Tag: Jim Henson

Disney World closing Muppet*Vision 3D would be a colossal mistake for its legacy

Disney simply cannot close Muppet*Vision 3D for good.

On a sweltering Orlando Sunday in August 2022, my dutiful wife accompanied me to Disney’s Hollywood Studios for my 30th birthday to stroll about Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and celebrate a turning of the decade like most, ahem, adults do.

Although, the sticky Florida summer hits you like a baseball bat to the jaw the second you walk into any Disney park in the summertime. After wandering around for a bit, she asked if we could get some air conditioning. Obviously, I obliged with the best Trojan Horse idea I could possibly have.

I knew of the perfect place with ample A/C and plenty of seats to beat the heat. A place where you could play the music, light the lights, raise the curtain and get things started for a theme park attraction that’s, well, one of the most most sensational inspirational, celebrational and … Muppetational … things to do in all of Walt Disney World.

The exacerbated look on my wife’s face once she realized that I was leading her into Muppet*Vision 3D to get out of the sun is one I’ll never forget, yet another memory from one of the great Disney World attractions I’ll tuck in my back pocket to give me a smile when I think about that trip, and countless others to Orlando. She’s not the world’s biggest Muppets fan, but I sure am.

Although, the beloved Muppets attraction now needs our help more than ever.

With Disney announcing a host of new park experiences at its D23 convention over the weekend, news of a Monsters Inc. land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios (including the long-awaited thrill ride based on that film’s iconic door chase) quickly gave way to concern about where exactly Disney was planning to build its Monstropolis replica.

The Wrap’s Drew Taylor, an authoritative voice on anything Disney, confirmed on Tuesday what many feared about this new Monsters-themed expansion. The area where Muppet*Vision 3D sits in Disney’s Hollywood Studios was a possible zone for construction for the Monsters Inc. land, which would mean shuttering the Muppets attraction for good. According to Taylor, the fate of Muppet*Vision 3D would be decided in mere weeks.

“Walt Disney Imagineering, the secretive arm of the Walt Disney Company responsible for the theme parks, has only a few weeks to decide whether to keep Muppet*Vision 3D or to shut it down, an individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap, and its closing was originally going to be tipped during a D23 presentation until a last-minute swap,” Taylor reported.

Taylor spells out varying reports about where the Monsters Inc. world could be placed on Disney’s Hollywood Studios property, with a possible landing spot being the barren animation courtyard that once housed a Little Mermaid live show and still holds the remains of an event space that featured a Disney animation showcase and, more recently, a catch-all for Star Wars.

However, Taylor’s reporting detailed why Disney might raze where the Muppets attraction stands to build a home for Mike and Sully.

“But another individual with knowledge of the situation pointed to why Muppets Courtyard (or Grand Avenue, as it is currently known), would be more ideal for the “Monsters, Inc.” land – there’s already a restaurant (themed to Rizzo, the lovable Muppet rat) and infrastructure for shopping,” Taylor wrote. “And, chiefly, there’s already a faux city aesthetic to the area, perfect for the converting Monstropolis. ‘It’s a perfect way to stretch that $60 billion,’ said this individual, referring to the $60 billion Disney has earmarked for theme park expansion around the world, which also includes additions to international parks and beefing up the company’s lucrative cruise ship line.”

This would, quite simply, be an absolutely horrible decision for Disney to make, even if the Monsters Inc. land does sound pretty neat.

Consider the history behind the attraction. Muppet*Vision 3D is one of the last great works of Muppets creator Jim Henson, who tragically died in 1990 before the attraction opened in Orlando in 1991. It’s one of the last things he created as steward of Kermit the Frog and the gang, one of the last examples of his megawatt creative spirit, deadpan comedic genius and genial Muppet anarchy that defined these beloved felt entertainers during their golden run in the 1970s and 1980s. Heck, it’s one of the last times we ever got to hear his voice as Kermit, guiding us along another zany Muppets adventure.

In a world where Disney has allowed the Muppets to gather dust after a two-film theatrical run in the early 2010s, an ill-fated sitcom in 2015 and a couple of fizzled-out Disney+ projects, Muppet*Vision 3D feels like the primary way that Disney is keeping Henson’s memory alive. To bulldoze through it in the name of theme park progress would feel like a moral abdication and a cruel, corporate calculation that erases the great testament to Henson’s genius and the long-lasting appeal of the Muppets for audiences of all ages.

Disney has never shied away from updating and outright replacing some of its older rides and shows, but there’s an unspoken truth to the legacy attractions that would spark widespread outcry if altered or closed. You can’t imagine Disney dismantling Dumbo the Flying Elephant for a snack shack or blowing up the big Spaceship Earth ball to make the entrance to Epcot more walkable for guests. Some parts of Disney parks are too sacred to replace.

With The Great Movie Ride reaching the closing credits and the Studio Backlot Tour going to the great Disney theme park in the sky, and Muppet*Vision 3D is one of the few attractions at Disney’s Hollywood Studios that hearken back to its roots as Disney–MGM Studios. The show, still unique and immersive in a way that few theme park attractions are, opened just two years after the actual park did, making it one of the anchor attractions that has withstood the park’s extensive changes over the last couple of decades.

While Disney has hacked up the Muppets Courtyard over the years down to just the attraction and the Rizzo-themed pizza parlor, it feels like a precious corner of a world gone by. Part of a Disney park’s appeal is how the passage of time slows down just enough to where you can recreate specific experiences you had as a child as an adult and even with your own children.

Muppet*Vision 3D embodies that mentality so well. The show hasn’t aged a day with its humor and heart and has remained surprisingly buoyant with its 3D technology and mix of pre-filmed material, involvement of a live performer (a Disney cast member in a Sweetums costume) and usage of impressive animatronics scattered throughout the theater.

Ironically, the only film that’s even slightly dared to match what Muppet*Vision 3D has offered in the past couple of decades may well be Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming Megalopolis, which utilizes a live actor in the theater having a conversation with Adam Driver’s character on the screen. Hypothetically, Henson did it first, and Disney World kept it going for more than 30 years. It’s an absolutely singular theatrical experience.

Vulture’s Rebecca Alter wrote an excellent piece recently on why Muppet*Vision 3D should be made a National Heritage Site, something we’re sure Disney would fight tooth-and-nail in order to retain the flexibility to close the attractions if it so pleases. The point Alter made still stands very sharply, even amid this troubling possibility of the show’s closure.

Henson’s last great piece of Muppets creation remains one of the great achievements at a Disney park, one where the pre-show waiting area will make you belly laugh in ways that 99-percent of ride queues fail to entertain (Max from the Union forever) and the actual show itself plays as wonderfully as anything Henson ever mounted with the Muppets.

Heck, Sam the Eagle’s “A Salute to All Nations, but Mostly America,” and the absolute mayhem it inspires, might be the single funniest thing that Henson and company ever devised with the Muppets. It still makes me howl all these years later in a way few things do.

As a card-carrying member of the Muppets Fan Club, I’m deeply biased in my deep desire for Disney to leave Muppet*Vision 3D the heck alone so that I can continue to enjoy it as a park guest and one day experience it with kids of my own.

It’s a timeless piece of Disney history that should stand for as long as the theme park surrounding it stands, and closing it would feel completely antithetical to the way Disney treats its other classic attractions, with deep reverence and keen understanding of how awful it would be to snuff out that corner of irreplaceable Disney magic forever.

Muppet History’s Joshua Gillespie, a fierce defender and noted historian of the Muppets and Henson’s work, put it as well as anyone could in a social media post on Tuesday about what Muppet*Vision 3D means: “It’s an important piece of Muppet history and to lose it would be losing a significant part of Jim’s legacy and the joy he brought to our world.”

Disney is far from a perfect company, but it’s got a layup of a decision to make with Muppet*Vision 3D. Let it live for another 30 years, and put the very promising Monsters Inc. land elsewhere in Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

To close the last great living Muppets experience would be an unfathomable error that the company could never take back. It’d be the ultimate sign of disrespect for Henson’s memory and yet another example of why Disney is proving itself unworthy of keeping the Muppets alive for future audiences.

If Disney is really serious about being the proper steward for Kermit and friends, then keeping Muppet*Vision 3D going is the very least it can do.

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