Welcome to For Your Amusement, a theme park podcast that aims to exhaustively evaluate the world's most popular theme park attractions to determine if they are world-class.

I'm Ryan Bergara, and I'm Byron Marin.

And for this episode's featured attraction,

we lace up our snowshoes and give a preemptive call to our chiropractor for the Matahorn

bobsleds at Disneyland, California. As you can tell by that intro, you wasted no time in getting

to a spinal adjustment joke. The fact that this ride breaks your spine in half like Bain did Batman.

It's a lot. It's a lot. We love it, but it is a lot. Let's not pretend that it's not.

And with that, let's get into some history, huh?

As many of you viewers and listeners, probably know by now, Disneyland opens in 1955.

There's no Matterhorn yet.

However, there's a massive pile of dirt that went by the nickname Holiday Hill.

This dirt came from the construction of Sleeping Beauty's Castle.

They basically had to dig a bunch of dirt up and move it around, and it basically formed this

20-foot mountain, or I believe it was around

20 feet tall. I believe that's what I have here 20 feet tall.

20 feet tall. Confirmed 20 feet tall mountain. Walt maybe had mixed feelings at best about this pile of

dirt which may come into fun facts later. So I'm going to refrain and just say that while on a

film shoot in Switzerland, Walt Disney fell in love with the

Matterhorn Mountain, the real Matterhorn. He instructed his Imagineers to get going on a roller

coaster ride. I'm once again withholding because there is a great little fun fact that I know

you're smirking about, so I know it's there.

It's coming soon, coming soon.

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