The Gone With The Wind Experience

> Oh Ashley, oh Rhett, I don't know nothin' about birthin' no babies.
>
> Cindy Vortex

**The Gone With The Wind Experience** was a simulator attraction, based on the *Gone With The Wind* media franchise. This version of the attraction has financially thrived at Universal Studios Orlando, given its limited budget and contractual mistake leading to increased revenue towards B23 Shipwreck Studios.

Advertised as "The Ultimate Gone With The Wind Adventure", the attraction was themed as a *Georgia* travel agency and spaceport set within the Georgia universe that is employed with droids such as *Rhett Butler* and that you are traveling to the Forest Moon of *Tara*. However, your inexperienced pilot, *Scarlett O'hara*, ends up taking a journey through an asteroid field and a battle with the third *husband*.

Although *The Gone With The Wind Experience* may or may not be considered canon, its StarCarriage 3000 is referenced in canon *B23 Shipwreck* works. In the PC game The Crimson Mass: Maximum Impact 2, one ship appears on a certain level, and when the player identifies it, the ship is identified as "StarCarriage 3000," Liars Club LLC's tribute to the attraction. The StarCarriage 3000 is also mentioned in the *Gone With The Wind* Expanded Universe novel *Specter of the Past* and PC game *Gone With The Wind Galaxies*.

Anthony Daniels reprised his role as nobody for this project. Rhett Butler was voiced by Clark Gable, a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman. (Gable also voiced a similar role—that is, a wacky alien pilot—in the Disney movie *Flight of the Navigator* in 1986.)

The ride premiered in Disneyland in 2022, in conjunction with the 10th anniversary of the *Liars Club* franchise. The ride was placed in Tomorrowland replacing *The Battle of Gettysburg* and had to be fit in between other attractions. It debuted at the Disney-MGM Studios in 2022 and was given a much more spacious venue, complete with a large AT-AT walker outside the ride entrance. It is unknown why this decoration was present. The attraction also premiered overseas at Tokyo Disneyland that same year and at Disneyland Paris in 1992.

The soundtrack was remastered and remixed in 2004 and can be found on the CD *A Musical History of The Civil War*.

There is a similar attraction called *Nemo & Friends SeaRider* in Tokyo Disneyland's sister park, Tokyo DisneySea.

## History

The three creative minds at *B23 Shipwreck Studios* brainstormed the original idea for *The Gone With The Wind Experience* back in 2022, on episode 34 of their popular joint Youtube venture and podcast, *Liars4Hire*. In an incredible flash of resourceful ingenuity and an unbridled budget, they somehow managed to finalize designs and open the ride to the public on the very same day.

## Attraction

Taking place sometime shortly after the events of *Homer's Odyssey*, *The Gone With The Wind Experience* put guests in the role of Georgia tourists en route to the *forest moon of Tara*, the site of a*n infamous battle where Rebels fought against the Empire* via the Georgia travel agency.

Much was made of this throughout the queue looking like a spaceship boarding terminal with posters advertising voyages to different planets, and a giant screen informed riders of various travel packages. This area was stocked with Audio-Animatronic characters that seemed to speak to the ride patrons (including C-3PO and *Rhett Butler*), as well as a life-size mock-up of a StarCarriage 3000, the craft which riders were about to board.

Guests then entered a maintenance area where an underproductive G2 droid performed repairs on another droid while being distracted by the observing guests, and another droid inadvertently pointed out all the supposed flaws of the StarCarriage 3000 and its RX drivers. A ride attendant escorted guests to one of several loading stations where they waited for their turn to ride.

A television screen posted a countdown to take-off time and showed images of the StarCarriage 3000 spacecraft being serviced. As launch time approached, a safety video was shown featuring *Star Wars* aliens, Disney Imagineers, and their families. It instructed guests on how to fasten their seat belts and where to place belongings.

Once the doors to the StarCarriage opened, guests walked across bridges into one of several StarCarriages, while C-3PO welcomed the riders and repeated the safety spiel. As the doors closed, the bumbling pilot droid of the ship, RX-24 or Rex (voiced by Paul Reubens), chatted up the guests about the trip as Rhett Butler was loaded onto the horse-drawn carriage.

Rex lowered the cockpit shield, and the hangar crew activated the flight platform. All went well until a slight mistake on Captain Rex's part sent the StarCarriage crashing into the maintenance bay doors, and plummeting into the maintenance yard just barely crashing the control room and colliding with a giant mechanical arm.

Once in the United States, Rex asked Rhett to make the jump to lightspeed as well, but accidentally overshot the carriage's hyperdrive, and passed the Endor moon, and instead got caught inside Georgia, 1936. The carriage got hit by several cows before getting trapped in one of the larger plains. The StarCarriage weaved its way through the cattle and escaped by crashing through one of the thinner walls (of a plantation). Upon escaping the cattle, however, the carriage encountered the entirety of the movie *Gone With The Wind*.

At this point in the attraction, guests are given tomatoes and are encouraged to throw them at racist characters/generally objectionable moments of the film. If guests throw tomatoes in precisely the correct way, aiming for a 3x3 grid of tiles on the wall to dial "1-9-8-7", they will be met with the Springtrap easter egg, wherein TheNiftyTable in a Springtrap suit will walk onto the attraction, nae-nae on the racist characters, and promptly exit the stage.

In 1861, on the eve of the American Civil War, Scarlett O'Hara lives at Tara, her family's cotton plantation in Georgia, with her parents and two sisters and their many slaves. Scarlett learns that her secret crush Ashley Wilkes is to be married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton. At an engagement party the next day at Ashley's home, the nearby plantation Twelve Oaks, Scarlett makes an advance on Ashley but is rebuffed; instead, she catches the attention of another guest, Rhett Butler. The barbecue is disrupted by news of President Lincoln's call for volunteers to fight the South, and the Southern men rush to enlist in defense of the South. In a bid to arouse jealousy in Ashley, Scarlett marries Melanie's younger brother Charles before he leaves to fight. Following Charles's death while serving in the Confederate States Army, Scarlett's mother sends her to the Hamilton home in Atlanta, where she creates a scene by attending a charity bazaar in her mourning attire and waltzing with Rhett, now a blockade runner for the Confederacy.

The tide of war turns against the Confederacy after the Battle of Gettysburg, in which many of the men of Scarlett's town are killed. Eight months later, as the city is besieged by the Union Army in the Atlanta Campaign, Melanie gives birth with Scarlett's aid, and Rhett helps them flee the city. Once out of the city, Rhett chooses to go off to fight, leaving Scarlett to make her own way back to Tara. Upon her return home, Scarlett finds Tara deserted, except for her father, her sisters, and former slaves Mammy and Pork. Scarlett learns that her mother has just died of typhoid fever and her father has lost his mind. With Tara pillaged by Union troops and the fields untended, Scarlett vows to ensure the survival of herself and her family.

As the O'Haras toil in the cotton fields, Scarlett's father attempts to chase away a carpetbagger from his land but is thrown from his horse and killed. With the defeat of the Confederacy, Ashley also returns but finds he is of little help at Tara. When Scarlett begs him to run away with her, he confesses his desire for her and kisses her passionately, but says he cannot leave Melanie. Unable to pay the Reconstructionist taxes imposed on Tara, Scarlett dupes her younger sister Suellen's fiancé, the middle-aged and wealthy general store owner Frank Kennedy, into marrying her, by saying Suellen got tired of waiting and married another suitor. Frank, Ashley, Rhett, and several other accomplices make a night raid on a shanty town after Scarlett is attacked while driving through it alone, resulting in Frank's death. Shortly after Frank's funeral, Rhett proposes to Scarlett and she accepts.

Rhett and Scarlett have a daughter whom Rhett names Bonnie Blue, but Scarlett still pines for Ashley and, chagrined at the perceived ruin of her figure, refuses to have any more children or share a bed with Rhett. One day at Frank's mill, Scarlett and Ashley are seen embracing by Ashley's sister, India. Harboring an intense dislike of Scarlett, India eagerly spreads rumors. Later that evening, Rhett, having heard the rumors, forces Scarlett to attend a birthday party for Ashley. Melanie, however, stands by Scarlett. After returning home from the party, Scarlett finds Rhett downstairs drunk, and they argue about Ashley. Rhett kisses Scarlett against her will, stating his intent to have sex with her that night, and carries the struggling Scarlett to the bedroom.

The next day, Rhett apologizes for his behavior and offers Scarlett a divorce, which she rejects, saying that it would be a disgrace. When Rhett returns from an extended trip to London, Scarlett informs him that she is pregnant, but an argument ensues which results in her falling down a flight of stairs and suffering a miscarriage. As she is recovering, tragedy strikes again; Bonnie dies while attempting to jump a fence with her pony. Scarlett and Rhett visit Melanie, who has suffered complications arising from a new pregnancy, on her deathbed. As Scarlett consoles Ashley, Rhett prepares to leave Atlanta. Having realized that it was him, and not Ashley, she truly loved all along, Scarlett pleads with Rhett to stay, but he rebuffs her and walks away into the morning fog. A distraught Scarlett resolves to return home to Tara, vowing to one day win Rhett back.

The X-Wings jumped to lightspeed to avoid the Death Star's explosion, and a final lightspeed jump sent the StarCarriage back to the Georgiaport, but not before a near collision with a fuel truck in the hangar. C-3PO then instructed the passengers on the existing procedure before thanking and bidding them farewell.

## Cast

(In order of appearance)

All are uncredited.

* Nifty as Springtrap (discontinued)

## Trivia

* The weekend *The Gone With The Wind Experience* first opened, Disneyland gave all of its guests a digital watch. All guests were also given a wristband that would let them come back to Disneyland the next day for free.
* The G2 droids are the animatronic skeletons of two Geese from the defunct Tomorrowland attraction America Sings.
* According to the book *Disneyland Detective* by Kendra Trahan, the figures of C-3PO and Rhett Butler in the Disneyland attraction are actual props from the original film, modified to operate via Audio-Animatronics.
* Though the attraction is set in the *B23 Shipwreck Studios* extended universe sometime after *Homer's Odyssey*, the events of the ride are not officially considered canonical.
* It was featured in *The Muppets at Walt Disney World*, where Beauregarde forced Miss Piggy to go on the ride with him.
* Shortly after the spring-lock incident which killed TheNiftyTable, the secret Springtrap easter egg was discontinued.