Walt Disney World Archives > Mr. Toad's Wild RideMr. Toad's Wild Ride
Closed September 7, 1998'We're merrily merrily merrily on our way to nowhere in particular!'
Mr. Toad's Overview
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride in Walt Disney World® was a dark ride that allowed guest to undergo a wild journey through the street of London.
Guests would ride a runaway automobile that takes you on many twists and turns through haystacks, nearly overrunning characters down, crashing through a fireplace, and then to ultimately end up on a railroad track with a locomotive bearing done on you. The ride also had encounters with all your favorite Mr. Toad characters including Ratty, Mole, Badger, the Weasels, and even the villainous bartender Winkie.
One very nice feature of Mr. Toad's Wild ride was that there where two different tracks that where mirror images of each other, but with slightly different scenery. This allowed guest to experience a different ride depending on which queue line they went in.
Mr. Toad's History
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride was based on the 1949 Disney animated film, "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad".
It was originally envisioned as an indoor rollercoaster, but was later decided to be
a dark ride.
The ride is taken from an incident in "The Wind in the Willows". Mr. Toad
decides that he requires a car, though he doesn't know how to drive.
Having acquired a car, he leaves Toad Hall in the hands of the untrustworthy Weasels,
and speeds off into town. Near disaster ensues at every moment, for he turns
out to be an
extraordinarily bad driver. In the ensuing scene he manages to destroy a significant part of London.
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride debuted in Disneyland on July 17, 1955, and then opened in Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom on October 1,1971.
The attraction was shut down on October 7, 1998 and replaced with a Winnie the Pooh attraction. The only thing that remains of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is a picture inside the Winnie The Pooh ride of Mr. Toad handing over the deed of Toad Hall over to Owl.
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- Above the entrance to Toad Hall you could find a shield bearing the words, "Toadi Acceleratio Semper Absurda." Which translated means "Speeding with Toad is always absurd."
- Cast members were not allowed to call the exit scence the "Hell Room" so it was called the "Inferno Room".
What Happend to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride?
"Mr. Who?" asks the wide-eyed child about to enter The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh attraction, dragging his exhausted parents on for the third time today. Sorry, my friend, he isn't the "lost" Power Ranger, he's not "Experiement 213" from Lilo & Stitch, nor will you likely see him in the "House of Mouse" or "That's So Raven" on the Disney Channel. No, Mr. Toad was born in 1908, a little but before your time, in a popular tale called the "Wind in the Willows" by Kenneth Grahame. In 1949, he and his oddly-named friends like Moley, Mac Badger, Ratty and Winky were adapted by the folks at Disney into the feature film, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad... Click here to continue reading this article by our guest columnist, Lou Mongello.
