Surrender to zany, cartoon logic at Disneyland
Review of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway
4 (out of 5)
With the opening of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Disneyland, park fans on the West Coast will now be able to have “Nothing Can Stop Us Now,” its lively earworm of a theme song, imprinted on their auditory memory–right next to “It’s a Small World (After All).” Yup, it’s that catchy. The delightful attraction anchors an expanded Mickey’s Toontown and is among the highlights of the Disney100 Anniversary Celebration, which gets underway this Friday at the Disneyland Resort.
The first ride-through attraction starring the 100-year-old company’s standard bearer and his gal pal, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway is essentially the same as its Disney World counterpart, which opened about three years ago. It uses a trackless ride system to great effect and takes hapless passengers on a wacky journey through a highly stylized, animated landscape based on the frenetic Mickey Mouse cartoon shorts.
Instead of the palatial Chinese Theatre, which houses MMRR at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, guests make their way to the El CapiTOON Theatre to get on board the rambunctious railway. It’s a curvy, cartoony take on Hollywood’s landmark El Capitan Theatre, which Disney restored and now operates. According to the backstory, folks are coming to the Toontown movie house to see the premiere of Perfect Picnic, the new Mickey Mouse short.
Before they enter the auditorium, guests snake through the lobby to ogle movie props and artifacts from Mr. Mickster’s long career that have been curated by the “Toontown Hysterical Society.” (The puns just keep on coming here.) Among the displays are the prop plane used for Mickey’s 1928 debut, Plane Crazy, and the ship’s wheel from the first synchronized sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie. Of course, there can’t be “props” from cartoons. But since this is Toontown, it somehow makes sense.
“This is where Mickey and Minnie live,” says Marnie Burress of Walt Disney Imagineering. “The theater is a celebration of the golden age of cinema in the context of Toontown.” The wonderful exhibit is unique to the Disneyland version of the attraction.
Guests watch Perfect Picnic, which features the mouse couple planning a day out at Runnamuck Park. All hell breaks loose when a train, helmed by ever-unreliable Engineer Goofy, encounters Mickey’s convertible. I’m not going to tell you what happens, but a spectacular gag enables audience members to enter the cartoon world.
Goofy then invites them to board his train for a leisurely ride through the park. The Mouseke-pair follow along in their jalopy as Goofy proclaims, “What could possibly go wrong?” Cue the theme park attraction calamity.
Seemingly on a railroad track up to that point, the individual cars break away, and the trackless vehicles chug through the show building on their own paths. Passengers experience a series of disjointed scenes, one more madcap and perilous than the next. None of it makes a heckuva lot of sense–at least not beyond Toontown’s city limits.
“It’s zany, cartoon logic,” Kevin Rafferty, the retired Disney Imagineer who helped create the original attraction, told me when MMRR opened at Disney World. “Forget the laws of physics. It’s one surprise after another.”
Digital projection mapping has been featured for a number of years in nighttime spectaculars at the Disney parks. “Wondrous Journeys,” the new show that Disneyland will be presenting as part of the Disney100 celebration, will continue the tradition by projecting colorful imagery and animated scenes onto Sleeping Beauty Castle and the buildings that line Main Street U.S.A. But as projection technology continues to evolve, it is being deployed in many ways, including in ride-through attractions. MMRR is fairly bursting with projections, enveloping guests in cartoon anarchy.
There are ginormous images that fill cavernous sets as well as smaller ones that are projected onto dimensional objects and add a sense of depth. Sometimes the imagery completely changes, thereby repurposing projection surfaces as the ride vehicles approach them from a different angle. There are also practical sets, old-school black-light paint, and a number of other design elements at play. The attraction incorporates animatronics as well. The effect of the video that animates the characters’ faces is funky and a bit unsettling.
The Fab Five that are presented here are not like the walk-around characters in the parks. They are based on the retro look of today’s Mickey shorts, which in turn takes a pie-eyed cue from the Mickey of the 1930s but with a postmodern spin. Guests can see examples of the vintage Mickey look in some of the posters that line the attraction’s queue.
As Walt Disney famously said, “It all started with a mouse.” That’s why it’s particularly apropos to have the Mickey-starring attraction in the spotlight for the company’s 100th anniversary—at Disneyland no less.
Ride along with me and catch a few scenes from MMRR.
There will be no height restriction to ride the railway. It may be “runaway,” but the action is relatively benign. There are a couple of scenes in which disaster looms that may frighten very young children, but most kids (and wimpy adults) should be fine. When it officially opens, there will be no standby line for MMRR. Instead, it will use the dreaded virtual queue system. (Essentially, you’ll have to set your alarm for 5:55 a.m., log on, and pray for a boarding group.) It’s likely Disney will eventually phase out the virtual queue as it has done with other attractions it has recently debuted. Individual Lightning Lane (the one you where you have to cough up some extra money) will also be available to get you onto MMRR.
While MMRR debuts Friday with the kickoff of the Disney100 celebration, the rest of the expanded Mickey’s Toontown won’t reopen until March 8. In addition to old standbys, Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin, Chip & Dale’s Gadget Coaster (previously Gadget’s Go Coaster), Mickey’s House, and Minnie’s House, kiddos will be able to visit Goofy’s House, get wet in the fountains alongside Donald’s Boat, frolic in Goofy’s How-To-Play Yard, and hang out in CenTOONial Park.
With the crazy-high bar Disney has set with attractions such as Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, perhaps MMRR doesn’t quite meet the standards of a modern-day E-Ticket ride. But it is charming, full of surprises, and very engaging–a solid D+ ticket of a ride. Virtual queue notwithstanding, nothing should stop you now from climbing aboard the zany railway.
Have you been on MMRR at Disney World? Share your thoughts. Are you planning to visit Disneyland to ride MMRR?
My wife, youngest daughter, and I enjoyed our one ride on MMRR about a year and half ago at Hollywood Studios. I really liked the dancing room section. My wife and daughter sang the title song over and over all the way back to our hotel that evening. In fact, I heard them still sing the song together about 3 weeks ago!
It looks lovely; a perfect addition to Disneyland's Toontown adding extra capacity in a good location.
I'm a big fan of the current Mickey cartoons in this style. They're charming and actually funny, and the retro nods feel like the look will last a quite a while before feeling dated.
Seems like a bang-up all ages ride.