Monday, 9 January 2023

Disney MGM Studios

Thursday 8 July 1993. We have decided to have a day at Disney's MGM Studios.

We arrived early and the park was just opening, but Chip and Dale were there to greet us and we were told which rides would open first. The only ride open when we got there was The Great Movie Ride, housed in a copy of Hollywood's Grauman Theatre. This was a really good ride with tableaux of classic movies interspersed with live action performances based around western and gangster themes and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The Star Wars Tour was a simulator ride - but what a simulator ride!!! The queueing are took us through a futuristic droid controlled environment where the droids actually talked to people going round, making jokes about their clothing etc.

We went in the Muppets "4D" Experience. It was 4D because not only was there a 3 dimensional film but halfway through, the Swedish Chef broke the projector and Sweetums came out into the audience, the lights came up, the two old guys heckled from their box and the Swedish chef opened fire with a cannon upon which huge lumps fell off the walls!

The main streets had the feeling of old Hollywood or New York with 1930s to 1950s themed buildings and some old cars parked here and there.

Tom and Jerry The Movie was about to be released onto the world as a totally predictable disaster. Ignoring all the wonderful cartoons that had been made in the 1940s, it gave the characters unrecogniseable voices and instead of them knocking seven bells out of each other, had them working together in a rescue mission. Proof - as if we didn't know - that people with money don't always have the brains to go with it.

On photographs the New York set looks perfectly plausible and unbelievably expensive to create. It is all painted on plywood!

Another picturesque corner at MGM Studios with old street furniture - a semaphore traffic light - and the old black and yellow taxicab parked up at the side of the road.

Min and Bill's Dockside Diner was housed in a somewhat cartoonish boat.

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