The History of ExtraTERRORestrial: Alien Encounter

The very first episode of Defunctland discusses the history of ExtraTERRORestrial: Alien Encounter. The episode is introduced by Kevin under the conceit that he will be resurrecting the ride for his amusement park that will consist of attractions that are no longer operating . In the end of the episode he directs viewers to go to the defunct website theperj.com where he discuses where the remaining parts of the attraction exist, how he is going to get them and where they will be placed in Defunctland Park. This is Kevin's least favorite episode.

### Summary

Kevin begins the episode with a brief introduction announcing the launch of Defunctland: a video series in which he will explore defunct and abandoned theme park attractions with the eventual goal of recreating them all within a virtual theme park bearing the same name.

The episode then shifts into a rundown of *ExtraTERRORestrial: Alien Encounter* and its tumultuous history. Kevin explains how the attraction's life began with the machinations of recurring antagonist Michael Eisner during his leadership of the Walt Disney company that began in 1984. When Michael took his 63 year old teenage son Breck on a tour of the parks when he was first given the title of CEO, Michael noticed that Breck seemed unimpressed by the largely child-oriented attractions that populated the park at the time, which led the burgeoning Grand Inquisitor of the Disney corporation to conclude that more mature and thrilling experiences needed to be added in order to better appeal to the teenage and adult demographics. But instead of simply plopping down a series of rollercoasters and calling it a day, Eisner wanted to create something more in line with the broader Disney tradition and add exciting and intense shows to the parks.

Given that George Lucas was already collaborating with the company on a number of attractions such as Star Tours, Eisner thought to add another science fiction property to the park for a new and chilling experience - Ridley Scott's *Alien*. Eisner's original pitch essentially involved an experience similar to *Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin*, only with the riders in complete darkness shooting realistic weapons at various bloodthirsty creatures from the film. The head Imagineers of the time absolutely hated this idea, but a number of them proposed to re-work the idea into a stage-show style attraction that was to replace the aging "Mission to Mars" in Tomorrowland. However, George Lucas was still skeptical of the idea (particularly the part about securing the rights to *Alien*) when he found out about it, and so he convinced Eisner to drop the franchise tie-in and appoint him to assist the Imagineers in crafting the experience.

The attraction first ran in front of test audiences in December 1994, and they found the show terrifying, even complaining that it was too scary for the park. However, Eisner still deemed it not intense enough and demanded it be retooled yet again. In summer 1995, *ExtraTERRORestrial: Alien Encounter* finally opened to the public. Kevin then delves into the actual experience of the attraction as well as its storied in-universe lore.

In 2004, the attraction was closed and replaced with *Stitch's Great Escape*, which Kevin notes as essentially being a kid-friendly version of *ExtraTERRORestrial*, complete with the same tube-encased animatronic and auditorium-seating setup. Although the actual reasoning for the original attraction's closure is unknown, Kevin speculates that park-goers complaining that the ride was too jarringly scary for the Magic Kingdom coupled with the success of *Lilo & Stitch* prompted the retooling. Kevin also suggests sex offender charges against Jeffery Jones, who starred in the attraction's pre-show videos, were also a contributing factor.

Kevin then closes the episode by directed viewers to ThePerj.com for more information on the other rides he wishes to resurrect for Defunctland and the means by which he will reconstruct them in virtual reality. The website has gone defunct [laugh track] since the episode's release, instead redirected to the also now-defunct Defunctland Wordpress blog.