Mickey And Minnie's Runaway Railway, A New Mickey Mouse-Themed Attraction, Officially Coming To Disneyland
During the 2017 D23 Expo, we learned that Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway, the first-ever Mickey Mouse-themed ride-through theme park attraction, was coming to Walt Disney World. The ride was supposed to be ready by this fall to help with crowd management from Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, but it's been delayed six months and won't open in Florida until spring of 2020.
In a bit of damage control, Disney today announced that the attraction will also be coming to Disneyland in California in 2022. Read on for more details.
According to the official Disney Parks Blog, Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway will open in the Mickey's Toontown area of Disneyland in three years.
This first major Mickey-themed ride-through attraction at Disneyland park will put you inside the wacky and unpredictable world of a Mickey Mouse cartoon short where anything can happen! Once you step into the cartoon world of Mickey and Minnie, you'll board a train with Goofy as the engineer. Then, one magical moment after the next leads you to a zany, out-of-control adventure filled with surprising twists and turns.
With an original story and lovable theme song, Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway uses state-of-the-art technologies and dazzling visual effects to transform the cartoon world into an incredible and immersive multi-dimensional experience.
This news about the ride possibly coming to Disneyland was initially rumored in October of last year, but now that we have this confirmation, it seems as if the company is looking to revitalize Mickey's Toontown, one of the most stagnant and least interesting areas in the park. Adding such a high-profile attraction there indicates that A) Disney is looking to create enticing alternatives for guests who can't make it into Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, and B) they're not going to re-theme that section of the park any time soon. Mickey's Toontown, which was inspired by the 1988 movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, essentially looks like a cartoon set was dropped into the real world, and this new ride continues that theme by blending those two different "worlds" over the course of the attraction.
The Disney Parks Blog teases that they'll eventually reveal "special details that promise to make this amazing attraction unique for Disneyland park guests," so it sounds like it won't just be a beat-by-beat recreation of the version that's coming to Walt Disney World. But frankly, it sounds like they might have a bit of trouble in store until they can get this ride up and running at Disney World's Hollywood Studios park – that park doesn't have enough rides right now as it is, and delaying the opening of this attraction for months doesn't exactly inspire much confidence. On a recent episode of The Disney Dish podcast, host and theme park reporter Jim Hill spoke about how this ride is extremely complex and technical, and it's proving to be something of a nightmare behind the scenes to get everything to run smoothly. Sounds like they needed more time to iron out the kinks, but that extra time could translate into a lot of miserable guests during the early months of Galaxy's Edge in Florida.
Personally, I'm shocked that it took this long for Mickey and Minnie to get their own ride. Considering how important branding is to Disney as a company, you'd think they'd have half a park devoted to those characters by now.