A great article on attractions that never made it to the Disney MGM Studios
If you’re sitting in front of your computer today looking for something fun to read, check out this piece from MGMStudios.org. It’s by Matt Hochberg, the website’s owner and host on the terrific WDW Today pod cast, and it’s called “The never made it list”. It discusses four great concepts for attractions that never made it to the Disney-MGM Studios. I don’t know about you, but I just can’t get enough of this kind of stuff.
Mickey’s Movieland is described as ““A replica of Disney’s original Hyperion Avenue Studio, where guests will encounter whimsical, hands-on movie making equipment where they can live out their own motion picture producing fantasies.” Honestly, what concept would be a better fit for a Disney movie theme park then this one? We’ve often heard the story about how something along these lines was supposed to go into Epcot but was instead the inspiration for the Studios park, a story I never really bought. It is truly amazing that Disney executives never went ahead with the idea, and now we have a Disney movie park that only slightly covers Disney movies.
Mr. Hochberg also talks about a much anticipated, but never realized, expansion on the Muppets inclusion in the park called “The Muppet Movie Ride”….
The Muppet Movie Ride had the scope of being a premier attraction at the Studios. Where Muppetvision 3D was a simple 3D film, the Muppet Movie Ride would be a major attraction with audio animatronic Muppets and special effects. Like the name hints, the Muppet Movie Ride would be a parody of the Great Movie Ride that would appear to be the same as the scenes you would find in the Great Movie Ride, only you would see go wrong and then Muppet style fun would ensue.
Like many things in the Muppets franchise, this was a concept lost along with the death of Jim Henson. Now Disney can do basically whatever they want with them, but so far little has been done. The new Muppet Mobile Lab is certainly exciting, but falls very short of the possibilities that once existed.
Now let’s all take a break for our computers and go have some fun…It’s St. Patrick’s Day. Happy St. Patrick’s Day from all of us at Mouse Extra.
by Dave
Matt said,
March 17, 2007 @ 6:19 pm
I’m glad I’m not the only one who enjoys reading about attractions that never happened. The Muppets idea really hit me hard because of how close they were to making it. Some of the others were just concepts but the Muppet Movie Ride was real and about to be implemented. I’m trying to plan an interview with a man who worked on the Mickey’s Movieland concept before the Studios opened and hope I can do that sometime next week or so.
You may find this backstory on Tower of Terror before they decided on Tower of Terror interesting: http://www.towerofterror.org/historyearly.html I interviewed a former Imagineer, McNair Wilson, about it and it’s really interesting to hear some of the ideas they came up with.
By the way Dave, I think you forgot a link to the article in your piece. And thanks for the plug
Matt
Mike said,
March 17, 2007 @ 8:29 pm
Interesting piece Matt. I enjoyed the work you do.
David said,
March 18, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
Oops! Thanks Matt, the link is now there. Let me just tell you that I have been wrestling with this darn computer endlessly…