Everything has become the Great Movie Ride

A note on recent events in America before we begin:

It’s hard to catch your breath after you return home from a vacation when your country starts tearing itself apart so quickly after you step off the plane.   How, and why, do you reflect on your Walt Disney World vacation — an inconsequential and largely meaningless exercise — when the strained cultural seams of America, seams which have been threatening to split again for a generation, finally do?  The how is something I’m figuring out as I write this — with difficulty.  The why is because we have to.  We must fight back against the white supremacy, Nazism, racism, and bigotry that has been stoked by our current imposter of a President.  We must denounce it, full stop, without hesitation.  We must not let the distorted voice of bigotry become dominant or normal.  Fighting back is two-fold — we must be and remain engaged: broadcast your concerns to your lawmakers, donate to organizations that fight racism, or attend a Charlottesville solidarity rally; but we must also continue our lives and not let fear, disbelief, or anger consume us.  Fear is the lifeblood of terrorism and to feed that fear is to let it win.  And so, here we are.  I’m writing about Walt Disney World because as inconsequential and meaningless as this is, it will help me maintain sanity in the face of insanity.  And that sanity is a weapon in and of itself.

I just got back from a whirlwind trip to the Vacation Kingdom of the World in which I spent four days touring the new offerings across Walt Disney World and saying goodbye to a couple others.  My last visit out to Florida was in 2015 for a quick weekend trip with some friends to attend a Halloween party at the Magic Kingdom.  I decided to take a break from Walt Disney World after that trip, not because I didn’t have fun but because the Florida property was feeling tired to me,  lacking any new progress or change I felt compelled to to return for.  It made sense for me to take a break and give Florida some time to figure itself out a bit while I visited other places.  I originally planned on not returning for several years.  Fast forward to now, and I’m back from my first Walt Disney World trip in two years.  To be honest, two years is a lot less time than I planned to be away from Florida but I frantically booked a trip after Disney announced in mid-July that two classic rides would be closing by mid-August.  One in particular, the Great Movie Ride, was one that had left an indelible impression on me during my first Walt Disney World visit in 2005.  It had been a must-ride for me on every trip since then, so the news that it was closing permanently to make way for a new projection-based Mickey Mouse ride spurred me into getting out to Florida to see one of Disney’s great Audio-Animatronics spectacles one last time.

 

 

It seems pretty silly, even to me, to book a trip out to Florida to see a ride about movies.  Silly because I live so close to actual Hollywood; but because of my familiarity with the real thing, the fictionalized versions that Disney and Universal create in their Florida parks have always been infinitely more appealing to me than the real deal.  The Great Movie Ride struck me as unique on my first trip out to Walt Disney World in 2005 for a variety of reasons but it was the blurring of lines between real Hollywood, a land of artifice and magic, with the artifice and magic of a Disney theme park that was really intriguing.   Housed within a replica of Hollywood’s very real Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the Great Movie Ride’s queue took you through spaces that replicated the style and decor of the actual theatre’s lobby and into a theater that showed you clips of classic movies.  You exited the theater space through a side door to be greeted with a moving theater waiting for you on a hot set designed to look like Hollywood exterior.  You had effectively passed through Disney’s real Chinese theatre and emerged onto Disney’s fake film set.  The make-believe of being in a “real” theater had dissolved and you’d passed into a Hollywood dream world that would take you through the screen itself and into some of the most beloved moments in film history.

That dream was really the promise of the entire park — a promise that was emblazoned on the ride’s marquee: a spectacular journey into the movies.  And now that journey, that promise, is lost to time and progress. Disney-MGM Studios debuted with real ambitions to be a working production studio and offered backstage studio tram tours of facilities built for real production, both live-action and animated.  As production dreams withered over the years, the Studio Tour eventually died in 2014 and the Great Movie Ride remained as the primary thematic statement of a park that seemed to languish under the weight of unrealized potential.  The Great Movie Ride delivered on the promise of putting you into the movies even when the rest of the park failed to. Furthermore, it did so by taking you into movies as a concept by breaking down barriers created by competing studios: every major studio was represented, save for Universal. It was a unique example of everything aligning at just the right moment, under the right corporate agenda, with a clear creative vision, to be made possible.

 

Indeed, today’s corporate agenda is entirely different.  An experience like The Great Movie Ride is seen as no longer being relevant. It’s easy to see why when the trend at Disney’s theme parks has become rides taking you through great movies (usually Disney-owned movies) instead of unique, standalone experiences that don’t rely on pre-existing intellectual properties. It helps that Disney has acquired several lucrative franchises and studios for itself over the years, so the need to incorporate competing studios for variety (or to accomplish a specific artistic goal) is no longer necessary.  At Epcot, a park once bursting with lofty aspirations of inspiring innovation and progress in the global community, Disney has added the fish from Finding Nemo to its pavilion about scientific oceanic study, Frozen characters sing songs from their movie at you in a pavilion intended to be about the people and culture of Norway, and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy superheroes are moving into a building that was designed to house a ride about the history and future of energy production.   At the Magic Kingdom, characters from Pixar’s Toy Story and the Monsters Inc. take up residence in Tomorrowland and a rollercoaster through the computer world of Disney’s own TRON is on the way.  At Disney’s Animal Kingdom, a park about nature and conservation, Disney licensed James Cameron’s AVATAR movie to be the basis of an entire themed land with two attractions, dining, and shopping.  At Disneyland in California, a massive Star Wars area is taking over one of the park’s final expansion areas, and in California Adventure, Pixar characters are taking over a seaside pier that’s supposed to represent 1930s California.  When everything becomes a ride through a great (or even not-so-great) movie, do you even need a Great Movie Ride anymore?

Apparently Disney’s answer is no and so Mickey Mouse, in his new style, will be moving into the Chinese Theatre to lead a presumably frenetic ride through scenes and environments that have no relevance to the Chinese Theatre in which it’s housed, or the history of Hollywood that such a setting like the Chinese Theatre suggests.  The magic of seeing a historic collection of great movies transformed from their two-dimensional celluloid into three dimensions around you will be lost as Mickey’s new adventure will be delivered using the latest in projection technology in lieu of physical sets.

Perhaps ironically, as Disney repositions its Hollywood Studios park as a place to truly live in the worlds of their films with major expansions based on Star Wars and Toy Story, a ride like the Great Movie Ride remains as relevant as ever a thesis statement for the park. And while the argument for updates to the Great Movie Ride is a fair one, the notion that the concept was dead is not.  The idea of journeying beyond the movie screen to live, even briefly, in the worlds of your favorite films is something Disney continues to pursue aggressively for its parks and could have continued to pursue with updates to the Great Movie Ride.

 

And so, the neon of the Great Movie Ride has been turned off for good as Disney’s Hollywood Studios prepares now to start fresh with a new chapter, finally unburdened with the legacy of its past ambitions.   Hopefully the future holds exciting things for Walt Disney World’s smallest park but while we wait to see what Disney delivers next, I am grateful for the 28 years we had to enjoy some great moments at the movies.