Mickey's Toontown
| Mickey's Toontown | |
|---|---|
| Opened | January 24, 1993
|
| Theme | Classic animated cartoons
|
| Status | Operating |
Mickey's Toontown is a themed land at Disneyland Park in the Disneyland Resort, California, presented as the cartoon neighbourhood where Mickey Mouse and his friends live. Opened on January 24, 1993, at the northern edge of the park behind Fantasyland, it was the first entirely new land added to Disneyland since New Orleans Square in 1966, and it remains the park's area most directly aimed at young children, with walk-through character houses, play spaces and rides with low or no height requirements.
History
The land drew its visual language from the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, in which human characters step into a world inhabited by animated figures, and from the rubbery, exaggerated architecture of early American cartoons. Buildings in Toontown lean, bulge and curve as if drawn rather than built, and ordinary street furniture — hydrants, mailboxes, manhole covers — was designed to produce comic sound effects and surprises when handled. The conceit was that Mickey and his neighbours had always lived just beyond Fantasyland, and that guests were being admitted to their home town for the first time.
Toontown opened with Mickey's House and Minnie's House, walk-through homes doubling as character meeting locations, along with a small roller coaster themed to Gadget Hackwrench of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, a playhouse for Goofy, a boat for Donald Duck, and a treehouse for Chip and Dale. Its second ride, Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin, followed in 1994, placing riders in spinning taxi cabs on a journey through the film's plot. A station on the Disneyland Railroad serves the land.
In November 2021 Disney announced a broad reimagining of the land, intended to add open green space, improve accessibility and create play opportunities for children of different ages and sensory needs. Toontown closed on March 9, 2022, for the work. Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway, a trackless dark ride first opened in Florida in 2020, made its California debut inside the land's El CapiTOON Theater on January 27, 2023, ahead of the rest of the land. The reimagined Toontown reopened in full on March 19, 2023.
Attractions
The 2023 reimagining kept the land's houses and rides while rebuilding its play areas. CenTOONial Park, at the entrance, provides lawns, a fountain designed for interaction, and a sculpted dreaming tree inspired by a tree Walt Disney knew in his boyhood home of Marceline, Missouri. Goofy's former playhouse became Goofy's How-to-Play Yard, a garden of sound, movement and climbing elements around Goofy's house, and Donald's boat area became Donald's Duck Pond, a water play space beneath the leaking hull of the Miss Daisy.
Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway is now the land's largest attraction: guests pass through a cartoon premiere into a short film that goes wrong, boarding a train that separates into separate cars for a series of scenes built with projection and physical sets. Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin remains the land's older dark ride, and Chip 'n' Dale's Gadget Coaster — renamed from Gadget's Go Coaster in the reimagining — is a junior coaster of less than a minute, often a child's first. Mickey's House and Minnie's House continue to anchor the land as self-guided tours ending in meetings with their owners.
Dining and shops
Dining in the land centres on Café Daisy, a quick-service restaurant that took over the former Toontown dining location in 2023, and Good Boy! Grocers, a market stand selling snacks and drinks. The EngineEar Souvenirs shop beside the Runaway Railway exit sells merchandise tied to the attraction and the land. Earlier food and retail locations, including the Gag Factory store that Runaway Railway replaced, were removed during the reimagining.