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Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway (DHS)

This is going to be a HUGE hit with families and much more popular than the great movie ride, wether it’s considered “better” or not.

now get to building that Indy ride...the park is still way too short on rides.

also fix Rise while you’re at it.
Not saying it won't happen, but Indy is sort of a dead rumor right now. I certainly wouldn't expect it, but it sure would have a much better shot of happening if Indy 5 actually gets made and is good. It could bring renewed interest to the franchise and be a good opportunity for Disney to capitalize in the theme parks.
 
My basic review:

There's a lot to like but as an overall package, I found the ride to be underwhelming. The ride is an enigma of sorts. Creative and kinda lazy? The projection effects are really crisp and clean, but outside the first room (the desert room) and the final room (which is a very impressive transition), it feels cheap; mostly due to the fact that it's filled with props instead of a room with 95% screens. The pre-show effect is great, and a very clever way to transition into the cartoon world. I'll admit, I do not like the animation style of the new Mickey cartoons - and some of the AA's look very awkward, specifically the first pair of AA's in the car. The tornado scene feels like an afterthought and almost as they ran out of money. The Daisy dancing scene feels like a completely random, forced moment (probably to add to the ride time to help with vehicle dispatching) and a total WTF moment. During our ride, we started out on the last train, and due to that, we completely missed the jungle/volcano scene. I also wasn't a fan of the waterfall portion. Because the ride is overwhelming with visuals, it forces you to look around; so because of that, the ceiling with all the production equipment stands out more.

As a supplemental ride, this ride will be fine in Disneyland (and ultimately, be fine here), but in the context of DHS, the ride needed to deliver more. I don't think of it as a worthy replacement of Great Movie Ride. GMR definitely needed an overhaul and understood why it needed to go, so this isn't a case of sour grapes - but this could've easily taken over something else instead of the main weenie of the park.
 
I thought slinky dog was the main weenie of the park. :bolt:

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My basic review:

There's a lot to like but as an overall package, I found the ride to be underwhelming. The ride is an enigma of sorts. Creative and kinda lazy? The projection effects are really crisp and clean, but outside the first room (the desert room) and the final room (which is a very impressive transition), it feels cheap; mostly due to the fact that it's filled with props instead of a room with 95% screens. The pre-show effect is great, and a very clever way to transition into the cartoon world. I'll admit, I do not like the animation style of the new Mickey cartoons - and some of the AA's look very awkward, specifically the first pair of AA's in the car. The tornado scene feels like an afterthought and almost as they ran out of money. The Daisy dancing scene feels like a completely random, forced moment (probably to add to the ride time to help with vehicle dispatching) and a total WTF moment. During our ride, we started out on the last train, and due to that, we completely missed the jungle/volcano scene. I also wasn't a fan of the waterfall portion. Because the ride is overwhelming with visuals, it forces you to look around; so because of that, the ceiling with all the production equipment stands out more.

As a supplemental ride, this ride will be fine in Disneyland (and ultimately, be fine here), but in the context of DHS, the ride needed to deliver more. I don't think of it as a worthy replacement of Great Movie Ride. GMR definitely needed an overhaul and understood why it needed to go, so this isn't a case of sour grapes - but this could've easily taken over something else instead of the main weenie of the park.
I agree with this for the most part. As you said and i've said in this thread, as an addition to DL, it's a great addition, but I do think it having replaced an attraction, specifically GMR, makes it so it's a lot tougher for me to judge the ride at DHS. I think it's an improvement from the GMR of 2017 when it closed due to the state the ride was in then, but it's not a massive improvement and the ride definitely leaves room for argument that it's not even as good.

I've never been big on it replacing GMR anyway simply bc DHS needed MORE rides, not just replacing. This ride would've been great in an Animation Courtyard redo and that's pretty much where i'll always be on this, but at the same time, by the end of the GMR's tenure, I just had the feeling like Disney was never going to update the ride and it was sort of like a time capsule ride. So it's just tough I guess because something did have to be done.

I like the ride, I just would've liked it more as an addition to the park. They really nailed it with this signage though:
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It's almost if the timing of the ride has been changed during testing. There;'s an entire sequence (when the tropics/volcano changes to underwater/the pipes in the sewer start flowing) that's fully animated, but can't be seen during the ride (only in the 360 degree video looking backwards). Weird. Some scenes almost look like they were designed to be longer than they are.
Too bad they couldn't work out Daisy so you'd meet up with other cars. I think the mix-with-previous-dispatch has only been done at Pooh in Japan and Symbolica.
 
It's almost if the timing of the ride has been changed during testing. There;'s an entire sequence (when the tropics/volcano changes to underwater/the pipes in the sewer start flowing) that's fully animated, but can't be seen during the ride (only in the 360 degree video looking backwards). Weird. Some scenes almost look like they were designed to be longer than they are.
Too bad they couldn't work out Daisy so you'd meet up with other cars. I think the mix-with-previous-dispatch has only been done at Pooh in Japan and Symbolica.
Mystic briefly meets the previous dispatch during the pseudo-omnimover section through the Mediterranean Art Hall.
 
Reading posts on Magic, which is primarily a Disney fan site, I was surprised how critical and nitpicky so many of the posters comments were from yesterday and today. A pretty mixed bag of reactions. ...Here on IU, a predominantly Universal site, the reviews were mostly positive and much fairer. Score one for the IU members :thumbsup:
Well yeah, Universal fanboys have been getting screen based rides for the last two decades. :bolt:
 
So I got to ride for a second time, this time in the front of the train. Starting out in the front, the Mickey & Minnie AA’s looked much better and I totally missed Goofy in the front of the train last time.

Positives out of the way, I feel like the story is a bit of a mess, the twister room is an obvious afterthought (as others have pointed out), the lack of motion in the dome bothers me, and we had a technical issue in the Daisy room that threw off the momentum of the ride.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think this is a cute ride that will be great as an ADDITION to DL, but the ride just isn't that long and I still don’t know what happens in the finale scene to fix things - the scene feels rushed.

To end on a positive though, the ride is operating extremely well with limited breakdowns and is seemingly seeing apretty good per hour capacity. The wait time was less than 60 minutes when I left around 6:30 and highest I saw all day was 90. For a brand new ride, these are great numbers.
 
Started reading the article and I know I shouldn’t care, but calling every ride a rollercoaster might be my biggest pet peeve. Like nails on a chalkboard to my little theme park brain lol.
And how everything is a “theme park”. Check out the new Star Wars and Toy Story theme park! I’m like no.... THEY ARE LANDS WITHIN A THEME PARK.

It’s like how people call sketches from SNL “skits”, makes my blood irrationally boil.
 
Started reading the article and I know I shouldn’t care, but calling every ride a rollercoaster might be my biggest pet peeve. Like nails on a chalkboard to my little theme park brain lol.

in the author’s defense, I don’t think they know what they’re talking about. I did actually try to find a different article to link to. It’s still a cute app.
 
Well ain't this the cat's pajamas! I don't think we've ever seen kids meal toys based on rides before.

 
I got the Goofy train conductor one and my friend got the Minnie riding Dinosaur one. I haven't cared about a Happy Meal toy since what.. Space Jam? :lol:
 
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