Fans have been fearing this day for decades, and it has finally arrived: Muppet*Vision is closing. As you know by now, Jim Henson’s last Muppet project will officially vacate its home at Disney’s Hollywood Studios… but in typical Muppet mayhem, Kermit, Piggy, Fozzie, Gonzo, Animal, and the rest won’t be gone for long. Instead, the Muppetational cast will takeover one of the park’s E-Ticket thrill rides.
Today, let’s take a brief look back at how we got here, and what we think, know, and hope the future holds for the one and only Muppets at Walt Disney World…
Catching Up
First, you have to understand that Disney has had a long love affair with the Muppets – since long before the company owned the characters outright. Actually, in the late ’80s, then-CEO Michael Eisner initiated a sort of corporate courtship with Muppets creator Jim Henson. “We both work for families, and at Disney they have the best ways of reaching families, the best distribution channels,” Henson said of the work already underway at the then-new Disney-MGM Studios. “I wanted to work with that whole Disney machinery. It’s such a terrifically strong thing. Besides, we’re having a lot of fun.”
Henson’s appreciation for Disney’s “machinery” was just what he was looking for. Henson was allegedly eager to step back from the business of the Muppets and instead take on a creative role with the brand. More to the point, Henson saw Disney as a company that could preserve, protect, and evolve the Muppets – just as they had with their own timeless characters and stories. It was all but a done deal that the Walt Disney Company would soon acquire both the Muppets and their creator, with plans for a Muppet Studios at the Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park as the planned endgame for the growing partnership.
But of course, the unexpected death of Jim Henson in May 1990 at just 53 years old rocked both companies. Henson’s family (understandably) recoiled, retracting plans underway with Disney. Frankly, it was a miracle that the one project they’d completed – Jim’s last film, Muppet*Vision 3D – was able to open at all.
The story of the Muppets post-Jim-Henson is an odd one, with the brand passing from never-heard-of-’em company to company until 2004, when – fifteen years after the courtship began – Michael Eisner oversaw the purchase of the Muppets for just $75 million. Unfortunately, Eisner and Kermit’s reunion was short-lived. Eisner exited the company in 2005 (before the end of his contract, even) ushering in the reign of Bob Iger… who promptly when on to acquire Pixar for $7.4 billion. (In other words, valuing Pixar at one hundred times more than the Muppets.) Soon, Marvel (2009) and Star Wars (2012) joined, very much signaling that the Muppets weren’t going to be a focus for Disney in the 21st century.
Sure, Disney released two Muppet films (The Muppets in 2011 and Muppets Most Wanted in 2014) and a short-lived “The Muppets” sitcom on ABC (above) in 2015. But in a modern Walt Disney Company – where a “billion-dollar-blockbuster-or-bust” mindset pervades the worlds of Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars – such projects felt more like fan-service frivolities than the kind of franchise-building that’s needed for long-lasting investment. Let’s face it, the Muppets would never support a billion dollar film… Seemingly realizing that, in the mid-2010s, the Muppets were corporately-re-homed from the Disney Consumer Products to a most unusual new place in the company: being nested under Walt Disney Imagineering itself.
Perhaps explains park projects like the “Muppets Present … Great Moments in American History” show that ran from 2016 to 2020 at Magic Kingdom, the 2020 opening of the vaguely-Muppets themed “Regal Eagle Smokehouse” in EPCOT’s United States pavilion, appearances by the Muppets in Hollywood Studios’ Jollywood Nights beginning in 2023, and the brief flirtation with a true Muppets-themed land when PizzeRizzo opened adjacent to Muppet*Vision in 2016. But surely, Muppet*Vision remained the anchor of the Muppets’ presence at Disney Parks… even if it felt permanently endangered.
News… or not
… Which brings us to the 2024 D23 Expo. After a post-pandemic drought of new projects, Disney came to the 2024 event armed with plenty of announcements. Or at least, partial ones.
Following the multi-year trajectory that transformed D23 Expo from a “best kept secret” to a hype-filled fan convention centered on merchandise, the 2024 event may as well have been subtitled “D23: No Bad News.” Disney released oodles of artwork around substantial projects – including an expanded Avengers Campus and Pandora: The World of Avatar for Disney California Adventure, the Tropical Americas project at Animal Kingdom, a new Cars mini-land and Villains land at Magic Kingdom, and a Monsters Inc. land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Of course, what they forgot to mention was that each of them would also require substantial removals at the parks they’d take shape in. (It was only two days after the event that Disney confessed that the Cars rides would replace the Rivers of America, for example.) At least as we understand it, the lack of specificity in the initial Monstropolis art was intentional. Though the resort’s leadership always intended for the Monstropolis land to overtake Muppet*Vision (hints of which fans picked up on in the concept art above), allegedly a last minute request from Imagineering bought some time to look at other options within the park, leaving the initial announcement vague…
But in November 2024, they’d clearly exhausted all other options and the plan was made official: Muppet*Vision 3D would end its nearly 35-year run at an undisclosed time in the near future to make way for Monstropolis. The Internet was predictably alight with conversation as fans mourned the inevitable yet unthinkable end of the beloved experience – remember, the last that Jim Henson himself personally worked on, and his last time puppeteering and voicing Kermit the Frog.
Just as they hadn’t wanted to include the “bad news” with D23 audiences, Disney has also never acknowledged the closure of Muppet*Vision on social media. However, in a quiet Disney Parks Blog post, they teased that “As we move forward with these changes, we are having creative conversations and exploring ways to preserve the film and other parts of the experience for fans to enjoy in the future.” Of course, that could be something as simple as uploading the film elements to Disney+ or the Apple Vision Pro, or as ornate as relocating a (modified?) version of the show to a smaller, custom-built space somewhere at either Disneyland or Walt Disney World. We just don’t know what will actually come of the noncommittal “creative conversations”… if anything does at all.
But of course, the tragic announcement also came with an unexpected twist. For the first time ever, The Muppets – yes, The Muppets! – will receive their very own E-Ticket ride…
