First look at Toy Story Mania

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Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Matt Hochberg

The big news as you’re no doubt well aware of is the announcement (finally) of Toy Story Mania is coming to the Studios. Toy Story Mania replaces the dearly departed Who Wants To Be A Millionaire – Play It! attraction that closed its doors in August. If you’ve been the park at any point between then and the announcement, you’d have known something was in the works with the construction walls and general gutting of the area. This new attraction is part of a new trend in attractions coming to Walt Disney World.

This trend I’m referring to is the “interactive” attractions. This era was heralded in back 2003 when Mission:Space opened. No, Mission:Space was not the first attraction to open the era of these interactive attractions, rather, it was the proverbial huge asteroid that hit the Earth that wiped out the dinosaurs. It was everything old attractions were: the same attraction over and over again with a huge budget that started to get old after a few times riding it. With much less fan-fare, a little attraction with a small theater opened across the way in Epcot called Turtle Talk with Crush and this attraction quickly became (and still is) one of the most popular attraction in the park. Why? Because it’s a different show every time. It brings the character of Crush to life and guests like being able to see shows over and over again and not feel as if they’ve seen it before.

If you want to be technical, this trend of interactivity goes way back to the days of Horizons in Epcot (remember the part of the attraction where you picked the finale scene?) and was carried over in one form or another with the randomization of Tower of Terror as well as with the talking trash can and palm tree.

Getting back to Toy Story Mania, this will be an attempt to do a few things at the Studios. First, it will feature that interactivity and personalization guests enjoy. There will be a “living character” audio-animatronic that will be included as part of the pre-show queue area and this character will be none other than a 6ft tall Mr. Potato Head that will talk to the guests in line while they wait as well as remove his body parts. In addition, the ride will change based on who is riding it. If you’re a video game junkie and have great hand-eye coordination, it will amp up the difficulty for your skill level while making the game very easy for the six year old in the next vehicle over.

Another goal of this attraction is it’s going to bring an attraction to the Studios for all ages. Toy Story Mania will be able to be experienced by pretty much anyone who can sit up straight so it can be experienced by the whole family. Given the ability of the attraction to adjust to a guest’s skill level, it won’t be boring for the teenagers and the Toy Story theme is generally a universal one that doesn’t appeal to just the very young.

This attraction will also have the benefit of helping ease the Sunset Boulevard congestion and although I still think the general tendency will be to ride Tower of Terror and Rock ‘n Roller Coaster first, this will give a legitimate alternative to those who aren’t looking for those type of thrills, especially since not much is open in the Studios at park opening.

It's also interesting that this attraction got green-lit after the debacle at Hollywood & Vine last year when the character meal was supposed to be Toy Story themed and it got to the point of casting for the meal before the plug was pulled for political reasons related to Pixar but with the Pixar merger behind Disney, this is one of the first fruits of Disney's deal to merge with Pixar and bring something to the parks.

We don’t have quite all the details yet (we’ve only been privy to some concept art) so what’s on the drawing board and what comes out can be two completely different things and I’m eagerly awaiting 2008 so I can ride Toy Story Mania and almost as important to me, have a talk with Mr. Potato Head.

Agree with what I said? Disagree? Have a story to share sparked by this column? Share your own idea by posting a comment below.