The Great Movie Ride

The Great Movie Ride
Park	Disney's Hollywood Studios
Land	Hollywood Boulevard
Type	Hosted dark-ride
Opening date	May 1, 1989
Closing date	August 13, 2017

The Great Movie Ride was an attraction in Disney's Hollywood Studios which ran from 1989 to 2017.

History

Backstory

This attraction had guests enter, "The Chinese Theatre" in Hollywood, L.A. (based on the real-world Grauman's Chinese Theatre). Here, guests would be taken on tours through the worlds of various famous movies in an automated vehicle with a movie-loving guide.

Films

• Alien (1979):
• Casablanca (1942):
• Dollars trilogy (1964–1966):
• Fantasia (1940):
• Footlight Parade (1933):
• Mary Poppins (1964):
• The Public Enemy (1931):
• Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981):
• The Searchers (1956):
• Tarzan the Ape Man (1932):
• The Wizard of Oz (1939):

Jungle Cruise connections

Jungle Cruise

The Casablanca scene's Lockheed Electra 12A was created using the back-half of an allegedly authentic prop used in the film Casablanca. The backside of the plane was placed in the Magic Kingdom's Jungle Cruise as a downed plane. This plane was further originally implied to belong to the airline, "Aero-Casablanca" though a 2021 refurbishment changed this to being a plane with a racist name belonging to misogynist aviator Hathaway Browne. Incidentally, Casablanca's set-designer was Jungle Cruise Imagineer Harper Goff.

In the 2021 refurbishment, the chimpanzees added into the Jungle Cruise to replace the headhunter camp looked incredibly similar to those from the Tarzan scene of the Great Movie Ride. It has been theorized that the animatronics or their moulds might have been recycled from the Great Movie Ride. This refurbishment also included the detail of character Felix Pechman XIII originating from Silver Springs, Florida, a real-world location where Tarzan the Ape Man was filmed. In the audio at Walt Disney World, Albert Awol references the Tarzan films by imitating actor Johnny Weissmuller and by talking about a movie called, "Tarzan and Me".

The Jungle Cruise has also had looser connections to the Jungle Cruise relating to the films which they both have referenced. Albert Awol referenced the 1939 Wizard of Oz when promoting the Elephant Safari Company, the Ark of the Covenant was added to the gorilla scene during Indiana Jones Summer of Hidden Mysteries, a bottle of medicine from Mary Poppins is in the Amazon River Base and Nigel Greenwater plays the song, "As time goes by" popularized by Casablanca.

Other connections

Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Bar

Trader Sam has a post-card from Rick Blaine and photo of Professor Porter and Jane on their expedition. The character of Smith from Mary Poppins is also referenced in the bar.

Trivia

• Several of the handprints outside the Chinese Theatre are connected to the Jungle Cruise. Associated hand-prints include Annette Funicello, Donald Duck, Goofy, Robin Williams, George Lucas, and Mickey Mouse.
• In the Well of Souls were hieroglyphs depicting Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck from Disney and R2-D2 with C-3PO from Star Wars. Additionally, one of the mummies was dressed near identically to the Egyptian pharaoh from EPCOT's Spaceship Earth.
• The Wizard of Oz inspired the character of the Dreamfinder in Journey Into Imagination and Alien inspired L.C. Clench in ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter. Both of these characters are featured within Walt Disney World's Skipper Canteen.
• The Hollywood Sign in the queue read, "Hollywoodland". This was the original text on the sign until it was changed in 1949.

Gallery