PintoColvig
Active Member
Are you including the Animation tour in your 3 hour count? If not, you could add another another hour there as well.
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Backlot Tour May Go Bye Bye
- Thread starter Spaced Out Dude
- Start date
Woe is me.... I forgot Animation. Holds head in shame
kcnole
Well-Known Member
yep, I remember visiting long before ToT and RnRC were ever thought of and MGM was a full day park then. The only rides we had were GMR, Star Tours, and the backlot tour. Everything else was shows and we loved it. At the time GMR was ground breaking as was Star Tours and the tram tour was actually a great experience although I don't remember that much of it. I also remember my family being blown away by the Indy show.
batman3101
New Member
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this already being used at another park.... I believe it's in the Magic Kingdom in that Adventureland area.
imagineer boy
Well-Known Member
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this already being used at another park.... I believe it's in the Magic Kingdom in that Adventureland area.
No, that would be a ship fireing at a fort.
But personally, I think it would be a good idea because it shows how the ship battles were created in the movie.
But here's a thought: If they made MGM a working studio again, it would GREATLY increase the capacity of the Backlot tour. Sure, new encounters like the one I mentioned would help increase capacity too, but they woudn't quite do the justice. i also think that making it a working studio would broaded the appeal of MGM, therefor, increasing attendance.
batman3101
New Member
Yeah, fort/ship, close enough. I was joking anyways. :animwink:
I think that they should have a little bit of a walk-through tour displaying all the props and vehicles that they currently have. Kinda like an expansion of the AFI-Villians display they have, only make it larger. That way some of the vehicles in the boneyard could be saved from the elements. Max from Flight of the Navigator is a sad sight. That way you can go through at your own pace, take pics and the air conditioning would be nice.
I think that they should have a little bit of a walk-through tour displaying all the props and vehicles that they currently have. Kinda like an expansion of the AFI-Villians display they have, only make it larger. That way some of the vehicles in the boneyard could be saved from the elements. Max from Flight of the Navigator is a sad sight. That way you can go through at your own pace, take pics and the air conditioning would be nice.
AEfx
Well-Known Member
You know, thinking back to a time before ToT and RnR, it reminds me again of those beloved facades. Back then, when you'd talk Disney to non-Disney folk, their biggest point of reference was that section of the backlot tour. An unlikely candidate for a park touchstone, but I remember vividly so many conversations with people, and when you'd talk about MGM they'd say, "Oh, that's where I saw the Golden Girls house..." LOL. Then I'd remind them of GMR, etc., but it was always those facades I'd hear people remember.
It's a shame they can't build up a Wisteria Lane walk-through, but unfortunately I'm sure there is some incredible logistics that couldn't be worked out since it technically is already an attraction at Universal in Hollywood.
For me, memories of the early backlot tour were of those facades, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles van visit in between the tram and walking tour, and Madonna's dress from ________ Tracy.
AEfx
surfsupdon
Well-Known Member
Golden Girls and Home Improvement. Friends vacation and come back and ask me where the houses went. They were a conversation piece, haha.
And to anyone who has seen the Osborne Lights on Residential Street compared to the City, knows how far super the Lights were on Residential Street!
bugsbunny
Well-Known Member
Truly pathetic at this point.
The name of the park is MGM Studios, but neither word applies to the overal finished Disney product.
In one of the few things Eisner pulled off that Disney benefited from was the literal stealing of the right to have the MGM branded movies under the Disney banner. I do recall the largest shareholder at MGM at the time, cant remember his name, sued Disney after the fact but it was too late. I think Disney has the right to utilize 200 MGM movies at any one time and does NOT have to give credit to MGM when branding, advertising, etc. There were seperate deals for the blockbusters like Aliens, Indiana Jones, etc.
But in the end, Disney took someone else's junk and made a nice dime off it by semi-portraying it as its own. Sort of like how Microsoft used IBM for its software. :animwink:
And the word "Studios" in the title is now another far cry from any reality of it being a Disney branded or somehow related product. What's left that has to do with the movie business other than the signs hanging around? And for how long?
Got rid of the animators and just about everything else that had to do with the actual "production studio" term and now the Back Lot Tour seems to be turning into that literal sense of the word: a trolly ride through a back lot. It might as well be called the Parking Lot Tour since you see more employee vehicles than movie leftover vehicles on the tour.
So they might as well change the name from Disney MGM Studios to Six-Flags presents MGM.
The name of the park is MGM Studios, but neither word applies to the overal finished Disney product.
In one of the few things Eisner pulled off that Disney benefited from was the literal stealing of the right to have the MGM branded movies under the Disney banner. I do recall the largest shareholder at MGM at the time, cant remember his name, sued Disney after the fact but it was too late. I think Disney has the right to utilize 200 MGM movies at any one time and does NOT have to give credit to MGM when branding, advertising, etc. There were seperate deals for the blockbusters like Aliens, Indiana Jones, etc.
But in the end, Disney took someone else's junk and made a nice dime off it by semi-portraying it as its own. Sort of like how Microsoft used IBM for its software. :animwink:
And the word "Studios" in the title is now another far cry from any reality of it being a Disney branded or somehow related product. What's left that has to do with the movie business other than the signs hanging around? And for how long?
Got rid of the animators and just about everything else that had to do with the actual "production studio" term and now the Back Lot Tour seems to be turning into that literal sense of the word: a trolly ride through a back lot. It might as well be called the Parking Lot Tour since you see more employee vehicles than movie leftover vehicles on the tour.
So they might as well change the name from Disney MGM Studios to Six-Flags presents MGM.
AEfx
Well-Known Member
That has got to be the silliest statement I have ever read on these boards.
If people want actual productions going on in a theme park, go to Hollywood.
People have these romantic/nostalalgic notions attached to the concept, but I think it clouds their judgement when it comes to the practicalities of the situation.
AEfx
Legacy
Well-Known Member
Gee, like that doesn't happen with everything at WDW...
(Not directed at you, just making a statement.)
PintoColvig
Active Member
AEfx, to be fair, the romantic/nostalgic perpective that people have in thinking that MGM ought to be a working production facility is Disney's fault. That's how they billed it at the beginning. I guess that's one of the reasons why I'm now so disappointed with the Backlot Tour. When I first took the tour there was a chance that I could actually see a production under way. That anticipation is gone now and so is thrill. It's time for it to be shut down.
Oh, and I agree with you on the "Six Flags presents MGM" quote. MGM needs a re-think but that was totally off base.
the-reason14
Well-Known Member
Well, I would hope that disney gets it together as far as MGM is concerned. It def. needs more rides, and shows, maybe incoperate some crunk rollercoasters like RRNR and everest. But def. some dark rides and stuff, if they gotta get rid of the backlot tour, do it, it sucks horridly now, so do something to it.
Can anyone comment on what happened to all of the production equipment? Is it still housed above the first floor sound stages? Many will remember being able to walk along and look through the large glass into video post production, audio post production, etc. Sometimes there were people at work and other times not. It at least added to the backstage tour. So here is my question, is this equipment still installed? And if so, would it not make sense to again open it up for public view on the tour. Even if they put props or Audio Animitronics in there, I think it would at least add something to the tour. What do they have to lose if the stuff is just sitting there anyhow? For that matter, could they not set up a "shoot" in one of the studio sound stages? For example, they might recrate the Home Improvement set or something else. Again, it would be no different at all from the times tours were taken through only to see a static set just sitting there or someone painting, cleaning, etc.
C'mon folks, someone has to know what the status is.
C'mon folks, someone has to know what the status is.
AEfx
Well-Known Member
Thank you! "Home Improvement". I knew there was another facade that was very popular as well, but I never watched that show and didn't remember it.
It's funny, but I had totally forgotten about how much I used to hear about that part of the tour before people had RnR and ToT to talk about. I knew I missed it myself, but it really is true that a lot of people have that as their big impression from MGM of those days.
I guess that could be interpreted as a good thing, or a bad thing, LOL.
AEfx
AEfx
Well-Known Member
The thing is, the truth really is that they never really had productions there in the first place. It was always a sham. In the early days of the Backlot tour, they used to have a fake "music video" shoot going out there, and they'd have a few standing sets up "ready" for filming, but it never really was there. The guides used to try to build up anticipation, but they knew full well you weren't going to see Burt Reynolds in his bathrobe between takes.
Sure, there were a few. There was that TV-Movie in the mid-90's "Bermuda Triangle", that "Sheena" show awhile back. In the early days they did the "New MMC", of course, but really, that's about it.
I'm not trying to be a downer, I know people seem really attached to the concept. But I think they tried, and it failed. Orlando might as well be Zimbabwae it is so far from the centers of film and television in the US.
I think it's also very telling that Disney doesn't even do any of their own productions there. They haven't called it a working studio in a long time, and I just think there is ample reason.
I think a lot of expectations were built twenty years ago that just never were meant to be fufilled. Orlando just isn't the place for those experiences, and I think Disney always really knew it. People are just too sophisticated these days to fall for the fake stuff (or so I thought, until I saw L!M!A!, a sever abberation), and the real stuff just doesn't fit in a theme park.
Film and TV sets are actually very boring, pedestrian places most of the time. Crewmen work, performers sit in a trailer, they all come out for ten minutes to shoot one shot, then everyone goes back for 2-4 hours while they reset for the next shot. Even if it was at MGM-Studios, it wouldn't live up to the "excitement!" expectations some people have about the process.
AEfx
To be fair, AEfx is right. The 3rd gate was seeded in 1984 when Eisner - than at Paramount - heard Universal wanted to open a tour similar to Hollywoods in Orlando. A few months later he joined Disney, and put plans in motion to design one of their own. There was lots of talk in the press of beating Universal at their own game, and Universal/MCA taking on the mouse etc. but no one thought of the fact Orlando isn`t Hollywood. It became a race to save face.
Legacy
Well-Known Member
Ironically though... that is probably one of the things that Universal did better than MGM. True, when they opened hardly any of the attractions worked... however, the attractions were, and always were, the focus of the park. The studios were built off to the side. MGM, on the other hand, had the soundstages sitting in the middle of the park. When "Hollywood East" fell through, all Universal had to do was stop running the tram tour while it still had the attractions to support itself. Disney, on the other hand, was lost without the focus of "real productions", and was forced to re-invent the park, which they are still doing. Universal has stayed the course in what it is... a place where you can "Ride the Movies". That has never changed... whereas MGM as a whole has become a massive hodge-podge of ideas.