Lights, Camera, Action!: A Blue Sky, Armchair Imagineered Redesign of Disney’s Hollywood Studios Theme Park

Metroville

Background

I knew that after strengthening the park’s “Hollywood” opening act (with Hollywood Blvd., Sunset Blvd., and Hidden Hills), I wanted to begin to get to the park’s new direction: jumping into and out of worlds we’ve seen in Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Star Wars.

I also knew that I wanted the first of those worlds to be a city of some kind, smoothing the transition from the “real,” urban landscapes that necessarily serve as its prologue. I’ve always felt that there are three Disney or Pixar “cities” that are just instantly perfect matches for coming to life in a theme park, so it made sense to choose one to be the first of the park’s cinematic worlds.

• Monstropolis from Monsters Inc. – though we haven’t seen much of it, a “downtown” cityscape built around the eponymous factory seems like a no-brainer, with retail and dining opportunities beyond Disney’s wildest dreams… I mean, c’mon: “Gross-out” ice cream flavors! Ooze and Diet Ooze at the soda fountain! Build-a-Monster plush! Disney also already has the incredible Ride & Go Seek at Tokyo Disneyland dark ride developed, and a suspended, swinging coaster through the factory’s door warehouse was all-but-confirmed for Hollywood Studios and California Adventure (in the latter, as part of a full Monstropolis land that never happened).

• San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6 – the alternate history, near-future version of San Francisco infused with architectural and cultural elements of Japan. San Fransokyo is a totally compelling, dynamic, kinetic, coastal, and super cool concept, but I have already developed it into a full-scale, immersive theme park land for my from-scratch concept park, Disney’s Fantastic Worlds and I think it’s absolutely perfect, so I wouldn’t want to wedge it in here.

• However, I feel like a cleaner, kinder transition for the park is from Sunset Blvd. and Hollywood Blvd. to the third “city”-style land that exists in the back of my head: Metroville – the sort of hyper-saturated, retro-futuristic, mid-century cityscape of The Incredibles. Pixar’s superhero team feels like a great fit for this park. On one hand, it fills the “Avengers Campus” hole in the park’s lineup – a land of tech and gadgets and cooperation and taking flight with heroes. But in a way, it could also be this park’s Cars Land – a sprawling city pulled right from the screen.

Ultimately, I’ll tell you that this was not easy! Though Metroville is often glanced in The Incredibles and its sequel, it’s not a well-defined place (partly, of course, because as Pixar’s sixth film and the first with human character models, the backgrounds are pretty loosely rendered) or home to any single landmark that screams “The City From The Incredibles.” (Which is probably part of how Disney’s Hollywood Studios itself was able to just “label slap” a red brick alley as an Incredibles mini-area and have meet-and-greets and photo ops there, and no one could definitively say they were wrong.)

So in developing a Metroville, it’s more of a concept I had to work with: a ’60s-style city of colorful heroes, classic cars, comic book allusions, and villainous showdowns. The question wasn’t so much how to bring the actual, somewhat nondescript city from The Incredibles to life, but rather, how to build a city that would instantly recall The Incredibles.

The other qualifications: I knew that this land needed to fill space west of Sunset Blvd., hemmed in by the “Hub” and the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster – er, Invasion! – showbuilding, and ideally should disguise the latter. If done right, this land could transition from the “real” locales of Hollywood to the more fantasy realms at the park’s rear while also completing a needed “loop” of paths. In other words, a lot was riding on this land.

Build-Out

Unlike the San Fransokyo I developed that I felt should reflect the actual geography and landmarks of the city it’s based on, building a downtown square for Metroville was something entirely original. That made it easier to fit the land into the space occupied by the Animation Building and its offices (currently, Star Wars Launch Bay), with a couple of cross streets and the “skyline” of the city serving as the land’s backdrop (not unlike the Cadillac Range serving as a “berm” to envelope Cars Land.

As a bonus, the entrance to the land from Sunset Blvd. creates a much need pressure release valve for the formerly dead-end street (while also turning the area in front of Invasion! from a dead-end plaza to a part of the figure-8 flow that includes Hidden Hills.

But for our purposes, let’s pretend we’re entering Metroville off of the park’s hub. From there, guests would arrive at METROVILLE COMMONS – a large, central green space to relax or sip a drink. Of course, this green space would also be complete with a destroyed, sparking Omnidroid, its robotic limbs splayed out across the Commons. Serving as a weenie for the land against the cityscape backdrop at the land’s rear, this Omnidroid would instantly communicate The Incredibles while also serving a function…

While some of its legs would be perfectly positioned to serve as benches with phone chargers, others might lend themselves to a small children’s slide; a rock still gripped in its claw as a climbing wall; its various claws and shredders as spinnable interactives. This “adaptive re-use” would set the tone of the land – this sweet sort of idea of Metroville’s citizens dealing with villains, and learning to make the best of the aftermath.

Just adjacent, I actually salvaged the current Disney Junior Live on Stage show to become JACK JACK’S SUPER DANCE PARTY, with puppet-style Jack Jack joined by a “super-sitter.” Together, the show could see the pair put Jack Jack’s endless super powers to the test in a fun, interactive setting, with kids learning dance moves to emulate his powers.

Just past Metroville Commons would reside INCREDIBLAST!, bringing the Web-Slingers ride system to Walt Disney World. Here, I imagined guests being invited for a rare Fashion Week tour of Edna Mode’s super suit manufacturing facility and warehouse. After a pre-show in which an Audio-Animatronic of Edna herself demonstrates the incredible capabilities of her super-suits (above), guests would find themselves called to action when the villainous Sewer King releases his army of Robo-Rats into the facility to devour Edna’s suits thread-by-thread.

Recruited to hop aboard Edna’s new Incrediblaster vehicle, guests can choose their own power – ice, fire, electric, water, or stretch – to set off into the warehouse and take out the Robo-Rats. Guests would use gesture-recognition to rid each of the facility’s labs and storage rooms of the pests, leading up to a showdown with the Sewer King himself.

Naturally, guests would exit into Incredigear where they can purchase their own costumes – maybe including the kind of “add-on” gear that can personalize or overpower your performance on the ride, as in Web-Slingers. But the piece of Web-Slingers that I do like and would keep for this Incredibles version is that the group would be scored together so that the ride feels collaborative rather than competitive. I realize that after criticizing California Adventure for having Web-Slingers and Midway Mania so close, I’m a big ole’ hypocrite for bringing this back to another park that already has Midway Mania… But bear with me.

And yes, I do think it would be great to use Disney’s Stuntronics technology to see Mr. Incredible and Frozone flying over the warehouse throughout the day, which would also provide an awesome sight for people relaxing in the Commons.

Further back in town (and right alongside the entry from Sunset Blvd.) I envisioned FROZONE RUSH HOUR RESCUE. This would be what I think is a pretty clever reskin of California Adventure’s Rollickin’ Roadsters, which would fill a similar niche here as a large, kinetic family flat ride. With guests seated in little mid-century cars, this LPS, trackless flat ride would see the villainous Fender Bender arrive (via an Audio Animatronic pulling up in a beat-up car), activating his newest invention: the Traffic Jammer.

Under his remote control, the cars of Metroville would dance around in unison, horns honking and headlights flashing until Frozone’s arrival. Via lighting, projection, and fog effects, Frozone would freeze Fender Bender and the streets of town, sending cars sliding and spinning and dancing in a frosty finale.

Finally, I wanted the land to have an anchor E-Ticket attraction that I called MISSION: INCREDIBLE. Guests would enter the attraction through the Metroville Museum of Science to attend the unveiling of its brand new aviation exhibit. But just as they arrive at the exhibit’s finale – a demonstration of futuristic, four-person Flight Packs lead by the Incredibles themselves, the nefarious Doctor Gasbag would arrive and unveil his sinister plan: to inflate balloons he’s anchored around town, lifting Metroville into the sky and dropping it into the ocean.

Of course, with the ground shuddering beneath their feet, guests would be rushed off to the museum’s labs to climb aboard the prototype Flight Packs and take to the skies over Metroville. Their mission? To find and pop Gasbag’s balloons and bring the villain to justice. Using KUKA Robo-Arm technology (as in Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey), this would certainly be a major headliner for the park, and for all of Walt Disney World.

With an E-Ticket KUKA Robo-Arm ride; the no-height-requirement D-Ticket Incrediblast!, the C-Ticket trackless flat ride, and a family playground and show, I think think land would be a really well-rounded experience for families. More to the point, I think this would be a bright, kinetic, comic streetscape that would perfectly transition from 1940s Hollywood to 1950s superhero metropolis while also establishing a much-needed outer “ring” for the park’s layout and the first of its more fantastic lands.

Buying my plan yet? On the next page, we’ll continue our tour ’round a newly reimagined version of the park with two lands that I think Disney historians will appreciate…