'Burn this ride to the ground': The worst, most hated attraction in Disney history

That day, Princess Diana died in a car accident. Her tragic death was partly attributed to the alleged presence of paparazzi pursuing the vehicle.

Overnight, Superstar Limo was rendered incredibly tasteless. The ride plot that Eisner originally approved was this: You, the titular superstar, were being picked up by your limo at Los Angeles International Airport. Eisner himself came on a video screen and warned you that your huge movie contract with Disney wasn’t signed yet. In order to seal the deal, you had to zip through L.A. traffic, avoiding the paparazzi, and arrive at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to meet Eisner.

What followed was a high-speed chase through the city’s most iconic landmarks. Upon arrival, Eisner would inform you that, sadly, you’d been caught by unscrupulous cameras and the contract was void. Guests would then exit up the Chinese Theatre red carpet and into a gift shop, where photos of themselves snapped on the ride, superimposed on tabloids, were available for sale.

Disney knew the concept was unsalvageable. So they suggested a few alternatives, among them the Hollywood Tower of Terror drop ride. But due to Eisner’s over-ambitious theme park expansions around the world, funds were running short for California Adventure. Without the attraction, though, there would be no opening day ride in the Hollywood Pictures Backlot. They had to fix Superstar Limo.

The fix was unbelievably, unimaginably bad.

The first thing to go was the “chase” element. It had to become a slow ride. Rich, intricate detail is the hallmark of Disneyland’s dark rides like Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean. Guests have too much to look at, so despite their slow speeds, the attractions stay interesting and fresh with each ride. Superstar Limo’s Hollywood sights and gags that looked great going by at speed suddenly looked awful at a snail’s pace. So the Disney Imagineers decided to pack it full of insider jokes.

They did this in part by adding celebrities. But due to budget constraints, they only used likenesses of celebrities who already had contracts with Disney. The mishmash of cameos included Joan Rivers, Cher, Jackie Chan, Regis Philbin, Tim Allen, Cindy Crawford, Drew Carey, and then-couple Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. Instead of lifelike animatronics, Disney went with cheap figures. Regis popped out of the “Bauble Room” waving a stack of cash. Drew Carey rocked back and forth, holding Hollywood star maps.

"You end up with Princess Diana dying right midway while the project is being installed, and suddenly paparazzi are, like, 'That's a really bad theme,'" Walt Disney Imagineering Chief Creative Executive Bruce Vaughn said in the Disney Plus docuseries "The Imagineering Story." "... You're almost done, what are you gonna do? So now it turns into, 'you're gonna be a star.'"

"It just didn't work," Vaughn added.

About the only joke that was cut was a sign mimicking the DreamWorks logo. Instead, it read: DreamJerks. The reference was to Eisner’s ongoing feud with Jeffrey Katzenberg. Once co-workers at Disney, the pair engaged in a bitter power struggle in the 1990s that eventually led to Katzenberg being forced to resign. Katzenberg then founded DreamWorks.

The other element that went by the wayside was Eisner himself. He was replaced by a sleazy Hollywood agent, cigar and all. Although Eisner reportedly wanted his image removed because it no longer suited the cartoony ride, who could blame him for wanting his face nowhere near Superstar Limo?

During the 2001 media previews for California Adventure, the once-enthusiastic Eisner massively undersold Superstar Limo to the assembled media.

"The other attractions are high-tech," he said. "This one is low-tech."

That was probably the nicest thing one could say about it. From opening day on Feb. 8, 2001, Superstar Limo was the subject of near-universal revulsion. The New York Times charitably called it "probably the schlockiest attraction" in the park while the Longview Daily News in Washington state went straight for the jugular.

"The space would be better devoted to something more entertaining, such as an Audioanimatronic dentist doing root canals on all Imagineers who came up with the idea for Superstar Limo," the reviewer wrote. It was given one star in their ride-rating system: "Burn this ride to the ground and start over."

Guests agreed. The look and feel of the ride was undeniably cheap — nowhere near the usual Disney standard — and the jokes made no sense to kids, were often too inside-baseball for adults and, more than anything, deeply unfunny.

By the fall, Imagineers were already talking about re-theming the ride. At the time, the company’s Disney stores across the nation were doing a massive design overhaul. As a result, they had hundreds of character figurines. One briefly floated concept was Goofy’s Superstar Limo, packed full of these discarded figurines. But after 9/11, momentum for any changes petered out.

Not even a year after opening, Superstar Limo closed in January 2002. The next year, Disney was in the process of acquiring the rights to Jim Henson’s Muppets. Miss Piggy’s Superstar Limo seemed a natural fit, but the acquisition process went too slow. That idea, too, went by the wayside and Superstar Limo remained shuttered.

Finally, in 2005, it reopened as Monsters, Inc.: Mike and Sulley to the Rescue!, themed after the Pixar hit. It was a fairly inexpensive redo and, as such, a remarkable amount of Superstar Limo lives on in the attraction. The exterior and queue are almost identical, with just posters and accessories swapped out. The sparkly purple limos were repainted as taxi cabs. And, most alarmingly, the celebrities are still there.

Because they're now decked out in hazmat suits, you wouldn't know it at a glance. But Regis Philbin, Jackie Chan and other stars are now hidden beneath new skins, masquerading as monsters in Monstropolis.

For any guest who saw their original form, however, this version is a vast improvement.

Katie Dowd is the SFGATE managing editor. Email her: katie.dowd@sfgate.com | Twitter: @katiedowd