America Sings - Closure

Closure

America Sings closed on Sunday, April 10, 1988. It closed for a few reasons, but mainly because of its waning attendance in Disneyland. By removing the attraction, it made audio animatronic figures available for Splash Mountain. Show sponsor Del Monte had already ended its sponsorship. The Carousel Theater was used as office space for ten years. During this time, the carousel theater's external appearance was unchanged. A large sign in front of the building showed Sorcerer Mickey alongside text reading, "Sorry, we're closed to imagineer a brand new attraction." For many years guests wondered what the new attraction was going to be. For a few years, during the planned 'Disney Decade' started by Michael Eisner, a new audio-animatronic show called Plectu's Fantastic Intergalactic Revue was to open. It was to have been an outer space-themed musical-variety revue featuring a troupe of Audio-Animatronics itinerant alien musicians whose spaceship has landed in Tomorrowland. The idea was part of the original "Tomorrowland 2055" plan and was planned to open around 1994. However, Disneyland Paris, which opened in 1992, ended up costing billions of dollars, so the whole "Tomorrowland 2055" plan was scrapped due to budget considerations.

America Sings was finally replaced by Innoventions, a version of the Epcot attraction of the same name, in 1998. Most of the Audio-Animatronic animals were moved to Disneyland's Splash Mountain log flume, which opened on Disneyland's 34th anniversary on July 17, 1989. In 1986, two years before America Sings officially closed, two audio-animatronic geese were taken out of the attraction. They had their "skin" removed, which left only a robotic skeleton, had their heads replaced, and were used as two talkative G2 droids in the queue to Star Tours, which would open in early 1987. Ironically, one of them (named G2-9T) still sings a modified "I've Been Working on the Railroad" (retitled "I've Been Looking at the Same Bag" in Star Tours: The Adventures Continue) As a result, the geese quartets in Acts 1 and 2 became trios until the ride ceased to operate. The rock and roll stork in the finale is now used by Imagineers for training new Animatronics programmers, acting as a final exam of sorts. The remainder of the show's Audio-Animatronics were recycled.