Comic-Con@Home featured a little bit of Disney Parks magic today with the “Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway: From Animation to Imagineering” panel, looking at the relatively new Walt Disney World attraction and revealing some interesting information regarding the mission to create a Mickey-focused attraction.
- The “Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway: From Animation to Imagineering” panel was moderated by Sarah Sterling and featured:
- Charita Carter (senior producer, Walt Disney Imagineering)
- Kevin Rafferty (retired Imagineer and executive creative director for Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway)
- Paul Rudish (executive producer and supervising director, The Wonderful World of Disney)
- Christopher Willis (composer, The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse and Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway Parks attraction)
- Elsa Chang (character designer, The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse and Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway Parks attraction)
- Rafferty pointed out that a big difference in sound design for an animated short and for an attraction was that you could be in a spot and hear four scenes at once and he thought it was interesting to watch Willis switch gears from the screen to the park.
- Chang touched on the transition of the zany nature of the shorts into an attraction and pointed out that guests are thrown right into that craziness and always have so many different things to look at in each scene of the attraction.
- Carter talked a bit about the partnership between animation and Imagineering in creating this attraction, saying it was a fun challenge to bring guests into a two dimensional world while also laughing that they still had to follow the laws of physics.
- Rudish talked about how everyone fell in love with Chuuby immediately and that he made the call to add more of the character to the final room of the attraction.
- Interestingly, Rafferty admitted that many ideas had been tossed around for a Mickey attraction in the parks for a long time, including what eventually became Toy Story Midway Mania.
- The whole crew was asked about their favorite easter eggs in the attraction, one of which is the fact that the sound of the train’s whistle was made with the actual whistle that was used to make the same sound in the original Steamboat Willie short.
- Finally, Rudish mentioned that he and his team have been creating shorts that could fit into specific lands in the parks and would be happy for them to lead to future Mickey attractions.
- You can watch the full “Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway: From Animation to Imagineering” panel below:
Be sure to check back for more coverage from Comic-Con@Home 2021 throughout the rest of the day.