Echo Lake (Disney's Hollywood Studios)
| Echo Lake | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disney's Hollywood Studios |
| Land / area | Echo Lake |
| Type | Themed land |
| Opened | May 1, 1989 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering
|
| Status | Operating |
Echo Lake is a themed land at Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World in Florida, built around a small oval lake to the left of Hollywood Boulevard. It is named after Echo Park in Los Angeles and evokes the city's golden-age film era, with two pieces of whimsical roadside architecture standing in and beside the water: a giant green dinosaur and a lake steamer that is actually a restaurant. Some of the park's oldest surviving attractions stand around its shores.
History
Echo Lake opened with the rest of the park, then called Disney-MGM Studios, on May 1, 1989.[1] On the park's earliest maps the district was labelled Lakeside Circle or the Backlot Annex rather than Echo Lake, although the lake itself was present and named from opening day. Its earliest shows reflected the park's original working-studio idea: Superstar Television let guests appear in famous television scenes, and the Monster Sound Show demonstrated film sound effects, with audience participation.
Two major attractions arrived within months. The Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular opened on August 25, 1989, after missing opening day because the show was judged not ready.[2] Star Tours followed on December 15, 1989, bringing a Star Wars motion simulator to the far side of the lake.
The sound-show buildings on the lake's edge have been repeatedly reused. The Monster Sound Show became Sounds Dangerous, a sound-effects show starring Drew Carey, and later a small Mickey Mouse theatre. Superstar Television's theatre later housed The American Idol Experience, and after that closed in 2014 the building was renamed the Hyperion Theater and became the permanent home of the Frozen sing-along, which moved there in June 2015. Through all of those changes, the lake, the dinosaur and the steamer have remained in place since 1989.
Attractions and entertainment
- Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular — a live stunt show recreating scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark, demonstrating falls, fights, vehicle stunts and pyrotechnics in a large outdoor theatre behind the lake.
- Star Tours – The Adventures Continue — a 3D motion simulator in which a Starspeeder flight piloted, by accident, by C-3PO is diverted by the presence of a Rebel spy aboard. The current version opened in 2011, replacing the original Star Tours.
- For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration — a musical sing-along retelling of Frozen in the Hyperion Theater, on the lake's edge, led by two comic Royal Historians with live appearances by Anna, Elsa and Kristoff.
- Vacation Fun — a Mickey Mouse cartoon theatre in the former Sounds Dangerous building, showing an original Mickey and Minnie short with photo opportunities.
- Dinosaur Gertie — the giant dinosaur in the lake is itself an attraction in form if not in function: a tribute to Winsor McCay's 1914 animated character Gertie the Dinosaur, built in the exaggerated roadside style sometimes called California Crazy architecture.
Dining
- Dockside Diner — a counter-service restaurant inside the S.S. Down the Hatch, the steamer apparently moored in the lake. Long known as Min & Bill's Dockside Diner, after the 1930 film Min and Bill, it serves hot dogs, sandwiches and drinks, with shaded seating on deck and on shore.
- Dinosaur Gertie's Ice Cream of Extinction — an ice-cream stand inside the giant dinosaur, selling soft-serve and other frozen treats.
- Hollywood & Vine and 50's Prime Time Cafe, two long-standing table-service restaurants on the lake's Hollywood Boulevard side, serve character breakfasts and lunches and 1950s American comfort food respectively.
See also
- Disney's Hollywood Studios
- Star Tours – The Adventures Continue
- Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular
- Sunset Boulevard (Disney's Hollywood Studios)