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Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is a dark ride at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California. It is loosely based on Disney's adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows (1908), one of two segments comprising the animated package film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The ride is one of the few remaining attractions operational since the park's opening in July 1955, although the current iteration of the ride opened in 1983. Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is located in Fantasyland, a variation of the attraction also existed as an opening day attraction at Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World from 1971 until 1998.

In all versions of the attraction, guests have assumed the role of the titular Mr. Toad, recklessly careening through the English countryside and streets of London in a period motorcar before ultimately meeting demise in a railway tunnel and ending up in a tongue-in-cheek depiction of hell. The attraction, unlike other Fantasyland dark rides, is not a direct retelling of the film that it was based on. Originally envisioned as a roller coaster, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride was realized as a dark ride because Walt Disney felt as though a roller coaster might not have been appropriate for young children and the elderly.

1955 version (Disneyland)

The very first iteration of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride was the least complex out of all three. Designed by Imagineers Bill Martin, Ken Anderson, Claude Coats, and Robert A. Mattey, the version of the attraction that opened to the public along with the rest of Disneyland in July 1955 contained the simplest gags, the fewest setpieces and characters, and, with a duration of 98 seconds, was the shortest in length.

One notable quality of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride that was especially prevalent during its earliest years was the liberal use of painted plywood "flats" in its interior sets. Whereas its contemporary opening-day Fantasyland dark rides Snow White and her Adventures and Peter Pan's Flight employed three-dimensional figures and sculpts for either the majority or at least a significant quantity of their interior scenery and characters, the various scenes of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride were rendered predominantly by means of two-dimensional flats, with only a scarce presence of three-dimensional sculpts. More three-dimensional gags and scene details were added in later updates, although the attraction has always remained overwhelmingly "flat" in its presentation, despite the other Fantasyland dark rides having become considerably less so over the decades.

In 1961, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride received an assortment of new gags, scene details, and technical improvements. Among these were additional character flats (Moley, MacBadger, and a human butler in Toad Hall, as well as Ratty in front of one of the painted storefronts in the village scene and a handful of new police officers, including one on a motorcycle), new crash doors (these being a construction barricade located in the village street and multiple breakaway flats of stacked crates and kegs in the warehouse), improved crash doors in general, and fully-sculpted devils and red "rock" in the underworld scene replacing the original flats.

1983 version (Disneyland)

Guests enter a re-creation of Toad Hall, passing by artistic works commemorating characters from the film. A large mural shows the adventures of Toad and his motorcar, foreshadowing various scenes in the ride. This mural has a hidden reference to Walt Disney and his love for trains in the form of a train named "W.E.D. Rail". Guests hop aboard miniature, early 1900s (decade)-era, multicolored motorcars. The name of one of the characters from the film (Mr. Toad, Toady, Ratty, Moley, MacBadger, Cyril, Winky, or Weasel) is inscribed on each motorcar. Disembodied voices sing The Merrily Song, but it is more like the version in the film.

Some small changes were made to this version of the attraction. The fireplace effect which used to be a projection on smoke, but it got changed to a crash door due to the smoke’s timing often making it invisible, some of the character flats were replaced with different looking flats (depicting the same characters as before), and the lighting at the end of the train collision room was changed, thus making the collision less convincing.

The installation at Disneyland was manufactured by Arrow Development.

Magic Kingdom version

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride was one of the Magic Kingdom's opening day attractions on October 1, 1971. Although it was modeled after the Disneyland attraction and reused the soundtrack and various sound effects from the attraction, it had some unique characteristics that set it apart from its California counterpart. The most obvious was that the Florida incarnation had two separate boarding areas. The vehicles (in the form of jalopies) in each boarding area were on separate tracks that followed different paths, so riders would get a slightly different ride depending on where they boarded.

Like its counterpart at Disneyland, it was not a thrill ride, but it was not slow and quiet like most dark rides. It made sudden turns and often the vehicle would move at full speed towards an obstacle, which would move out of the way at the last second. At one point the vehicles on different tracks would head directly towards each other, giving the sense of an oncoming collision. It was a very stylized attraction and resembled a cartoon more than any other Disney ride. It contained highly ornate plywood characters and sets that were very reminiscent of the multiplane camerawork featured in many Disney films.

(Wikipedia)