Matterhorn Movie in the Works???

From Borys Kit on The Hollywood Reporter:

Disney is developing an adventure movie project inspired by the Matterhorn ride and has set Jason Dean Hall to pen the script. Justin Springer (Tron Legacy, Prom) is producing the project, which has a working title of The Hill.

The Matterhorn, also known as the Matterhorn Bobsleds, is part of Disneyland’s Fantasyland section. Opened June 1959, the elaborate ride was inspired by Walt Disney‘s desire for a toboggan-themed roller coaster as well as thoughts he had after an extended trip to Switzerland, the site of the famed mountain. The ride, a centerpiece of the park, was refurbished in 1978, with one of the upgrades being the addition of three automatronic Abominable Snowmen (aka Yetis) who growl at riders.

The idea behind The Hill is to do a thrilling, fast-paced movie centering on five young adventure seekers who, for mysterious reasons, are called to the top of the mountain and encounter a Yetis on the journey down.

You can read the rest of the article Here.

Boats, Cars, & Segways

Here are a few of the latest Disneyland Park rumors from our friends over at Screamscape:

10/3/08 – The latest rumor on the proposed new Matterhorn cars claims that any plans to retire the current trains in favor of a new fleet will have to wait until 2011 at this point, as it was not approved for the next year’s budget.

9/29/08 – According to a reader this past Saturday was the last day for the Segway experience in Innoventions at Disneyland. Apparently this was never a sponsor driven display and just something the park put in as filler while building the Asimo and Dream Home projects.

10/3/08 – A few weeks ago I mentioned that Pirates had been apparently testing out a few new prototype boats under consideration for next year’s rehab. According to the latest rumor this latest boat design sounds like a disaster and may have already been canned. Apparently the prototypes may have been an off-shoot of the new It’s A Small World boat design (see pictures below), as they were said to look quite similar. The biggest flaw up front was the fact that these boats seemed to have molded “bucket seats” instead of plain bench seats, along with individual hand-grips in all the rows except the front row. The seats were said to be much too small and only allowed for four-across seating. From the sound of things, these boats may have been sent back to the drawing board for a complete redesign.

10/6/08 – I’ve got a quick update on the new prototype Pirate boats. It seems that the comments about the poorly designed prototype boat at pirates was in reference to another test boat dropped into the water very briefly in early 2008. The new prototype boat(s) that was tested more recently will not have the bucket seats or hand grips that were talked about in the last rumor, but will have contoured seat backs just like the new small world boats. They will leave the bench-seating design intact and will actually allow for one extra passenger per boat. The current boats seat only three in rows 1 and 6, and four-across in 2-5. The new boats have a wider Row 1 that will allow for four-across seating as well.

50th Anniversary Monorail Pin

The What’s HapPINing official Disney pin blog put up a preview of a pin being release next year, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Monorail system:

It should be safe to say that Disneyland will somehow be celebrating the 50th anniversary of not only the Monorail, but also the Submarine Voyage & the Matterhorn next summer.