Why Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway is a grasp class in theme park storytelling – San Gabriel Valley Tribune
Ask any Walt Disney Imagineer concerning the secret to the corporate’s theme park success, and the reply inevitably contains the phrase, “storytelling.”
However successfully telling a narrative within the distinctive atmosphere of a person theme park experience requires a variety of expertise. That you must engineer a experience car that strikes individuals by way of the story on the desired tempo, whereas pointing their consideration within the path you need them to see. You want characters that may transfer and act on cue for every particular person experience car. The experience’s present lighting, scenic design, media and music all should assist set up and reinforce the tone and tempo of the story you are attempting to inform.
Disney established a successful method for theme park storytelling with its unique Disneyland points of interest in 1955 and has been elevating the bar for that normal within the many years since. But with Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, now open at Disneyland, the corporate has created maybe essentially the most complicated storytelling atmosphere in its theme park historical past.
Theme park darkish rides historically have used tracked automobiles that comply with a standard path by way of the experience. Consider the boats on Pirates of the Caribbean or the Omnimover “Doom Buggies” in Haunted Mansion. However Runaway Railway makes use of trackless automobiles that take one in every of 4 completely different paths by way of every present scene within the attraction.
This isn’t Disney’s first trackless darkish experience. Disney has been utilizing the know-how since Pooh’s Hunny Hunt opened at Tokyo Disneyland in 2000. At Disneyland, trackless experience automobiles most just lately appeared on Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, which debuted in early 2020. However neither of these rides embraced the chance to create a number of story threads the best way Disney has on Runaway Railway. Spoilers from right here on, by the best way.
The by way of line of Runaway Railway is Mickey and Minnie’s try and chase down and acquire the prepare vehicles that scattered after Mickey crashed his roadster right into a railway monitor change. However there’s a B story happening, too, one which many guests will miss on their first time by way of the experience — Pluto’s try and return their picnic basket to Mickey and Minnie after they misplaced it throughout the preshow.
The present scenes depict contemporary obstacles in our heroes’ journeys and the timing of these story beats varies by which prepare automobile you’re in. You may see completely different particulars and listen to completely different dialogue from the assorted vehicles, after which the order of the prepare vehicles modifications after every scene.
To the visitor, it seems like cartoon chaos on Rashomon’s Railway. Behind the scenes, it’s all a deft act of timing that helps make every experience on Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway really feel distinctive.
It takes an enormous group to tug all this collectively, and Imagineers Kevin Rafferty and Charita Carter led the group that created Runaway Railway for its preliminary set up at Walt Disney World. Carter now has moved on to go the event of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, which supplies me nice hope for that Splash Mountain retheme subsequent 12 months. I can’t look forward to Disneyland’s subsequent grasp class in storytelling.
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