Someone once defined a boat as "A hole in the water, into which one pours money." Disney prefers to pour guests into their holes in the water, and have been doing since their attractions at the World's Fair, but why, and indeed, how?

In the early days of attraction building, reliable, high-capacity ride vehicles were difficult to achieve, the best solution being chains of smaller vehicles. However, this then leads to problems with maintenance of the engines of said vehicles, and the tracks on which they run.

As design work began on the sponsored attractions for the 1964-65 World's Fair, it became clear that the rides would need to have a high capacity in order to meet the projected demand, and the previous walk-through and ride-through systems were unsuitable for scaling up.

As usual, Imagineers found a simple solution - make the track a pool of water, and use large boats as the vehicles. This method was first used in It's A Small World, but proved so successful that the Pirates wax museum in Disneyland was scrapped, and rebuilt using the same technology to make Pirates of the Caribbean. Later still, the relatively inexpensive system was used in EPCOT in Living With The Land, while also giving the Mexico and Norway pavilions their own rides, El Rio de Tiempo and Maelstrom respectively. Even Splash Mountain uses part of this system to move the logs around outside of the splash zones.

El Rio del Tiempo boats can carry 16 passengers at once, with a capacity of over 1650 guests per hour

 

The system itself is fairly simple. Logically, there are two ways to move a boat through water: propel the boat, or propel the water. In order to reduce maintenance burdens (and costs), the boats themselves do not feature any kind of engine. Instead, strategically placed propulsion pumps (much like the ones that circulate water in jacuzzis or swimming pools) generate a gentle current, which pushes the boats along the attraction. The waterways are designed with guide rails that help steer the boats in the right direction, and, if necessary, backstage, out of service.

El Rio del Tiempo´s guide rails and current jets move the boats in the right direction

Although this system works well once the attraction is underway, loading and unloading guests, and timing special effects cannot be done easily. For loading and unloading, the boat is supported on a conveyor belt, lifting it out of the water and providing a stable platform. As for triggering effects, infrared beams can be set up across the water, which are then broken by the boat as it passes.

A peek at the conveyor belt in the load/unload area of El Rio del Tiempo

OK, that explains the 'gentle' boat rides, but the more technically sophisticated attractions (Maelstrom, Splash Mountain) are going to take a little more work...

Although it may be hard to think of Maelstrom and Splash Mountain in the same way as Small World, there are some similarities. When traveling through the 'level' sections of these rides, you are being propelled by similar pumps to those in the older boat rides. Also, the narration and effects are still being triggered by infrared sensors. However, when it comes to traveling up or down hill, this requires the use of chain lifts, conveyor belts and standard roller coaster track (indeed, the downhill sections of Splash Mountain don't need water to operate, it's there purely to hide the rails the logs roll down). For safety, thesezones are controlled by multiple sensor sets, at the start and end of the area in question to make sure that another boat isn't sent out directly into the back of one leaving the zone. This is often the cause of breakdowns in these attractions, as a failure to activate these sensors will lead to the motion of the logs being stopped by deactivating chain lifts, and physically blocking passageways.

Hopefully this gives some insight into how the internal fleets sail, although by way of a freebie (as they probably won't merit a full article here) Jungle Cruise boats, and the Mark Twain Riverboat have their own engines, but run on a rail below the water surface, while the old Keelboats, Rafts and Canoes were totally free-floating.

Photos by Bill Iadonisi