Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway

Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway
Disney's Hollywood Studios
Area	Hollywood Boulevard
Coordinates	28°21′22″N 81°33′38″W / 28.356232°N 81.560483°W / 28.356232; -81.560483Coordinates: 28°21′22″N 81°33′38″W / 28.356232°N 81.560483°W / 28.356232; -81.560483
Status	Operating
Opening date	March 4, 2020[1]
Replaced	The Great Movie Ride
Disneyland Park
Area	Mickey's Toontown
Status	Under construction
Opening date	2023[2]
Canada's Wonderland
Area	Mickey's Toontown
Status	Under construction
Opening date	TBD (planned)
Replaced	Action Theatre
Canadian National Exhibition
Status	Under construction
Opening date	TBD (planned)
Niagara Falls
Status	Under construction
Opening date	TBD
General statistics
Attraction type	Trackless dark ride
Designer	Walt Disney Imagineering
Theme	Mickey Mouse
Music	“Nothing Can Stop Us Now” by Christopher Willis and Elyse Willis
Vehicle type	Trackless Vehicle
Riders per vehicle	32
Rows	8
Riders per row	4
FastPass+ available
Must transfer from wheelchair
Closed captioning available

Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway is a trackless dark ride in Disney's Hollywood Studios at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, and forthcoming in Mickey's Toontown at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. The attraction—the first Mickey Mouse-themed ride-through attraction at a Disney theme park—is based on the stylized world from the television series.^[3][4]

The version of Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway at Disney's Hollywood Studios was first announced at the D23 Expo in July 2017^[5] as part of the unveiling of 23 improvements to Disney Parks,^[6] including 4 new rides across the theme parks.^[7] The version at Disney's Hollywood Studios opened on March 4, 2020, within the park's replica of Grauman's Chinese Theatre, replacing The Great Movie Ride.^[8][9] A second version is scheduled to open in 2023 at Disneyland,^[8][9][10] which will be located inside Mickey's Toontown.

Premise[]

At the beginning of the ride, guests are invited to watch the premiere of a new Mickey Mouse cartoon, Perfect Picnic, in which Mickey and Minnie Mouse prepare for a picnic outing and encounter Goofy driving a train.^[7] According to Imagineer Kevin Rafferty, guests then pass through a simulated movie screen where they will experience a “zippy zany out-of-control adventure”.^[8] Guests will then be transported into the cartoon and aboard Goofy's train, which takes them on a wild adventure.^[7]

The ride features a new technology known as "2 and 1⁄2 D" (3D without glasses) to give depth to the 2D environments.^[5][11] It also includes more hidden Mickeys than any existing ride.^[11][12]

Summary[]

Queue[]

For the Disney's Hollywood Studios version, guests enter through a re-creation of the Chinese Theatre and wind through the lobby, adorned with a series of posters of Mickey Mouse shorts that might have previously premiered there, before entering the auditorium.^[13] Beside the poster artwork for Perfect Picnic are nine posters for real-life Mickey Mouse shorts: "Croissant de Triomphe", "Mumbai Madness", "Potatoland", "Split Decision", "Three-Legged Race", "Tokyo Go", "Wish Upon a Coin", "Wonders of the Deep", and "Yodelberg". The posters were created for the attraction by Walt Disney Imagineering and Disney Television Animation.^[14]

Beside the ride, is a TV screen, inside the TV Screen are eighteen shows from Disney Channel & Disney Junior shows, such as Happy Monster Band, Tasty Time With ZeFronk, Cars Toons: Mater's Tall Tales, Minnie's Bow-Toons, Ooh, Aah & You, The Bite-Sized Adventures of Sam Sandwich, Dance-A-Lot-Robot, Mickey Mouse, Animal Mechanicals, Go, Baby!, The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!, Phineas and Ferb, Muppet Babies^{[disambiguation needed]}, Pocoyo, The Wiggles, Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs, Rob the Robot, and Handy Manny: School For Tools. the eighteen shows from Disney Channel on the TV screen were created for the attraction.

In the upcoming Disneyland version, a new building will be constructed for the ride in Mickey's Toontown called the El CapiTOON Theater, which is a pun of the El Capitan Theatre which in turn is owned by Disney in Hollywood. The queue for this version will feature a special exhibit put together by the Toontown Hysterical Society, showcasing costumes and props from the toon world.^[15]

Pre-show[]

The guests then enter the auditorium where the short, Perfect Picnic will be premiering. Once the doors close, the cartoon begins on the movie screen. The short begins with Mickey, Minnie, and Pluto setting out for a picnic at the Runnamuck Park, singing "Nothing Can Stop Us Now" while packing Mickey's car, Minnie accidentally packs Pluto with the picnic basket in the trunk. The duo make their way to the park. Along the way, Mickey and Minnie drive alongside Goofy, who is operating the Runnamuck Railroad train that surrounds the park. Mickey and Minnie pull forward and hit a bump on the railroad crossing. The trunk pops open, releasing Pluto and the picnic basket into the air, which Pluto quickly manages to save the picnic basket. However, a pie from the basket falls out and lands on top of the train's smokestack. With the pie clogging the smokestack, the train picks up speed. Goofy panics as the train pulls into a railroad barn, where an explosion occurs, causing a large, ragged hole to appear in the movie screen (created by a hidden mechanism and therefore literally breaking the fourth wall). When the smoke clears, Goofy lands on a loose board on the outside of the barn, sees the guests and offers them a ride on the train. He then asks a nearby cast member to help the guests step inside the cartoon while he goes back to the barn to fix the train. He then tells the guests he'll be back to pick them up. After walking through the movie screen, the guests find themselves in the cartoon railroad station, and make their way to the loading platform where the train arrives.

Ride experience[]

Once the train stops at the loading station, guests board one of four cars behind the locomotive. Dr. Doofemirtz (from Phineas and Ferb) was walking around the park, when he's sees Mickey Mouse and Minnie driving the car for their picnic, he decided to get a revenge on them from having a picnic, The train then departs the station and makes a left turn, passing the park on a musical sunny day before entering a tunnel. Once inside the tunnel, Goofy opens the back window and asks the guests if they are ready for a tour around the park. Mickey and Minnie in their car pull up next to Goofy and exchange greetings. Mickey parks next to a railroad switch and asks Goofy to take care of the guests. Goofy proudly exclaims, "Gawrsh they're with me, what could possibly go wrong? Well, back to work." Right when Goofy closes his window and begins to sing "I’ve Been Working on the Railroad" the switch falls, breaking the train up with Goofy and the locomotive making a left and the cars with guests making a right. Mickey and Minnie declare to catch the "runaway" train.

The cars exit the tunnel into the desert with Mickey and Minnie on horses trying to round up the cars. They get their ropes caught on themselves and vultures target them. The cars then make their way to a carnival where Mickey and Minnie find them while on a sign. But before they can get down, the Twister logo on the side of the carnival's wooden roller coaster comes to life and sweeps up the carnival in a storm sending it into a frenzy. The cars get a close up to the tornado which has Mickey, Minnie and Pluto sucked up. In the next room, The duo land in a tropical island where a volcanic eruption occurs. Each of the four cars enter their own separate rooms to find Mickey and Minnie going downstream towards a waterfall. They go underwater and the cars pull back to the tropical isle room, which is now an underwater scene filled with musical undersea life (including a Giant Squid playing a trumpet). This is achieved through a special effect in which the entire room background is a screen that changes.

The cars go down a drain pipe into a big city, where Pete is doing construction work (while laughing at the vibration he causes) and Donald is stuck in traffic. The cars detour into a dance studio where Daisy has the cars "dance". The cars "waltz" before Daisy announces a conga. The cars "conga" out the studio through an alley and enter a dangerous factory that Doofenshmirtz worked on as Mickey and Minnie try to stop the cars from being smashed by the Smasher on a conveyor belt. Doofenshmirtz tried to stop Mickey and Minnie from destroying his factory, Mickey and Minnie pull the switch, which shuts the factory down and it magically transforms into a moonlit night at the park. Doofenshmirtz's plan got failed. The cars reverse and turn around to find Goofy and the locomotive at the front of the "train". As the guests enter a tunnel, Goofy concludes the tour and hopes that the guests had a good time. The train pulls around the corner to find Mickey, Minnie, and Pluto finally having their picnic and singing one final rendition of "Nothing Can Stop Us Now" while fireworks go off in the sky above the guests. Goofy waves goodbye to the guests and closes the back window. Just before the train enters the station, Goofy finds a lever and pulls it triggering a small explosion in the cab and his signature holler is heard, giving guests a last laugh. as the train arrives back to the railroad barn. As guests leave the station, they pass through the movie screen returning to the real world, the title card saying “The End” is displayed as guests leave the theater.

Voice cast[]

• Chris Diamantopoulos as Mickey Mouse
• Russi Taylor as Minnie Mouse
• Tony Anselmo as Donald Duck
• Bill Farmer as Goofy and Pluto
• Jim Cummings as Pete
• Tress MacNeille as Daisy Duck

References[]

External links[]

• Disney's Hollywood Studios site