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How it changed and why it ultimately closed

It may seem trite to say, but when you’re in a time of great prosperity, it’s hard to realize that it could ever come to an end. This was the case with the Disney Renaissance and the Disney Decade, both of which seemed to come to a halt around the same time – the dawn of the new millennium.

While Walt Disney Animation’s run from The Little Mermaid to Tarzan was unparalleled in its success, it experienced a slight downturn in the time following those films. In fact, other than Lilo and Stitch in 2002, the Studio didn’t produce another smash hit again for nearly a decade. With diminishing returns coming on Disney’s investment in its animation department, as well as the shift to computer animation following Pixar’s Toy Story in 1995, it didn’t quite make sense for Disney Animation to keep running its Florida outpost.

And so, Disney began a slow drawdown of Florida operations after Lilo and Stitch – and by 2003, hardly anything was produced in the Disney-MGM Studios.

While the Magic of Disney Animation was a fantastic attraction while the studio was open, it lost a spark whenever production shut down. Throughout the Disney Decade, it seemed as though new animated features were being made almost daily in Florida, but as that creative well began to dry up, so too did the production schedule in the Orlando facility.

During the leaner times, the experience left much to be desired. Half the attraction – the portions involving a tour of the animators’ studio – was rendered moot when there wasn’t a film actively being made. Guests weren’t interest in spending their time walking among empty corridors and viewing blank sheets of paper.

As production slowed in Orlando – and was eventually shuttered for good – Disney realized they needed to alter the attraction to be more of a walk-through museum, rather than a tour. The pretense of the area being a working studio was mostly dropped, and with it, the Back to Neverland feature left as well. A new film centered on Mushu from Mulan (a film made in Orlando, no less) was created, and much of the space was converted to be the home of several interactive activities – all culminating with the Animation Academy,where guest animators would teach parkgoers how to draw Disney characters themselves.

The diminished attraction still had its fans, as every Disney attraction does, but by 2015, it had become clear that the experience had run its course. Without real films being made on the premises, it didn’t make sense to dedicate so much real estate to such a simple experience. And so, on July 12, the Magic of Disney Animation closed for good.

What Disney learned, and where the future may take it

Image © Disney

Guests connect with something real – or something so close to being real that they’re able to suspend their disbelief enough to enjoy it. In the 1990s, with the original Magic of Disney Animation, Disney gave them something real. They could watch a real film being made, before their eyes, and see everything that went into that process. But ever since that original version of the attraction went away, both it and Disney’s Hollywood Studios at large have had something of an existential crisis.

Where this park has failed is that now, and for the past decade, it has failed to do either of those things – it has neither shown guests something real, nor has it given them a world transporting enough as to seem real. Some attractions, like the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, are completely immersive. Others, like Star Tours, have a studio backlot aesthetic that always seems to pull you out in a jarring fashion. While you can seamlessly find your way back to reality after, say, Space Mountain, you don’t have that same experience when you’re thrust into the movie studio vibe of Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

While this has been true for some time with Disney’s Hollywood Studios, it wasn’t until Universal Orlando opened its immersive Wizarding World of Harry Potter that it became glaringly obvious. Universal offered real immersion, while Disney’s Hollywood Studios offered something of a knockoff version.

The announcements at D23 show that Disney is now changing that. Gone is the faux-studio aesthetic, and in its place will be real, total immersion. Star Tours will now be transplanted into an actual planet form the world of Star Wars. Toy Story Mania will be given a proper exterior amid a full-sized recreation of the world from its namesake film.

The next 10 years will see Disney’s Hollywood Studios transform into an entirely different park, but, as they say, everything old is new again. Maybe Disney isn’t making movies on that park’s property anymore, but now they’re doing something even better – they’re putting you inside one.

Image © Disney

Back to Neverland worked because Robin Williams was our avatar on screen. We experienced the animation process through him, and his unequaled wit and childlike charm perfectly represented the Disney guest. However, ultimately, you couldn’t help but feel a bit envious of the guy. After all, he got to live out every child’s dream and live inside a Disney movie. That’s the same impulse that drove you to dress up as Aladdin or Belle or Snow White or Robin Hood when you were a kid, and it’s the impulse that drives kids today to show up at the Disney parks dressed as Anna or Elsa or Hiro or Tony Stark. We’ve all wanted to be one of those characters.

Well, with these new developments, now you can. Soon, you’ll be able to blast your way out of a spaceport in the Millennium Falcon, or hang out with Woody and the gang in their very own world. So, maybe Disney isn’t showing us how they make their movies anymore – but what’s the point of being behind-the-scenes when now we can be on stage? Wasn’t that always the magic of Disney animation, anyway?

 
 
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Comments

I hope that Disney lives up to the expectations it is giving us, I personally thing that most of the new "Experiences/rides" ie. The little Mermaid and the, yes I am going to say this.. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train ride leave me a bit disappointed. They don't have the same feel as the older rides, they seam to be all "new" but are in my opinion very poorly done. Yes they have new innovations, swinging ride cars and such, but if you have been on these rides they lack that certain "disneyesque" quality, that " Plus" Disney is so proud of. Those who have ridden these know what I mean, but to explain it to others let me just say that they have left little to the imagination and have done little to hide the fact that they are rides in an amusement park, sure there is all the Facade work, making it Look amazing, but it has always been the experience inside that made a ride truly Disneyesque. They need to bring back the immersive quality that was once was. According to this article they just might...we'll see.

In reply to by Beth Newman Willard (not verified)

My thought on this is that those rides you mentioned -- The Little Mermaid and Seven Dwarves Mine Train -- really weren't put in a position to succeed. These attractions are D-Ticket attractions at best, but were over-hyped by the company as a sort of bizarre PR campaign to show that, yes, they were investing in Walt Disney World. With Universal expanding faster than a supernova, they needed to try and counter the narrative somehow.

I think for what they are, they're fine attractions. They simply aren't the game-changing experiences we all wanted them to be. What Disney's promising moving forward, from Star Wars to Pandora, are attractions in this mold -- attractions that we'll be awed by. It remains to be seen if they'll be as successful as Disney is claiming they'll be, but I think the recent disappointments, as you call them, are more due to unrealistic and unfair expectations that Disney itself fed into.

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