What is Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and what should it be?
That question has hung over decades of Disney Imagineers like a dark cloud. It makes sense… after all, you have to remember that when Walt Disney World’s third gate (then called the Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park) opened in 1989, its purpose was twofold: externally, to whisk guests away into the real, behind-the-scenes filmmaking of Walt Disney Pictures, and internally, to scare competitors at Universal Studios out of their plans to build a version of their world famous Studio Tour in Orlando. Long story short: neither endeavor was successful.
As a result, Disney spent decades laboring over the park, stuffing it with one-off E-Tickets to draw in guests. The park’s “studio backlot” theme was a scapegoat of sorts, allowing designers to abandon the standards they’d set at Magic Kingdom and EPCOT and instead mash piecemeal IPs into beige studio soundstages, focusing on promotion over permanence. Even by the early 2000s, the park’s “studio” style had soured. In an era defined by immersive, timeless projects like Islands of Adventure and Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios looked like a cop-out.
In the mid-2010s, Disney began polling guests on potential new names for the park, at last signaling that it might turn away from its “backlot” origins… “Disney Cinemagine Kingdom.” “Disney XL Park.” “Disney Beyond Park.” “Disney Kaleidoscope Park.” None stuck. That’s probably because – especially with immersive, cinematic lands like Toy Story Land and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge topping the bill – it was obvious that Disney’s Hollywood Studios wasn’t a Hollywood Studio… but… what was it?
Ultimately, the Hollywood Studios name stuck (with a redesigned logo simply downplaying the word “Studio,” as if it might shrink into obsolescence to be replaced with the word “Adventure” at any moment). But even with Toy Story Land and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in play, Hollywood Studios remains a park confused. Too many E-Tickets. Too little for families. Tons of underutilized space, dead-ends, soundstages, and mish-mashed IPs… If you’ve ever daydreamed about what you would do to fix Hollywood Studios, you’ve come to the right place…
Blue-Sky Build-Out
So what do I think Hollywood Studios could be? It’s a very good question… and today, we’ll step into our own, idealized, dreamy reimagining of Disney World’s third gate – a celebration of the magic of Hollywood and the worlds it has created. In Part I of our walkthrough, we’ll explore the first four lands in our ideal, armchair-Imagineered version of this park – two existing lands that we’ve “plussed” and “built-out,” and two from-scratch projects we’ve imagined.
Along the way, remember that the point of a “Blue Sky” build-out is to dream big… to think outside the box, and to work with the existing pieces of this park to create something better for everyone. Is our version of Hollywood Studios perfect? Of course not! But I hope that once you’ve toured Part I and next month’s Part II, you’ll feel like this multiversal, fully-matured variant of the park would be on your bucket list to visit.
So with that said, let’s explore the first half of our lovingly-reimagined Hollywood Studios, land-by-land from the real background to the full build-out…
Hollywood Blvd.
Background
I truly believe that in the pantheon of Disney Parks “main streets,” Hollywood Blvd. must be among the best. It truly takes everything that makes Imagineering’s projects so powerful and combines it into one.
It’s habitable and historic, but idealized and romanticized; “a Hollywood that never was, but always will be;” in an instant, it transports guests to a place and time that they may not even be able to pin down. It doesn’t matter. Hollywood Blvd. is this vibrant, glowing, powerful, cultural mirage of what the Golden Age of Hollywood was, with every crack papered over; every wrinkle erased, and even a castle at the end of the street: the scaled recreation of the Chinese Theater.
If Hollywood Blvd. has a flaw, it’s that it’s too short (basically as if Main Street U.S.A. terminated at Center Street) and has too many gaps, where pathways branch off and expose that the street isn’t very “real” upon close inspection. I didn’t address the former, but I did try to iron out the latter.
Build-Out
I started by plugging the hole in the street that branches off halfway down on the left, leading to (in the real park) Echo Lake. Why? Mostly because that’s the start of this park descending into pathway chaos, with random breakaways and obsolete plazas and frustrating reversions to “studio backlot” aesthetic. Instead, I wanted to emphasize the area in front of the Chinese Theater as the park’s “Hub,” from which everything diverges, with as little sightline intrusion as possible.
The plaza in front of the Chinese Theater was famously designed as a large, upside down Hidden Mickey with Echo Lake as the character’s left ear. Over time, that feature has been pretty hideously disfigured by new planters that have ruined the eyes, “Center Stage” being built over the nose, and Sunset Blvd. erasing the right ear out of existence. So I brought it back (albeit, right-side-up this time) using an ear for an accessory plaza.
Otherwise, I made relatively few changes to Hollywood Blvd.! Just a new SILVER SCREEN MUSEUM exhibit behind a newly-extended facade along the Hub, and CLUB OBI WAN – a “lounge” style bar paying homage to the Shanghai club as seen in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Seemed to me like a sweet little “in-universe,” period-appropriate hangout that could become a favorite of Annual Passholders. These additions also have the benefit of helping to box in the park’s “Hub” so it feels like a part of Hollywood Blvd. instead of a massive, sun-drenched plaza. (As it is, the Chinese Theater is so far from the place where Hollywood Blvd. terminates that it feels like something else entirely.)
I also decided to add the HOLLYWOOD LINE STREET CARS, a version of Disney California Adventure’s Red Car Trolley that would whisks guests down Hollywood Blvd. and around the corner to Sunset Blvd. As simple as it seems, a ride like this adds so much life, vibrancy, and – yes – capacity to Hollywood Studios and makes this entry land feel like a real must-have. (Granted, part of Disney World’s problem is that operations deems it easier to simply pull these kinds of attractions than to navigate the crowds.)
Last but not least, I decided to swap out the contents of the Chinese Theater, namely by returning a new version of THE GREAT MOVIE RIDE. Don’t get me wrong – I actually love Runaway Railway, and I like setting it in the Chinese Theater so much that I did exactly that in my build-out plan for California Adventure. But at this park, in this land, this building calls for something more akin to a “thesis” attraction – something truly epic, and a great foundational piece for the world to come.
Would I bring the Great Movie Ride back exactly as it was? Probably not. But try as I might, I can’t think of a better basis than the “moving theater” with a live tour guide. It’s really no surprise that it started development as a potential EPCOT Center ride; it was ambitious, thoughtful, weighty, and immersive in a way that I’m not sure a trackless dark ride could re-capture, you know?
Would I bring the Great Movie Ride back in the way the modern Walt Disney Company would? (That is, as a revisionist history of Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars?) Of course not. There’s probably no universe in which Disney would ever consider tipping a hat to pre-1970s films, much less from outside its owned and acquired portfolio… but a tribute to great films of the past and how they laid the groundwork for the future feels like a worthy topic and inhabitant of this building.
And of course, as the Hollywood Line Street Car glides its way around the corner, we arrive at the park’s second land – one expanded and reoriented from its current state…
What ride system are you thinking of for The Great Muppet Movie Ride? Also wanted to know how a new (I’m assuming A-Ticket) would go into a space roughly the size of Muppet*Vision.
First of all, I’ve just discovered your site and I’m really enjoying your build outs! I first read your DCA one and made a suggestion that Disney’s actual Hyperion Studio be the “weenie” at the end of Hollywood Blvd. (which I suggested could become Disney’s Animation Avenue). Then I saw this build out and…there’s the Hyperion Studio. Love that.
I am amazed that Disney hasn’t recreated this company landmark, the aesthetics alone justify it, let alone the history. Yes, the Carthay Circle was important, but it wasn’t Disney’s. And the Chinese Theater is even more unspecific to Disney. Seeing them now take inspiration from the Robert Stern animation building at DHS (in the former Animation Courtyard) makes a recreation of the Hyperion Studio a great next choice.
You’r neighboring Encanto/Indy combo seems prescient by the way!
Thanks so much! Good to see you again, and again I’ll say how much it means that you actually read these very lengthy and detailed walkthroughs! Haha! Yes, when they announced that the old Animation Courtyard was becoming “Walt Disney Studios” I did a double take. It’s a shame they didn’t fully commit by recladding the area like the Hyperion Studio. I appreciate the Stern-style sorcerer’s hat and post-modern embellishments (which are also on the “Art of Disney Animation” building in Paris).
And it looks like they’re going to integrate some love letters to the real hand-drawn Animation process into the meet-and-greets, so hopefully that carries through the interior. It’ll be an interesting middle ground that highlights the continued conflict between seeing “behind the scenes of the movies” and “stepping into the movies”… that sort of thing where the park is called a Studio, and has some studio architecture, and some studio mindsets, but wishes that it didn’t. So we get to visit what looks like the Roy E. Disney building, but it contains an Alice in Wonderland playground. And meet-and-greets that nod to the multi-plane camera, but where we meet CGI characters. Fascinating stuff!
I wonder, given the Animal Kingdom buildout including Tropical Americas, Disney bulldozing Muppet Courtyard, Rock n Rollercoaster being rethemed into Muppets, and the recent Animation Courtyard plans, how would that affect this build-out?
Great question! This has always been a Build-Out I don’t feel 100% happy with – probably because ultimately, I wasn’t able to solve the park’s core issue, which is that it doesn’t make sense that it flips back and forth between “idealized historic Hollywood” and “immersive, modern IP Living Lands.” I’m not sure if there’s a “reasonable” solution, because I wouldn’t ever imagine getting rid of Hollywood Blvd. or Sunset Blvd., but you also can’t ever really get rid of Galaxy’s Edge, so you’re always going to have to work around the incongruous parts that somehow need to come together.
Likewise, I was really hesitant about expanding onto the parking lot or removing backstage facilities to expand the park’s overall footprint because doing that might’ve teetered this into the territory of pure fiction. It felt like “Well, if I expand in the parking lot, it’s like throwing out the rulebook so at that point, why adhere to reality at all?” But now that Disney itself is doing that, it does make me want to return to this from that perspective, too, and play with the bounds of what space can be developed.
So long story short, this Build-Out probably didn’t age well; the rulebook I used is no longer the rulebook in play; and a lot of the ideas I had are either now out-of-sync with reality or, weirdly, becoming real in modified ways. Maybe that’s an excuse to re-do this and approach it from a bit of a new direction! I also feel like I’ve gotten a lot better at this since I did this build-out, so maybe a fresh start would be a win-win. Stay tuned! Hahha.
Hi! When’s the next part of the tour going to happen? It’s a really good park!
Ahh! Thanks for the reminder! Haha. I got distracted by the holidays, but the second half is up! Be sure to stick around to the end for the final map with all the layers of foliage and texture added. Thanks for checking it out!