Not every attraction is destined for greatness. Not every attraction stands the test of time.
And so far, our growing collection of in-depth Declassified Disaster entries has looked into the troubled pasts of some of the most flubbed, frustrating, and outright failed attractions ever designed. We’ve seen frazzled technology spell the end of Disneyland’s Tomorrowland ’98 and the Rocket Rods; we’ve watched as ’90s cartoon comedy overtook a classic to create the dated Enchanted Tiki Room: Under New Management; SeaWorld’s attempt to best Disney with Journey to Atlantis simply sank; a would-be update created the embarassing Journey into YOUR Imagination; and a blood-curdling classic became Disney’s most despised attraction ever, Stitch’s Great Escape. Our LEGEND LIBRARY is filled with stories of flopped and failed attractions.
Image: Disney
But even facing tone-deaf “upgrades,” fried technologies, and outright embarassements, there may be no attraction on Earth that serves as a bigger symbol of an entire park’s gradual decline in concept and quality than the Disney-MGM Studios’ Backstage Studio Tour. Literally the would-be headliner of a cutting-edge park, the 25-year life of this doomed attraction mirrors the unthinkable reality faced by Disney’s designers: their studio park was not going to survive. Today, we’ll go backstage on the Backstage Studio Tour to see its lofty ambitions… and to see how its decline mirrors the abandonment of the park’s purpose. Even Disney’s most eager fans may be surprised at the tumultuous history of this disastrous ride…
Moving Pictures
Since the very first moving pictures, people the world over have been drawn to the silver screen. From the romance of the golden age of Hollywood to the advent of talking pictures, animation, and Technicolor, our culture is inseparably tied to the celebrity and stardom of cinema. The glamour of Tinseltown and the magic of the movies have been part of our society for generations.
And for as long as people have followed the golden glow of theater lights, they’ve been longing to see behind-the-camera… to live the lives of the stars, to see the drama of production, and to witness the wonders of “movie magic” that make the impossible look so real.
Image: Universal
Look no further than Universal Studios Hollywood where, in 1915 – over one hundred years ago – a 25-cent “studio tour” began offering tourists to the emerging new “Hollywood” a chance to walk past through the sets of “moving pictures” to see the still-young world of cinema.
Just a decade after Universal Studios opened, in 1925, Walt and Roy Disney moved their animation studio to a brand new facility located on Hyperion Avenue in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. Just a few years later, Mickey Mouse would hit the screen. And at once, letters began to pour in, as eager fans wondered why they couldn’t tour Disney’s studio to see Mickey in person. The answer was simple: Walt knew that the process of animation was decidedly less interesting than his studios’ fans would’ve imagined. Walking through the cramped studio watching men hunched over palettes wouldn’t provide the excitement people wanted.
Click and expand for a larger and more detailed view. Image: Disney
That’s why Walt started to develop the idea of transforming the lot adjacent to the studio into a Mickey Mouse Park with a recreation historic village, river boats paddling around an island, a Western town, stagecoaches, and a picnic park, all encircled by a steam train. We chronicled the in-depth story behind this would-be amusement park in its own standalone feature, but you know what happened: Mickey Mouse Park grew – both physically and conceptually – until it no longer fit on the lot on Riverside and Buena Vista.
Image: Disney
After years and years of planning, a more fully realized design – Disneyland – opened in the quiet town of Anaheim. By that point, Walt and his designers had intentionally and entirely left behind any suggestion of moviemaking or a connection to the studio. Disneyland wouldn’t show guests behind-the-scenes, it would place them into the scenes. Radically different from anything that had become before, Disneyland was built by filmmakers to be immersive, living, and habitable.
The Magic of the Movies
While Walt’s Disneyland may have intentionally turned the notion of a movie park on its head, Universal Studios Hollywood – just about an hour north of Anaheim – used its storied, cinematic assets to its benefit. We already mentioned that Universal began offering tours of its L.A. studio lot back in 1915, but the introduction of “talking pictures” with sound had rendered the tour obsolete, given that “Quiet on the set!” became the standard in the 1930s.
Image: Universal
It wasn’t until 1965 that Universal revived the Studio Tour in a more formalized way and began offering the tram-led Tour still known the world over today… In its earliest years, Universal’s Studio Tour was a multi-hour ride on “Glamour Trams” through Universal’s real backlots where actual filming with genuine stars might be taking place… on-board, guests would view familiar and landmark movie sets, get a glimpse of the dressing rooms of the stars, and see the authentic soundstages and behind-the-scenes facilities that powered the world of motion pictures.
Image: Universal, via theStudioTour.com
The Studio Tour’s highlights, though, quickly became run-ins with staged special effects that gave guests a clearer understanding of how “movie magic” could bring unthinkable scenes to life. Guests were enthralled by such living demonstrations as a Mexican town that would flood and drain before your eyes; a menacing rockslide that reset for the next tram; and a dizzying, spinning “avalanche” tunnel that might give riders (or, as importantly, viewers) the sensation they were tumbling through falling snow.
Image: Ollie Harridge, Flickr (license)
Of course, the real headliners began to arrive in 1976, when the runaway hit film JAWS – literally the origin of the summer blockbuster – inspired the creation of a sincerely startling run-in with an unthinkable animatronic Great White. A decade later, King Kong Encounter set a new standard for animatronic encounters. In 1988, the Studio Tour added another spectacle, trapping guests in the 8.3 namesake of Earthquake.
Gradually, Universal Studios Hollywood began to add one-off thrills like E.T. Adventure and the famed Lost Legend: Back to the Future – The Ride, but its heart – its purpose for being – remained the Studio Tour. An hour-long headliner that not only peeled back the lens of Hollywood magic, but also offered a “best-of” menu of disasters-on-demand that thrilled Hollywood tourists.
Hollywood East
Image: Universal
For decades, Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood co-existed as Californian classics – each a must-see destination for very different reason. More peers than opponents, the two were regional day-trips.
All the while, Walt Disney World in Florida opened, then grew, then grew again. By the 1980s, Walt Disney World was already fulfilling its promise of becoming a “Vacation Kingdom of the World,” drawing guests from around the globe. Disney made Central Florida a vacation hotspot where once had resided sleepy towns and marshes. And as anyone would, Universal’s executives made the none-too-difficult decision that they, too, wanted a piece of property there.
Image: Universal
By the early 1980s, plans for a Universal Studios Florida were already in the works. If Disney had turned the unlikely Central Florida into a worldwide vacation destination, Universal hoped to turn it into a Hollywood East – a legitimate satellite Tinseltown that would become the new hotspot for directors and stars to shoot their films, with Universal Studios Florida as the place to do it.
One man stood in the way, and we bet you’ll recognize him… Read on…
Eisner
It just so happens that right as plans for a Universal Studios Florida started to get rolling, a new CEO stepped into the top spot at Walt Disney Productions.
Michael Eisner and Frank Wells. Image: Disney
Michael Eisner was hand-selected by Roy O. Disney – Walt’s nephew – to take over Walt Disney Productions after a period of stagnation, uncertainty, and fear during the ‘70s and ‘80s. See, Disney was the rare company whose vision and identity emanated almost entirely from its well-known, well-liked, and brilliant founder, and when Walt Disney passed away in 1966, there was legitimate worry that that might be the end. What was Walt Disney Productions without Walt Disney? And even those inside the studio seemed to falter.
Without Walt, the Studio went into decline. Disney famously hit a dry spell, going most of the ‘70s without a legitimate studio hit as both live action and animated features tanked and the theme parks stagnated. Disney’s brand was decimated, and the company was this close to being the victim of a number of corporate takeovers that likely would’ve split and sold-off Disney’s assets.
Images: Disney
Eisner was the guy to turn that around. Given that he’d been the CEO of Paramount Pictures, Eisner was the man to revitalize Disney’s animation, revive its live action studio, and use his industry expertise to forge new partnerships to give Disney’s sagging brand new swagger.
And boy did he, kicking off what’s today called the Disney Renaissance (when Disney had hit after hit after hit at the box office from The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast to Lion King, Pocahontas, and Mulan).
Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
From the get-go, he instituted a new and unprecedented policy of using his cinematic résumé to make Disney’s theme parks into cool, hip places with the latest stars and hot movies – even if they weren’t Disney movies! – kicking off the agreement with George Lucas that led to Indiana Jones Adventure and Lost Legends: Captain EO, the ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, and STAR TOURS.
If movies could save Walt Disney Productions and fundamentally revive Disney’s theme parks, it may deserve its own pavilion in EPCOT Center’s Future World, elevated to the level of other American industries like transportation, energy, and health. Early plans for a filmmaking pavilion called for an epic dark ride through the greatest scenes in movie history, but Eisner’s ambition grew…
…Could it be that the storied history of film and the process of movie-making deserved its own, entire park?
Stolen
Image: Disney
Insiders say it’s no coincidence that Eisner announced a movie-making park for Walt Disney World right about the time Universal announced their own Universal Studios Florida. As the CEO of Paramount, Eisner might have even been aware of their plans even before they’d been made public. And maybe – just maybe – Eisner had hoped that a Disney movie park would be the preemptive strike to cut Universal out of the Orlando market before they could even get a foothold.
But just in case they dared continue forward, Disney offered the deepest cut yet: the headlining attraction at the new Disney park in Florida would be – you guessed it – a multi-hour tram-guided tour through backlot facilities of Disney’s new, working “Hollywood East” studio facility and past staged demonstrations of special effects and disaster encounters.
Image: Disney
Yes, Disney’s movie park had literally ripped the bread-and-butter of Universal’s century-old studio park and its famed Studio Tour to headline their own movie park.
(By the way, while Disney had doubtlessly hoped that their “borrowing” the concept would talk Universal out of a Floridian park entirely, it didn’t quite work. Universal’s designers went back to the drawing board and did something brilliant: they took the staged encounters made famous as pieces of Hollywood’s Studio Tour and split them out, turning each into its own full, standalone, built-out E-Ticket attraction… Today, remembered as Lost Legends: JAWS, Kongfrontation, and Earthquake: The Big One. Spoiler alert: Universal probably ended up with the stronger studio park because of it.)
Disney-MGM Studios
A movie park was a peculiar choice for Disney for a number of reasons. Scheduled for a 1989 opening, the park would practically open alongside the first film in Eisner’s Renaissance period. Put another way, “Disney” was certainly not a brand most people would equate with the rich history of Hollywood – neither antique nor modern – and wouldn’t seem very reputable in any attempt to celebrate either classic Tinseltown or current films.
Image: MGM
Smartly, Eisner began negotiations with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Like Disney, MGM was well past its prime, but unlike Disney, MGM was once been the largest, most glamorous, and most revered studio in Hollywood, besting Universal in grandeur. MGM was the brand that would lend reputable name recognition to Disney’s movie park, not to mention that MGM had among its libraries of classics many of the films needed to create an epic central dark ride for the new Disney-MGM Studios.
Image: Disney
Though Universal’s park was announced first and broke ground first, it was Disney’s that managed to have the earlier 1989 opening day (thanks to its smaller size and the controversial Reedy Creek Development arrangement wherein Disney effectively signs its own building permits in Florida).
The miniscule park was an oddity even then: designed only for a half-day of exploration, the Disney-MGM Studios was comprised of a convincingly “Disneyland”-style introduction (an idealized, romanticized, Golden Age recreation of Hollywood Blvd. ending in the castle-esque Chinese Theater and its headlining dark ride – the park’s Lost Legend: The Great Movie Ride) with almost all of the rest of the park’s footprint made of a much more industrial backlot of beige soundstages, trailers, and camera-ready facades supported by scaffolds.
Image: Disney
In the brochure, the Backstage Studio Tour through that actual, working movie studio that made up the park’s latter half was truly the attraction worth seeing. In reality, the attraction that created the Disney-MGM Studios ended up killing its concept. On the next page, we’ll take a ride through the Disney attraction that became a catastrophe in its own right. Read on…
Hooray for Hollywood!
Image: Disney, via Yesterland
Visit Magic Kingdom to be transported to the romantic worlds of “yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.”
Stop into EPCOT Center to explore a brave, new “permanent World’s Fair” concept, showcasing American innovation and cultural unity.
But the new, third theme park to join Walt Disney World is just a little different.
Michael Eisner’s dedication at this park’s May 1, 1989 opening proclaimed that the park was “dedicated to Hollywood—not a place on a map, but a state of mind that exists wherever people dream and wonder and imagine, a place where illusion and reality are fused by technological magic…” The Disney-MGM Studios is a celebration of “a Hollywood that never was – and always will be.”
Image: Disney
More simply, this new park still transports you – but not to another world. Just another side of the country. The Disney-MGM Studios is exactly what it sounds like: a real, working movie studio modeled after the classic, soundstage-packed movie-making campuses sprawled across Hollywood, California. It’s a place where, at last, Disney can dispense with timelessness and immersive worlds and instead provide a home base for Eisner’s new industry-leading concept: that Disney Parks should be hip, young places packed with the stories, characters, and settings that resonate with young people right now.
Okay, in 30 years, people might not still be talking about ABC’s 1991 sitcom Dinosaurs, and 1987’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or 1995’s Goosebumps may not be “timeless” enough for that snoody Magic Kingdom, but here in the beige showbuildings and industrial backlots of a studio, they’ll feel right at home! And even better, their inexplicable proximity to each other would be part of the fun! After all, we’re not really being transported to Ariel’s world… we’re on a backlot, where we might bump into her and the Power Rangers in one stroll!
Click and expand for a larger and more detailed view. Image: Disney
When the Disney-MGM Studios opened in spring 1989, it didn’t exactly offer a full roster.
In fact, the park was officially divided into two distinct halves: a theme park proper (featuring just one ride – the iconic Lost Legend: The Great Movie Ride – with another Lost Legend: STAR TOURS en route for later that year) and a studio. The eponymous studio that gives the park its name is indeed an actual, real, active production facility. Look no farther than the map above, pointing out a Backlot (comprised of camera-ready sets representing New York, Chicago, and San Francisco interchangably, a Residential Street, and a special-effects-ready canyon set) and a formal Production Center of studio sets, costuming, and other studio musts.
Disney built this place to singlehandedly transform Orlando, Florida into a “Hollywood East,” courting major stars and blockbuster productions to take up shop among its amenities. One potential pitfall? Your shoot will be within earshot and eyeline of Walt Disney World guests on one of the most spectacularly-sized attractions ever:..
The Backstage Studio Tour
If you’ve got a few hours to spare (and we imagine you do, given the Backstage Studio Tour is the second of two rides at the new Disney-MGM Studios), make your way to the park’s headlining attraction – its “thesis” of sorts, though saying so makes the park sound pretty uninspired. At a whopping two hours (give or take), this attraction is so wildly scaled, a restroom break is provided halfway through.
Your journey begins under the daunting Studio Arch just off of the park’s central plaza. That arch – modeled after the ornate arches often found at the gates of Hollywood’s movie studio lots – is a grand entrance for a grand attraction. Boarding the park’s fleet of studio trams, we’re off!
Image: Disney
Quickly coming into view is the park’s official icon. Magic Kingdom has a castle; EPCOT Center has Spaceship Earth; Disney-MGM Studios has the Earful Tower. At a whopping 130 feet, the Earful Tower is an instantly-recognizable water tower (humorously wearing its own set of Mickey Mouse ears… size 342 3/8, if you ask). In the early 1900s, Hollywood studios’ backlots were always populated by water towers, ready to strike if and when easily flammable wooden sets caught fire. This water tower doesn’t actually have water in it. It’s also unusual in that the only clear view of this park icon is from this ride. The gorgeous, elaborate exterior of the Chinese Theater reigning at the end of Hollywood Blvd. might’ve made more sense, but this is a studio park, where a studio icon is a must. (Spoiler alert: Though this Earful Tower made our list of 10 Demoted and Destroyed Park Icons, its younger and taller sister is still holding strong at Disneyland Paris’ Walt Disney Studios Park… more on that later.)
Snap your photos while you can, because the tram continues along and into the heart of the studio’s production center. Passing into a warehouse, a long window gives us a sneak peek into our first behind-the-scenes feature: the Costuming department, “where skilled designers create the clothes worn by your favorite stars.” And indeed, seamstresses and tailors are hard at work within, sorting and trimming various lengths of fabric to create the costumes in use in the studios’ productions.
Attached is the Scenic Shop where studio craftsmen design the props and setpieces the production calls for.
Ah, but here’s the moment we’ve been waiting for. The Backlot. It’s finally time to see some hot sets. Undoubtedly, we’ll run into world famous directors and stylish celebrities making their newest Oscar-winning feature films.
Image: Disney
A charming-enough place to start is Residential Street. As the name implies, this collection of “homes” (really merely facades) was built to stand-in for suburban American neighborhoods with a “choose-your-own-adventure” array of architectural styles.
Take, for example, the ranch-style house here.
Image: Disney
Look familiar? For fans of The Golden Girls, it will. The Golden Girls was originally filmed on-location in Brentwood, California. An exact replica of the real home’s exterior was built here at Disney-MGM Studios for use in season two onward. Keeping up with the Joneses wouldn’t be easy in this neighborhood, as the house next door was featured in Empty Nest, with the homes from Earnest Saves Christmas and Splash, Too just down the street.
At any time, a Hollywood producer could choose to do their filming here on this quiet, convincing residential street in the middle of a studio backlot… but it’s unlikely we’ll see any production today…
That all changes at our next stop, as the tram loops around the heads for Catastrophe Canyon!
Image: Disney
In the spirit of the original Studio Tour at… well… a competing studio’s Hollywood headquarters… a visit to the Backlot wouldn’t be complete without a staged special effects demonstration in the form of a disaster. They already cornered the market on sharks, apes, and earthquakes, but Disney’s home-grown disaster isn’t too shabby. As our Tram comes to a stop amid the quiet desert canyon, the metaphorical and literal floodgates open. Sudden torrential rain sends a wall of water over the canyon walls, carrying an oil tanker that catches on fire, sending the tram rumbling. It’s an explosive, exciting moment as we see how physical effects come to life, then “magically” reset.
Of course, this demonstration is for our benefit, not a director’s. Though our Tram guide assures us that we’ve been caught in the middle of a live taping, you won’t spot any celebrities here, either.
The Tram glides out of the canyon as everything impressively reverses and drains – quiet once more – and drives around the back of the “set,” giving us an impressive look at the industrial infrastructure that makes these astounding effects – and their reload – so simple.
Image: Disney
Then, it’s back through the Backlot and this time to New York Street, a convincingly flexible cross street of facades that are literally designed to stand in for the real thing. Though each shop, deli, and laundromat along the streets are artificial, to the camera lens behind Hollywood’s next blockbuster, this simple set would be close enough to catch even Brooklynites unawares… it’s the perfect spot to get that action shot without the New York production budget or the street closures. Still, looks like nothing’s filming today.
Ah, but now, we’ve reached our halfway point. That’s right – despite all the wonders we’ve witnessed (though, to our count, no actual filming… yet!) we still have another half of this star-studded attraction. Luckily, we’ve got a chance to stretch our legs at the Backstage Plaza, accessible only to us… and any Hollywood headliners who may be in the park for productions today. Don’t recognize anyone else ambling around at the Studio Catering Co. restaurant? They must be indie arthouse directors then.
Take your time at the Backstage Plaza. The tour will go on without us, but we shouldn’t take it personally. The next half of the attraction is on-foot, and groups of guests leave from Backstage Plaza and back into the behind-the-scenes magic in pulsed batches. Restroom break? Snack? Then off we go…
Part II
So, no one seemed to be filming on the Residential Streets, Catastrophe Canyon set, or the Streets of New York today, but this next half of the tour is when we really dig into the Disney-MGM Studios. Our next stop is the Water Tank.
Images: Alan Huffman, Yesterland
Standing around the perimeter of this stormy ocean set, we’re due for a quick catch-up on some more practical effect wizardry that goes into Hollywood favorites. For example, we’ll see how miniatures are often used to stand-in for full-sized scenes, how to simulate an ocean battle on a closed set, and – with the help of some audience volunteers – see how simple effects (including an absolute onslaught of water) can create a surprisingly convincing scene when lightly edited and interspersed with pre-recorded footage on-screen.
Okay, so a few lucky volunteers were selected to showcase this fun special effects example, but where are the real productions? Ah, but ahead comes a highlight of the tour: the Soundstages. This is it! We’re about to see real studio sets constructed for actual filming, with Hollywood stars aplenty.
The walking tour leads us up into the special viewing hallways above the sets with bird’s-eye views of the goings-on beneath.
Image: Disney
Aha! See? The brochures didn’t lie. You’re looking at the set from The Disney Channel’s All-New Mickey Mouse Club (the show’s third incarnation) and it’s true that you may even get a glimpse of Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gosling, JC Chasez, or Christina Aguilera on-set… of course, they weren’t famous yet, so you probably wouldn’t recognize or care. But no photos please!
An inordinate number of sets you’ll find on these three soundstages belong to small-scale, accessory, early-’90s Disney productions, like Teen Win, Lose, or Draw, and Adventures in Wonderland. Game shows like Let’s Make a Deal, Wheel of Fortune, and MTV’s Remote Control would occassionally set up shop for special tapings. But if you’re hoping to see a Hollywood headliner, don’t hold your breath.
A final catwalk connects us to our last soundstage and the finale experience: the literal cutting room where editors work to clean up audio and picture post-production, making the movies we’ve seen today ship-shape for the big screen. Then, it’s into the Walt Disney Theater for a preview of upcoming Disney films. They weren’t filmed here.
Image: Disney
The studio tram took us all the way out to the Backlot, and our walking tour through the Production Center brought us back into the shadow of the Studio Arch.
Exiting into the light at last, our two-hour journey into the movies gave us an unparalleled glimpse into a real movie studio, just without some of the features you might expect, like movie stars or filmmaking. But are they essential to the experience? Eisner thought so, and predicated an entire theme park around the draw of a working movie studio… So what happens when reality strikes and Disney realizes that production simply isn’t going to catch on and their “Hollywood East?” That’s how the story wraps up… We’re off to the big finale on the last page…
…Annnnddd Cut!
Image: Disney
Guests quickly reported that they liked Disney’s new movie park, but that it was a little too short on things to actually do. The park opened on May 1, 1989, and before the end of the year, the Streets of New York set was annexed from the tour and instead opened to pedestrian traffic to serve as an attraction to see and photograph up close.
It wasn’t much longer after that that a crack appeared in the park’s façade: it was already apparent that despite Universal’s dream and Disney’s concrete efforts, Orlando, Florida would not become a Hollywood East. Aside from some Disney television productions and a segment of the studio’s animation group, production never really picked up at the Disney-MGM Studios. A new street off of the Studio Tour entrance (between the Great Movie Ride’s showbuilding and the studio’s facilities) was opened to pedestrians as “Mickey Avenue.”
By 1991, Disney’s efforts to expand the park’s offerings saw the oversized and epic behind-the-scenes ride split in two. Let’s trace the story of each half:
1) The walking tour
Image: Disney
The walking portion tour was splintered off into Inside the Magic: Special Effects and Production Tour, taking its same route from the water tank special effects stage, through the Soundstages, and back to the Studio Arch.
Advertised as a “35-minute walking tour,” the attraction still toured guests along the upper floors of the studios’ staged showbuildings and past Disney sets where accessory Disney features would occasionally record. But before long, it became a somber look at unused sets where things might be – but wouldn’t be – filmed. Production had dried up.
Image: Disney
The attraction gradually diminished and downsized on its own, beginning when its finale soundstage (the former post-production exhibit and Walt Disney Theater) was repurposed into a stage for the short-lived “Here Come the Muppets” and the much, much longer-lived “Voyage of the Little Mermaid” (still playing today after a continuous 25 year run of continuous 16-minute shows… you do the math.)
Eventually, the unfortunate walkthrough was renamed Backstage Pass and outfitted with “sets” and artifacts updated to reflect a current Disney feature film. It closed entirely in 2001.
The three fully-equipped Soundstages designed for Hollywood production were repurposed. First, Soundstage 3 was retrofitted with the convincing Who Wants to be a Millionaire – Play It! interactive game show experience based on the worldwide phenomenon on ABC. When it closed, Soundstage 3 and Soundstage 2 were combined to house Toy Story Midway Mania. The other soundstages along Mickey Avenue became One Man’s Dream (now Walt Disney Presents) and a rotating exhibit themed to Disney’s newest live action feature, most recently The Legend of Captain Jack Sparrow.
Image: Disney
Given that “Mickey Avenue” is expected to become a backstage area after the opening of Toy Story Land (which will be placed on the other side of the soundstages, where Toy Story Mania will now be entered from), it’s likely that this block of showbuildings and soundstages will soon disappear completely from our toy-sized perspective behind a “giant” fence.
2) The tram tour
Image: Theme Park Tourist
Upon that 1991 split, the tram-led portion of the tour had its name appended, becoming the Backstage Studio Tour featuring Catastrophe Canyon.
It didn’t last long that incarnation, either. On June 30, 1996, the attraction re-opened as the Studio Backlot Tour, now entering via the former walking tour warehouse entrance at the end of Mickey Avenue. By this point, it may be hard to keep track of what’s what, but believe it or not we’ve arrived at a version of the attraction you know…
Image: Disney
The Studio Backlot Tour is the 30-minute ride that inexplicably continued to exist at the park for two decades, combining an abbreviated version of the walking tour (with its water tank special effects demonstration) with an abbreviated version of the tram tour (highlighting Catastrophe Canyon) until 2014(!) despite production having pulled out of the studio since before its opening.
A visit to most Disney Parks is about using your imagination to become heroes, travel to new worlds, and forget reality entirely. Disney-MGM Studios turned that recipe on its head by instead promising to reveal how Disney faked those new worlds. But the long-running Studio Backlot Tour was an exercise in imagination exceeding even the most fanciful attractions in that it required guests to imagine that they were really on an actual, working studio’s backlot. Even though production had long ceased, the attraction curiously kept up the paper-thin pretense that you might actually see a star, a hot set, or a camera… each as unlikely as the last.
Identity
Image: Disney
It won’t surprise our readers that Disney’s third gate – since renamed Disney’s Hollywood Studios – is trapped in its own identity crisis.
The allure of seeing “behind the scenes” largely fell away with the advent of the DVD bonus feature; the mystery of the lives of the stars lost its luster thanks to Twitter; the awe of the special effect demonstration dimmed as digital effects took over. In a 21st century marked by Universal’s Islands of Adventure, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and Tokyo DisneySea, “studio” parks populated by shuffled and short-lived intellectual properties, industrial lighting rigs, and beige soundstages look and feel like cost-saving cop-outs… and… they are.
One need only look at the subject of one of our most spectacularly sad Declassified Disasters: Walt Disney Studios Park, to see what happened when Disney mixed the dated-and-desperate “studio” park concept with the cost-saving desperation of the end of Eisner’s age, creating what is without a doubt the most pathetic Disney park on Earth. (Its would-be headliner is also a tram-led studio tour.)
Image: Disney
It leaves Disney with a dilemma: what is Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and what should it be? How do you transform a park that’s based on a fundamentally dated concept? What do you do when a park is broken at its core?
In Hollywood Studios’ case, Disney’s betting big on intellectual property. Thanks to two massive projects in the last decade, the park today hosts two large, immersive themed lands that follow the “Magic Kingdom” and “Wizarding World” recipes more than the studio one, allowing us to step into the worlds of Star Wars and Toy Story.
Despite their grandeur, they admittedly add to the hodge-podge of a park identity rather than course-correct them. After all, with Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Toy Story Land in the lineup, Disney’s Hollywood Studios offers:
- Two lands ostensibly themed to various eras of the Golden Age of Hollywood… except that they’re populated by the Disney-on-Ice-esque Beauty and the Beast – Live on Stage (a little long in the tooth after 25 years), the modern soundstage-set Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster starring Aerosmith set in the nonsequitor shadow of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and – confusingly – the opulent, palatial Chinese Theater that should be the park’s icon, formerly home to the park’s thesis and Lost Legend: The Great Movie Ride, now housing Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway;
- One land devoted to modern Los Angeles (and nonsensically having an entire area dedicated to The Muppets, stylized after New York)
Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
- Two cinematic, immersive, insulated, Magic Kingdom style lands devoted to Star Wars and Toy Story
- The remains of “studio” style in Echo Lake (with its mis-matched Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, Frozen Sing-Along, ’50s Prime Time Cafe, and perpetually empty soundstages) and the Animation Courtyard (with the likely-soon-to-be-vacant Star Wars Launch Bay and the 25-year running Voyage of the Little Mermaid)
And as the cherry on top, our must-read Ride Count Countdown shows that Disney’s Hollywood Studios has the least rides of any Disney or Universal park, and – until Toy Story Land opens next summer – has half as many as the next in line.
So what is Disney’s Hollywood Studios? What will it be? The jury’s still out. But if the story of the disastrous Backstage Studio Tour and its even more delusional successors shows it anything, it’s the one thing Disney’s Hollywood Studios isn’t: a Hollywood studio.
Image: Disney
If you enjoyed this look back at the infamous Backstage Studio Tour, make the jump to our In-Depth Features Library to open another detailed Disaster File.
Then, we want to hear from you – in the comments below, tell us about your experience going “behind-the-scenes” at this unusual Disney park. Should Disney have given up on the studio style long ago? How can a park developed so many ways over so many years ever feel cohesive and intentional? If ALL of Walt Disney World’s parks become stocked with “immersive fantasy” lands, what does that say about the strength of their identities? Was there another path for Disney’s troubled third gate?
