6 Secrets Disney Imagineers Don't Want You To Miss on This Hollywood Studios Ride

Disney Imagineers do a lot of impossible things, but that comes with the job. Every ride is filled with details and special technology that you would never even notice unless you knew about those things. And they keep coming up with new ways of doing things on rides!

This was certainly the case when Imagineers built Mickey’s & Minnie’s Runaway Railway in Disney’s Hollywood Studios (and then later in Disneyland). Now, those Imagineers who helped create the ride are sharing some of its best hidden secrets.

Walt Disney Imagineering recently dropped a new video pointing out some details about Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, as well as some secrets on how they pulled off some of the ride’s cool effects. They walked through the ride in Hollywood Studios and revealed some of the ride’s secrets.

Hidden Mickeys

Did you know that Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway has more hidden Mickeys than any other Disney World attraction? You’ll find them everywhere…in the lighting fixtures, the chandelier, and all throughout the ride’s queue.

You’ll want to keep an eye out for these hidden Mickeys the next time you ride.

Pre-show screen

The pre-show of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway has a screen where you’re watching a Mickey and Minnie cartoon, but then suddenly, chaos erupts, and the cartoon bursts wide open and leaves an actual space that you can walk through. This is something Imagineers had never done before, and one of the two pre-show theaters in Hollywood Studios was actually the prototype for testing the effect.

It’s not just an illusion or special effect, though. The screen really does tear apart.

The smoke during the pre-show

You also see smoke during the pre-show, but there aren’t any visible smoke machines or vents in the theater where smoke could come from. That’s because Disney hid smoke machines behind the “To Trains” sign that you can see as you walk through the screen.

The sign actually moves to allow the smoke machines to do their thing, and then it moves back into its original place so you never see what’s behind it.

Working with UV light

The scenes in the actual ride are also firsts for Disney Imagineers. For example, Imagineers demonstrated how they used projections combined with UV light to create the first scene, as well as other scenes in the ride.

The things that are closer to the ride vehicles are painted set pieces, while the pieces farther away are projections. They also created a daytime scene using blacklight, which is something you don’t see blacklight used for often.

Meet Crustacea

You may have never noticed it, but there’s a crab that appears in every single scene of the ride. Her name is Crustacea, and apparently, she was one of the pets the Imagineers used when designing the ride’s tropical scenes.

Well, the Imagineers loved Crustacea so much that they just put her in every single scene of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway.

The big factory scene

The big factory scene in Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway uses just about every trick Imagineers used in previous rooms, but it does have one minor difference: it has moving parts.