Houston, we have a problem! While the Flying Saucers attraction was Disneyland’s futuristic answer to bumper cars, floating Guests across a cushion of air, the attraction constantly had problems and was often breaking down. Technicians continuously tried to keep it optimally working, but even in the land of Tomorrow, it proved to be too much of a problem and by 1966, the Flying Saucers touched down for the last time. Not every aspect of the attraction was a headache, however… Disneyland’s vehicle wiz, Bob Gurr, recently reminisced, “Aero Development came up with the idea of these valves. Aero Development, up in Mountain View, was absolutely key to a lot of things we did. They figured the whole thing out and they had a temporary body. And then Walt gave me the job to design a production body so that was just one of those quick art direction jobs where I made a rendering of it, and then I made one or two drawings of it and that was it. It was dead simple. That car had no moving parts. It was a wonderful thing to design. No moving parts.”
