Disney World - this is the place where you let your mind run wild. Disney allows your imagination to escape and lose itself in the far our fields of fantasy and dreams. And how do you let your imagination escape? By going to The Great Movie Ride at MGM Studios! That’s how! Let me show you why...

The Great Movie Ride is located at the center of MGM Studios, one of Disney’s smaller parks known for its Rock 'n' Roller Coaster ride and Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Once entering the park, just go straight - toward this huge blue hat towering over the shops and crowd. Right behind it stands a replica of Mann’s Chinese Theater.

The Great Movie Ride accepts FastPass tickets and riders who are disabled. There is no height restriction as the ride is slow moving and sometimes even stops. I would not recommend using the FastPass ticket which gets you ahead of the line as many people are taken into the 15-minute attraction at a time - roughly 80 people.

Before entering the attraction, you’ll enter the waiting area where there a bunch of snake rows. While waiting a mere five minutes, you can watch clips from certain movies on this huge movie screen. It shows some of the greatest clips of movies and gets you into that whole ‘Hollywood mood’ thing.

When the main doors open, you’ll hear this Broadway-type Jazzy music, and then you’ll be instructed to move into the open-air vehicles and all the way to the end of the row. There are actually two cars, one in front of the other, but they are both connected. Each car has about eight rows and can sit five people comfortably.

When first getting into the car, your driver will welcome you aboard and introduce himself. He operates the car and goes with you through the whole attraction---or does he? We’ll get to that later on. Make sure not to interfere with the driver as he is a trained actor that has to perform certain actions during the attraction. Once all the introductions are over, the cars pass beneath these bright blue and pink lights that say, “A Spectacular Journey into the Movies.”

The Great Movie Ride lets you ride the movies - such as Universal Studios. The car takes you through certain scenes of different movies. The majority of the movies that you go through are Disney, but not all. There are classics, cartoons, and other movies that Disney has not yet made into their own attraction.

Most of the movie scenarios that you go through are well known movies. This includes The Tarzan, Fantasia, Alien, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Mary Poppins. There are three movies that I’ll go into specifics about later. Each one is displayed with moving mannequins that represent a character. They are terribly realistic, and movements are similar to those a real human.

Some of the mannequins sing, talk, and even scream. To hear them when they perform these actions, there are hidden speakers all over the place. This really gives you a sense of being in a surround-sound theater, even though you are living the movie.

During one part of the attraction, the vehicle enters an old Western slum. There are mannequins holding guns shooting at each other and hiding behind saloon doors and wooden boxes. Eventually, the tour guide on your is overpowered, and then a new tour guide comes - a gangster (he actually looks more like a member of the Mafia, but whatever).

Remember that this “gangster” guy is really a Disney employee and that this is a part of the attraction. Toward the end of the attraction, the “gangster” sees a red ruby and attempts to steal it. However, he doesn’t know that there is a curse on it, and anyone who tries to steal it is destroyed. Sure enough, he tries to steal it and is “destroyed”, then our old guide comes back and finishes up the attraction.

I told you before that I’d go into complete detail about three scenes of the attraction that I really enjoy, so here they are:

1.) Singin' In The Rain is a classic, and therefore it was put into The Great Movie Ride. The scene shows Gene Kelly holding his umbrella, leaning against a pole, and yes - he’s singing in the rain! He’s standing in front of a realistic apartment in a city street. The rain pours down from above, but it won’t get you wet.

2.) Casablanca has many great moments for capturing, but Disney decided to capture the part where Ingrid Burgman and Humphrey Bogart are standing on the tarmac in front of the plane. Just as the propellers turn on, Humphrey says, “Here’s looking at ya, kid.” This part is so realistic as the plane is really there, and it looks as if the mannequins actually become emotional.

3.) Welcome to the Land of Oz! Just as the munchkins welcome you to Munchkin Land, the Wicked Witch of the West decides to welcome you too. Appearing from red smoke on the ground, the character exclaims, “I’ll get you my pretty. And your little dog too!” You see her laughing, and there stand Dorothy, Toto, Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion shocked.

So would I recommend The Great Movie Ride? Faster then you can say...aww, screw it. The attraction represents Disney’s ability to make anything come to life, and what’s better to come to life than the movies? Sure, blasting off to Mars and visiting the Dinosaurs are nice, but if you’re in the mood to visit Dorothy, Bing, Humphrey, Mary, and all them kind folk, then make sure to make a stop at The Great Movie Ride!

Recommended: Yes