A First Timer’s Review of Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Although I consider myself to be a Disney fan, my favorite park before was Universal Studios Hollywood because of its reasonable annual pass discounts, less child oriented attractions, the studio tour, and the fact that it had most of my favorite franchises at the time like Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, and the Penguins of Madagascar. However, over the years I discovered that Disney’s parks were better at immersing guests in worlds of imagination, and I appreciated immersion more than the rides at theme parks. When I visited Disney’s Hollywood Studios, I always found myself comparing this park to Universal’s, because of the similar creative DNA of the two parks, despite the fact DHS shuttered their film studio years ago. I believe that if you only compare the theme park parts of both parks (Universal Hollywood has a working backlot) than Disney Hollywood Studios has the better park, but yesterday (11/20) the park had overly high wait times and I was displeased with how Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance’s queue was handled as the wait time of that attraction peaked at 5 hours. Other than that, this is a great park. I will be reviewing this park by land, starting at Hollywood Boulevard, and going counterclockwise.
Hollywood Boulevard
This area was one of my favorite areas of the park as it recreates Hollywood in a clean and idealized fashion. The land’s architecture faithfully recreates the aesthetics of the 1930s with Art Deco architecture, interior, 1930s music, and period advertisements through a fantasized lense. On one Thanksgiving trip, when I visited the Magic Kingdom, the holiday music did not match well with Main Street’s Victorian era theme because the music was not re-arranged to sound like ragtime, sentimental ballads, or any other styles from the period, whereas Hollywood Boulevard’s Christmas music is distinctly from the 30s with singers like Andy Williams and Burl Ives. The land has a unique entrance after you get “inside” the park with the actual Magicpass scanners inside of the park gates, which I found very interesting as I had never seen it before. The central attraction of the land, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, is a trackless dark ride. Though this attraction is targeted toward younger audiences, it is still good enough for adults to enjoy because of its humor and special effects. I personally liked it because it accurately recreated the modern cartoon style of Paul Rudish’s Mickey Mouse shorts (which the ride was based on), its humor, and how the ride was able to seamlessly take you from the real world to the cartoon world. Walt Disney Presents is also located in this land near Animation Courtyard. This attraction is a museum about Walt Disney’s life, and the company’s ventures before and after Uncle Walt’s passing such as Walt Disney World, Tokyo Disney Sea, and the upcoming Disney Wish Cruise ship. I loved this collection of exhibits as I love theme park miniatures and I build some myself.
Sunset Boulevard
This land, like Hollywood Boulevard, is also based on another real street of the same name, though it is quite different from Hollywood Boulevard as it is divided into two distinct parts. On the right side of the street, there is an upscale department store area with buildings such as the Carthay Circle Theater and many other Hollywood venues. On the left side of the street, there is a mom-and-pop shop area with joints like Hollywood Scoops and Fairfax Faire. The land, like Hollywood Boulevard, evokes the feeling that you’ve stepped into 1930s Hollywood with its Art Deco architecture, Big Band music, and literal tinsel in Tinseltown, but travels in time from the 30s, to the 40s, to the 50s, the 90s, and finally the present day at the Tower of Terror. These efforts to make the land feel authentically Hollywood really benefit the star of this land, The Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror, which like the land, is rooted in Hollywood architecture and style. I appreciated this ride for its trackless ride system in the fifth dimension scene (which is spectacular because of how realistic it feels), its quality storytelling as it sets up a story and follows through, how it stays true to its source material, and the ride’s thrilling drop tower ride system that pulls you down faster than gravity. Rock and Rolling Roller Coaster Staring: Aerosmith is one of the best coasters I’ve ever ridden on as rock and roll and roller coasters happen to be a match made in Heaven as the music mixes very well with the high intensity and fun of the roller coaster far greater than the Incredibles’ theme.
Toy Story Land and Pixar Place
Pixar Place is a small alley that is home to meet and greets, two small snack locations, and is themed to Pixar’s headquarters in Emeryville, California. I did not spend much time in this small cul-de-sac but it is great for managing crowds. Toy Story Land is essentially the Fantasyland of DHS as it is home to many carnival style rides such as the Slinky Dog Dash kiddy coaster, Alien Swirling Saucers teacups, and the interactive carnival game ride Toy Story: Midway Mania. I have only ridden Mania, and only in California. I thought this ride was fun as you get shrink to the size of a toy and play carnival games with a popper, however it’s technology is far behind the times when it was considered high tech in the late 2000s because it has been eclipsed by advanced interactive rides such as Millenium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run. The land itself is cheap and cheerful. The land does feel like a child’s backyard with toys strewn about in a more or less organized order as oversized “toys” such as tinker toys and blocks are strewn across the land, which form buildings and railings, but are mismatched and disorderly, like a child made this, but this land is not spectacular like Galaxy’s Edge. The rides also match this toy aesthetic because many rides look like they were made from toy sets such as Mania, which appears to be a board game set. The land does a decent job of bringing you into the world of Toy Story, despite this land being done on the cheap. Many wish to see a Toy Story area that is a replication of Andy’s Bedroom, but to create that location accurately would need to have it completely indoors. This alone would require a significant expenditure, far more than Star Wars: Galaxy Edge would because an indoor land that large would have to be giant, and Galaxy’s Edge was being built during this time and was already very expensive. Overall, this area is a decent place that makes you feel as if you are in a child’s play area, does not break the bank, and increases capacity to a relatively overcrowded park.
Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge
This land has to be the largest and most spectacular land of our time. Galaxy’s Edge is full of fine detail from the inclusion of a full scale Millennium Falcon, the blaster marks on the Falcon side of Oga’s Cantina that forms an upside down hidden Mickey, to the carbon scoring on the underside of the X-Wing’s wings just outside of the village.
The Outpost
The land is home to a large, detailed village that includes many shops, a bazaar styled after the ones found in cities with Middle Eastern culture, a First Order garrison, and a spaceport that houses the Millenium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run attraction. Many have complained that the village is nothing more than a giant outdoor mall, and in some ways it is a mall because it is because it has many small shops all lined up next to another, but the reason why this area of the park has so many shops is because villages in Star Wars (and in real life) have many shops, so naturally to fabricate the illusion that the Black Spire Outpost is a real town, many small, local businesses had to be created with their own backstories to make them realistic.
The Falcon
The Smuggler’s Run attraction I would consider to be a higher end D-Ticket because it is building off of the great attractions that came before it, such as Star Tours, and is not something radically different like another attraction just down the road in GE that Smuggler’s Run is meant to play second fiddle to. The queue experience is enjoyable and quite humorous because the queue is very well detailed with Star Wars tools, weapons, and droids which convey the feeling that you have entered an industrial facility in the Star Wars universe. I especially found the conversations over the “Comm system” which sometimes were about a missing tool, or a suspicious box in a completely “legitimate” operation. The ride is quite interactive allowing participants to control their adventure to some degree, though some positions are more interactive than others, like the pilot position compared to the engineer position. The ride video is probably the best ride quality video I have ever seen in a simulator because of its crisp video quality and smooth frame rate of around 60+ frames per second. Overall, this attraction makes your neighborhood teenager’s gaming platform look like a pocket calculator, which I have found to be quite fun despite the overly high expectations on this attraction.
The Forest and The Main Attraction
The forest that is just a short walk from the village, is virtually empty as it only has one small shop, scattered soda stands, and only one attraction (the village has more character appearances, is filled with more than just trees, and Smuggler’s Run). I think that on both coasts in the future, Disney could add a small quick service restaurant like Ronto Roasters and a new D-ticket attraction to increase capacity. However the forest does serve an important purpose: to house the jaw-dropping and hilariously expensive Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. This mixed ride system adventure utilizes a simulator, a trackless dark ride, and a simulator strapped to a drop tower ride system. This attraction has single-handedly made Disney’s Hollywood Studios as popular as the Magic Kingdom. After riding the attraction, I think that this attraction is up there with Pirates of the Caribbean because the storytelling is phenomenal as it sets up a great story, develops it, and has a clear resolution (unlike Dinosaur). The special effects on the attraction are mind blowing and preserve the illusion of being immersed in the world of Star Wars with effects such as breakaway walls, hologram glass projections, state of the art animatronics, and live actors playing First Order officers. I enjoyed this ride thoroughly, and I cannot wait to get on this modern marvel again. Due to the popularity of the park now, this shows that this park needs more high capacity rides, not shows, high capacity rides to draw crowds away from Rise, or another park needs a new large draw to get guests away from Rise.
Grand Avenue, Commissary Lane, and Echo Lake
Grand Avenue is themed after a gentrified district of L.A. and its main attraction is Muppet Vision 3D. I was expecting an out of date, cheesy, and poor quality show, but actually I found this show to be one of the best attractions in the park because it’s hilarious, uses all of the major Muppet characters effectively by using them in major roles, and breaks the all-too-sacred Fourth Wall, which is especially sacred in Disney parks. The 4D shows I have experienced from Universal and Disney primarily relied on just the 3D screen and 4D effects, and compared to a show like Mickey’s Philharmagic or Shrek 4D, this attraction is superior as it makes wider use of animatronics and its storytelling is more detailed and feels less like a clip show of different Disney films. Commissary Lane is a small subsection of Hollywood Boulevard that has eateries like the ABC Commissary and Sci-Fi Dine In Theatre. The land is stylized like a film backlot with its large, boxy, beige “soundstages” and has a Minnie Mouse meet and greet area. Echo Lake is themed after the L.A area of the same name which has Star Tours, the Frozen Musical Singalong, Indiana Jones: Stunt Spectacular, and Mickey Mouse: Vacation Fun short film. Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, one of my favorite attractions on my past overnight summer camp trips, which takes you into the Star Wars universe via the Star Tours terminal on Endor. The ride takes you on a randomized ride sequence to some Star Wars locations (but for some reason I always get the Boonta Eve Podrace on Tatooine and I’m sick of it), which always includes an encounter with the Empire/First Order and the Rebellion/Resistance. I liked this ride a lot as it has a lot of nostalgic value, the ride experience is good each time (still sick of Boonta Eve), and I love classic Star Wars.
Food
I enjoyed food at two locations during this visit, ABC Commissary and The Brown Derby. The Commissary had a pretty good salad which was fresh and flavorful and shrimp tacos which were about as good as Southern California from authentic Mexican restaurants there. The interior of the Commissary seemed to be mainly for advertising ABC’s TV shows like The Wonder Years. The Brown Derby also had good dishes such as Walt’s Filet Mignon, prepared the way that he liked it, which was tender, cooked enough, yet still juicy with a perfect over easy egg on top that added another layer of flavor. The Free Range Chicken was not dry, had the right amount of spices, and its sides such as the spaetzle and string beans complemented the dishes well by giving a full meal with carbohydrates and vegetables.
Overall, I give Disney’s Hollywood Studios a 92% for its unique lineup of attractions, consistently good atmosphere (I like the mix of the studio backlot with the immersive movie and Hollywood areas as it provides the park a bit of creative diversity), and surprisingly good food. The lack of capacity to meet the park’s high demand is worth overlooking because of the high quality of the park and I would like to see more new attractions in the future, which could help alleviate high wait times. I still rate this park to be higher quality than Universal Studios Hollywood and I cannot wait to return to see the next great attraction that Imagineering has made this time.
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