Never Built Disney's Studios
After it opened Disney MGM Studios had multiple expansion plans immediately planned to fix problems with the park on opening day. It was built quickly, to beat Universal's similarly themed park, and was incredibly short on rides on opening day. So Disney decided to add lands based on their recent hits to make it the modern and hip park at Walt Disney World. At the time, there was no bigger Disney hit than Roger Rabbit.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit essentially represented the restart of Disney animation as a cultural icon. While The Little Mermaid is generally considered the start of the Disney Reinassance, this film that came out a year earlier really started the resurgence, and was an easy choice for a theme park expansion in the early 1990s.
The plan was to add an entire land based on the film, Roger Rabbit's Hollywood, to the park, and it would open with an interactive building based on the film with several photo ops and props from the movie, signifying Disney's future intention.
The plan was for this to be a land off of Disney's other expansion plan for the park, Sunset Boulevard, being built to the left of Tower of Terror, and it was set to be its own land with many different attractions.
The land would be set in post World War II 1940s Hollywood at about the same time as the film, with many iconic locations from the film including the bar and the Gag Warehouse (renamed from the ACME Warehouse in the film, which they couldn't use for legal reasons).
It would feature several attractions, including a simulator through Toontown, a Baby Herman ride, and an attraction based on Benny the Cab.
This land seemed like a natural fit for the park already primarily set in the golden age of Hollywood that never was, but would never end up happening, but not for the reason that most Disney Decade projects were canceled.
Roger Rabbit's Hollywood would be canceled amid a large fight between Disney and Steven Spielberg following the collapse of plans for a sequel to the film, that would essentially halt all future Roger Rabbit attractions.
All of the ride concepts would later be combined into Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin that would open at Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland, but no Roger Rabbit themed ride would ever open in Walt Disney World. The land it was planned for became Rock N Roller Coaster, and Roger Rabbit would be relegated to only a select few easter eggs in Walt Disney World.
This land was ambitious, but it never came to be due to entirely unrelated legal disputes, robing us of this land, and attractions designed for it that were planned for both Disney MGM Studios and Disneyland.
Next week we will be taking you through the plans for the Roger Rabbit Simulator Toon Transit, also be sure to check out the entire series here.
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