Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin
| Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disneyland Park |
| Land / area | Mickey's Toontown |
| Type | Dark ride |
| Opened | January 26, 1994 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering
|
| Status | Operating |
Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin is a spinning dark ride in Mickey's Toontown at Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California. Based on the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the attraction places guests in a cartoon taxicab for a chaotic drive through Toontown in pursuit of Roger Rabbit, while the villainous Weasels attempt to eliminate him with the solvent known as Dip. A second version operates at Tokyo Disneyland.
History
Ideas for a Roger Rabbit attraction circulated at Walt Disney Imagineering soon after the film became a major success in 1988. Early concepts were developed for a Roger Rabbit-themed area proposed for Disney-MGM Studios in Florida, but that larger project was not built. The character instead found a permanent home in California, where Mickey's Toontown opened behind Fantasyland in January 1993.
The ride itself followed a year later, opening on January 26, 1994. It was the land's headline attraction, housed inside a large show building styled as the Toontown Cab Company. Imagineers designed the experience between 1991 and 1992, combining a conventional dark-ride track with a free-spinning vehicle that guests could influence themselves — a pairing that gave the journey through cartoon sets a deliberately out-of-control feeling suited to its source material.
For most of its life the plot followed the film closely, with Jessica Rabbit tied up in the boot of a car and Roger racing to rescue her. In December 2021 Disneyland updated the storyline, recasting Jessica as a private detective in a trench coat who is investigating a crime wave by the Weasels in Toontown. The scenes, vehicles and spinning action remained, but Jessica's role in the narrative changed from captive to investigator.
Experience
The queue winds through the Toontown Cab Company and a series of cartoon back alleys, past props and gags that establish the Weasels' Dip plot before boarding. Guests board in pairs in a yellow cab named Lenny — presented in the fiction as a relative of Benny, the talking cab from the film.
Once dispatched, the cab travels through a succession of Toontown scenes: china shops, electrical plants, warehouses stacked with cartoon hazards, and streets where familiar characters appear amid the mayhem. The distinctive feature is the steering wheel in the vehicle. Turning it spins the cab as it moves along the track, so riders can face scenes from different angles or whirl through them, much as Roger himself careers through the film. The degree of spin is controlled by the guests, which makes each ride slightly different.
The journey lasts just under three minutes. Near the end, Roger uses a portable hole — a classic cartoon device — to offer an escape route, and the cabs return to the load area through a final series of gags. Because the vehicles load continuously and the experience is suitable for most ages, the attraction has remained a central part of Mickey's Toontown alongside the land's character houses and, since 2023, Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway nearby. The Disneyland Railroad passes the land at Toontown station, a short walk from the ride entrance.