Nothing Can Stop Us Now: Your Guide to Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway!
Greetings and salutations, my fellow travelers!
Like a lot of you, I have my must-do attractions for every visit to Walt Disney World. I’ve written about several rides in the past like Tower of Terror, Space Mountain and Cosmic Rewind, but today I’m indulging in the ride I love above all others: Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway opened in 2020 inside Hollywood Studios’ replica of the iconic Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (now the TCL Chinese Theatre), replacing the Great Movie Ride.
The first thing you’ll notice when heading to the ride queue is the large theater marquee featuring Mickey and Minnie. Runaway Railway uses the same art style as the Mickey Mouse animated shorts series developed by Paul Rudish in 2013. You can even find posters for several of these shorts, such as ‘Mumbai Madness’, ‘Wonders of the Deep’ and ‘Split Decision’, in the queue, along with posters for ‘Perfect Picnic’, the short created for the attraction’s intro.
Once you get through the main queue, you’ll be ushered into a room for the pre-show where the ‘Perfect Picnic’ short starts playing. Mickey and Minnie are off to enjoy a picnic and come across Goofy driving a train. After a brief chat, Mickey and Minnie drive off, but a mishap involving a pie clogging the smokestack of Goofy’s train causes an explosion, which tears a hole in the theater’s screen.
Goofy then has a brief chat with a nearby Cast Member, asking them to escort us into the cartoon and the final line for the ride. Once onboard the ride’s train vehicles, we pass Mickey and Minnie driving by as suddenly the train cars detach from the engine, sending us on the path to chaos!
Mickey and Minnie quickly act to try and save the runaway train cars as they careen through a variety of scenes and settings, including a waterfall, a dance studio (where Daisy is giving a dance lesson!) and even a tornado before reuniting with Goofy (who is still unaware of what happened!) and connecting us back with the train’s engine.
And thus the day is saved! Mickey and Minnie finally get to enjoy a perfect picnic, and we get off the train and exit back through the hole in the movie screen (which now reads ‘The End’), as we return to Hollywood Boulevard.
Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway remains my favorite attraction at Disney World! No Disney trip is complete without it, and I’m always on the lookout for new Runaway Railway merch each trip! If you love this ride as much as I do, you might also know that this isn’t the only attraction featuring this version of Mickey at Hollywood Studios either! You can also find the animated short ‘Vacation Fun’ playing in the Mickey Shorts Theater (Vacation Fun is currently temporarily closed, but it’s expected to reopen later this year!)
That’s all for now! In the meantime, I’m going to be looking forward to my next Disney trip, where I’ll get to enjoy this runaway train again.
Until next time, fellow travelers!
~Stephen









