Studio Backlot Tour

Studio Backlot Tour
Park	Disney's Hollywood Studios
Land / area	Backlot
Type	Tram and walking tour
Opened	May 1, 1989
Closed	September 27, 2014
Designer	Walt Disney Imagineering
Status	Closed

The Studio Backlot Tour was a tram and walking tour attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World in Florida. It opened with the park — then called Disney-MGM Studios — on May 1, 1989, as the Backstage Studio Tour, and was for years the park's signature attraction: a behind-the-scenes journey through a working film and television studio. Its best-known scene, Catastrophe Canyon, subjected the tram to a simulated earthquake, fire and flash flood. The tour closed on September 27, 2014, after a long decline in which both the tour and the working studio around it steadily shrank.

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History

Disney-MGM Studios was conceived as both a theme park and a real production facility, and the tour was its reason for existing. In its original 1989 form it was a two-part experience advertised at around two hours: a tram ride and a substantial walking tour. The tram passed the production centre, costuming and scenic shops and working soundstages, while the walking section took guests through special-effects demonstrations and views into stages where programmes were actually being made.

The park's production role never lasted. Animation and live production gradually left Florida, stages were converted to attractions, and each change cut the tour shorter. The walking and tram sections were split into separate offerings in the 1990s; in 1996 the tram tour was renamed the Studio Backlot Tour and its entrance moved. New attractions also took its land: the Lights, Motors, Action! stunt show stadium, opened in 2005, was built over Residential Street. By its final years the tour lasted roughly 35 minutes.

Experience

In its later form, the tour began with a volunteer demonstration at a water-effects tank, showing how naval battle scenes were filmed with models and dumped water. Guests then walked through a warehouse of film props before boarding the tram.

The tram passed the costume department — viewed through windows, with seamstresses at work in its earlier years — and the scenic shop, then rolled through the "boneyard" of retired vehicles, aircraft and props from Disney productions, including Walt Disney's own Grumman Gulfstream aeroplane. The finale was Catastrophe Canyon: the tram stopped on an apparently quiet desert film set beside a fuel tanker, where an earthquake shook the ground, power lines sparked, the tanker burst into flame and a torrent of water came roaring down the canyon around the tram. Once the flood subsided, the "director" reset the set and the tram returned to unload.

Closure and legacy

Disney announced the closure only a week in advance. The Studio Backlot Tour's final operating day was September 27, 2014. Demolition cleared the backlot for the park's redevelopment: its former grounds now lie beneath Toy Story Land and Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, which between them replaced the studio-era backlot entirely.

The tour's passing marked the end of Hollywood Studios' original identity as a working studio guests could look inside. Almost nothing of it survives in place, though Walt Disney's aeroplane was preserved and later displayed elsewhere in the park. Catastrophe Canyon remains its defining image: for a generation of guests, the moment the ground shook and the water rose was the Studios park in miniature.

See also

• Disney's Hollywood Studios
• Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge
• Toy Story Land