The Great Movie Ride

The Great Movie Ride was a dark ride located at Disney MGM Studios at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, United States. Designed by Walt Disney Imagineering, the attraction employed the use of Audio-Animatronic figures, practical sets, live actors, special effects, and projections to recreate iconic scenes from twelve classic films throughout motion picture history. The attraction—which debuted with the park on May 1, 1989—was located inside the park's replica of Grauman's Chinese Theatre, one of Hollywood's most famous movie palaces.
The Great Movie Ride was originally developed by Disney as a cinema-themed pavilion for the Future World section of Epcot. Under the direction of Michael Eisner and Marty Sklar, the concept was expanded into a new theme park devoted to motion pictures that included the dark ride as its centerpiece. To accurately represent a broad spectrum of American film, Disney also incorporated films from outside of its own library, mainly through its licensing agreement with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and later Turner Entertainment. Turner subsidiary, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) sponsored the attraction for the final two years of its operation, with TCM film historian Robert Osborne serving as the attraction's host during that time.
The Great Movie Ride closed on August 13, 2017, becoming the park's last opening-day attraction to permanently close. The attraction was replaced by Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway, which still uses the Chinese Theatre replica.
The Great Movie Ride directly inspired the creation of Disney's Hollywood Studios. In a Walt Disney Imagineering book, it was revealed that The Great Movie Ride was originally planned as the main attraction in a show business themed pavilion at Epcot, which was to be called "Great Moments at the Movies". However, the newly assigned Disney CEO Michael Eisner and WDI president Marty Sklar decided the idea was strong enough to lead an entire new theme park. The idea for the ride was expanded, and the Disney-MGM Studios went into official development. The attraction used the likenesses of numerous living and deceased actors to be recreated as audio-animatronics. Chad Everett provided the voice for John Wayne's figure at the behest of Wayne's family. Lee Marvin's inebriated character of Kid Shelleen from Cat Ballou was planned to be included in the Western segment but was replaced with one of Clint Eastwood, as Marvin's family believed that particular portrayal was inappropriate to showcase.
Plans called for The Great Movie Ride to be the main attraction for the Disney-MGM Studios Europe theme park, which was scrapped due to the early financial difficulties of the Euro Disneyland Resort. Years later when the resort began turning profits, a show business themed theme park went into development again, and the Walt Disney Studios Park opened in 2002 at the Disneyland Resort Paris, although minus The Great Movie Ride. A show called CinéMagique was built in lieu of the ride due to claims by Disney management that the French preferred shows to ride-through attractions.
Three separate attempts were made by Walt Disney Imagineering to bring The Great Movie Ride to California. First were plans to incorporate the attraction into the proposed “Disney-MGM Studio Backlot” project, a 40-acre (160,000 m) film studio themed retail and entertainment district that was planned (but ultimately never built) for downtown Burbank, California during the late 1980s. Several years later, plans called for the ride to serve as the centerpiece of the proposed Hollywoodland at Disneyland, which would have been added to the park during the planned Disney Decade in the 1990s. Due to budget cuts, however, Hollywoodland was canceled. Later, plans called for the ride to be built as part of the Hollywood Pictures Backlot area of the Disney California Adventure theme park at the Disneyland Resort. But budget cuts in the park's original development planning forced the ride's projected cost to be spent on smaller, original and less expensive attractions.
An early concept was supposed to be called Great Moments at the Movies, presented by Sears Roebuck & Co. The Walt Disney Company and the retailer (then the largest in the world) announced a 10-year joint marketing and licensing agreement on November 19, 1987. Sears would sponsor the park's signature attraction and a Hollywood Showcase Store. However, these plans were scrapped before the park's opening. Coca-Cola stepped in as the attraction's sponsor, and it became The Great Movie Ride to reflect it was a ride, not a movie, despite being housed in a replica of a famous movie theater.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Disney was interested in purchasing Jim Henson's Muppets. Walt Disney Imagineering developed a Muppet-themed land for Disney-MGM Studios called Muppet Studios. The land was to feature two main attractions; one was Muppet*Vision 3D and the other was The Great Muppet Movie Ride, a parody of The Great Movie Ride featuring Muppet characters such as Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Gonzo re-enacting scenes from famous films such as Frankenstein and Peter Pan. However, after Henson died, the deal fell apart and Disney cut back on the Muppet-themed area to just Muppet*Vision 3D.
On the park's opening day, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Roger Rabbit and other Disney characters placed their signatures, footprints, and handprints in front of the façade of the Great Movie Ride.
Unlike many Disney dark rides that feature separate embarkation and debarkation areas, the Great Movie Ride had only a single combined unloading and loading area. The last people to exit the vehicles often passed the next group of guests waiting to board the vehicles. At the time the ride was designed (the mid to late 1980s), it was common throughout the theme park industry to have all major rides exit into a store selling merchandise associated with the attraction. The Great Movie Ride, however, did not exit directly into a store and instead allowed guests to directly exit back outside into the park.
In 2014, as part of an exclusive programming deal with Disney, Turner Classic Movies agreed to become the sponsor of the attraction. The attraction underwent a refurbishment in 2015, with the addition of a new pre-show and post-show hosted by Robert Osborne, who also provided onboard narration to the ride. The changes were unveiled on May 29, 2015.
On July 15, 2017, it was announced that The Great Movie Ride would be permanently closed in order to make room for its replacement, Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway. The attraction had become outdated over the years as the animatronics were starting to age, in addition to Disney's Hollywood Studios changing its theme from show business to popular Hollywood movies. Last rides were given at 9:30 PM on August 13. By the next morning, the signs were taken down and a photo opportunity of Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway was installed near the former exit.
There are three references in Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway that pay tribute to The Great Movie Ride. A poster that says The Great Moving Ride can be found in the carnival scene between Horace's popcorn stand and Donald's hot dog stand. The tornado scene contains a mailbox with the iconic No Place Like Home quote. Prior to the factory scene, an alley cat sound effect can be heard in the back alley which was also used in The Great Movie Ride.
The first sequence of the ride, Footlight Parade, was plagued with engineering and technical problems from the beginning. When the ride was newly opened, the Footlight Parade segment was different from what it later became. The entire portion following the neon lighted entrance was fleshed out. All the walls leading up to, around, and beyond the "cake" were painted in art deco style patterns as seen in "By A Waterfall". Approximately three "diving boards" with three mannequin "dancers" wearing capes were perched on the right-hand side of the wall as you enter the ride segment. The five-tiered "cake" was prominently displayed at a left-hand turn. It was in the open air illuminated with an array of animated lights. During this pass through the Footlight Parade segment, riders would hear a "loop" of "By A Waterfall" (a song featured in Footlight Parade) lasting approximately 40 seconds as bubbles fall from the ceiling.
For approximately the first year, the "cake" actually rotated and was adorned with water jets as seen in the film. Allegedly, the rotating "cake" mechanism was constantly breaking down, causing frequent repairs and downtime. In addition, the water pumps would constantly fail, flooding the ride path. Park operations believed it was much cheaper and less problematic to leave the "cake" in place with lighting effects used to provide what Imagineers term as "kinetics" to the segment.
When it closed, this segment was still the "opening act" of The Great Movie Ride, but significantly toned down. The guests entered a segment with its lighting significantly diminished. The outer walls were dark with practically no art deco recreations from the film set. The "diving boards" had been replaced with art deco style wall sconces. Instead, guests passed through a deco inspired archway to find themselves facing a large scrim-lined proscenium decorated with gray/blue clouds and remnants of the art deco set designs. Throughout the segment, three large rotating projections of Busby Berkeley-style kaleidoscope dance sequences appeared on the scrim (from By A Waterfall, Dames, and Shadow Waltz). These disappeared to expose the "cake," which was behind the scrim and was simultaneously illuminated with washes of light and reflective water effects. The caped dancers on diving boards were located to the far left of the "cake" behind the scrim. The art deco style wall panels still resided behind the "cake". The looping song segment and bubbles remained.
The Wizard of Oz scene did not have major structural changes, but Imagineering replaced the original A-100 Wicked Witch audio-animatronic character with a newer-design figure utilizing Sarcos technology. The Sarcos-equipped audio-animatronics are capable of a great deal more movement possibilities than the original "limited animation" figure designs and can move much more quickly. As a result, they were made much more lifelike.
The Great Movie Ride was located inside a recreation of the famous Hollywood landmark, Grauman's Chinese Theatre. The park's Chinese Theatre is a full-scale replica of the original building; Imagineers used the original building's 1927 blueprints in the construction of the park's theatre. At the time the attraction opened, the actual theater's name was "Grauman's Chinese Theatre" and later "Mann's Chinese Theatre", however, the park's proper name for this version of the building is simply "The Chinese Theater". From 2001 to 2015, the theatre façade was obscured from view (when looking from the park's entrance), when the Sorcerer's Hat was situated directly in front of the attraction. The Chinese Theatre facade and courtyard remained after the attraction's closure and was retained for Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway.
The line wound through a recreation of the Chinese Theatre lobby past glass display cases containing actual costumes, props, and set pieces from various films. The lobby also featured digital posters of various motion pictures. The line then took guests into a small pre-show theatre where Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne provided insight and commentary about various motion pictures and film genres—such as musicals, adventure, science-fiction, westerns, romance, and gangster films— including those films that were featured within the ride. The queue line ended at a pair of automatic doors at the front of the theatre that lead into a 1930s era Hollywood soundstage where guests were loaded onto waiting ride vehicles.
As the guests reach the end of the queue, they entered a 1930s-era Hollywood sound stage where they become loaded by cast members into one of two pairs of open, theatre-style seating ride vehicles. The ride vehicles utilize a "traveling theatre"-style automated guided vehicle ride system similar to the former Universe of Energy attraction at Epcot. However, here the ride vehicles are much smaller in size, are grouped together in pairs of two, and feature an open cab in the first row of the front vehicle for a live tour guide to stand, provide narration, and operate the ride vehicle. Earlier and later in the day, only the second pair of ride vehicles (#2B) are used as the first pair of ride vehicles (#1A) are only used during the busier times of day.
The film set within the soundstage features a large neon theatre marquee and a cyclorama of the 1930s-era Hollywood Hills complete with the original Hollywoodland Sign. As the ride begins, the song "Hooray for Hollywood" plays overhead as the vehicles' tour guide welcomes the guests and introduces Osborne, who informs them (via onboard narration) that they will be taken through scenes from different classic films throughout history.
The first genre of films introduced are musicals, which begins with a cake of starlets from By a Waterfall from Busby Berkeley's Footlight Parade. The next musical scenes include audio-animatronic figures of Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) swinging from a lamp post from Singin' in the Rain, followed by Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews) and Bert (Dick Van Dyke) singing on the rooftops of London from Mary Poppins.
The next scene is a tribute to gangster films. The ride vehicle passes through the dark and seedy backstreets of a 1930s Chicago and past an audio-animatronic Tom Powers (James Cagney) in a scene from The Public Enemy. When both pairs of ride vehicles are in use, the #1A ride vehicle continues on to the next show scene past a green traffic light above a tunnel entrance while the #2B ride vehicle is stopped when the traffic light changes to red. While stopped, a live gangster named Mugsy (Boy) or Mugsi (Girl) and their audio-animatronic companions Squid and Beans show up and get involved in a shoot-out with rival mobsters (Brains, Legs, and Weasel) in a car on the opposite side of the street where the ride vehicle is stopped. During the shootout, the live gangster then chases the tour guide and hijacks the ride vehicle.
Next, the ride vehicle enters into a tribute to the Western genre. Here, the guests encounter audio-animatronics of the Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood) standing outside of a saloon and Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) sitting atop his horse. A sign on one building facade reads “Ransom Stoddard Attorney-at-Law” (James Stewart). The #2B ride vehicle (which is already being driven by the gangster) continues past a shootout between the town sheriff and an audio-animatronic bank robber named Snake. The gangster ignores the shootout and continues on to the next scene. However, the #1A ride vehicle (which is still being driven by the tour guide) stops in front of the town bank while a bank robbery is in progress. Suddenly, a live bank robber named Kate Durango (Girl) or Kid Carson (Boy) appears from inside the bank. After getting into a shoot-out with the town sheriff and chasing the tour guide into the bank, the bandit sets the town bank ablaze with dynamite and hijacks the ride vehicle. Following this scene, the remainder of the attraction is the same for both the #1A and #2B ride vehicles.
Next, the ride vehicle continues into a darkened corridor of a seemingly abandoned spaceship, revealing itself to be the Nostromo, the doomed vessel from Alien. The ride vehicle passes an audio-animatronic Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) holding a flamethrower as she prepares to confront a creature lurking within the ship. Guests could also hear Jones, Ripley's pet cat, meowing in the darkness, as well as the Nostromo's "Mother" computer warning of an imminent ship self-destruction countdown. Hearing this, the gangster or the bandit becomes nervous and speeds the ride vehicle through the ship, but not before the Alien appears and attacks the guests, popping out from both the ceiling and the wall.
The ride vehicle next enters a scene set in an ancient Egyptian tomb filled with snakes. Osborne informs the guests that they are in a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark as audio-animatronic figures of Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) struggle to lift the Ark of the Covenant. A second room within the temple features a large altar in the form of the ancient Egyptian god Anubis. Near the top of the altar, a large priceless jewel is being watched over by a cloaked temple guard. The gangster or the bandit sees the jewel, stops the ride vehicle, and disembarkes to take it. Before touching the jewel, the temple guard gives a warning that those who disturb the treasure of the gods must pay with their life. Ignoring the warning, the gangster or the bandit reaches to grab the jewel. Suddenly, a plume of fiery smoke shoots from the ground engulfing the temple altar (as the temple guard leaves, undressing to reveal that the temple guard is the original tour guide while doing so before reappearing from the shadows). When the smoke clears out, the skeletal corpse of the Gangster or Bandit is revealed and the tour guide reboards the ride vehicle and continues on with the show.
The next film genre introduced are horror films as the ride vehicle goes through an ancient burial chamber full of mummies, some of which have come to life. The ride vehicle soon departs the tomb and enters a dense jungle. Here, audio-animatronic figures of Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) swinging on a vine, Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan) sitting atop Timba the elephant, and Cheeta the chimpanzee can be seen. The ride vehicle then moves past the final scene from Casablanca, featuring audio-animatronics of Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) as they stand in front of a waiting airplane. Next, the ride vehicle passes a film projection of Mickey Mouse in his role as the Sorcerer's Apprentice from the 1940 Walt Disney's animated film, Fantasia.
The ride vehicle then enters into the Munchkinland scene from The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy's house has landed on the Wicked Witch of the East. When both the #1A and #2B ride vehicles are in use, they meet up here and come to a stop in the middle of the scene. Audio-Animatronic Munchkins begin to appear from various places and sing as they welcome guests to their home. However, a plume of smoke suddenly rises from the ground as an audio-animatronic Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) appears and asks who is responsible for killing the Wicked Witch of the East. The tour guide aboard the #1A ride vehicle briefly interacts with her before she disappears in another puff of smoke. The Munchkins reappear from their hiding places and begin to sing again as both ride vehicles follow the Yellow Brick Road out of Munchkinland past audio-animatronic figures of Dorothy (Judy Garland), Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), Tin Man (Jack Haley), Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) and Toto (Terry) standing in front of the Emerald City, and onto the ride's grand finale.
For the grand finale, when both the #1A and #2B ride vehicles are in use, they both enter a dark theatre where they line up side by side and come to a stop in front of a large movie screen. There, Osborne or the tour guide concludes the tour with a three-minute film montage of classic film moments. At the conclusion of the film, the tour guide, who is applauded by the guests, declares the tour a success, and both ride vehicles exit the theater in single file to return to the 1930s soundstage, where the ride concludes.
Disney arranged separate licensing deals with various studios to represent the different characters and settings featured in the attraction. Most of the non-Disney films represented in The Great Movie Ride were produced by and/or owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer when the ride's operation began. In 1985, Disney and MGM entered into a licensing contract that gave Disney worldwide rights to use the MGM name and logo for what would become Disney-MGM Studios (now known as Disney's Hollywood Studios), while separate contracts were used for The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Singin' in the Rain, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Public Enemy, Tarzan and His Mate and Footlight Parade to give these films representation in The Great Movie Ride. Disney's license for the aforementioned films continued with Turner Entertainment until the attraction's closure.
The Great Movie Ride also included Alien, owned by 20th Century Fox, as Disney originally acquired the licensing rights to the film for a different attraction, which was ultimately cancelled. Disney, however, retained the rights to use Alien and decided to incorporate it into the Great Movie Ride. In addition to Fox, scenes from almost all of the major film studios were presented in the film montage with one notable exception; there was no reference to any motion picture released by Universal Pictures, whose parent company operates the rival Universal Orlando Resort, although Shakespeare In Love, which was produced by Miramax and distributed by Universal internationally, was featured in the montage.
In alphabetical order:
The Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior plane, is often claimed to be the actual plane used during the filming of Casablanca, but no full-size plane was actually used during the filming of Casablanca. The back half of this plane was cut off and can be found resting along the shoreline of the Jungle Cruise attraction at the Magic Kingdom.
Much like the real one in Hollywood, the Chinese Theatre located inside Disney's Hollywood Studios features handprints, shoe prints and signatures of actors, musicians and film characters that still remain today, after Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway replaced The Great Movie Ride.