As the Magic Kingdom approaches its 50th anniversary, the Most Magical Place on Earth is seeing some new projects pop up, including one that has recently closed up shop at the Main Street Cinema.
What’s Happening:
- At Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, guests walking right down the middle of Main Street USA may notice that the Main Street Cinema (Which has been an Art of Disney Store in disguise for well over a decade) has been closed.
- The store, which connects to both Uptown Jewelers and the Main Street Confectionary has been closed off by curtains where guests could formerly pass through store to store.
- There is no exterior work being done (at this time) and you can still technically walk into the Main Street Cinema, but you’d find a few movie posters and then the curtain blocking off the rest of the building.
- Magic Kingdom’s Main Street Cinema opened with the park in 1971, playing old silent movies before switching over to Mickey Mouse shorts. By 1998 however, the cinema was not showing cartoons, but rather previews of upcoming films from Walt Disney Feature Animation. The bulk of the screens were removed from the building in 2005, when the Main Street Cinema became THEE place to play the Virtual Magic Kingdom online game, being renamed (at least on maps and such) VMK Central. VMK Central closed in 2007, with the Cinema being transformed into the park’s Art of Disney Location later that year.
- Though we don’t know exactly what is happening behind the curtain, the timing is appropriate as the Main Street Cinema was an opening day attraction, and we are fast approaching the 50th Anniversary of Walt Disney World. As such, we will likely see projects similar to this pop-up in the coming months.
- Recently, we saw the removal of the interactive Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom attraction from the park, which led to the restoration of the Main Street Firehouse.
- The art that was for sale at the Main Street Cinema as part of the Art of Disney can now be found at the newly reopened Bonjour Gifts in Fantasyland.
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