Disney's The Great Movie Ride

by Ryan Silberstein, The Red Herring

Disney's The Great Movie Ride was a monument to the power of theme parks and cinema.

My first trip to Walt Disney World was in 1996, when I was 10 years old. While excited to visit all three of the theme parks there, I was most excited to visit Disney-MGM Studios (now called Disney’s Hollywood Studios). Billed as a working production studio as well as a theme park, it was Disney’s answer to Universal’s park down the road. But for me, the fact that there was a Star Wars ride, an Indiana Jones stunt show and a 3D Muppet movie meant that my excitement for the Disney version was at a fever pitch. And while those attractions met or beat my expectations, the ride that had the biggest impact on me was The Great Movie Ride.

Billed as “A Spectacular Journey into the Movies,” The Great Movie Ride took you through a tour of 10 elaborate movie recreations as well as a final clip reel featuring tons of movies. But even before the ride began, the love of movies was strong. The front was a façade of the Chinese Theater in Hollywood, including concrete imprints of celebrity handprints that, surprisingly, weren’t only Disney’s usual cast of suspects, from Tony Curtis to Tom Cruise and  Maureen O’Sullivan to Jane Russell. Inside the theater, the queue for the ride wound around cases containing various film props, including a pair of Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz, a dress worn by Cyd Charisse from Brigadoon and Sam’s piano from Casablanca. all while a reel of vintage trailers for films featured in the ride played on a screen above. Just from these, you could sense that the attraction was truly a tribute to classic film in general, not just those produced by Mickey and friends.

The ride itself was different from your typical “dark rides” like Pirates of the Caribbean. While there were elaborate movie scenes replete with some pretty advanced audio-animatronic figures from classic films, each large ride vehicle had an onboard operator. This Cast Member served as both a guide to the genres you traveled through, as well as part of the action later. This made The Great Movie Ride even more immersive than your typical theme park ride and, at 22 minutes long, one of the longest. It was like a slow-moving movie montage, and I found it captivating. The ride moved from genre to genre, including musicals, Westerns, gangster pictures, science fiction, action-adventure and horror. The final major scene was an elaborate recreation of Munchkinland before guests were taken into a huge theater playing a montage of clips from many other classic films. 

Throughout each elaborate scene, audio-animatronics of some Hollywood greats (including James Cagney, Clint Eastwood and Sigourney Weaver) participated in the scenes, recreating their real life counterparts’ moments from the silver screen. The ride even had its own storyline, with your Cast Member host getting replaced by either a gangster or a cowboy, depending on the car in which you were seated. 

For me, at such a young age, I had yet to see any of the movies featured save Fantasia and The Wizard of Oz.. But being “attacked” by a xenomorph made me a little bit less afraid to watch Alien, and seeing Tarzan swing overhead made me want to branch out beyond the things I already knew. As part of the first generation of kids who grew up with cable, I was able to watch kids’ programming almost at will. I didn’t experience the US versions of Godzilla movies or other random things on over the air television networks. My privilege looks like Nicktoons and hours of Hanna-Barbara reruns. So The Great Movie Ride helped bestow a sense of importance on these pieces of culture. 

And at the core of it, that’s one reason it is one of my all-time favorite theme park rides. It had the same mission as MovieJawn, sharing a love of movies. Because older films, especially, will not find new audiences without advocates. Was every movie represented in The Great Movie Ride one of the all-time best? No. Would I have seen Footlight Parade or Tarzan the Ape Man if not for my memories of this ride? Maybe not! It’s so amazing to me that Disney World once had a ride that served as a monument to cinema. And it would be so easy to re-litigate the things that were included (which were largely influenced by licensing costs and which actors or estates would allow robots to be made). But since the ride closed down a few years ago, maybe we can appreciate that, at least at one time, Disney spent millions of dollars to celebrate and share the power of classic Hollywood films.

Check out the latest print issue of Moviejawn featuring writings and artwork celebrating films of the carnival, theme park and circus! Available for purchase here.

Read more from The Red Herring, Ryan Silberstein in Moviejawn’s Summer 2020 print issue.