A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis: Toy Story Midway Mania at Disney’s Hollywood Studios

By Dave Shute

Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.

TOY STORY MIDWAY MANIA

By Jim Korkis

The highly popular Toy Story Midway Mania! attraction opened at Disney’s Hollywood Studios on May 31, 2008 in the area labeled Pixar Place. It was John Lasseter’s suggestion that the archway entrance look like the entrance to the real Pixar Studios in Northern California, even using the same type of brick.

At the Studios, as park guests enter the attraction, they find themselves in Andy’s room from the 1995 Pixar animated feature film Toy Story which is strewn with board games, puzzles and other toys. The murals located in the load area are the biggest murals painted since Epcot was built.

The toys all look gigantic because the guests have “shrunk” to the size of a toy because the toys won’t come to life if a human is around. The area was designed so that a five foot six inch tall person would feel about fourteen inches tall.

According to the back story, Andy has received the Midway Games set for his birthday. However, before he can completely set it up and play with it, he is called away and Andy’s toys decide to set up and play with the set themselves.

The Mr. Potato Head Broadway Barker figure (the most complex audio-animatronics figure ever built by Disney) is actually not part of the set itself but an additional figure that was “sold separately” as can be seen by his boxy stand and backdrop. Imagineers spent more than thirty hours with comedian Don Rickles who was the voice of the character in the original films to record his dialog.

The idea for the eighty million dollar attraction began in May 2005, when Imagineers were working on the concepts for Cars Land at Disney’s California Adventure and thinking about how they could bring some interactive components to the area. They later discarded those ideas as infeasible for the new land but were still intrigued by the initial concept.

After some in-depth research at the local Los Angeles County Fair with classic midway games, the idea progressed. The pull-string shooter was inspired by the Pirate Adventure game at DisneyQuest. In order to create a show that responds not only to every pull of a guest’s spring-action shooter, but also every move their midway tram makes, there are more than 150 computers communicating over multiple networks throughout the attraction.

Imagineers Lori Coltrin, her brother Robert Coltrin, Roger Gould and Kevin Rafferty were the primary team on the attraction.

The look of the attraction was inspired by a game that one of the Imagineers had as a kid called Snoopy and the Red Baron which is why there appears to be cardboard backdrops, stickers, and pieces molded out of single color of plastic.

In their test group, the Imagineers saw noticed young children were reluctant to break the plates so they added the line where Sarge yells: “I am not your mother -break those plates!”

Typically over one million of the virtual China plates are broken every single day. The green army men work hard to clean up the plate shards as plates are shattered all around them, although most riders never pay attention to that action.

Toy Story Midway Mania is the first blacklight show viewed with 3D glasses, which made mixing the paint colors more of a challenge. The Imagineers involved in the art direction had to always carry 3D glasses around with them when they were working inside the attraction.

The attraction opened before Toy Story 3 was released, so in May 2010, Disney changed the mini game, “Bo Peep’s Baaa-loon Pop”, and replaced it with “Rex and Trixie’s Dino Darts”.  Trixie was a new character introduced in the new film, as was Buttercup who was added to the Hamm and Eggs game.

The attraction was so popular that a third track was added in May 2016.

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Thanks, Jim! Toy Story Midway Mania will become part of Toy Story Land on June 30, 2018.

Here’s the review of attraction from The easy Guide to Your Walt Disney World Visit 2018:

And come back next Friday for more from Jim Korkis!

In the meantime, check out his books, including his latest, Call Me Walt, and his Secret Stories of Walt Disney World: Things You Never You Never Knew, which reprints much material first written for this site, all published by Theme Park Press.

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