Here now is a verbal tour of Mickey's House of Wonders (I'm not sure if it will be the last time, however), to be broken into two parts because it's so huge:
Here is the approximate location of the ride:
The ride lasts 3-4 minutes, about as long as the Peter Pan ride at the other end of Fantasyland. This will be something akin to Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin.
The entrance looks approximately like the entrance to what would have been Mickey's Madhouse in what would have been Dumbo's Circusland:
As you enter, you wind through a reduced queue, about half the space of the queue in the image above. The remaining space, along the exit path, will be home to an alternate meet-n-greet space known as the Silly Symphonic Sideshow (replacing Pete's Silly Sideshow), where you can meet with various lesser-known characters like Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow, Ludwig Von Drake or the Three Little Pigs.
In the queue here, it is shown, via a trunk full of magic show items, that Magician Mickey the Magnificent is a traveling magician who pulls double duty as House of Wonders host by day and performing magician by night, adding a little bit to the area. It is based on the Town Square Theater, where Mickey performs a magic show and traveled by train to Carolwood Park to perform. He has his good friends Donald and Goofy, also circus performers, Donald a seal trainer (The Astounding Duke Donaldo) and Goofy a stuntman (The Great Goofini), on hand.
The House of Wonders, where you board a colorful carriage-car through a zany funhouse-like attraction, where anything can happen. And it just might, apparently, with odd-shaped mirrors, special effects, and much more, to say nothing of Donald and Goofy trying to operate things. Throughout the queue there are a few props and memorabilia from their tours (hinting that Storybook Circus is a traveling circus), as well as the aforementioned magic trunk belonging to Mickey.
The queue winds back and forth on the right side and should be enough to hold a 35-minute wait before spilling out into Storybook Circus (although it may or may not have Lightning Lane available).
You then climb into your ride vehicles for your trip through the House of Wonders. They are themed as the aforementioned carriage-car-things which look like a cross between the non-cage cars of Casey Jr...
…and the larger motorcars from the updated Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (before it closed in 1998):
In short, they look like the Mr. Toad cars with the circus-like filigrees from Casey Jr. The cars seat six passengers per seat, and to make up for the loss of the roller coaster element of Mickey's Madhouse, they will actually be a milder version of the EMVs found at Disneyland's Indiana Jones ride and the Animal Kingdom's Dinosaur ride. As such, there will be some jerking, lurching side-to-side motions, so it's going to be a little rough, but not as rough as Dinosaur. Incidentally, there is a moment in the Winnie the Pooh ride that also gets a little jerky as the honey pot vehicles there "bounce" with Tigger, but that's only for one scene, however. Each of the cars are one of three colors, red (for Mickey), blue (for Donald) and green (for Goofy). On the fronts of the cars, they have designs of the characters' heads like the old Mickey's Fun Wheel:
Also on the cars are some rather strange-looking wands that look like flashlights with a crystal ball on the tips of them. Weird...
As you climb aboard, you hear Mickey providing the typical bilingual safety spiel, and once the lap bars are down, you are on your way.
SCENE 1 – MEET MICKEY AND PALS
Mickey, Donald and Goofy all greet you and then Mickey sends you on your way into the House of Wonders by pulling on a rope attached to a group of steam whistles (themed to "Steamboat Willie") that opens a door to usher you in. Before leaving, Mickey points out some "unknown light" wands that look like flashlights mounted to a crystal ball on your cars, with which to keep things under control in case anything goes wrong. Better safe than sorry, after all. That's what those strange-looking wands are, apparently.
Donald and Goofy, meanwhile, start operating lights and machines to turn everything on. However, Goofy accidentally stumbles into the magic trunk from earlier, including the "unknown light"...
...which zaps Donald and brings all other objects to life, including a crystal ball, topped by a magic hat, which was strategically placed there to keep things under control. The hat spews out rabbits, birds and playing cards. They all get loose and fly into the room ahead of you. That can't be good.
Fortunately, Mickey senses an opportunity to use those "unknown lights", and advises guests on using them: to aim at any loose rabbits, birds or playing cards in the area and capture them with the lights, which will get sucked back into the crystal, and thus not cause trouble. Meanwhile, they try and get the magic hat back on top of the crystal ball, which seems to work, for now. But the rabbits, birds and cards are still loose and must be returned. And as the ride vehicles enter into darkness, the crystal ball does not seem to want to stay put, as it briefly lights the darkness, while also spilling out a few birds, rabbits or cards here and there...
The spill effect is a shadow on the wall and sound effects, and the scurrying is through projections, also on the wall. Also, the figures of Mickey, Donald and Goofy here may seem familiar to many fans, and that's because the figures themselves are the same figures from the long-gone Mickey Mouse Revue, which was relocated from Florida in 1980 to Tokyo Disneyland for that park's opening in 1983, but has since closed in 2009:
However, since the Donald figure in particular has since been reused for Epcot's Mexico boat ride, it seems likely that that figure will have to be reused from a mold used to create the original figure, like how the molds used to create the Seven Dwarfs here were reused to create the Dwarfs in the post-1994 Snow White ride (and by extension the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train).
SCENE 2 – MICKEY'S FOLLIES
You enter a barn very much in the style of the one that would have been built for Mickey's Madhouse:
While a jazzy ragtime player piano plays the theme for the ride, which is the music in "Thru the Mirror" (which I'm told is called "Seagull Shore", created by Frank Churchill for a black-and-white Mickey short "Shanghaied"), Donald directs some seals (two adults and one pup, resembling Salty) to toot some horns to add to the music, as seen in "Mickey's Circus":
Interestingly, however, the seals themselves resemble more those from "Mickey and the Seal":
Meanwhile, Goofy is seen adding his own flair with a strange pipe instrument thing of his own making, which is from "The Whoopee Party" (the pipe thing belonged to Horace Horsecollar there):
Various cows dance ballet (as in "Mickey's Revue") while various ducks dance about and shake their tail feathers, as in "Mickey's Follies". Even Mickey himself tries to add some flair with a clarinet, as in "Blue Rhythm":
SCENE 3 – JUNGLE RHYTHM
The music of the previous scene spills over into the next room, a jungle-themed room where wild animals, including a lion, a bear and a gorilla, once threatening Mickey and Donald, all suddenly start dancing when they hear the music. From a nearby beach, a whale, resembling that of "The Whalers"...
...leaps out of the water, with Goofy riding on its back like a cowboy in a rodeo. In fact, he's wearing the same cowboy duds as in one of the posters of his roller coaster nearby, which advertises Goofy as riding a rocket:
The threat of the bear, lion and gorilla is taken from an old Mickey cartoon called "Jungle Rhythm", in that as in that cartoon, Mickey finds himself menaced by a lion and a bear, only for the music charm the animals and makes them dance:
The animals themselves more resemble later versions of themselves. The bear looks like that from "The Pointer" and "Donald's Vacation", the lion looks like that from "Pluto At the Zoo" and the gorilla looks like that from "Donald Duck and the Gorilla":
However, the invasive magic of rabbits, birds and cards (which you are trying to capture with your magic lights) starts to cause some chaos for the jungle scene, with the animals freaking out and becoming threatening again, while the once-frolicking whale lands in the water hard and throws Goofy off with its tail.
SCENE 4 – MIRROR BARREL
Meanwhile, the splashing water caused by the frolicking whale, startles Mickey and Donald and sends them stumbling backward, Donald hitting the lively crystal ball, which has teleported there magically. The crystal ball turns the barrel into a spinning hall of mirrors with distorted reflections all around. Donald gets teleported inside one of the mirrors, a magic one, which has also gone loose from Mickey's magician trunk, along with playing cards, as you go inside as well. As you enter, not just Donald, but Mickey and Goofy, too, have been teleported inside (Goofy having been thrown off the whale by its tail), and they all try and figure out what's going on. Meanwhile, the birds, rabbits and cards appear inside, so keep trying to get them with your "unknown lights"!
That's all for now. I will get to the second half of the ride later. And maybe I will even draw pictures to show you some ideas of what I have in mind, as preexisting screenshots can only accomplish so much.
