Disneyland is a kingdom of illusions. Forced perspective makes small buildings appear grander. Special paint colors hide eyesores in plain sight. Disney Imagineers company lingo for theme park creatives are the best in the business at keeping reality from creeping into guests’ consciousness.

But there is a glaring exception: a ride, dead now for nearly 25 years, that still looms large and ugly above all of Tomorrowland.

Rocket Rods was billed as the highlight of Disneyland’s much-touted 1998 Tomorrowland redo. Then-Disney head Michael Eisner derisively referred to the outdated area as “Yesterdayland,” and its attractions were certainly worse for wear. Guests mostly popped into the land to ride Space Mountain, then walked back out to other parts of the park.

One of the aging Tomorrowland rides was the PeopleMover. Although now mourned as a classic piece of lost Disneyland nostalgia, in the late 1990s, few were clamoring to ride it. The slow-moving vehicles chugged along on tracks above Tomorrowland, occasionally passing through the show buildings of other attractions, like Space Mountain and Star Tours. It was sweet, relaxing and, in Eisner’s estimation, way too boring.

“As a type A person, I wanted something faster than the People Mover,” he once told the LA Times.

The solution was Rocket Rods, the fastest attraction ever built in Disneyland to that point. Using the PeopleMover’s track, the serene, 16-minute ride became a 2.5-minute race around Tomorrowland. With a max speed of 35 mph, it was billed by Disney as the public transportation of tomorrow. “Instead of relying on huge trains or subways, the transportation of the future will look like the Rocket Rods thrill ride,” Disneyland’s press release boasted.

When asked by the LA Times how she felt about this bold proclamation, Southern California Regional Rail Authority chair Sarah Catz was magnanimous.

“The People Mover was kind of boring,” she said. “I’m not sad at all. That new ride sounds fun.”

It was. Kind of.

When the “Tomorrowland 2055” renovation opened in May 1998, guests were underwhelmed. Instead of a sleek, cool future, Disneyland went with a red and gold color theme that felt dated even then. Michael Jackson’s star power in the Captain EO show was swapped for the cute but hokey “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience” attraction. Innoventions, which was going into the old Carousel of Progress building, wasn’t ready in time for the opening. At the land’s entrance sat the new Astro Orbiter. The Times called it a “64-foot-high hookah pipe.”

And then there were the rockets. Guests loaded five at a time into an open-air vehicle. Accompanied by loud whining and futuristic space sounds, the vehicles circled around the land. Although it could go relatively fast on straightaways, frequent forays into indoor sections slowed the cars to a crawl and sometimes even a full stop.

In what can now only be read as a bad omen, racing legend Mario Andretti joined Mickey Mouse for one of the first trips around Tomorrowland. The ride had to be delayed significantly while Andretti struggled to secure his seat belt.

Almost immediately, Rocket Rods started breaking down. Although guests generally liked the ride, it rarely felt worth its very long wait, and the constant breakdowns didn’t help matters. Less than a month after it opened, Disney officials announced the ride was going down for repairs.

“Rather than take it down piecemeal we thought it best to shut the ride down so that we can do the whole thing at once,” a Disney spokesperson said.

Disney was cagey about Rocket Rods’ problems, but rumors were circulating among employees. One of its stress points came from a cost-cutting measure. Of the $100 million allocated for the Tomorrowland renovation, about $20 million was set aside for Rocket Rods. The decision to use the old PeopleMover tracks to cut costs was calamitous.

Because the tracks were made for a slow-moving attraction, it didn’t have banked curves. This meant that every time a Rocket Rods vehicle slowed down, it had to slam on the brakes instead of decelerating gradually to get around a corner. This was apparently leading to axle problems and overheating. The wear and tear on the ride vehicles was untenable.

Although Disney said the closure would last about five weeks, the Rocket Rods shutdown went on for months. It was a disastrous time for the park at large, which was in the thick of the Paul Pressler cost-cutting era. Now remembered as one of Disneyland’s most reviled executives, when Pressler ran the park he was tasked with trimming operating expenses. Guests complained of long lines, “shoddy maintenance” and rides that felt barely open; the Enchanted Tiki Room, for example, was only open from noon to 6 p.m. every day.

In October 1999, Rocket Rods finally reopened. In an attempt to quell complaints about long lines, a new pilot program from Disney World called FastPass was introduced at Disneyland that year. For the first time, Disneyland guests at certain attractions could get a return window for another time later in the day. Another Disney World pilot, the single-rider line, was also added.

Rocket Rods’ resurrection was short-lived. In August 2000, it closed again. This time, Disneyland did not announce a reopening date, but officials assured the public that this was simply routine seasonal maintenance. As weeks passed, rumors circulated that the ride would never reopen.

Fall turned to winter, and still Rocket Rods lay dormant. Up above the hustle and bustle of Tomorrowland, no work appeared to be taking place. In February, Pressler was asked about the status of the ride. “Sometimes we fail,” he said. “That’s show business.”

In April, a sign posted outside the ride promising a spring reopening was removed. Not long after, Disneyland announced the expected: Rocket Rods was closing permanently. Disneyland president Cynthia Harriss was remarkably transparent about its failure, pointing to the decision to save money by using the PeopleMover tracks as the ride’s downfall.

“The high-speed attraction was never able to perform to its designed show standards,” she said.

In the end, Rocket Rods was functional for less than two years, making it one of the most disastrous attractions in park history. Its queue building, which once proclaimed you were headed to “ride the road to tomorrow,” was repurposed for Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters. The rest of the ride, however, has deteriorated in front of guests’ eyes.

There’s likely a practical reason why the tracks can’t be removed. The route goes through multiple rides, which means any work done to the tracks would also mean major construction in Tomorrowland’s biggest attractions. It would be incredibly disruptive, at the very least, and possibly cost-prohibitive. At this point, the tracks are almost certainly too degraded to ever be safely used again, even for an ambling ride like the PeopleMover.

The only hope for revitalization is a total structural overhaul of Tomorrowland, something fans have been clamoring for practically since the 1998 revamp. The mishmash of themes “Star Wars,” “Toy Story” and generic space exploration has left the land feeling aimless.

Before the Tomorrowland retheme was unveiled, the Associated Press interviewed Disney Imagineer Tony Baxter about the project.

“What we wanted to create was a dreamlike place you’d want to live in, not just a place where you’d want to spend a couple of hours in a movie,” he said. “Disneyland is about reassurance. We can’t do some horrific vision of the future.”

Unfortunately for Disney’s creative team, a horrific future did come to pass: an embarrassing and costly failure that stares them in the face every day.