The Great Movie Ride
| The Great Movie Ride | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disney's Hollywood Studios |
| Land / area | Hollywood Boulevard |
| Type | Dark ride |
| Opened | May 1, 1989 |
| Closed | August 13, 2017 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Duration | 22 minutes |
| Status | Closed |
The Great Movie Ride was a dark ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World in Florida, housed inside the park's full-scale replica of Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Aboard large vehicles guided by a live host, guests travelled through full-sized recreations of scenes from classic films, staged with Audio-Animatronic figures and live performers. It opened with the park on May 1, 1989, and closed on August 13, 2017, the last of the park's opening-day attractions still operating. It was replaced by Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway.
History
The ride began as a concept for EPCOT: a pavilion about the movies, with a ride through film history. When Disney instead decided to build an entire park around Hollywood and filmmaking — Disney-MGM Studios — the movie ride became that park's centrepiece, and the Chinese Theatre replica its icon, standing at the end of Hollywood Boulevard.
The plan depended on film rights. Because the park was built in partnership with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the ride could draw on MGM's catalogue as well as Disney's, mixing The Wizard of Oz and Casablanca with Disney's Fantasia and Mary Poppins, alongside licensed scenes from other studios. The attraction was briefly to have been called Great Moments at the Movies under a Sears sponsorship that fell through; Coca-Cola became sponsor instead, and the name was adjusted to make clear it was a ride.
The Great Movie Ride opened on May 1, 1989, one of only two rides in the park on opening day, and changed little over 28 years. Its biggest update came in 2015, when Turner Classic Movies became sponsor: TCM host Robert Osborne recorded new narration and filmed segments for the queue and finale, and the script and pre-show were refreshed.
Experience
The queue wound through a cinema lobby past real costumes and props, then into a screening room showing a trailer montage of classic films, before guests boarded the vehicles in a 1930s Hollywood soundstage. Each vehicle was driven by its live tour guide, who narrated the journey and stepped into the plot.
The ride moved through film scenes, each a physical set populated largely by Audio-Animatronics: Busby Berkeley musical spectacle and Singin' in the Rain; Mary Poppins on the London rooftops; a 1930s gangster film, where the vehicle was hijacked by a live gangster; a Western, where a rival live bandit could take over instead; the Nostromo's corridors in Alien, with the creature overhead; Raiders of the Lost Ark; the finale of Casablanca; Sorcerer Mickey in Fantasia; and finally Munchkinland from The Wizard of Oz, with the Wicked Witch of the West appearing in a burst of smoke. The hijack made the live cast part of the story: the villain was dispatched, the guide regained the vehicle, and the ride ended with a rapid-fire montage of film clips.
Closure
By the 2010s the park was being rebuilt around Star Wars and Toy Story, and the ride's licensing patchwork and ageing film canon made it an expensive fixture. At the D23 Expo on July 15, 2017, Disney announced it would close to make way for Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway, the first ride-through attraction starring Mickey Mouse. The Great Movie Ride gave its last rides on August 13, 2017 — the same day EPCOT's Universe of Energy also closed.
Legacy
Runaway Railway opened inside the Chinese Theatre on March 4, 2020, reusing the building and its famous façade, courtyard and handprints while replacing the ride entirely. The Great Movie Ride is remembered as the purest statement of the original Disney-MGM Studios idea — that guests could step inside the movies — and no opening-day attraction survives at the park without it.