Journey into the imagination

OK i have to try to remember this ride. I was young when this ride went down and then destroyed. The only thing I remember was the scary part in the middle and the opening scene. So my question is what was it like. Did it used to be longer? What used to be upstairs? (what I mean by this question is there are stairs in the mechandise shop, so where do they lead to) What did the line look like? What where the scenes like from the ride itself? The reason i ask this is because i remember that I loved this ride, but I was so young when they took it out I just remember a couple of scenes. All I know is whats there now sucks compared to what used to be there from what I remember.

YouTube has several home movie versions of it. Here's one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rczkFwE5UIc

The rub is that since these were filmed in the 1980s with consumer camcorders the quality is pretty crummy.

As for the original queue, there was nothing to it, just a series of switchbacks in the loading room. In the middle of the cavernous ride loading area was a circular stairway that wrapped around an elevator for direct access to the upstairs playground.

What was upstairs? A series of interactive exhibits, early generations of some of the things that are now there when you exit the ride (like the room where you step on areas that trigger sound effects, and where you controlled instruments). There was also a corridor with a rainbow of lights that would follow you as you moved along. Oh, and there was also a green screen type of attraction where a few guests would be incorporated into a brief segment with Figment and Dreamfinder.

I was just on this attraction two weeks ago and it still pains me to see the "improvements" they made to this ride. This is version three they have now which is better than version two but still sucks in comparison to the original version.

The original just seemed to capture 'imagination' wonderfully and I felt it was an attraction that I had to see several times on each visit to WDW. Surely attendance couldn't have been as bad on it when they did the first rehab as it is now.

I found this video that compares version one with number three:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmOcYfzZ4x4&feature=related

I hope this works, I haven't had much luck pasting links.

I've read that the pavillion's sponsor had an agreement that stipulated it be regularly updated, to keep traffic flowing.

Instead, the opposite happened.

Whoops.

Of course, this could be totally bogus, but I'm never one to let the facts get in the way of a good story.