The Great Movie Ride was one of my favorite attractions at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Even though it’s been closed for several years now (and even though I love its replacement, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway) it’s still surprising to me that Disney closed the ride in the first place, and I think I’ll always miss it whenever I visit this park.
The ride opened at then-Disney-MGM Studios on the park’s opening day, May 1, 1989. It was revolutionary for its use of Audio-Animatronics from iconic movie scenes throughout history. Notably, the Wicked Witch of the West Animatronic in The Wizard of Oz (1939) scene was very technologically advanced for its time and known for its fluid movements. The attraction also featured multiple Cast Members acting in different roles on the attraction, and performing alongside said-Animatronics, making this a totally unique experience.
The Great Movie Ride closed in 2017 to make way for Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, but there is one thing I never got to do while the ride was still open: Watch every movie. I’ve seen most of the movies that had full show scenes on the ride, but have barely scratched the service of all the films included in the ride when you take into consideration the pre-show trailers and post-show montage.
I’ll be watching every movie featured in the Great Movie Ride, and sharing a review of each one (with a few exceptions, see * in the list below). As my reviews are published (on my other blog, BrittRose.com, unless they are Disney movies then they’ll be here) I’ll link them below.
These reviews could have spoilers (but some of them are literally 100+ year old, so…..) and some are reviewed by Josh as we’re watching all of these movies together.
- The Kiss (1896)
- The Great Train Robbery (1903)
- The Birth of a Nation (1915)*
- Behind the Screen (1916)
- The Rink (1916)
- The Cure (1917)
- The Sheik (1921)
- Cops! (1922)
- The Ten Commandments (1923)
- Forbidden Paradise (1924)**
- The Gold Rush (1925)
- The Black Pirate (1926)
- The Jazz Singer (1927)
- Wings (1927)
- Our Dancing Daughters (1928)
- Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
- Steamboat Willie (1928)
- The Skeleton Dance (1929)
- The Public Enemy (1931)
- The Dentist (1932)
- Grand Hotel (1932)
- Tarzan the Ape Man (1932)
- 42nd Street (1933)
- Footlight Parade (1933)
- King Kong (1933)
- Queen Christina (1933)
- Bright Eyes (1934)
- It Happened One Night (1934)
- The Live Ghost (1934)
- David Copperfield (1935)
- A Night at the Opera (1935)
- Camille (1936)
- Follow the Fleet (1936)
- San Francisco (1936)
- Swing Time (1936)
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
- The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
- Babes in Arms (1939)
- Gone With the Wind (1939)
- Stagecoach (1939)
- The Wizard of Oz (1939)
- Wuthering Heights (1939)
- Fantasia (1940)
- The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
- A Plumbing We Will Go (1940)
- Citizen Kane (1941)
- Casablanca (1942)
- Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
- Cabin in the Sky (1943)
- Lassie Come Home (1943)
- Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
- Anchors Aweigh (1945)
- Gilda (1946)
- It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
- Notorious (1946)
- The Three Muskateers (1948)
- Adam’s Rib (1949)
- All About Eve (1950)
- Sunset Boulevard (1950)
- An American in Paris (1951)
- A Place in the Sun (1951)
- Royal Wedding (1951)
- Show Boat (1951)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
- High Noon (1952)
- Million Dollar Mermaid (1952)
- Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
- The Band Wagon (1953)
- From Here to Eternity (1953)
- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
- Roman Holiday (1953)
- Animal Farm (1954)
- Lady and the Tramp (1955)
- The Seven Year Itch (1955)
- Giant (1956)
- High Society (1956)
- The Searchers (1956)
- The Ten Commandments (1956)
- The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
- Jailhouse Rock (1957)
- Pal Joey (1957)
- The Defiant Ones (1958)
- Ben-Hur (1959)
- North by Northwest (1959)
- Some Like It Hot (1959)
- The Absent-Minded Professor (1961)
- Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
- The Great Escape (1963)
- Hud (1963)
- A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
- Mary Poppins (1964)
- Doctor Zhivago (1965)
- The Sound of Music (1965)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
- Funny Girl (1968)
- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
- Take the Money and Run (1969)
- True Grit (1969)
- Patton (1970)
- The French Connection (1971)
- Klute (1971)
- Cabaret (1972)
- The Godfather (1972)
- The Way We Were (1973)
- Blazing Saddles (1974)
- The Godfather Part II (1974)
- Young Frankenstein (1974)
- Shampoo (1975)
- Marathon Man (1976)
- Taxi Driver (1976)
- Saturday Night Fever (1977)
- Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)
- Grease (1978)
- Superman (1978)
- 10 (1979)
- Alien (1979)
- Airplane (1980)
- Arthur (1981)
- Chariots of Fire (1981)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
- Poltergeist (1982)
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
- Tootsie (1982)
- Never Say Never Again (1983)
- Risky Business (1983)
- Silkwood (1983)
- Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (1983)
- Terms of Endearment (1983)
- Trading Places (1983)
- Amadeus (1984)
- Beverly Hills Cop (1984)
- The Karate Kid (1984)
- A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
- The Terminator (1984)
- Cocoon (1985)
- Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
- Crocodile Dundee (1986)
- Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986)
- Platoon (1986)
- Top Gun (1986)
- Broadcast News (1987)
- Dirty Dancing (1987)
- Fatal Attraction (1987)
- Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
- The Last Emporer (1987)
- Lethal Weapon (1987)
- Three Men and a Baby (1987)
- Big (1988)
- Cocktail (1988)
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
- Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989)
- Pretty Woman (1990)
- Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
- Thelma & Louise (1991)
- Aladdin (1992)
- Malcolm X (1992)
- Sister Act (1992)
- Unforgiven (1992)
- The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
- Forest Gump (1994)
- The Lion King (1994)
- Braveheart (1995)
- Toy Story (1995)
- Independence Day (1996)
- Mission: Impossible (1996)
- Space Jam (1996)
- Armageddon (1998)
- Shakespeare in Love (1998)
- The Matrix (1999)
- Toy Story 2 (1999)
- Pearl Harbor (2001)
- Chicago (2002)
- Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie (2002)***
- Finding Nemo (2003)
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
- Shanghai Knights (2003)
- The Incredibles (2004)
- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)
- Tangled (2010)
- Frozen (2013)
- Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
*I’m not writing a review of The Birth of a Nation because the film is absolutely deplorable (and really should not have been included on the ride even if it is just a short clip you could miss if you blinked in the final montage). I don’t think I know enough about film to speak to the technical achievements of the movie, and even so it has to be one of the most racist forms of media to ever exist and as such I think I’ve already spent enough time on it here….
** Forbidden Paradise has several minutes of lost footage, and it was difficult to track down any “full” video of it at all, nevermind with translations of the title cards from Russian. I did watch what I could find, but since I spent most of the movie just trying to follow the (admittedly basic) plot, I’m not sure I could really write a full review of it.
*** I’m 99.9% sure that Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie (2002) is NOT in any version of The Great Movie Ride montage, but I initially included it here where it’s on some of the lists I found while researching this. I don’t know where the other lists got it, and I’m basically going to watch it as a joke now, but just to be up front about that I really don’t think it was actually in the montage at all.
