Red Car Trolley
| Red Car Trolley | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disney California Adventure |
| Land / area | Buena Vista Street / Hollywood Land |
| Type | Tramway / transportation ride |
| Opened | June 15, 2012 |
| Closed | February 8, 2025 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering / Brookville Equipment Corporation
|
| Status | Closed |
The Red Car Trolley was a tramway and transportation attraction at Disney California Adventure in Anaheim, California. Its replica trolley cars, modelled on the famous Red Cars of the Pacific Electric Railway, carried guests between Buena Vista Street and Hollywood Land from 2012 until 2025. More than a ride, the trolley was a piece of living scenery: its bells and slow progress along Hollywood Boulevard set the period tone for the park's entrance lands. It closed permanently to make way for the expansion of Avengers Campus.
History
The trolley was born of the park's billion-dollar reinvention. When Disney California Adventure opened in 2001 its entrance was the modernist Sunshine Plaza, but the five-year overhaul that began in 2007 replaced it with Buena Vista Street, a recreation of Los Angeles as Walt Disney found it when he arrived in 1923. A street needs streetcars, and construction of the trolley line began on January 4, 2010.
The Red Car Trolley opened on June 15, 2012, the same day as Buena Vista Street and Cars Land, at the ceremony that rededicated the transformed park. It was an immediate signature of the new Disney California Adventure, linking the entrance to Hollywood Land along the route of the recreated Hollywood Boulevard.
In August 2024 Disney announced that the attraction would close in early 2025. The reason was backstage rather than onstage: the trolley barn, where the cars were stored and charged, stood in the path of a major expansion of Avengers Campus that would roughly double that land's size and add two attractions. In December 2024 the final day was set. The Red Car Trolley made its last runs on February 8, 2025, drawing crowds of farewell riders; the line was closed early in the evening once capacity for the day was reached, and the final trip was reserved for Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse and the trolley's cast members. One car remains parked on Buena Vista Street as a stationary photo opportunity.
Experience
The line had four stops: Buena Vista Street at the entry plaza, Carthay Circle, Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood Land, and Sunset Boulevard near the Hyperion Theater. Guests could ride the full route as transport, ride it round-trip as an attraction, or simply listen for the clanging bell as the cars passed.
Two battery-powered cars, numbered 623 and 717 and built by Brookville Equipment Corporation of Pennsylvania, worked the line. Because no overhead wires could be strung over the park's streets, the cars ran on batteries that were recharged overnight in the barn, with decorative trolley poles completing the period look. Car 623 was modelled on Pacific Electric's 600-class cars of the 1920s, while the larger 717 followed the 700-class design. A conductor rode each car, narrating the sights of 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles as the trolley rolled past the Carthay Circle Theatre and down Hollywood Boulevard.
The historical Red Cars were once the largest electric railway network in the world, serving Southern California from 1901 until the last lines closed in 1961. The attraction's cars, station signage and the Red Car Trolley conductor costumes all drew on that heritage, and the News Boys street show, in which performers arrived by trolley, made the cars part of the park's entertainment as well as its transport.