Toy Story Mania – Ride Review
New Walt Disney World Ride Provides Fast-Shooting Fun
Toy Story Mania combines the thrill of a ride, the challenge of a game, and the fun of an animated film into one virtual shooting match at Disney's Hollywood Studios.
Inspired by the Disney Pixar animated films Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Toy Story Mania takes riders through a fast-moving series of five midway games where they launch spring-action shooters at a variety of targets.
3-D Glasses for a 4-D World
In the film Toy Story, little Andy’s toys come to life whenever he’s out of the room. In this ride, those irrepressible toys open Andy’s new “Midway Games Play Set” and set up game booths and carnival trams. Greeted by an Audio-Animatronic Mr. Potato Head and surrounded by over-sized, brightly colored toy props, Toy Story Mania riders don plastic 3-D glasses and after a quick practice session, spin around in trams with on-board spring-action shooters (easy enough for all ages to maneuver) through the games.
As players shoot, virtual objects are launched toward the targets, each of which has a point value assigned. A counter on each seat totals points for each target hit. The new 4-D special effects technology makes objects feel like they’re sailing past as they fly out of the 3-D scenes. In each of the Toy Story Mania games, hitting one or more “Easter egg” targets triggers the appearance of bonus high-value targets and quick changes to the scenery.
Toy Story Mania provides plenty of colorful action to watch, a cacophony of noises associated with the games, musical variations of Randy Newman’s song “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” plus 4-D action (such as puffs of air and mists of water). The trick to achieving high scores in the midway games, however, is ignoring all the visual and aura stimulation and focusing entirely on launching as many virtual projectiles as possible.
The Midway Games
The first round “Pie Throw Practice” lets players try splattering targets with virtual pies.
The second round features a booth where players launch plastic virtual eggs at barnyard targets.
Next comes “Bo Peep’s Baaa-loon Pop” that presents a landscape of balloon sheep, trees, and other objects for virtual dart throwing.
The fourth round introduces the “Green Army Men Shoot Camp” where the challenge is to break virtual plates with virtual baseballs.
The final round is “Buzz Lightyear’s Flying Tossers” in which Buzz hosts a ring-toss game with Little Green Aliens as the targets.
The grand finale game gives riders one more chance to rack up points with Wild West scenes in “Woody’s Rootin’ Tootin’ Shootin’ Gallery” followed by a bonus roundup for a few extra points. If in doubt about when the games (and fun) are actually over, just keep shooting!
Final scores are tallied and posted to compare with recent high-scoring players.
Toy Story Mania: Fast Facts
Toy Story Mania is a new ride featuring midway games at Disney’s Hollywood Studios (formerly Disney-MGM Studios) located at Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida. The ride opens May 31, 2008. The ride opens late June at Disney’s California Adventure in Anaheim.
Toy Story Mania comes with a warning about motion sickness. The trams pick up a little speed moving from game to game, and sometimes spin around very quickly. This movement may bother people with extreme sensitivity to motion sickness or severe neck/back injuries.
For more information about new attractions at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, read Disney’s Block Party Bash, Disney's American Idol Attraction, and Narnia - Prince Caspian Attraction.
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