Welcome to Extinct Attractions. This week, we’ll take a look back at one of the most delicious attractions to make its way into the Disney Parks.
We are now just eight days away from the opening of the Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure, just under a year after it was supposed to open. With the land, we’ll have the new Spider-Man themed attraction as well as a variety of dining experiences also primed to pop up. The thing I’m most looking forward to is Pym’s Test Kitchen, with a lot of different foods of various sizes. Everything that they’ve revealed will be available looks delicious, and while the restaurant is more of a laboratory, it got me thinking about an opening day factory attraction from the park’s past.
Disney has never been shy about utilizing corporate sponsors to help make their attractions more economical. Over the years, the sponsorships have become a bit less common, but when Disney California Adventure opened on February 8, 2001, the park was ready to take any of the funds that it could get.
Via Disney Wiki
With all that in mind, the Mission Tortilla Factory opened along with the park on that opening day, February 8, 2001. As you can see from the photo above, all of the magic of the experience was housed in a couple of gigantic silos, which held enough flour to make 408,000 corn tortillas and 390,000 flour tortillas.
Via DisUnplugged
The experience started out with a fun little preshow “hosted” by some grade school kids. While the kids were definitely actors, it was fun to see a preshow without any celebrity cameos. While the move may have simply happened because of cost cuts, the decision actually made the attraction have more of a family feel to it, especially with the animation that they used in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB0Fm3v3uSA
After the preshow, guests moved on to view a series of vignettes that were lovingly referred to as the ghost people because they all had a ghostly glow to them. It was basically some moving images of people making tortillas back in the olden days as a prep for the factory experience. It’s always important to know ones’ history before seeing how things work in today’s day and age.
Next up on the tour, guests got to see all of the glory of the tortilla making process in today’s day and age with the machine’s working and creating hundreds of tortillas every day. There were little signs all over the place that gave information about each machine and how they functioned.
After taking in all of the factory equipment, guests could visit the Demonstration Kitchen, where chefs showcased various dishes that could be made using tortillas, though unfortunately they were not for guests to consume, even for a fee. Seeing some of the pictures, the dishes did look pretty darn delicious, so it would have been pretty cool if they had a pamphlet with recipes.
There was always a fun scale that told you your weight in tortillas, so there was finally a way to reveal one’s weight without giving too much away,
Via Fanpop
But of course, the biggest highlight of the attractions was the free tortilla samples that every guest received as they finished up their tour. They were always fresh and hot and delicious. Between the Tortilla Factory and the Boudin Bakery next door, there was plenty of free food to go around, especially if you visited them three to four times a day as I was wont to do.
Personally, I enjoyed the Mission Tortilla Factory. It was a simple experience, but I am a sucker for free food plus I thought it was really cool to basically live a real life How It’s Made episode. But the real question is, was it an attraction? The jury is still out of that question, but personally I side with it being one. We’ve seen multiple walking tours considered attractions before and though this one was a bit shorter, it still counts to me.
Via Disney Parks
The Mission Tortilla Factory provided all the tortillas for the resort, so once the attraction closed on May 31, 2011, the park needed to find a new source since the new inhabitant of the space was a Ghirardelli store, which still provided some deliciousness, but a much more sweet kind.
Ten years in the park for such a simple attraction is actually quite the accomplishment, and though it was probably time for it to go, I’ll certainly miss those tortillas.
Via Disney Food Blog
As always, don’t forget to check out my interactive maps of the Disney Parks throughout the years where you can watch or learn more about all the attractions from every Disney park around the world, with Shanghai Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland added recently.
Thanks for reading and have a magical day!