Review: Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway

By Dave Shute

MICKEY AND MINNIE’S RUNAWAY RAILWAY

Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway opened at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in March 2020, in the space formerly occupied by The Great Movie Ride.

Since the parks re-opened, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway has been one of the most popular rides at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, with only Rise of the Resistance being a higher priority. This makes sense, as it is an all-ages ride in a park with few such, and has some pretty appealing stars. And it’s silly and fun!

The concept of the ride is that guests are being transported into a cartoon via a train for which Goofy, taking a break from leading the worldwide COVID-19 response, is the engineer and conductor. Goofy being G, things get off-track pretty quickly, and the train cars split off into separate ride vehicles for the rest of the experience.

Most of the ride is spent passing through a variety of large, richly detailed sets that combine physical structures, audio-animatronics, and projection-mapped added visuals. The overall effect is astonishing, with rich details that will take many rides to fully see.

One exception is a waltz-conga scene which fits nothing else on the ride whatsoever but simply exists to take gleeful and whimsical advantage of the underlying technology of the ride vehicles.

The pre-show to the ride, which includes a brief Mickey short and a tour-de-force entry to the railroad station, has been suppressed for social distancing reasons.

Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway has been seeing what today counts as long lines all day. The lowest-wait way to see it is at park open or just before park close.

Note that the Disney characters in Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway are based on the more recent Paul Rudish styles of these characters, not the more cuddly versions elsewhere in Walt Disney World.

If you or your party has not yet seen these, then a first stop to see Vacation Fun in the Mickey Shorts Theater is the right thing to do, to be introduced to the new styles.

This would work, of course, only if either you have a two day visit to the Studios, with Vacation Fun on day one and Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway on day two, or if you plan to see Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway near park close and Vacation Fun earlier that day.

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