What is Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and what should it be?
That question has hung over decades of Disney Imagineers like a dark cloud. It makes sense… after all, you have to remember that when Walt Disney World’s third gate (then called the Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park) opened in 1989, its purpose was twofold: externally, to whisk guests away into the real, behind-the-scenes filmmaking of Walt Disney Pictures, and internally, to scare competitors at Universal Studios out of their plans to build a version of their world famous Studio Tour in Orlando. Long story short: neither endeavor was successful.
As a result, Disney spent decades laboring over the park, stuffing it with one-off E-Tickets to draw in guests. The park’s “studio backlot” theme was a scapegoat of sorts, allowing designers to abandon the standards they’d set at Magic Kingdom and EPCOT and instead mash piecemeal IPs into beige studio soundstages, focusing on promotion over permanence. Even by the early 2000s, the park’s “studio” style had soured. In an era defined by immersive, timeless projects like Islands of Adventure and Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios looked like a cop-out.
In the mid-2010s, Disney began polling guests on potential new names for the park, at last signalling that it might turn away from its “backlot” origins… “Disney Cinemagine Kingdom.” “Disney XL Park.” “Disney Beyond Park.” “Disney Kaleidoscope Park.” None stuck. That’s probably because – especially with Toy Story Land and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge announced – it was obvious that Disney’s Hollywood Studios wasn’t a Studio… but… what was it?
Ultimately, the Hollywood Studios name stuck (with a redesigned logo simply downplaying the word “Studio,” as if it might shrink into obsolescence to be replaced with the word “Adventure” at any moment). But even with Toy Story Land and Galaxy’s Edge in play, Hollywood Studios remains a park confused. Too many E-Tickets. Too little for families. Tons of underutilized space, dead-ends, soundstages, and mish-mashed IPs… If you’ve ever daydreamed about what you would do to fix Hollywood Studios, you’ve come to the right place…
Blue-Sky Build-Out
So what do we think Hollywood Studios could be? It’s a very good question… and today, we’ll step into our own, idealized, dreamy reimagining of Disney World’s third gate – a celebration of the magic of Hollywood, and the worlds it has created. In Part I of our walkthrough, we’ll explore the first four lands in our ideal, armchair-Imagineered version of this park – two existing lands that we’ve “plussed” and “built-out,” and two from-scratch projects we’ve imagined.
Along the way, remember that the point of a “Blue Sky” build-out is to dream big… to think outside the box, and to work with the existing pieces of this park to create something better for everyone. Is our version of Hollywood Studios perfect? Of course not! But I hope that once you’ve toured Part I and next month’s Part II, you’ll feel like this multiversal, fully-matured variant of the park would be on your bucket list to visit.
So with that said, let’s explore the first half of our lovingly-reimagined Hollywood Studios, land-by-land from the real background to the full build-out…
Hollywood Blvd.
Background
I truly believe that in the patheon of Disney Parks “main streets,” Hollywood Blvd. must be among the best. It truly takes everything that makes Imagineering’s projects so powerful and combines it into one.
It’s habitable and historic, but idealized and romanticized; “a Hollywood that never was, but always will be;” in an instant, it transports guests to a place and time that they may not even be able to pin down. It doesn’t matter. Hollywood Blvd. is this vibrant, glowing, powerful, cultural mirage of what the Golden Age of Hollywood was, with every crack papered over; every wrinkle erased, and even a castle at the end of the street: the scaled recreation of the Chinese Theater.
If Hollywood Blvd. has a flaw, it’s that it’s too short (basically as if Main Street U.S.A. terminated at Center Street) and has too many gaps, where pathways branch off and expose that the street isn’t very “real” upon close inspection. I didn’t address the former, but I did try to iron out the latter.
Build-Out
I started by plugging the hole in the street that branches off halfway down on the left, leading to (in the real park) Echo Lake. Why? Mostly because that’s the start of this park descending into pathway chaos, with random breakaways and obsolete plazas and frustrating revertions to “studio backlot” aesthetic. Instead, I wanted to emphasize the area in front of the Chinese Theater as the park’s “Hub,” from which everything diverges, with as little sightline intrusion as possible.
The plaza in front of the Chinese Theater was famously designed as a large, upside down Hidden Mickey with Echo Lake as the character’s left ear. Over time, that feature has been pretty hideously disfigured by new planters that have ruined the eyes, “Center Stage” being built over the nose, and Sunset Blvd. erasing the right ear out of existence. So I brought it back (albeit, rightside-up this time) using an ear for an accessory plaza.
Otherwise, I made relatively few changes to Hollywood Blvd.! Just a new SILVER SCREEN MUSEUM exhibit behind a newly-extended facade along the Hub, and CLUB OBI WAN – a “lounge” style bar paying homage to the Shanghai club as seen in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Seemed to me like a sweet little “in-universe,” period-appropriate hangout that could become a favorite of Annual Passholders. These additions also have the benefit of helping to box in the park’s “Hub” so it feels like a part of Hollywood Blvd. instead of a massive, sun-drenched plaza. (As it is, the Chinese Theater is so far from the place where Hollywood Blvd. terminates that it feels like something else entirely.)
I also decided to add the HOLLYWOOD LINE STREET CARS, a version of Disney California Adventure’s Red Car Trolley that would whisks guests down Hollywood Blvd. and around the corner to Sunset Blvd. As simple as it seems, a ride like this adds so much life, vibrancy, and – yes – capacity to Hollywood Studios and makes this entry land feel like a real must-have. (Granted, part of Disney World’s problem is that operations deems it easier to simply pull these kinds of attractions than to navigate the crowds.)
Last but not least, I decided to swap out the contents of the Chinese Theater, namely by returning a new version of THE GREAT MOVIE RIDE. Don’t get me wrong – I actually love Runaway Railway, and I like setting it in the Chinese Theater so much that I did exactly that in my build-out plan for California Adventure. But at this park, in this land, this building calls for something more akin to a “thesis” attraction – something truly epic, and a great foundational piece for the world to come.
Would I bring the Great Movie Ride back exactly as it was? Probably not. But try as I might, I can’t think of a better basis than the “moving theater” with a live tour guide. It’s really no surprise that it started development as a potential EPCOT Center ride; it was ambitious, thoughtful, weighty, and immersive in a way that I’m not sure a trackless dark ride could re-capture, you know?
Would I bring the Great Movie Ride back in the way the modern Walt Disney Company would? (That is, as a revisionist history of Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars?) Of course not. There’s probably no universe in which Disney would ever consider tipping a hat to pre-1970s films, much less from outside its owned and acquired portfolio… but a tribute to great films of the past and how they laid the groundwork for the future feels like a worthy topic and inhabitant of this building.
See how it works? Building out a park means imagining its best form. It’s a “Blue Sky” process, not a budgetary one! In this fully-creative thought process, for just a moment, we can be a little “improbable” about what Disney could or would or should do and imagine an emboldened Hollywood Blvd. without the constraints of reality.
And of course, as the Hollywood Line Street Car glides its way around the corner, we arrive at the park’s second land – one expanded and reoriented from its current state, and a fully original, from-scratch new land you’ve never seen before…
Sunset Blvd.
Background
Sunset Blvd. officially opened in 1994 as part of the then-Disney-MGM Studios park’s need to add more capacity. The quickly-constructed studio park was far more popular than expected, and a Sunset Blvd. expansion was on the roster even when Imagineers weren’t sure what would inhabit the creepy abandoned hotel at its end.
Operationally, Sunset Blvd. has some issues. First, it’s a dead end with one entrance and one exit whose farthest point serves as entry to two E-Tickets and a very, very popular nighttime show, creating crowding and confusion. Even worse, Disney hastily constructed a very large “Sunset Showcase” flex space that can only be accessed by walking through the courtyard of Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster… Just odd dead-end nesting all the way through.
Narratively, it also has a problem. Though the 1940s Hollywood setting is a great and logical continuation of Hollywood Blvd.’s and the “Sunset” name here is an appropriately ominous lead-up to the Hollywood Tower Hotel, the rest of the street suffers from “California Adventure Syndrome.” That is, it looks like a wonderful, historic Hollywood streetscape, but is populated by Beauty and the Beast, Mickey Mouse, Cars, and Aerosmith.
Brace yourself as I try to fix both…!
Build-Out
First, let’s talk narrative. I know this would be absolute blasphemy to be spoken aloud at the modern Walt Disney Company, but there’s really no reason that a land like Sunset Blvd. couldn’t reasonably, realistically commit to a timeline and style guide – just as we’d expect Avengers Campus or Frontierland to. In other words, it’s actually not that hard to keep Pixar out of a 1940s Hollywood Blvd. if you just try.
Obviously, the TWILIGHT ZONE TOWER OF TERROR would remain as the anchor of this land, still looming over Sunset Blvd. Obviously, its narrative gravity should pull all else in this land, not unlike Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure resetting the aesthetic of all of Adventureland to a 1930s pulpy Southeast Asian bazaar. At a glance, Sunset Blvd. meticulously lends itself to a fully-immersive 1940s Hollywood, so we need only make some logical fills to make the substance match the style.
For example, Sunset Blvd. already contains a scaled recreation of the Carthay Circle Theater – a fabled Hollywood movie palace so important to Disney history and so lovely to look at that it’s actually the park icon of Disney California Adventure. Here, it’s reduced to somewhat of an oddly-proportioned, stretched-and-skewed, forced-perspective version of itself painted a dark Tuscan beige, which I would like to correct if only because the Carthay deserves better.
Likewise, it’s a shame that Florida’s recreation of the Spanish Colonial Revival-stylized tower is populated by a gift shop. The Once Upon a Toy shop and the adjoining Mouse About Town retailer that make up this “block” of the street can be combined to create a good-sized building, and kicking out the back wall for an expansion would actually provide a substantial little space for more.
So I decided to make the Carthay home to SNOW WHITE’S ENCHANTED WISH – a much-needed Fantasyland-style dark ride for the park, and a chance to reintroduce the shuttered Lost Legend: Snow White’s Scary Adventures from Magic Kingdom with Disneyland’s “Not-So-Scary” 2021 update. Given that the Carthay famously hosted the 1937 premiere of Snow White – the first full-length animated film ever, and Walt’s greatest risk – it seems like a perfect match.
Likewise, I’ve gone ahead and replaced the outdoor Theater of the Stars with a new, 2,000-seat Broadway-ready theatre, which I’d use to house ROCKETEER – THE MUSICAL! Disney’s cult classic 1991 superhero film wasn’t appreciated in its time, but man is it a gem. Set in World War II Hollywood, the film is a mix of superhero, noir, steampunk, action-adventure, and art deco, and translating it into a 45-minute special effects spectacular and musical just feels like the weirdest, coolest treatment.
Fun fact: it’s also a return to the park for the Rocketeer. Coinciding with the film’s 1991 premiere, the Rocketeer actually took flight in front of the Chinese Theater as part of a limited time Sorcery in the Sky update. Even though the film had a disappointing box office run back in 1991, Disney Junior’s The Rocketeer animated spin-off series offers that this (as a BBC reviewer put it) “airborne Indiana Jones” isn’t a dead property, but actually has franchise-potential…
In keeping with that theme and timeline, I added an adjoining SOUTH SEAS CLUB – the nightclub seen in the film. I sort of envision this as a “quick service by day, table service by night” experience brought to life with lounge singers and jazz acts… perhaps with a second story bar (a rebirth of the park’s Catwalk Bar) open even as the restaurant itself switches styles.
As a final change, I’ve gone ahead and addressed the Rock n’ Roller Coaster problem. Frankly, this launched indoor coaster is badly placed. It takes up a strange section of real estate that prevents the park from expanding into otherwise-obvious expansion pads, and it necessitates a very, very tall and conspicuous showbuilding that’s disguise as anything but the big warehouse it is. So to be honest, the smart move might’ve been to just eliminate this ride entirely or (if we’re being fully “Blue Sky”) move it. But in my attempt to be at least reasonably realistic here, I decided to keep it. But with a change…
Separately from this park wide reimagining exercise, I actually developed a period-appropriate overlay for this ride before. So this feels like the perfect place to roll it out into the bigger picture reimagining. I called it INVASION! A so called “Transmission From The Twilight Zone,” this relatively simple overlay of the existing ride would see guests come to Sunset Radio – a 1930s radio station reigned over by metallic antenna towers.
Inside, guests would find themselves as the legendary 1938 broadcast of the radio drama adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. As urban legend goes, listeners across the nation mistook Orson Welles’ immersive radio drama for the real news, believing that alien invaders had indeed made landing on the East Coast and setting off mass panic in the streets.
While the veracity of the story is debated, it makes for a compelling start to a thrill ride when, ushered out of the radio studio with Welles wondering aloud if “anyone will buy it,” we’re launched into an otherworldly thrill ride of the imagination as the real sounds of the radio broadcast launch us into a wild ride. Halfway through the experience, ten-foot tall incandescent bulbs would illuminate the interior of the coaster’s “spaghetti bowl” of track, revealing that in actuality, we were inside a radio, swirling around like the electrical connections powering the broadcast.
That would make this version of the ride not only an allusion to a real, historical event and a peek behind the curtain on Foley effects, but an “in-universe” (and kinda “out-of-universe”) experience that would be a little heady, a little weird, and a big thrill. Rod Serling’s voice would greet us on the final brakes: “Around and around she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows. What happened here is yours to be believed or disbelieved. One way or another, if you’re seeking something strange, you can find it through a strange and wonderful machine called a radio… tuned to the Twilight Zone.”
Altogether, I think that serves to do something unique to Sunset Blvd.: to actually focus it all on the same timeline. Every allusion in the land would be rooted in real films, pop culture, and stories set in the period from 1937 to 1939, which I think is a pretty amazing feat to still result in such a varied and exciting lineup. And actually, continuing with that classic Hollywood theme, a third land – and our first from-scratch new land – emerges… Just take the road that runs alongside the Carthay and you’ll find yourself in a whole new part of town…
Hidden Hills
Background
Hidden Hills is an entirely new land for the park – and in fact, it’s a mini-land contained entirely on one of the two arterial pathways that connect to the Fantasmic stadium. (In other words, Fantasmic could survive this land being built.)
Hidden Hills really is one of the elite gated communities you’ll find in Los Angeles, tucked away in the Santa Monica Mountains. (Countless celebrities – including Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, Will Smith, Jessica Simpson, Kanye West, and nearly every individual Kardashian have owned homes there.) But my version largely just uses the name to take us to an elite, forested community of Hollywood that never was, but always will be; sprawling estates, luxurious homes, and the historic manors of stars of the silver screen…
So as the streetscape of Sunset Blvd. gives way to the beautiful, green, lamp-lit grounds of Hidden Hills, we stumble on the estate of a genuine Hollywood legend…
Build-Out
One of the oldest and most intriguing homes in Hidden Hills is that of Hollywood starlet Luna Fortuna; a long-retired but still-beloved actress from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Though she’s now retired to her home – VILLA FORTUNA – in the comfort of Hidden Hills, Luna is a star at heart and has opened her home to the public to tour the countless props and artifacts she’s been gifted from film sets across her illustrious career.
By now, you can probably tell that Villa Fortuna is my way of bringing Imagineer’s most jaw-dropping Modern Marvel: Mystic Manor to Walt Disney World. Stepping into Fortuna’s grand and glorious estate, she would welcome us to her home, recalling her days in front of and behind the camera of some of Tinseltown’s most legendary films.
Of course, when her playful tabby cat George accidentally kicks on an enchanted film projector packed with clips of Luna’s heyday, its decades of accumulated “stardust” would spill out, carrying us through the home and awakening Luna’s prop collections… from pulp adventures to creature features; sci-fi classics to historical dramas. A musical, madcap, movie-themed dark ride, this Hollywood-ized version of Mystic Manor would just be an instant classic and a perfect fit for the park.
To build out this mini-land, I also added the DIRECTOR’S CLUB restauarant – a quick service eatery packed with “in-universe” film memorobilia. This would, of course, be a variant of Hong Kong’s Explorers Club. But the great thing is that the antiquities-themed rooms of that restaurant translate well to particular archival collections you might expect of a high-end Hollywood soiree – a pretty clean way to bring more of Mystic Point back to Orlando as Hidden Hills.
Finally, completing the mini-land, I added the GARDEN OF WONDERS – an outdoor walkthrough hedge maze nestled into the hills on the estate, containing props, interactives, and special effects too large to fit into the Villa itself, ending at an enchanted wrought iron greenhouse with lookouts across the property.
As you can see, the winding, lantern-lit paths of this upscale, new money estate connect back up to the Hollywood Tower Hotel. But the entrance to the land next to the Carthay has also been extended as a cross street that continues on into a whole new land… Read on…
Metroville
Background
I knew that after strengthening the park’s “Hollywood” opening act (with Hollywood Blvd., Sunset Blvd., and Hidden Hills), I wanted to begin to get to the park’s new direction: jumping into and out of worlds we’ve seen in Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars.
I also knew that I wanted the first of those worlds to be a city of some kind, smoothing the transition from the “real,” urban landscapes that necessarily serve as its prologue. I’ve always felt that there are three Disney or Pixar “cities” that are just instantly perfect matches for coming to life in a theme park, so it made sense to choose one to be the first of the park’s cinematic worlds.
- Monstropolis from Monsters Inc. – though we haven’t seen much of it, a “downtown” cityscape built around the eponymous factory seems like a no-brainer, with retail and dining opportunities beyond Disney’s wildest dreams… I mean, c’mon: “Gross-out” ice cream flavors! Ooze and Diet Ooze at the soda fountain! Build-a-Monster plush!
Disney also already has the incredible Ride & Go Seek at Tokyo Disneyland dark ride developed, and a suspended, swinging coaster through the factory’s door warehouse was all-but-confirmed for Hollywood Studios and California Adventure (in the latter, as part of a full Monstropolis land that never happened).
- San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6 – the alternate history, near-future version of San Francisco infused with architectural and cultural elements of Japan. San Fransokyo is a totally compelling, dynamic, kinetic, coastal, and super cool concept, but I think that to do it right, you need lots of space, and to set it on a body of water.
Sort of proving my point, I have already developed it into a full-scale, immersive theme park land for my from-scratch concept park, Disney’s Fantastic Worlds and I think it’s absolutely perfect, so I wouldn’t want to wedge it in here.
That left just the third “cityscape” style land that’s been sitting in my head as a perfectly theme-park-able place for years…
- Metroville – the sort of hyper-saturated, retro-futuristic, mid-century cityscape of The Incredibles. Pixar’s superhero team feels like a great fit for this park. On one hand, it fills the “Avengers Campus” hole in the park’s lineup – a land of tech and gadgets and cooperation and taking flight with heroes. But in a way, it could also be this park’s Cars Land – a sprawling city pulled right from the screen.
Ultimately, I’ll tell you that this was not easy! Though Metroville is often glanced in The Incredibles and its sequel, it’s not a well-defined place (partly, of course, because as Pixar’s sixth film and the first with human character models, the backgrounds are pretty loosely rendered) or home to any single landmark that screams “The City From The Incredibles.” (Which is probably part of how Disney’s Hollywood Studios itself was able to just “label slap” a red brick alley as an Incredibles mini-area and have meet-and-greets and photo ops there, and no one could definitively say they were wrong.)
So in developing a Metroville, it’s more of a concept and a mood board I had to work with: a ’60s-style city of colorful heroes, classic cars, comic book allusions, and villainous showdowns. The question wasn’t so much how to bring the actual, somewhat nondescript city from The Incredibles to life, but rather, how to build a city that would instantly recall The Incredibles.
The other qualifications: I knew that this land needed to fill space west of Sunset Blvd., hemmed in by the “Hub” and the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster – er, Invasion! – showbuilding, and ideally should disguise the latter. If done right, this land could transition from the “real” locales of Hollywood to the more fantasy realms at the park’s rear while also completing a needed “loop” of paths. In other words, a lot was riding on this land.
Build-Out
Unlike the San Fransokyo I developed that I felt should reflect the actual geography and landmarks of the city it’s based on, building a downtown square for Metroville was something entirely original. That made it easier to fit the land into the space occupied by the Animation Building and its offices (currently, Star Wars Launch Bay), with a couple of cross streets and the “skyline” of the city serving as the land’s backdrop (not unlike the Cadillac Range serving as a “berm” to envelope Cars Land.
As a bonus, the entrance to the land from Sunset Blvd. creates a much need pressure release valve for the formerly dead-end street (while also turning the area in front of Invasion! from a dead-end plaza to a part of the figure-8 flow that includes Hidden Hills.
But for our purposes, let’s pretend we’re entering Metroville off of the park’s hub. From there, guests would arrive at METROVILLE COMMONS – a large, central green space to relax or sip a drink. Of course, this green space would also be complete with a destroyed, sparking Omnidroid, its robotic limbs splayed out across the Commons. Serving as a weenie for the land against the cityscape backdrop at the land’s rear, this Omnidroid would instantly communicate The Incredibles while also serving a function…
While some of its legs would be perfectly positioned to serve as benches with phone chargers, others might lend themselves to a small children’s slide; a rock still gripped in its claw as a climbing wall; its various claws and shredders as spinnable interactives. This “adaptive re-use” would set the tone of the land – this sweet sort of idea of Metroville’s citizens dealing with villains, and learning to make the best of the aftermath.
Just adjacent, I actually salvaged the current Disney Junior Live on Stage show to become JACK JACK’S SUPER DANCE PARTY, with puppet-style Jack Jack joined by a “super-sitter.” Together, the show could see the pair put Jack Jack’s endless super powers to the test in a fun, interactive setting, with kids learning dance moves to emulate his powers.
Just past Metroville Commons would reside INCREDIBLAST!, bringing the Web-Slingers ride system to Walt Disney World. Here, I imagined guests being invited for a rare Fashion Week tour of Edna Mode’s super suit manufacturing facility and warehouse. After a pre-show in which an Audio-Animatronic of Edna herself demonstrates the incredible capabilities of her super-suits (above), guests would find themselves called to action when the villainous Sewer King releases his army of Robo-Rats into the facility to devour Edna’s suits thread-by-thread.
Recruited to hop aboard Edna’s new Incrediblaster vehicle, guests can choose their own power – ice, fire, electric, water, or stretch – to set off into the warehouse and take out the Robo-Rats. Built with the same ride system as Web-Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure, uests would use gesture-recognition to rid each of the facility’s labs and storage rooms of the pests, leading up to a showdown with the Sewer King himself.
Naturally, guests would exit into Incredigear where they can purchase their own costumes – maybe including the kind of “add-on” gear that can personalize or overpower your performance on the ride, as in Web-Slingers. But the piece of Web-Slingers that I do like and would keep for this Incredibles version is that the group would be scored together so that the ride feels collaborative rather than competitive. I realize that after criticizing California Adventure for having Web-Slingers and Midway Mania so close, I’m a big ole’ hypocrite for bringing this back to another park that already has Midway Mania… But bear with me.
And yes, I do think it would be great to use Disney’s Stuntronics technology to see Mr. Incredible and Frozone flying over the warehouse throughout the day, which would also provide an awesome sight for people relaxing in the Commons.
Further back in town (and right alongside the entry from Sunset Blvd.) I envisioned FROZONE RUSH HOUR RESCUE. This would be what I think is a pretty clever reskin of California Adventure’s Rollickin’ Roadsters, which would fill a similar niche here as a large, kinetic family flat ride. With guests seated in little mid-century cars, this LPS, trackless flat ride would see the villainous Fender Bender arrive (via an Audio Animatronic pulling up in a beat-up car), activating his newest invention: the Traffic Jammer.
Under his remote control, the cars of Metroville would dance around in unison, horns honking and headlights flashing until Frozone’s arrival. Via lighting, projection, and fog effects, Frozone would freeze Fender Bender and the streets of town, sending cars sliding and spinning and dancing in a frosty finale.
Finally, I wanted the land to have an anchor E-Ticket attraction that I called MISSION: INCREDIBLE. Guests would enter the attraction through the Metroville Museum of Science to attend the unveiling of its brand new aviation exhibit. But just as they arrive at the exhibit’s finale – a demonstration of futuristic, four-person Flight Packs lead by the Incredibles themselves, the nefarious Doctor Gasbag would arrive and unveil his sinister plan: to inflate balloons he’s anchored around town, lifting Metroville into the sky and dropping it into the ocean.
Of course, with the ground shuddering beneath their feet, guests would be rushed off to the museum’s labs to climb aboard the prototype Flight Packs and take to the skies over Metroville. Their mission? To find and pop Gasbag’s balloons and bring the villain to justice. Using KUKA Robo-Arm technology (as in Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey), this would certainly be a major headliner for the park, and for all of Walt Disney World.
With an E-Ticket KUKA Robo-Arm ride; the no-height-requirement D-Ticket Incrediblast!, the C-Ticket trackless flat ride, and a family playground and show, I think think land would be a really well-rounded experience for families. More to the point, I think this would be a bright, kinetic, comic streetscape that would perfectly transition from 1940s Hollywood to 1950s superhero metropolis while also establishing a much-needed outer “ring” for the park’s layout and the first of its more fantastic lands.
Buying my plan yet? I hope so, because the best is yet to come… Next month, we’ll continue our tour of this idealized, built-out, Blue Sky version of Disney’s Hollywood Studios… So if you’re enjoying it, share this story with your friends and let us know in the comments below: what do you hope awaits in the second half of our reimagined Hollywood Studios?
