Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway has now cast-member previews at WDW Disney's Hollywood Studios and D&M has a review from one who was able to experience the ride. His review is below and there is a big warning! as there will be spoilers, so if you don't want to know, jump to D&M next post!
First thing he said is "The ride is very bright with tons of VIBRANT colors, the imagineers were on hardcore drugs when they were designing this ride!" and the next one was "It also reminded me Rise of the Resistance with many many similar tricks for scenes". Of course he's not talking about the scenes themselves as both rides have two completely different theming but mostly on a technical angle as you'll read below.
First: "You enter into the pre-show mini theater ( picture above ), the movie screen shows the cartoon and then bam! at the end of the short the screen blows open and you walk through the screen to enter the rest of the queue. You enter into the cartoon world!"
As we've read this in others reviews earlier this week i asked him about how the effect is done: "The screen tears open and the wall moves up in the theater room creating a door space to walk through. This also reminded me of the effect in Rise of the Resistance when you break out of the interrogation cell when a door is done in the wall using projection effect. Next is the loading area and it's very neat watching the train pull in. Also I love how comfortable the vehicles are."
Then, "One of the next scenes is the part where the vehicle enters a room with a dome screen and you fall down a waterfall. This scene feel just like the one with the escape pod at the end of Rise of the Resistance, same exact feeling! Yet, without the fall effect here."
A scene he thinks that was poorly done was the tornado scene: "Maybe all the black lights were turned off when I went to experience it? It’s a black room with a lit up white tornado as the cars go by, with fans. Was not impressed and was more hoping for a Mystic Manor type experience. The tornado scene just looked cheap to me compared to the rest of the ride where it was so vibrant."
Remember that it's a cast-member preview, which is usually also used by Imagineers as test time to check that everything works fine and have feedback from the CMs, so may be the day he went, not everything had been working properly.
Then we talked about the Daisy dance class scene "...which has an Audio-Animatronic of Daisy orchestrating you dancing as the cars stare at Daisy. This is exact layout of the Kylo Ren Audio-Animatronic moving your vehicle around during his last appearance at the end of the Rise of the Resistance ride."
"The ride transitions into scenes at a very fast pace. For example the scene where you're in a dome with the feeling falling down a waterfall and then the vehicle turns around into a city. Then you are in Daisy's dance class. During this scene it bugged me that you can see the whole scene behind you as you are dancing with Daisy. I wish the room was closed."
"Also, one thing that I have to get used to was how the Mickey and Minnie AA have this exact ball shaped head. Very strange looking. I loved the finale scene with Pluto and the picnic happening. The story transitions are kind of all over the place and you have trouble following along because there is so much going on in each scene. You will need to ride this attraction multiple times to catch all the hidden details. I did see the 1901 street and 1928 where a street sign say YENSID way, and there are many references all around and hidden Mickey's."
"My favorite scene is the carnival scene seeing Donald Duck in a carnival booth eating ice cream." I asked him if Donald was a Audio-Animatronic: "Donald is a projection not a AA. There is a Pluto AA at the end with Mickey and Minnie. Daisy is an Audio-Animatronic. There’s a city character Animatronic in the scene before the Daisy dance scene. It’s hard for me to remember, but there is way more projection characters than actual AA. Goofy driving the train is a projection with a projector in the front seat of the ride vehicle train."
"The ride is well done, don’t get me wrong. I think I need to go on again to catch all the details. A friend just got off and he said he felt like he went on an acid trip! I don’t think, though, that it’s better than the Great Movie Ride, but the technology is extremely impressive, and I enjoyed that it’s an ORIGINAL ride idea and not really an IP driven agenda. Again, the ride is very well done but the Great Movie Ride is not replaceable. Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway belongs in Toon Town and will be a great addition at Disneyland's Toon Town in 2022 ( artwork below ). It’s going to take some time for me to think if it belongs in the Chinese theatre..."
Pictures: copyright Disney
