsleds, and Space Mountain.

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