On May 1, 1989 Walt Disney World added its third theme park, the Disney-MGM Studios! On opening day this brand new theme park, which may or may not have been direct competition for the Universal Studios Florida theme park set to open the following summer, had a hand full of attractions and chief among them was the Backstage Studio Tour. The Tour at that point lasted approximately 2 hours and included 2 different short films and walking tour of the sound stages (current home of Toy Story Mania). Also the “Backlot” consisted of a residential area with houses from the Golden Girls and a visit from a certain VW Bug (current location of Lights, Motors, Action theater), the New York sets (guests can now walk), and of course the grand finale Catastrophe Canyon.
Over the past 25 years the park became Disney’s Hollywood Studios and the Tour has been shortened and sets have been removed, but you could always count on a nice tour to help show “how movies were made.” That all came to an end on September 27 as the Studio Backlot Tour gave its final ride. Below are videos of the 3 remaining parts of the attraction, filmed a few days before the closing and before the park started removing pieces from the boneyard.
This first part is the “Harbor Attack” water tank scene.
After the water tank we take a brief walk through the Prop Warehouse.
And finally we wrap it all up with the actual tour of the Studio Backlot!
With the largest area of the Disney’s Hollywood Studios park now wide open, we can only guess what the future holds for this area.
But till than, that’s a warp on another opening day attraction!
