High School Musical Pep Rally Tribute Disney's Hollywood Studios

Extinct Disney Tribute

Disney's Hollywood Studios has gone through a complete personality change in the last few years, and it can be difficult to remember that originally it was not a park dedicated to send you into the world's of your favorite films, but the world of making them. This led it to become the temporary location for many of Disney's hottest new properties. Most notably, it would become home to Disney's rising television properties.

Today we begin a new series here at TPE, exploring lost attractions from the Disney Parks. For our first tribute we are looking at the High School Musical Pep Rally attraction from Disney's Hollywood Studios.

This attraction began in 2006 in Tomorrowland before moving to Disney MGM Studios, which was a much better location for the show.

The show was performed on a temporary stage in front of the Sorcerer Mickey hat on Hollywood Boulevard. It featured a collection of Wildcats performing songs from the film while dancing along in costumes inspired by characters from the movie.

The show also featured a lot of audience participation primarily aimed at the children who had enjoyed the original film on the Disney Channel.

As the original film became a franchise, the show would be changed out twice over the years to fit the new movies.

For High School Musical 2 the show would get updated with the new songs from the film and the stage was repainted in a summer vacation inspired color scheme. It would however keep songs from the original film its finale.

The show got a final update for High School Musical 3 that once again updated the show's set to more muted blacks and reds. This version would be the last version of the show in Walt Disney World, as the franchise took a lengthy hiatus following the third film. It would be replaced by a few other small Disney Channel shows before Disney's Hollywood Studios began to take on its new theme.

This show in a way is a look back at the end of the original theme of Disney's Hollywood Studios. Using the park as a blank slate to bring modern Disney into the parks temporarily. This was a nice fun use of the park as a flex space, but not something that ever would have stayed in the parks for too long.