Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage

Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage
Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage in January 2015
Disneyland
Area	Tomorrowland
Status	Operating
Soft opening date	June 9, 2007
Opening date	June 11, 2007
Replaced	Submarine Voyage
General statistics
Attraction type	Undersea voyage
Designer	Walt Disney Imagineering
Theme	Finding Nemo
Music	Ed Kalnins (Inspired by the film score)
Vehicle type	Submarines
Riders per vehicle	40
Duration	13:45
Audio-Animatronics	126
Total Water	6,300,000 US gallons (24,000 m3)

Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage is an attraction located in the Tomorrowland area of Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, which opened on June 11, 2007. Based on the characters and settings of the 2003 Disney·Pixar film, Finding Nemo, it is a re-theming of the classic Submarine Voyage attraction that operated from 1959 to 1998.

The original Submarine Voyage was built in 1959 as part of the "new" Tomorrowland. The attraction was loosely based on the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, and its voyage to the North Pole in 1958. It closed on September 9, 1998. At the time, it was reported that the attraction would reopen with a new theme by 2003. On the final day of the attraction's operation, Imagineer Tony Baxter told then-Disneyland president Paul Pressler "This is one of the worst days of my life." Baxter was one of many Imagineers who championed to bring the attraction back with a new theme. One of the first attempts to resurrect the subs was to create an attraction based on Disney's 2001 animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and a mock-up was built to test the concept. However, when the film under-performed at the box office, plans for an Atlantis re-theming were shelved. The next year, an attempt was made to re-theme the attraction based on Disney's animated film Treasure Planet, but it too under-performed. During this period of uncertainty, the lagoon languished as scenery, though with the underwater track and dock still intact, it was obvious the lagoon was a defunct attraction. At one point, Disneyland executives considered getting rid of the submarines, feeling that they took up too much storage space. In response to this, then-Imagineering creative chief Marty Sklar hired a naval engineering firm to inspect the subs, and it was discovered that they had forty to fifty years of life left in them, thus saving the submarines from destruction.