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Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is an indoor/outdoor mine train roller coaster located at
Disneyland Park at the
Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. Designed by
Imagineer Tony Baxter and ride design engineer Bill Watkins, the concept for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad came from Baxter's work on Imagineer
Marc Davis's cocept for the Western River Expedition in
Magic Kingdom. The original expansion's plans looked like an enormous plateau that was to contain several rides, one of which would have been a mine train roller coaster. The concept as a whole was deemed too expensive, though, in light of the
1973 construction and opening of the
Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. Baxter then suggested going ahead with the mine train as its own attraction, separate from the rest of the axed expansion., but it was decided to have the attraction built first at
Disneyland. It opened on
September 2,
1979 in Disneyland's
Frontierland. On
January 7,
2013, Disneyland closed the ride for an extensive refurbishment that included a new track, trains, scenery, and new ending featuring special effects such as projection mapping and smoke effects. The attraction reopened on
March 17,
2014. The new track was fabricated by
Dynamic Structures, the company that had previously rehauled the coaster track in
Space Mountain.
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