I’m just gonna say it. The Barnstormer Starring the Great Goofini is a theming wasteland. The worst at the Magic Kingdom. There’s a reason we don’t talk about great Barnstormer details here. Because there are none. It’s the Disney equivalent of wearing socks with sandals.

Goofy’s Barnstormer was the ride’s original name, back when this area was called Mickey’s Toontown Fair. It had way more theming than the current Storybook Circus incarnation. There was a cartoon barn. A W-A-C-K-Y radio station. It even had animatronics.

It was still a train wreck.

Goofy’s Barnstormer represented the first crack in the Disney armor. An off-the-shelf kiddie coaster with a sparse storyline about an octo-plane. We’ve been oscillating between awesome thrill rides and dreck like Dino-Rama ever since.

But what if everything was not as it seemed? What if — despite the sparse landscaping, the bland checkerboard tower, and the occasional stunt-themed Barnstormer detail — there were actually a few inexplicably nice touches hiding on the grounds?

Inexplicable. I don’t use that word lightly. While you might expect a fiberglass cannon and a few cut-outs of Goofy just to hit the lowest bar of theming, these other details defy explanation.

Meaning: they’re actually pretty clever.

The Busted Billboard

There are few things as fun as logic. Okay, probably most things are more fun than logic. But we always love it when some Imagineer applies real-world logic to a situation, even though every single guest would accept the illogical version without questioning it.

Logic lurks. Logic hides. It only reveals itself if you start looking for it. And most people aren’t looking for it in a kiddie coaster featuring a 6-foot talking dog.

Take this billboard, for example.

This is what passes for theming at Goofy’s Barnstormer: a cutout of the plane as Goofy crashes through it. They’ve been using the cut-out gag ever since the Toontown Fair days. Ha ha, cute. This is what happens to literally every wall when a cartoon character collides with it.

Even worse, it’s just a darn photo spot. It’s for people who aren’t even on the ride. Snap a pic of Grandma and little Johnny as they fly through. This is the only thrill ride they’re getting on today. Might as well memorialize it.

How does it look from the ride itself?

Just terrible. The back of the sign is completely unthemed. Other than the Goofy cut-out, I guess. He has actually clipped through one of the four vertical bracing beams holding up the billboard… and what’s that?

Logic says the snapped remains of the post should still be there. Therefore, somebody built it. Even though none of us would have missed it if they hadn’t. We aren’t looking for logic. We’re looking for the photo of the train passing through the billboard.

Vote for Pedro

There was a time back in 2013 where Disney was promoting the heck out of the latest release from the Pixar Cars universe. It was called — get this — Planes.

You’ve probably already forgotten it. Because Planes was not an actual Pixar movie. It began life as a Direct-To-Video picture by an offshore (aka “cheaper”) animation studio. A corporate cash-grab. It featured a breathtakingly original plot, in which an upstart racer dreams of winning the big one, and must get help from a grizzled veteran to defeat the villainous star of the racing circuit. We did not make that up (and neither did they).

We don’t want to jinx it, but it’s safe to say Disney won’t be bulldozing any essential Magic Kingdom landmarks for a Planes Land any time in the near future. But that did not stop them from going plane crazy with plush animals planes, carded action figures, remote control doohickeys, and propeller-snouted cupcakes.

Despite the hype (was there hype? Was there??), Planes is no longer on anyone’s radar (hee hee). Which is good, because Planes was not the first Disney movie to feature a talking, self-aware, winged mechanical beast. That honor belongs to Pedro, who got his very own segment in Saludos Amigos.

Pedro was a small mail plane who flew across the mountains in Chile, to near disastrous effect. One look at the cute little guy and one wonders immediately just how derivative the Planes movie can get. Pedro looks like a perfect match for that RC plane above. He also isn’t aping his plot from a previously successful series entry.

Pedro was introduced to audiences in 1942 and promptly offended Chile, apparently. They didn’t want their country represented by a little mail plane. They responded with something called Condorito, which Wikipedia informs me is Latin America’s most ubiquitous comic strip character.

This means that Pedro has been missing from Disney promotional material for more than 80 years.

Yet if you happen to be looking the right way in the Storybook Circus loading station, you may catch a Barnstormer detail sure to bring a smile to your face. It’s an old gas can sitting among the props nearby.

Barnstormer Details in the Shade

When The Barnstormer Starring the Great Goofini replaced the less-exhausting Goofy’s Barnstormer as the title, they technically overhauled the storyline. Barnstorming is now just a small part of Goofy’s act. He also rides rockets, ejects from cannons, and juggles tigers.

I guess that gave them free rein to completely bulldoze the real barn that he’s supposed to be storming.

The barn was the old queue for the ride. The Storybook Circus iteration swapped the entrance and exit, so now you board from the left instead of the right. This was not an artistic choice. Before the Fantasyland expansion, would you believe that one of the worst lines at the Magic Kingdom belonged to Dumbo? Seriously, people would rope drop it and everything.

Disney decided they wanted twice the Dumbos in Storybook Circus. To make room for a second spinner, the only decently-themed portion of Goofy’s Barnstormer got stormed to the ground (again: it was the barn).

Now people queue up for Barnstormer on the other side. Usually there’s not enough of a line to extend past the marquee. But on rare occasions the line stretches into a set of switchbacks that line the path between Storybook Circus and Tron Lightcycle Run.

If you try looking up into the blinding glare of the Florida sun, you’ll see the Ghosts of Goofy’s Past protecting you.

A canvas panel that says “Barn”, you think to yourself. That’s not worth mentioning in a post about the unsung Barnstormer details.

But what if I showed you the second panel?

Nope, still basic. Except that if you really study these panels, you’ll see that they are an exact match to the old Goofy’s Barnstormer logo. The Toontown Fair version, not the current version’s logo. Go ahead and compare to the signage in the original barn picture above.

We wonder if they salvaged an actual prop banner from Towntown Fair to create the shade tarps. We haven’t been able to locate one, so we must assume they are recreating the logo as an homage. It’s not like the Goofy’s Barnstormer logo was iconic in its own right. No one expects to see it.

And yet here it is.

Sculpted Sandbags

One of the most interesting Barnstormer details actually sits on the grounds of the Storybook Circus Railroad Station, across the path from the kiddie coaster.

At first glance, it’s more of the same. It’s a giant target on a pole. It clearly goes with the prop cannon on the other side of the sidewalk. In true Barnstormer fashion, Goofy has punctured the target, fired from the cannon by the deranged monkey sidekick. Even when you’re trying to ride the railroad, you can’t escape this cartoon concept. Goofy cut-outs are everywhere.

Why didn’t the airborne canine simply knock over the target rather than blast straight through it? After all, it’s mounted on a simple stand.

The answer, it seems, is that the pole has been weighted down with several sandbags. More of that pesky logic at play. These are of the sculpted concrete variety, similar to the sandbags found in Harambe.

The Mysterious Case of Goofy’s Windsock Pants

Okay, this one is just weird.

To fit with the airplane theme, the original load station once had a pair of Goofy’s blue pants mounted on a pole at the apex of the building, functioning as a windsock. You can see them in the picture of the barn above. In real life, windsocks are lightweight textile tubes used to help pilots check the direction of the wind. The thing on Goofy’s roof was clearly made of fiberglass and meant as decoration.

When The Barnstormer Starring the Great Goofini arrived, the windsock pants disappeared from the roof and reappeared on the marquee sign. To our discerning eye, it is not literally a repurposed prop. The new pants are smaller, with a different sculpt, and painted red.

Somebody just liked the gimmick of windsock pants, I guess. Can you blame them? It’s a funny gag and makes for an easy decoration.

However, when making this post, we started to realize something strange. In some pictures, the pants are flying off to the left. In some, they are flying to the right. We’ve even found pictures where the pants are pointed straight out.

Is it possible that the windsock pants are more than just decoration? Are these things actually functional?