Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
Race through the diamond mine from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on a swaying family coaster.
“We dig-dig-dig-dig dig-dig-dig-dig dig the whole day through…”
Towards the back of Fantasyland, in a spot that splits foot traffic in an unappealing way, you will find the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (no apostrophe is used), a hot commodity among guests and an attraction that usually wields a queue that has one of the longest wait times in the entire park. If you do not have the Lightning Lane option, your best options are to get to the attraction when the park first opens or head to it either during or right after the evening’s fireworks.
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is interesting in that it really doesn’t have too large of a footprint, just enough to meet its needs – and you can rest assured that Imagineers took painstaking care to use every square inch of that area to their best advantage.
After entering the queue and taking in some of the shiny lights and activities to keep your mind busy, you are loaded onto “mine train” cars that are capable of swiveling from side to side provided with the right amount of G-forces. The coaster itself is fairly tame – a notch down from the intensity of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, though most of the turns are tighter and there are quite a few of them due to that limited real estate previously mentioned. The surprise comes about halfway through the ride when your train slows down and enters the actual mine where the dwarfs are excavating precious jewels from out of the earth. The Audio-Animatronics of the dwarfs have a neat little twist in each figure where their expressions are projected onto the surface of their faces. The effect is eye-catching and a little disturbing as the herky-jerky motions of other figures around the park have been reduced to almost nothing.
Behind the Schemes:
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is an exciting creation from Dutch amusement ride manufacturer, Vekoma – a company that has been around since 1926 and is famous worldwide for their expertise in constructing family coasters along with more aggressive rides as well. This was hardly their first rodeo.
This is not Fantasyland’s first attraction based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. What is now Princess Fairytale Hall was once home to the dark ride, Snow White’s Scary Adventures, which lasted from the park’s opening in 1971 to early summer of 2012. Some of the figures, including the dwarfs and vultures, were saved and installed in their new home as a nod to the past of yet another classic Disney attraction whose time had come to an end.
If your little princes or princesses are excited to see Snow White, be forewarned that she only makes a brief appearance in a party scene at the end of the attraction; this scene also features the Evil Queen but isn’t nearly as frightening as in Snow White’s Scary Adventures. Kids shouldn’t have a problem with this development as they will likely be focused on the characters dancing and not on who’s knocking at the front door.
Reality Check:
This attraction features the Snow White standard, “Heigh-Ho,” a song originally released in 1938 that managed to hit the charts for nearly three months. Not bad for a song from a groundbreaking new film that was not live action.
The American Film Institute named Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the greatest animated American film of all time.
The eastern half of the Magic Kingdom’s parking lot used to be named after dwarfs. Lots were called Sleepy, Dopey, Happy, Grumpy, Sneezy, and Bashful. Unofficial parking lot tram spiels explained that there was no Doc because “that’s where you park the boats.”
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