The Peoplemover
One of the rides scheduled to be renovated in the revamping of Tomorrowland is the Peoplemover. Some time ago, an unoccupied Peoplemover car jumped its tracks. This was the first time any such thing had happened to the ride, which nonetheless has a long history of being dangerous to idiots who climb out of it. The engineers took a look at the problem (not wanting a second occurrence, especially if the car happened to be holding guests) and decided that the changes required would require more expense than would be worth the short run before the renovation. So they closed it.
Word from Bruce, the producer of the newTomorrowland renovations, the head Imagineer over the project, is that the new name for this ride will be Rocket Rods. That's what Imagineering wants, anyway, but Marketing says absolutely not. They aren't coming up with anything else, so for now it's Rocket Rods.
After being asked this question by a regular poster to alt.disney.disneyland (the source of this bit and some others), he told about the Contemporary, Golf (now Shades of Green) and Polynesian Resorts in Florida. He said that at the time, the same thing happened: Marketing had no names. It came down to the wire, and someone just took the names written on the blueprints: Contemporary Resort, etc.
He also said that Splash Mountain had once been called Zip-a-dee-doo-dah. Michael Eisner had heard of this, and asked what the ride did. When he was told it ended with a big splashdown, he said something to the effect of: "We have all these other mountains, we need a Splash Mountain."
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