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Disney Was Once Home To The World’s Scariest Ride

Aliens, darkness, and blood

Grant Piper
5 min readJan 26, 2023
(Wikipedia)

Many years ago, a strange thing happened. My dad emerged from a Disney ride with two kids in tow, both of them screaming in terror. My mom immediately asked what happened, and he informed her, matter of factly, that the ride we had all just gone on was a little too scary. I was around 7, and my sister was around 5. The ride was called the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter (Disney capitalized terror, not I), and it was a short-lived ride that terrorized children for years before Disney finally had to throw in the towel and pull the plug.

ExtraTERRORestrial combined state-of-the-art animatronics, visual effects, and a dark story to create one of the most realistic and terrifying experiences in their history. The ride focused on a new teleportation technology that would beam people across the solar system with the press of a button. It was located in Tomorrowland (my favorite section of Disney World) and enticed visitors to experience a “sensory thriller” created by Disney imagineers and George Lucas.

So what made the ride so freaking scary? It strapped you in, trapped you in complete darkness, and then literally murdered people in front of you.

The Experience

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Grant Piper
Grant Piper

Written by Grant Piper

Professional writer. Amateur historian. Husband, father, Christian.

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