Tag: Disney’s Hollywood Studios

To conclude our celebration of Mickey’s 89th birthday and our very early look at Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, why don’t we take a walkthrough of the upcoming ride?

As with any attraction, the story begins in the queue. The facade of the Chinese Theater and the first part of the exterior and interior queue will be the same as they were for The Great Movie Ride, with the original lobby still very much intact. Obviously the displays will be different, but otherwise it will still have all of its original charm.

Guests will literally step through the movie screen and into the cartoon world in one of two pre-show rooms.

Things start to change where the large pre-show theater showing classic movie trailers once stood, just before guests would board their “journey into the movies”. This large room has been broken down into two identical pre-show movie theaters where guests will be going to see this new Mickey Mouse cartoon about the trio (including Minnie and Pluto) heading to the park for a picnic, with the screen ultimately opening up and guests walking through it to the load area of the attraction. Guests will then board Goofy’s train in a train barn before embarking on the ride.

The attraction begins with a trip through the park, followed by a tunnel. In the tunnel scene, guests encounter Minnie and Mickey in the car driving alongside them. Mickey and Minnie will be audio-animatronics figures here, inside of a physical car that will travel alongside guests through the entire scene. A maquette of the classic duo in the car can be seen at the preview of the attraction currently at Walt Disney Presents.

An Imagineer works on a maquette of the Mickey and Minnie animatronic figures who will travel in a car alongside guests through a tunnel.

The next scene appears to be a stampede or “running of the bulls” type scenario, where the cars break apart and try not to incur the wrath of the stomping creatures. This is followed by a trip to the carnival, which somehow ultimately ends with Mickey and Minnie caught up in a twister. The twister may or may not be a reference to The Great Movie Ride, which was famously set to have a twister scene before some arguments over the Wizard of Oz led to the scene being cut and replaced with Sorcerer Mickey Mouse.

Imagineers working on the carnival scene of Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway.

The twister drops guests and the characters in a tropical locale with 4 separate rooms, one for each car of the 4-car train to pull into. These individual rooms have a large screen and water effects that will spray guests as they teeter near the edge of a waterfall.

Concept art of the waterfall scene, with the train car teetering on the edge via projection technology and water effects.

The train cars then go down a drainage pipe into the big city. Guests somehow end up taking a detour into a dance studio, where an audio-animatronic Daisy Duck is giving lessons. The cars will dance while in this dance studio, similarly to Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters at DCA.

Kevin Rafferty and fellow Imagineers at work on the factory scene of Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway

Guests end up in a alleyway leading to a large factory, where they may come up close and personal with a giant furnace before being saved by Mickey and Minnie.

Imagineers at work with the factory furnace in the background

Once guests are safe, they arrive back in the park for a picnic. This scene includes audio-animatronic figures of Mickey, Minnie and their dog, Pluto. Guests then head to the unload station, disembark, and go back through a movie screen in a new postshow theater, to eventually exit out the same exit doors as The Great Movie Ride.

An Imagineer working on the park scene for the ride, which could be the area as seen in the first or final scene of the attraction.

Do keep in mind that all of this will be combined with cutting-edge trackless ride technology, an original musical score and theme song, over 10 audio animatronics, and the first-ever “2.5D” effects (think of it as 3-D without the use of special glasses), so text probably does not do every scene justice. Also keep in mind that many of the events that will take place in each scene are still a secret, so Runaway Railway has plenty of tricks up its sleeves.

If all of this sounds exciting, well, sadly we still have 18 months or more to wait for this attraction to open, but it sure does sound pretty cool. Of course, stay “tooned” to WDWNT.com for the latest on Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Some screenshots were collected from a video by Attractions Magazine, which you can see here.

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