Overqueue - The Magic of Disney Animation

The Overambitious Overflow Queues of Walt Disney World - The Magic of Disney Animation



This is an odd area.  The video above only shows a portion of the queue, and the only thing the line is for is the preshow "Drawn to Animation" with Mushu, which can (and usually is) bypassed to go straight into the building proper.  This is also the site of the only time I've snapped at a Disney employee - for interrupting me to let me know it's an Eddie Murphy soundalike, not the real Eddie Murphy. 

But the history of this queue area is also the history of Disney Hollywood Studios.

When the park opened in 1989 as Disney-MGM Studios, it consisted of a two-hour long Backstage Studio Tour and the Great Movie Ride.  Period.

The Backstage Studio Tour began with a tram ride, and the queue for the trams still exists today as the queue area for the Magic of Disney Animation.  By 1991 the tour was split into two attractions, the tram ride and the walking tour.  In 1996 the entrance of the tram tour, renamed the Studio Backlot Tour, was moved to its final location, where it died a slow death a piece at a time, closing without fanfare in 2014.

The area continued to be used for the Magic of Disney Animation Tour, which began with a preshow "Return to Neverland" with Walter Cronkite and Robin Williams and continued as a walking tour of a (sometimes) operating animation studio.  The studio parts left, and gradually the tour became an exhibit, with a drawing class and interactive computer terminals.  The expansive queue area outside was used for meet & greets, and as of this writing the entire inside area is one animation class and a series of meet & greets.

The queue area currently is mostly roped off, which is a shame as it has some interesting features, such as framed prints, remnants of an Atlantis meet & greet, and animator's hands in cement.

And that's it for overflow queues.  Were there any I missed?