"The World you have entered was created by The Walt Disney Company and is dedicated to Hollywood—not a place on a map, but a state of mind that exists wherever people dream and wonder and imagine, a place where illusion and reality are fused by technological magic. We welcome you to a Hollywood that never was—and always will be."

Welcome to MGM/Hollywood Studios!

MGM Studios (Now Hollywood Studios) opened on May 1, 1989. This park is dedicated to the glorified version of "Hollywood", kind of like everybody's vision of what Hollywood should have (but didn't actually) look like. What began as a smaller, scaled down yet detailed park eventually became a park that's basically a mish-mash of a whole lot of different things. This is Hollywood Studios today, a park that in my opinion, doesn't have much of an identity or unity. But we'll get more into that later.

Here's a complete walk-through video of the entire park.

The two previous parks that I've posted about, the Magic Kingdom and Epcot, both have a very structured layout, consisting of either "lands" or "pavilions". Hollywood Studios has always been more abstract in design. This totally isn't a bad thing, but it's definitely different than what the previous two parks were. That's the point! When the park was built, new management had taken over and had wanted to create a park that was new and different and exciting to the world. They actually hoped to use the park as a real, working movie studio, but that quickly fell through. More and more attractions themed to different things were built, and so now we have a park that's filled with amazing rides and attractions that don't really have a sense of belonging or unity to them. However, it really is a cool park!

The big sorcerer hat you see at the beginning of this post was built in 2001. The original "symbol" for the park was a replica of The Chinese Theater (below). The sorcerer hat was built to celebrate Walt Disney's 100th birthday, and was supposed to be temporary. For reasons unknown, the hat stayed. To some, it's magical and wonderful and pretty. To others, it's nothing but a big eyesore distracting from the theme of Old Hollywood. I personally am a part of the latter group, and love the look of the Chinese Theater replica.

Hollywood Studios is divided into six themed "areas".

Hollywood Boulevard

This is the park's main entrance. Similar to Main Street USA in the Magic Kingdom, it's lined with shops and restaurants and is basically like the opening credits to the park. Themed to Old Hollywood, this part of the park has one ride: The Great Movie Ride. This ride is actually inside of the Chinese Theater we just talked about! It's a 20 minute ride through scenes from classic movies, like Mary Poppins, The Wizard of Oz, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Singin' in the Rain, and many many more.

Echo Lake

This is the park's oval-shaped lake and the area surrounding it. The area has a 50s themed restaurant, an Indiana Jones show, a Hollywood Hall of Fame courtyard, an American Idol show, and one of my personal favorite rides, Star Tours. This ride is a Star Wars 3D flight simulator, and it's awesome! You get to enter a Starspeeder with your 3D goggles on, strap on your seatbelts, and it really feels like you're flying to one of the many planets in Star Wars. And the entire exterior is themed to resemble an Ewok village on the planet of Endor, complete with a life-size replica of an AT-AT walker!




Streets of America
This area is called Streets of America because it features a New York City backdrop, which creates the illusion of forced perspective. It's pretty cool because you can kind of picture yourself standing on the streets of Manhattan rather than a theme park in Central Florida. This area includes The Studios Backlot Tour, which is basically exactly what it sounds like, a tram tour through the pretend backlots of the park. Remember when I said that originally the park would be used as a movie studio? Well, all those movie studio buildings got built even though they were hardly used. This ride is a tour around the back lot of those areas. There's also a Honey I Shrunk the Kids playset for smaller kids. Even though it's basically a glorified version of a playground, what makes it magical is the fact that everything is built as though you're in your backyard and you're shrunk. Giant objects like ants and grass blades are what the kids play on. My personal favorite attraction in this area is Muppetvision 3D, a 3D show featuring the Muppets! It may sound like a simple 3D show, but this is Disney, and therefore the entire area and show building is themed appropriately. And there's one restaurant here: the Pizza Planet restaurant from Toy Story. And if you don't think that's the coolest thing you've ever heard, you need to get out of here.

Animation Courtyard
This smaller area of the park does not have any rides. It consists of shows and one special permanent exhibit. Animation Courtyard was originally going to be the beginning of the working movie studios tour, but again, the plans on that fell through. The reason it's called Animation Courtyard is because there are two live shows here: Voyage of the Little Mermaid, a theatrical version of The Little Mermaid, and Disney Junior Live on Stage, a show for small kids based on TV shows on the Disney Junior channel. The permanent exhibit is called Walt Disney: One Man's Dream. It's museum-like, but has rare artifacts from Walt's life, and it's seriously so incredibly moving. Every time I go in here I end up teary-eyed, because the exhibit does such a great job of showing Walt's dreams and aspirations. Obviously, I'm a huge Disney fan, and going through this exhibit is just a huge way for me to honor Walt and everything he's done.

Pixar Place
This is the park's newest area, and was actually built where some of the unused movie buildings were located. It's built to resemble Pixar's Production studios in California, which is actually pretty cool. As of right now it only has one ride, Toy Story Midway Mania, a 3D carnival game ride hosted by the Toy Story characters. Even though it only has one ride, it's pretty much guaranteed that there will be more rides coming soon. Why else would Disney build an entire area themed to Pixar to host just one ride?

Sunset Boulevard
If you're a big thrill-seeker, this area is for you. There are two hugely popular thrill rides here: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and Rockin Rollercoaster starring Aerosmith. Tower of Terror is based on the classic TV series, and is 199 feet tall, making it the tallest attraction on WDW property. It takes place in a haunted hotel, and when you board your "elevator", you end up soaring to the top, then down, then up, then down again. This drop sequence is completely random, meaning you never know how far you'll drop before you come back up again. Rockin Rollercoaster is a rollercoaster themed to Aerosmith. You board your "limo" and have to rush through LA traffic to reach Aerosmith's concert. It takes place completely in the dark except for neon signs and lights, and it's the only roller coaster in WDW that has inversions. It's pretty intense! There's also a live show here of Beauty and the Beast, similar to the show that was adapted onto Broadway.

Fantasmic
Hollywood Studios doesn't end their night with fireworks. Instead, they have a show called Fantasmic, which takes place in a huge amphitheater not far from Sunset Boulevard. Mickey is the star of this show, and he has to fight classic Disney villains using his powers of good, magic, and imagination. It has a ton of water effects, lasers, and some fireworks. It's really cool to watch, especially when the huge replica of Maleficent the dragon comes out! In the end Mickey wins of course, and to celebrate, a huge steamboat comes out with Princesses and Princes from the same movies that the villains were from. It's a great way to end your day at Disney's mish-mashed Hollywood Studios.