A long-running attraction at Disney’s Hollywood Studios is fading to black. The Studio Backlot Tour, a significant part of the theme park’s opening-day lineup in 1989, is taking its last visitors on Saturday.
The Backlot Tour was designed to show behind-the-scenes action of a working studio that pulled double duty as a theme park.
“That was the core attraction of the park,” said Robert Niles, editor of the Theme Park Insider website.
In the beginning, the tour took hours to complete and included walk-through segments where visitors peeked into TV productions underway. Trams took guests of the park — then called Disney-MGM Studios — down the faux New York street and through a residential area that included a facade of “The Golden Girls” house.
Over the years, the park’s emphasis morphed to entertainment and attractions based on films. New offerings, such as the Toy Story Mania ride and the Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show, ate away at tour space.
Today’s abbreviated tour clocks in at about 30 minutes, including a demonstration in a gigantic water tank and trams that roll past movie props and into Catastrophe Canyon, a supposed film set where floodwaters gush and an oil tanker explodes about every five minutes through the magic of moviemaking.
“The whole romance of seeing where movies are made really began to die as people got the ability to make movies themselves,” Niles said. “The only movie production that’s happening in there are people holding up their iPhones and uploading to YouTube.”
Brian Clouse of Auburndale made his final trip through the Backlot Tour this week.
“It’s bittersweet that it’s leaving. It’s the last remnant of the studio, per se, so that’s sad,” he said. “There’s so little of it left. … It’s almost like ‘Are we losing anything at all?’ Basically, it’s Catastrophe Canyon and nothing else.”
Disney World has not announced its plans for the bulk of the Studio Backlot Tour space. On Monday, Wandering Oaken’s Trading Post and a snow-play area, parts of the park’s “Frozen”-related activities, will move into a building at the end of the tour. That area had housed an American Film Institute exhibit and retail outlet.
“We know our guests are eager to hear details about our new experiences, and we look forward to sharing more with them at a later date,” Walt Disney World spokesman Bryan Malenius said Thursday.
The Backlot Tour is the second Hollywood Studios attraction to close within a month. American Idol Experience, a singing competition, ended its run Aug. 30.
“So much changes all the time” at Disney World, said David Heck, who lives in Reading, Pa., and visits Florida every few years. “I wonder when is it going to stop, when are they going to say ‘Hey, this is it. This is as far as it’s going to go’?”
Kerri Jungeberg, on a two-week family vacation, said the Backlot Tour was fun.
“I like it is because it’s different,” she said. “It’s not just roller coaster after roller coaster after roller coaster. It’s like real experiences.”
Jungeberg, who lives in St. Louis, was surprised the tour is ending.
“I’m glad we came today because we’re going to come next week and it won’t be here,” she said.
dbevil@tribune.com or 407-420-5477
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