Muppet*Vision 3D Closes Permanently at Disney World in June

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Get ready to book a trip to Florida, Muppet fans. Disney has revealed the timeline for the closure of the Grand Avenue section of Disney’s Hollywood Studios, which includes the Muppet*Vision 3D attraction that opened in the park in 1991. That film and the two restaurants in Grand Avenue will see a staggered closure, starting with Mama Melrose’s Ristorante Italiano’s last day on May 10, and ending almost a month later when Muppet*Vision 3D and the PizzeRizzo restaurant close at the end of park operations on June 7. The whole Grand Avenue section, which was briefly known as Muppets Courtyard in the past, is being closed to make way for a new land themed around Monsters Inc., as part of a widespread series of changes coming to Disney World’s four theme parks throughout the rest of the decade.

Of all the announced changes and closures coming to the parks, the loss of Muppet*Vision 3D has been felt the hardest by Disney fans. The show is the last major thing Jim Henson worked on before his untimely death, and there’s currently no other way to see it. Even if the film itself is eventually put on Disney+, as many have clamored for, it’ll still miss so much of what makes this attraction special. Set in a life-sized replica of the Muppet Theater, Muppet*Vision 3D is a 3D film with all kinds of 4D accoutrements. Those include animatronics of Statler and Waldorf, the penguin orchestra, and Bean Bunny; various visual effects; a cast member dressed as Sweetums; and a big show-stopping conclusion that leaves the theater all dinged up. You might be able to use a bubble wand to blow bubbles at your face during that part of the film if it is released outside of the attraction, but you won’t be able to recreate those animatronics or that explosion at the end. Disney has vaguely hinted at potentially having plans to preserve Muppet*Vision 3D in some capacity, but outside of rebuilding its theater elsewhere in the park (something that clearly doesn’t make any sense at all), the attraction as it was originally designed will be going away forever on June 7.

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The restaurants aren’t a huge loss, but PizzeRizzo is a curious outlier today because it heavily features the character Rizzo the Rat, who seems to have been unofficially retired when its performer, Steve Whitmire, was fired in 2016. And The Muppets won’t be entirely gone from Hollywood Studios, at least not for long; when Disney announced the closure of Muppet*Vision 3D, it also revealed that the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster would be ditching Aerosmith in favor of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. No timeline for that change has been disclosed, and there’s no window yet announced for the opening of the Monsters Inc. area replacing Grand Avenue.

As always, the big question with such changes to the Disney World parks is why build a replacement instead of a new addition. None of Disney World’s three non-Magic Kingdom theme parks have enough attractions at the moment. Hollywood Studios currently has nine rides, a stunt show, three stage shows, a couple of museum-style walkthrough exhibits, and the unique interactive experience that is Muppet*Vision 3D. (For comparison’s sake: Disneyland in Anaheim has 49 rides. None of the Florida parks need nearly that many, but there’s a lot of middle ground between nine and 49.) Hollywood Studios also has room for expansion; indeed, Disney has long touted “the blessing of size” as one of the greatest strengths of its Florida resort. It’s baffling to remove an attraction from a park that already doesn’t offer enough to do instead of adding to it, but that’s been Disney’s M.O. in Florida for a while now. Already this year we’ve seen the closure of part of Animal Kingdom’s Dino-Land area, the first step in its replacement by a Tropical Americas-themed land with attractions based on Indiana Jones and Encanto. They’re even planning on removing the Rivers of America from the Magic Kingdom, an unthinkable change that would remove the gorgeous, defining water feature that has been at the park since it opened in 1971. Everything Disney has announced coming to Disney World in the next few years sounds cool and exciting, and like they would be great additions to the parks; it’s a bummer, then, and genuinely confusing, that most of them aren’t actually additions, but replacements for attractions that don’t need to be removed. At least they’re giving people enough notice to enjoy Muppet*Vision 3D one last time; hopefully they’ll do the same with the other attractions that will be closing for good over the next couple of years.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.