These days, an argument can be made that Hollywood Studios might be Disney World’s most “modern” theme park, with full lands dedicated to Star Wars and Toy Story, plus relatively recently built attractions including Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, the Muppets (soon), and the in-construction Monsters, Inc. land. However, that wasn’t always the case.
For a period in the 2000s, the Disney World park once known as Disney-MGM Studios was nearly unrecognizable from the “real working studio” park that had opened in 1989, yet also was far from the park that currently exists in 2026. Instead, it was full of strange, in retrospect, quick-fix attractions that didn’t fit either the original theme or the current park. How did it get there, and when did that period of the park disappear? Let’s find out. To understand that, we have to go back to the park’s beginning.
The genesis of the Studios park began as a planned EPCOT attraction in the mid-1980s. The planned pavilion was going to be based around Hollywood and moviemaking, headlined by a behind-the-scenes attraction full of animatronics (sound familiar?) However, upon seeing the plans, then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner – inspired by Universal plans he had somewhat surreptitiously become aware of, according to theme park urban legend – decided to expand the pavilion’s concept into a full park AND working film studio that would aim to bring film production to Orlando.
When the park first opened in 1989, its primary attractions were The Great Movie Ride, the evolution of that animatronic trip through Hollywood history that was initially planned for the EPCOT pavilion. There was also an hour-long tram tour called the Studio Backlot Tour, which toured the studio buildings, which included working production stages for films and television shows, which didn’t beat those “stolen” from Universal allegations.
It also included a collection of backlot streets designed to look like New York City, an area of residential neighborhood facades, a wardrobe department, a special effects department, and a satellite animation studio. In addition, the overall theme of all areas of the park was that of a studio in a “Hollywood that never was” with guests being cast as movie stars, and all other attractions taking place on “hot sets” that put them in the midst of movie-making magic. Other attractions that opened to complement these attractions in the park’s early years included a tour of the park’s animation studio known as the Magic of Disney Animation, Star Tours, Superstar Television, and the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, while the Streets of America and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids playground, which were carved out of the studio tour within the first years of operation.
During the park’s early years, the dream of it being a “working studio” was alive and well, as there were many productions produced at the Disney-MGM Studios, including Newsies, Ernest Saves Christmas, The New Mickey Mouse Club, Adventures in Wonderland, Superboy, MTV’s Remote Control, Thunder in Paradise, Passenger 57, and World Championship Wrestling programs, including several episodes of their flagship series, Monday Nitro.
Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida, and the division worked on several of the company’s feature-length animated films in the late 1990s and early 2000s, including Mulan, Lilo & Stitch, and Brother Bear.
However, by the mid-1990s, the number of live-action productions began to dwindle, and the animation studio closed in 2004. At the same time, Disney focused on adding theme park attractions like the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and the Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith. While those two rides were and remain (one soon to be in Muppet-form) stone-cold classics, they ushered in a strange era at the park.
From the early 2000s through the early-2010s, the park began making additions that left most fans confused, angry, or both. First came the massive Sorcerer’s Hat in 2001. While the icon had its fans, the 122 ft tall hat, which was plopped right in front of the Chinese Theater replica that was then home to Great Movie Ride and had served as the park’s icon, was felt by many to be out of place (and certainly out of scale) with its Hollywood Boulevard surroundings.
2005 brought the Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show. An import from the Walt Disney Studios Paris Park, the stunt show was built on land that was cannibalized from the Studio Tour. Again, it had its fans and was certainly an entertaining watch. However, in what will become a running theme, it didn’t fit in the park.
Several years after the Stunt Show, Disney opened another bizarre-in-retrospect live show when the American Idol Experience opened in 2009. Housed in the former Superstar Television Theater, the show was staged several times a day and would feature park guests competing against each other in singing competitions based on the popular reality television series (right down to the set) before the winners from each show would compete in the day’s finale, with the overall winer receiving a “golden ticket” to be used during auditions for the real American Idol.
The show was bizarre for several reasons. For starters, lest you think it was corporate synergy, the show’s entire run took place while American Idol was airing on Fox, years before it moved to Disney-owned ABC. Beyond that, said Fox TV run had already peaked, and the show’s ratings and cultural influence were waning.
Not every change from the era was quite as strange, as 2008 saw both the opening of Toy Story Mania and the park’s official name change from the Disney-MGM Studios to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Unlike the aforementioned shows, these changes not only stuck, but they were also harbingers of things to come.
The park’s fortunes began to change in the mid-2010s, as Disney began pumping the park full of their newest and most popular IP. The American Idol Experience closed in the summer of 2014 and was replaced the following year by For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration.
Then, in August of 2015, Disney announced that two new lands (Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Toy Story Land) were coming to the park, expanding the park outward as well as replacing the Backlot Tour entirely, truly signaling the end of the original version of the park. These massive single-IP lands opened in 2019 and 2018, respectively, replacing the Streets of America (and displacing the Osborne Family Christmas Lights), the remnants of the Backlot Tour, and the area where Lights, Motor, Action! (which closed in conjunction with the announcement) had been staged.
In the midst of this, 2017 saw the closure of the iconic Great Movie Ride, to be replaced by Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway. With the closure, Hollywood Studios became the only Disney park in the world to have ZERO attractions from its opening day still in operation in some form. (Both Star Tours and the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular had been built for opening day, but neither opened with the park.) The Railway attraction, the first of its kind to star Mickey, debuted in 2020.
With the upcoming Monsters, Inc. land, the park’s transformation into a conglomeration of IP-based lands is continuing, moving the park further away from both its original studio theme and its strange, lost decade from the early 2000s to the early 2010s. Stay tuned to AllEars for more deep dives on Disney history.
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Did you visit Hollywood Studios during this period? Let us know in the comments below.
I miss the original Hollywood Studios feel of the park with its active animation studio, backlot tours, streetscapes, character actors, and the iconic Great Movie Ride. It really did feel like stepping back into the Golden Era of Hollywood movie-making. Now it’s a bit of a jumble, with no over-arching theme.