Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway opened at Disneyland on Jan. 27, 2023, and immediately got rave reviews for being family-friendly (with no height requirement) and for featuring Mickey and Minnie (who surprisingly didn’t have their own attraction until 2020 with the Runaway Railway at Walt Disney World). Still, many parkgoers don’t realize that Disneyland’s newest attraction is also one of Disney’s most technologically-advanced rides, integrating trackless ride vehicles, projection mapping, animatronics, physical set pieces, lighting, and effects to create the “off the rails” adventure. Let’s take a look at what goes into making Runaway Railway such a fascinating attraction!
Runaway Ride Vehicles
We chatted with Walt Disney Imagineering Senior Creative Director Jonathan Friday (who supervised Disneyland’s version of the attraction) to “pull back the curtain” (just a little) and find out how Mickey’s cartoon world was brought to life – starting with the ride’s name.
“It’s a ‘runaway railway,’ which means we start off a story that looks like it’s ‘on the rails’ and then goes ‘off the rails,'” Friday explained. “The attraction’s story is structured to highlight everything we can do with a vehicle that is not on a track: you go into a place, you back out of that place and find yourself in a different place, you slide sideways when the wind’s sweeping you, you dance sideways when it’s time to waltz, you turn around, you do everything you could never do if we were on a bus-bar track like on a traditional dark ride. There are so many opportunities, and the attraction highlights all of that really well. It’s kind of a showcase of what you can do with a trackless vehicle.”
In addition to using trackless vehicles, which gave Imagineers the freedom to move riders in any (and all) directions, the train cars also integrate elements that create a “tactile feel,” like when Pete (who is coming as a character to the Disney Parks for the first time ever!) is using a jackhammer in the city scene. You really feel like you’re part of the action.
“We deliver that heavy bass under your seat so you get the feeling of a jackhammer,” Friday said. “It gets used again occasionally as Goofy flips the wrong switch as you’re pulling into the barn, he’ll send a little electrocution to himself that we feel the effects of as well, and then when we’re headed over the waterfall, we get a little hint of motion that helps sell that illusion.”
Projection Technology – and When to Use It
The ride’s visuals are projected across multi-plane scenic flats and dimensional set pieces, which, according to Disneyland’s attraction fact sheet provides “a depth of field, while still maintaining a cartoon aesthetic.”
“There are 140 different disciplines at Walt Disney Imagineering, but it takes all of them to pull that together,” Friday explained. “What you’re seeing is incredible advances in black light printing and painting matched with media technology and the ability to map and deliver that consistently and perfectly through every scene.”
Friday credits Charita Carter – who led the scenic illusions team for Walt Disney World’s attraction – for figuring out the best ways to blend physical set work, projected media, screens, and audio-animatronics figures and create an “in-story” immersive and interactive experience.
“Long before the Mickey-based attraction was a concept, they were figuring out how to make the best use of these tools so when it came time to say ‘now let’s apply it to a story line,’ they already had the tips and tricks they needed to get there,” Friday said. “The diversity of thinking in that group – people who are focused on technology, people who are focused on artistry, and folks in special effects who blended those two together – they really nailed the technique on how to deliver a really consistent, beautiful scene.”
Scenic painting techniques were used to create Mickey and Minnie’s hand-drawn-looking cartoon world, so while the attraction does use projection technology throughout, Imagineers were very thoughtful about where that effect was used. Because of that, Friday says, some things you might think are media-based may actually be printed or painted to perfectly blend with the projections.
“We’ve often referred to it as “2 ½D” because you can’t quite tell whether it’s 3D or 2D,” He said. “One of my favorite effects that doesn’t get appreciated enough is Goofy in the locomotive in front of you. To have an animated figure who’s taking up physical space in a world is really tricky. We have some techniques we’ve used over the years that require things like a dark background behind a character, or that character might have a ghostly appearance…but Goofy is totally solid. You can’t see through him, you’re looking past him at a locomotive that’s also fully animated on the inside, and as he goes around that corner, you see the parallax on that because he’s real. I think what’s so great about that is, for most guests, they just say, ‘oh yeah, it’s Goofy up there, and he’s taking us on a tour.’
Friday says the idea that a solid, totally-opaque, animated character can be moving around in a brightly-lit condition was already hard to believe – and then the Runaway Railway team said, “let’s put him on a moving vehicle.”
“Hopefully for most guests that just kind of disappears into a story rather than being something to focus on,” he said. And when we asked what he calls the “Goofy effect,” Friday replied, “I call it magic. It’s something that shouldn’t be able to be there solidly in the world, but it is.”
Character Figures
Riders may notice the animatronic characters in the ride – like Mickey, Minnie, and Daisy – also look different from figures in other Disney attractions. Friday says that decision was driven by the intention to make riders feel like they’ve stepped into the very specific world of the animated Mickey Mouse shorts, which are “so stylized, so high-contrast, and so dynamic.”
“Thinking about how to make this world feel like one cohesive place drove certain decisions with the audio animatronic figures to keep that graphic look,” Friday said. “The best way to do that sometimes involved combining physical and media-based pieces together for one figure – and scene-to-scene that strategy changes – so sometimes Mickey is filled with dimensionality, and sometimes Mickey is against a surface. If he needs to ride a horse through the desert, that takes one level of Mickey; if he’s riding a balloon in the next scene, that allows us to make different choices see the characters in different ways. Combining all of those enables him to do what we need him to do story-wise throughout the attraction, but you never lose sight of the fact that it’s Mickey as you’re following along on this adventure.”
One particular section of the ride – when Mickey and Minnie are in their car at the track switch talking with Goofy on the train – required particularly complicated timing.
“You have four cars in a row, and they’re all going to have slightly different views of Mickey and Minnie (and of Goofy),” he said. “They all need that same story, so [we really thought] about how to stage it in a way that it’s clear to everybody exactly what’s happening. That’s the challenge and I think the team pulled it off beautifully.”
Which Mickey?
The decision to feature the modern Disney animated series-style Mickey was also deliberate because one of the challenges Imagineers faced when creating the first ride themed to Mickey and Minnie is the mouse couple doesn’t have a clear “home” like other Disney characters.
“If I say Anna and Elsa, you know you’re going to Arendelle; if I say Lightning and Mater, you know you’re going to Radiator Springs,” he said. “Mickey can do anything and could go anywhere – and there was so much opportunity in that – so when the new series of shorts came along, it felt like we had a style that was so fresh and different and fun. How could you not want to say this is the moment to deliver?”
And since we were talking about technology…
“We can tell a story about Mickey and Minnie in a way we couldn’t have told 20 years ago,” Friday said. “We now have tools to deliver on an attraction that’s worthy of these mice who’ve been our friends for 95 years, and with the combination of the scenic illusions team bringing the art and technology together and this great story around Mickey, it was one of those ‘kismet moments’ where everything aligned.”
But what about guests who are less familiar with the stylized cartoon shorts? The Imagineers thought about that too, and created an exclusive Disneyland queue inside the El CapiTOON Theater to integrate every version of Mickey.
“We know not everyone has grown up with this version, so we had an awesome opportunity [at Disneyland] with a queue story that reminds guests of all the versions of Mickey they’ve seen over the years – and that as he’s gone from black and white to color to computer-generated he’s always remained that same plucky optimist,” Friday said. “We wanted to make sure everyone finds the way they first met Mickey as they’re walking through the queue – and it was fun to get to tell a new piece of the story that’s unique to Disneyland.”
Check out our look at the fun Disney Easter Eggs in the Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway queue and ride:
Mouse Rules Apply
Even though Mickey and Minnie are cartoons, many guests still think of them as real-life characters, like we see at shows, parades, and meet-and-greets; however, on Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, “mouse rules apply,” which means riders can also go anywhere and do anything in the attraction’s colorful cartoon world, providing Imagineers with the freedom to take them to places they couldn’t go on a traditional dark ride that tells a linear story.
“When the team developed the new series of shorts, they reintroduced a lot of the flexibility in Mickey’s world, so when we go over the side of a waterfall and then find bossa nova-playing fish at the bottom of the ocean, we just accept that because this world is so free. It allows so much fun along the way and we can capture all that in the attraction.”
The Tech Behind the Tech
Friday also shared some of the technology involved in developing attractions that guests never see in the final ride experience, including a pre-visualization process where Imagineers can see a ride in 3D using virtual reality (VR) headsets.
“I was able to ‘ride’ the attraction over and over and over so we could check every sight line and figure out each of those motions,” he said. “And then…we were able to get onto a test vehicle in one of our warehouses that allowed us to ride through individual scenes in virtual reality, seeing exactly what the guests would see while feeling the motion of the vehicle.”
Because Imagineers could “see” the ride in advance, by the time the show building was built and the actual ride vehicles were ready, they already knew what they needed to do to create the attraction experience they wanted to deliver.
“That’s not something [guests see], but they get a really great experience because we were able to identify – long before we’d actually started putting things in the ground – Oh, you can see something between that gap in the trees, or what would happen if we need to move a set piece just a little bit this direction? How many flowers do we need in the field? All those sorts of things can be studied in advance and it just makes for a better guest experience because we’re using all this technology along the way.”
Disneyland vs. Walt Disney World
Contrary to social media speculation, Friday confirmed that Disneyland’s attraction is not exactly the same as the version in Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World.
“Every motion of the vehicle was completely recreated for our version in California because our buildings are not laid out the same at all,” he said. “The great news for us – and it goes back to the people every time – is the same amazing animator who animated our vehicle’s ‘personalities’ in Florida, also animated for California, so although he brought years of experience to that process, everything was different. And then there’s little things I’m sure some of your readers have picked up, like as you ride through the stampede scene in Florida, Mickey and Minnie approach from two different directions, but in [California], they approach from the same side. Just working with the different geometries we had, there’s little tiny things that don’t fundamentally change the story, but do allow us to offer the very best experience for our guests in each and every individual situation.”
So, to recap…
Disneyland’s newest family-friendly dark ride is also one of (if not the) most technologically advanced, but the genius of the Imagineering process is that guests don’t even notice.
“Everything is tied into a really complicated behind-the-scenes control system,” Friday said. “It’s not something a guest sees, except that a guest gets a seamless experience through a Mickey Mouse cartoon, and that’s the goal for all of us Imagineers: to offer a really great story.”
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Let’s Hear From You!
Have you ridden Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Disneyland? What do you think about the attraction and how it combines classic Disney storytelling and technology? Do you like Imaginnering’s use of trackless vehicles and projection mapping to help tell the “off the rails” story, or would you prefer a classic dark ride experience for Disneyland’s most classic characters? Let us know in the comments.
Want to know more about Disneyland’s newest ride? Our Complete Guide to Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway has all the info.
Complete Guide to Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Disneyland
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