Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway - Disneyland

[MarvelCharacterNerd]

Well now let’s not get too crazy! I don’t really think anyone stateside would fully appreciate the Bastille Day version. But maybe that’s just me.

Yeah but just WAIT for the Groundhog Day overlay - it's the same scene over and over again in every room!

 

[yeti]

I really hope they add some depth to the show scenes. Specifically I hope they fix the stampede, carnival, and island/underwater scenes, which move all the set dressing to the perimeter of the rooms giving the impression that you’re watching a highly-themed wall instead of an immersive set. I suggest having the trains move through corridors instead of large (empty) spaces, making all scenes more like the train tunnel, the city street, the sewer, and the alleyway between the dance studio and the factory.

 

[Magicart87]

I really hope they add some depth to the show scenes. Specifically I hope they fix the stampede, carnival, and island/underwater scenes, which move all the set dressing to the perimeter of the rooms giving the impression that you’re watching a highly-themed wall instead of an immersive set. I suggest having the trains move through corridors instead of large (empty) spaces, making all scenes more like the train tunnel, the city street, the sewer, and the alleyway between the dance studio and the factory.

I too wish they'd redesign a third of the attraction.

 

[yeti]

I too wish they'd redesign a third of the attraction.

LOL fair. I know it’s asking a lot but I think there’s a great attraction buried in MMRR somewhere. Some of the scenes work great and evoke classic FL style dark rides. The large, empty-feeling “rooms”...not so much. But I think it would be a surprisingly simple fix for a new build.

 

[Magicart87]

LOL fair. I know it’s asking a lot but I think there’s a great attraction buried in MMRR somewhere. Some of the scenes work great and evoke classic FL style dark rides. The large, empty-feeling “rooms”...not so much. But I think it would be a surprisingly simple fix for a new build.

I think that's part of the problem with LPS ride systems. We just ride around in a box and look at stuff. I don't quite know why, but it seems to work better in RoTR and Rat. MMRR suffers in that regard.

 

[PiratesMansion]

I think that's part of the problem with LPS ride systems. We just ride around in a box and look at stuff. I don't quite know why, but it seems to work better in RoTR and Rat. MMRR suffers in that regard.

Trust me, it DOES NOT work better on Rat (although that is also on the designers who were clearly trying to ape Spider-man on a ride system not well suited for it).

Mystic Manor and particularly Hunny Hunt are the only rides I've done that really justify the technology and show that it can work effectively.

 

[yeti]

I think that's part of the problem with LPS ride systems. We just ride around in a box and look at stuff. I don't quite know why, but it seems to work better in RoTR and Rat. MMRR suffers in that regard.

I think RotR - while IMO not as good a ride as Mystic Manor or Pooh - is technically the best use of LPS because the immersion is total - there are no seams or abstractions. You’re literally driving along the floor of a star destroyer, you’re not on a contrived bus-bar track, and the sterile black floor makes sense in the environment. As a result the ride path is representational, not abstract.

On Runaway Railway on the other hand, the ride path is not in-theme with what’s going on in the sets - it’s just a sterile black floor (except for the few moments where it’s cleverly themed as railway track). Which is fine if we accept - as we do on, say, Roger Rabbit’s Cartoon Spin - that the ride path is abstract. To accomplish this like Roger Rabbit does, the path shouldn’t draw attention to itself. When you have a large open space however, the path makes up the entire floor of the room - it automatically draws attention to itself. Because of that the rider doesn’t feel as immersed or transported into another world, it just feels like you’re on a ride. That’s why a lot of people complain that MMRR feels like you’re “in a warehouse”.

Large trackless open spaces can work. Three successful examples include:

- the blustery day sequence on Pooh’s Hunny Hunt (solution: the floor is painted blue and bulrushes emerge along the shoreline - boom - it’s not a floor, it’s a river!)

- the Heffalump and Woozles sequence on Pooh’s Hunny Hunt (solution: disco lights and spotlights projected on the floor - its simple but it fits the dreamlike scene)

- the finale of Mystic Manor (solution: this is maybe the one MMRR could learn the most from: have something to look at when you’re looking up and around you - this scene has crap going on everywhere around you except the floor, so the rider is easily distracted from the abstract pathway - meanwhile on MMRR’s “big open room scenes” (the stampede, the carnival, the island/underwater scene) the ceilings are bare, the floor is bare, the only thing to look at are the walls...that’s not enough to immerse the rider)

 

[BayouShack]

I know it’s controversial, but one has to admit that the projected floor during the ballroom scene on the new BATB is impressive.

Between that and the fully realized ceiling, it doesn’t feel like a box to me at all.

 

[mickEblu]

LOL fair. I know it’s asking a lot but I think there’s a great attraction buried in MMRR somewhere. Some of the scenes work great and evoke classic FL style dark rides. The large, empty-feeling “rooms”...not so much. But I think it would be a surprisingly simple fix for a new build.

I agree. If more of the rooms felt like the big city it would be a much better ride. You have nice set pieces with the ice cream truck and Pete. Then you have the movement with Pete moving up and down along with the buildings. The “traffic” moving in the background also look to be physical set pieces with projections but I could be wrong on that.

I’m guessing these Trackless rides have to have a few of this big rooms to get the capacity up. Or it’s just the only places they can showcase the trackless tech. If you think about it, what’s the point of the trackless tech if we re just going down tight corridors single file? This just goes back to my opinion that trackless rides are at an inherent disadvantage of putting a rider in an immersive setting. They exist primarily to show off the tech.

EDIT: interesting how we refer to them as rooms and not scenes. That’s part of the problem as well. Definitely a flaw in the design if we’re perceiving them as “rooms.”

 

[yeti]

I know it’s controversial, but one has to admit that the projected floor during the ballroom scene on the new BATB is impressive. View attachment 520565
Between that and the fully realized ceiling, it doesn’t feel like a box to me at all.

I think the BatB ride looks incredibly awesome — except for the “Something There” scene.

 

[yeti]

I agree. If more of the rooms felt like the big city it would be a much better ride. You have nice set pieces with the ice cream truck and Pete. Then you have the movement with Pete moving up and down along with the buildings. The “traffic” moving in the background also look to be physical set pieces but I could be wrong on that.

I’m guessing these Trackless rides have to have a few of this big rooms to get the capacity up. Or it’s just the only places they can showcase the trackless tech. If you think about it, what’s the point of the trackless tech if we re just going down tight corridors single file? This just goes back to my opinion that trackless rides are at an inherent disadvantage of putting a rider in an immersive setting. They exist primarily to show off the tech.

EDIT: interesting how we refer to them as rooms and not scenes. That’s part of the problem as well. Definitely a flaw in the design if we’re perceiving them as “rooms.”

Yeah exactly! I LOVE the big city set and basically everything after the underwater scene is gold.

That’s a fair opinion - there’s definitely a trap that trackless rides fall into where it’s more of a tech demo than a ride. However I think there would still be value to the trackless tech even if the ride was changed into tight corridors. That way the Daisy dance scene would stand out as the only scene where the cars actually separate (would make it a more surprising, wow-inducing moment).

 

[waltography]

What’s the point of the trackless tech if we re just going down tight corridors single file? This just goes back to my opinion that trackless rides are at an inherent disadvantage of putting a rider in an immersive setting.

I think the transition directly after Something There in BatB is a perfect example of tight corridor movement for trackless rides that's unfortunately few and far between in the current slate. I love the tightly choreographed movement there where you're ducking between props and cars alike. The walk-in freezer section in Rat would be a good example too if the scale of the ride were a tad smaller, but then that would make the rat scale even more ridiculous.

 

[britain]

EDIT: interesting how we refer to them as rooms and not scenes. That’s part of the problem as well. Definitely a flaw in the design if we’re perceiving them as “rooms.”

I remember the first time I saw the layout for Mystic Manor and I thought, "That's odd - it's like an actual home with rooms next to rooms. Almost like it was designed to look pleasing as a blueprint! Not at all like the theatrically linear scenes in typical dark rides."

It's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that you know something has changed in the imagineering approach when the layout of the fictional building matches the layout of the ride pretty closely.

 

[mickEblu]

I remember the first time I saw the layout for Mystic Manor and I thought, "That's odd - it's like an actual home with rooms next to rooms. Almost like it was designed to look pleasing as a blueprint! Not at all like the theatrically linear scenes in typical dark rides."

It's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that you know something has changed in the imagineering approach when the layout of the fictional building matches the layout of the ride pretty closely.

View attachment 520610View attachment 520609

Well it works in Mystic Manor as those are actually supposed to be rooms in a Manor and the execution is much better. In MMRR, people are referring to them as rooms because of how big and barren some of them are with most of the show being on the walls on screens. So our brain is perceiving it first and foremost as a room or physical space in the attraction show building and not an immersive scene or part of the attraction. Most people wouldn’t refer to the battle ship scene on POTC as a “room” because it’s executed at a level where we buy into our setting.

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

Runaway Railway is taking cool technology used in the foreign Chinese POTC ride and making it disappointing and crappy for American audiences who want to "dance" on rides.

 

[mickEblu]

Runaway Railway is taking cool technology used in the foreign Chinese POTC ride and making it disappointing and crappy for American audiences who want to "dance" on rides.

Hahah yup. In POTC Shanghai the screens serve mostly as backgrounds where as in MMRR they are the focal point. ROTR isn’t a home run for me but at least I never feel like I’m in an empty room with screens.

Something tells me that when it comes to modern Disney E tickets and lands, I’d be much more pleased with Pandora/ FOP and POTC in Shanghai.

I’m starting to seriously consider a WDW trip in March/ April. Masks, 5 year old, 6 month old and all. The perks of low capacity and short lines seem to outweigh the mask requirement, shorter hours and less entertainment. Plus we all need it. Well maybe not my 3 month old daughter. But the rest of us.

Side note: the hangar in the ROTR queue would be much better if they removed all of those Storm Trooper mannequins and replaced them with two good AAs.

 

[Jones14]

The only trackless rides I’ve been on are Runaway Railway and Rise, but I didn’t experience the ‘open warehouse’ issues on either of them for the most part. Railway was probably the worse offender, but the worst scene in that regard (the desert) goes by so quickly that you don’t really notice.

I had no issues with the carnival scene, it feels much more dimensional and dynamic in person.

 

[J4546]

the show building for mmrr being built in DL is bigger than the buildings for the RotR, so I hope its awesome

 

[mickEblu]

the show building for mmrr being built in DL is bigger than the buildings for the RotR, so I hope its awesome

Well, have you seen a ride thru of the WDW version?

 

[Magicart87]

the show building for mmrr being built in DL is bigger than the buildings for the RotR, so I hope its awesome

Bigger isn't always better. If anything it needs to be more intimate and tighter.