During the D23 Expo in 2017, it was announced that Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, the first major Mickey-themed ride-through attraction in any Disney park, was coming to Walt Disney World in Florida. The attraction was supposed to open this fall, but for some reason, its launch has been delayed for six months and won’t be ready until the spring of 2020. In an apparent attempt to make it up to fans, Disney announced last Friday that the ride will also be coming to Disneyland in California in 2022.
The announcement was first teased on Instagram before Disney Parks Blog made it official. In the Instagram post below, Disneyland Resort president Josh D’Amaro can be seen getting a peek at the plans for Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway.
The new attraction will be built in Disneyland’s Mickey’s Toontown probably as part of an effort to revitalize the area, which is arguably the most stagnant and least interesting part of the park.
According to Disney Parks Blog, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway “will put you inside the wacky and unpredictable world of a Mickey Mouse cartoon short where anything can happen! Once you step into the cartoon world of Mickey and Minnie, you’ll board a train with Goofy as the engineer. Then, one magical moment after the next leads you to a zany, out-of-control adventure filled with surprising twists and turns.”
The ride will also feature an original story and a lovable theme song and will use state-of-the-art technologies and dazzling visual effects to transform the cartoon world into an incredible and immersive multi-dimensional experience.
More details about the ride will be released in the future, but Walt Disney Imagineer Kevin Rafferty said in 2017 that the Disney World’s version of the attraction is “one of the boldest … most impossible things” he’s ever worked on in almost 40 years of being an Imagineer. “That’s what I love about it. Well, that, and Mickey,” he added. “This is not going to be a small attraction. It’s going to be game-changing.”
In a recent episode of The Disney Dish podcast, host and theme park reporter Jim Hill seemed to back up Rafferty’s comments about the ride, saying that the attraction is exceptionally complex and technical, and is proving to be something of a nightmare behind the scenes to get everything to run smoothly.