Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway® is a new innovative addition to Disney’s Hollywood Studios® that provides a unique version of a classic dark ride. The experience begins before you even start loading onto the ride vehicles by cleverly bridging the gap between the real world and the animated world with a cute animated short of Mickey and Minnie going on a simple picnic before the screen opens up to reveal a beautiful cel-shaded environment. After entering into this animated world, you board a train with Goofy as your conductor, where things quickly go awry as the train begins breaking apart and shooting off in different directions. From there, you’re sent on a mad dash through numerous vibrant set pieces as Mickey and Minnie frantically try to reassemble your ride vehicles. This effect of the train breaking apart showcases the innovative technology of the trackless ride system.
What makes this ride special is its use of immersive animation. I’m not usually a fan of what I call “tv-screen face” with some of Disney’s animatronics, where the faces look like a blank canvas with facial expressions projected onto them, such as in the ride Frozen Ever After at Epcot®. However, in the case of the Runaway Railway, everything is specifically designed to look animated, and these animatronics are executed far better than others of this style, so it all seamlessly fits with the rest of the ride.
The walls in the ride are constantly alive with colorful stories that accent the events of each room that you enter. This helps to give the sense that you are in the cartoon. As the story of the ride progresses, you find yourself in several different predicaments with Mickey and the gang, never knowing where you will find yourself next.
After riding this twice, we realized that each ride vehicle gives guests a different ride experience, making this ride that much more amazing. Hidden Mickeys and easter eggs litter the landscape of this masterpiece with little gems to titillate the Disney fanatic in all of us. Even if each vehicle was the same ride experience I don’t think anyone could ride it enough to see all there is to see in this amazing ride. I, for one, wouldn’t mind taking on that challenge though.
