The Adventure Thru Inner Space (aka “ATIS”) attraction opened on August 5, 1967 in the location now taken up by Star Tours.
Sponsored by Monsanto, it provided a showcase of their “technologies”…
and all the wonderful (?) uses of their delightful chemicals, including fashion.
It also provided the first use of the Omnimover system. If these little vehicles look familiar, that’s because they’re still being used on the Haunted Mansion. The benefit is that they keep the people moving and can twist & turn in the direction that Disney wants you to look. On this wacky and extremely dark ride, sometimes the guests did a little bit more than just twisting and turning. Fortunately for them, this was before closed-circuit cameras had been installed. From one of the cast members who worked the attraction:
We would see marijuana lit tips coming through, as well as many people desperately grabbing at one another. Usually all we had to do was shine the flashlight in their eyes and reprimand them for their activities, with a threat of taking them to Security to achieve the desired effect. I don't recall having to actually follow through with any action. Although ATIS didn’t have a camera system, there was one installed on the PeopleMover, covering the areas where the cars slowed down (through the ride buildings). In addition, the PeopleMover had pressure-sensitive pads placed along the catwalks in these same buildings which would automatically stop the ride should someone crawl out of the cars.”
Another Daveland reader shared this story:
Naturally this was a great ride during Grad Night—all these kids wanted a dark place to make out, but the Disney people would sometimes play games with them. On one specific grad night, a couple asked a cast member how long the ride was. He told them it was 10 minutes or something of the sort…the ride was only 3-5...so off the couple went. As the crew was watching the kids take their clothes off, the rest of the cast waited at the end the of the ride where the car came out. As the car jumped into the lighted area, the half-naked kids jumped around trying to put their clothes back on as the cast members started to applaud and dole out cat calls.
The premise was that the guest was being shrunk down to the size of an atom. Remember seeing those miniature vehicles in the test tube with guests in them? Geez…how did they do that?!?
While many view this attraction with fond memories, I just thought it was a snoozer. Chemistry bored me in school, and even with a Sherman Brothers tune playing over and over again (“Miracles from Molecules”), this one had the same effect.
At least it had some interesting space-age planters outside the building. Probably the closest to nature that Monsanto ever got.
See more Disneyland ATIS photos at my main website.
3 comments:
This is one of those cases where I think both opinions are correct. I will have fun memories of this attraction as it was the tail end of Walt's ideas even though he didn't get to ride on this one. It had a Sherman Brothers soundtrack which made it as endearing to us Anaheim fans as the Florida fans love Imagination for the same reason. Personally I don't really get that ride, Imagination. Whatever. But yeah, ATIS was an interesting ride for how simple it was. Some even claimed it was scary.
That aside, you are also correct, it was boring as hell. This was my childhood introduction to watching how corporate sponsorship desperately tries to grab at impressing itself upon an audience by showing them what they can do. They didn't show us a damn thing. Nothing about their displays about technology really registered with me or impressed me in any way. There were more "chemicals" being used by the people riding this thing in the dark then there were being explained in the exit queue on the way out.
Great pictures! I count three bareheaded sailor and only two kids in sailor hats in the first shot; I hope the third guy didn't lose his hat!
I never got a chance to experience ATIS, but I've heard from people who rode both that my beloved If You Had Wings share a certain degree of the same atmosphere.
My uncle the gravedigger tells a similar story to the former cast member. One time he came up out of the hole he was digging and scared the half-dressed teenagers who had parked in the cemetery for privacy so badly they broke the gate speeding out.
Bryan - Agreed on the chemicals; although the ones guests brought were probably less harmful than the ones Monsanto made/makes.
Melissa - Your uncle has my kind of humor!
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