Mere hours after Disney Experiences held its big showcase at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California and touted major and exciting new film, TV and parks projects at D23, the “ultimate Disney fan event,” it appears one fan-favorite attraction could be closing for good. Walt Disney Imagineering, the secretive arm of the Walt Disney Company responsible for the theme parks, has only a few weeks to decide whether to keep Muppet*Vision 3D or to shut it down, an individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap, and its closing was originally going to be tipped during a D23 presentation until a last-minute swap.
The original attraction opened in 1991, exactly a year after Jim Henson’s tragic death and has since become something of an institution. The film itself is a hilarious trip to the Muppet Labs, where your favorite characters are working on demonstrating a new 3D technology. It’s very much in the spirit of “The Muppet Show” and the recently aired “The Jim Henson Hour” (Waldo, the spirit of 3D, first appeared on the show), with technological breakthroughs being delivered with the anarchic spirit audiences have loved since “The Muppet Show.” And the whole thing lasts just 15 minutes.
During the D23 showcase, artwork for a proposed “Monsters, Inc.”-themed land was shown that would feature a coaster themed to the door chase from the first movie, along with monster-fied shopping and dining locations and be housed within Disney’s Hollywood Studios, a park that had started as a place where you would go behind the scenes of film and television production and has, with the addition of “Star Wars”- and “Toy Story”-themed lands, become the Disney theme park equivalent of the drawer at home where you shove all the stuff you don’t have a place for.
But where the “Monsters, Inc.” land would go within Disney’s Hollywood Studios was not disclosed.
According to a source with knowledge of the situation, there was alternate artwork that was going to be shown during this presentation that would have more directly pinpointed that Muppet*Vision is on the chopping block. At the last minute that artwork was swapped for something more nebulous. There were fears, internally, that Josh D’Amaro, the unflappable and widely beloved chairman of Disney Experiences, would get booed as he delivered the news. Eagle-eyed fans still spotted a telltale water tower that gave away the location, taking to social media to express their outrage.
Disney declined to comment for TheWrap’s story. The Jim Henson Company did not return TheWrap’s request for comment.
Hours before the event, an insider told TheWrap that the ride would be placed within animation courtyard, an area of the Hollywood Studios park that formerly served as the demarcation point between the Disney-MGM Theme Park and the area where actual production was being done. The animation courtyard’s name comes from the fact that a Disney Animation satellite studio used to be there, and it was later where guests would load onto trams for a backlot tour of the Florida facilities.
It made sense – the area is very open and not being used for much besides a “Star Wars” walkaround exhibit called Launch Bay that was built in service of promoting “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Now the area is mostly abandoned.
But another individual with knowledge of the situation pointed to why Muppets Courtyard (or Grand Avenue, as it is currently known), would be more ideal for the “Monsters, Inc.” land – there’s already a restaurant (themed to Rizzo, the lovable Muppet rat) and infrastructure for shopping. And, chiefly, there’s already a faux city aesthetic to the area, perfect for the converting Monstropolis. “It’s a perfect way to stretch that $60 billion,” said this individual, referring to the $60 billion Disney has earmarked for theme park expansion around the world, which also includes additions to international parks and beefing up the company’s lucrative cruise ship line.
At the moment it looks like it’s curtains for Muppet*Vision 3D. And this, for some, is a huge issue.
“If this replaces animation courtyard, this is a pretty neat addition. If this replaces Muppet*Vision 3D, this is the worst thing that has happened in my entire life,” said one fan on X. Another wrote that Muppet*Vision 3D “needs to be protected it is the most important piece of media in American history.”
“It’s devastating for me because I love Muppet*Vision and it still plays really well. They also just refurbished it and the effects look better than they have in a long time. Hollywood Studios is a park that has very little history left and while not an opening day attraction, Muppet*Vision was from that bygone era,” Kevin Perjurer, the man behind the Defunctland video series, told TheWrap. He recently made a multi-part Jim Henson series released on YouTube.
Perjurer points to the attraction as an example of “Henson humor from the ‘70s meets Eisner humor from the ‘80s,” adding, “Muppet*Vision treats Mickey Mouse as a celebrity. It treats the parks with reverence.”
Dan Becker, who creates content as Disney Dan (and owns some props from the Disney California Adventure version of Muppet*Vision), called the attraction “a living relic of a media empire.” “It’s a national treasure. It’s the last bastion of Jim Henson’s legacy. It’s the thing that embodies everything that the Muppets are, at the peak of the greatness of the Muppets. For that to go away would be the closing of a door on a huge legacy that I think would be counterintuitive to what Disney is,” Becker said. “The idea of perhaps one of the best pieces of American media that survived from the ’90s that we still indulge in daily going away is really sad. And for what? A ‘Monsters, Inc.’ sushi restaurant?”
The move is all the more devastating to Disney fans given the attraction’s legacy, both in the parks and when it comes to the Muppets.
The product of a historic union
In 1989, Jim Henson entered into an agreement to sell his company to the Walt Disney Company, then run by Michael Eisner and Frank Wells. At the time, Wall Street analysts valued the deal at costing around $150 million. Under the agreement Henson would become, in the words of a contemporaneous New York Times report, a consultant “under a long-term agreement and will produce television shows and films exclusively for Disney.” The announcement of the union was made at Disney-MGM Studios, where soon, it was revealed, Henson would produce new theme park attractions, including a new 3D movie.
Soon after, guests on the studio tour would pass by a wall that promised not a single attraction but an entirely new themed land – The Muppet Studios, which would also include The Great Muppet Movie Ride, “a backstage ride explaining how movies are shot but all the information is wrong,” Henson described at the time. There would also be a restaurant where animatronic rats would run around guests (this restaurant opened without the animatronics, as Mama Melrose’s). A charming primetime special, “The Muppets at Walt Disney World,” was produced for “The Wonderful World of Disney.” And Henson worked on a live stage show called “Here Come the Muppets” for Disney-MGM. He even bought a house in Windermere, an affluent area just 30 minutes north of Walt Disney World.
What makes this so incredible is that the flurry of activity pre-dated the deal between the two companies being signed. There was a handshake agreement in place but nothing legally binding. As Brian Jay Jones wrote in his indispensable Jim Henson biography, “There were some inside the [Henson] organization who wondered why Jim would keep doing work for Disney without a formal agreement in place.”
This would become a huge area of contention when Henson died, unexpectedly, after a brief illness, in May 1990. Frank Oz, one of Henson’s closest collaborators (who became a Disney Legend during a ceremony on Sunday), said in 2021 that, “the Disney deal is probably what killed Jim.” The TV special aired just a few days before his death.
Muppet*Vision 3D, meant to be the beginning of a whole suite of Henson/Disney products, became the last thing that Henson directed and performed in. That made the attraction, as bright and hilarious as it was, something more. It was now a living memorial to one of the 20th century’s most celebrated, powerful and profoundly influential creative voices.
Muppet*Vision 3D history
Along with Henson’s death, the deal between Henson and Disney dissolved. “Jim’s death and the subsequent, staggering estate taxes put both sides in such a complicated and untenable position that neither could make the deal work to anyone’s benfit,” wrote Jones. “Just as crucially the tone of the discussions – always important to Jim – had become toxic.” Henson’s family, including a young Brian Henson, who now found himself unexpectedly running the company, and John, who at the time of Jim’s death was training performers for Muppet*Vision 3D, talked about pulling the attraction from the park.
Ultimately, an agreement was made between the Henson family and Disney, and the attraction opened on the one-year anniversary of Henson’s passing. When it opened, the “4D” attraction, which featured audio-animatronics, walkaround characters and mind-boggling in-theater effects, felt like an instant classic – the kind of thing that could only be achieved thanks to the mixture of Henson and Disney. Even the pre-show film, meant to amuse restless guests as they waited for the film, was a work of art, with characters scuttling between mounted television sets.
And it’s hard to overestimate just how hot on the attraction Disney was. They saw it as a potential It’s a Small World or Star Tours – an attraction that could be replicated in parks across the world. At one point, according to former Imagineer Mark Eades, the movie was being considered for the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln theater on Main Street in Disneyland. (There’s a reason that when the fire engine breaks through the wall of the theater at the end that the background, shot on the Disney lot in Burbank and featuring the gazebo from “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” looks vaguely Main Street-ish.) Tony Baxter, then head of Disneyland, shot the idea down. But the attraction did wind up as an opening day attraction at Disney California Adventure. In 2014 the DCA version of the attraction went down for refurbishments and never reopened. The giant Kermit from outside the theater currently resides at the Jim Henson Company studio, which was recently put up for sale.
Somehow, the Florida version of Muppet*Vision 3D survived, through the construction and opening of both Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Toy Story Land (both in close proximity) and through endless theming changes to the area around it, now known as Grand Avenue. Most of the fun Muppet-y theming of the building was jettisoned in 2017 and a charming mural was painted over in 2019 (which led to Disney having to reiterate to fans that the attraction would remain operational). Just last year the show received a major upgrade, with projection mapping being added for a moment when the CGI character Waldo gets replicated and flies around the theater.
It’s always there and always open, reassuring and warm like your favorite hometown diner. Until now.
Ch-ch-ch-changes
As part of the Disney Experiences panel on Saturday, the company also announced that a new Walt Disney animatronic show would be installed at Disneyland, in the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln theater (yes, the same theater that would have shown Muppet*Vision 3D). But they were also quick to acknowledge that the show would rotate with the original Lincoln show, which opened at Disneyland following its debut at the 1964-65 World’s Fair in Queens. Still, it was the closest Disney came to admitting something beloved was going to have to shut down to make way for something new.
Rebecca Alter, a writer for New York Magazine’s Vulture, recently wrote a piece about how the attraction should be registered as a National Heritage Site, describing it as “a triumph of formal experimentation, a playfully subversive piece of studio satire, and a timeless piece of family entertainment.”
When TheWrap talked to her on Monday, she described herself as “not someone who is that reverent.” She appreciates Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, for example, but isn’t dazzled by it. Muppet*Vision is different. For Alter, the attraction is “the physical embodiment of this artform that is Muppets.”
“What makes this special is that it’s the final thing that Jim Henson directed and performed in and in a park that feels like it’s lost its way a bit, in all the investment in shiny new attractions, it’s a lot of wide, hot, empty concrete and lacks a cohesive vibe,” Alter said. “Muppet*Vision feels like that early ’90s MGM-Studios magic and vibe. Even though that park had way less E-ticket attractions it felt more cohesive. It’s this example of really great Imagineering and this partnership of Imagineering and Henson to combine forces to make this wildly lovely creative thing.”
Walt Disney once said that the parks are always in a state of change and those who followed in Walt’s footsteps have maintained this ethos of evolution. That nothing really should stay the same; this is not a museum, after all, but a place where people can indulge in flights, real and imagined, to fantastic, magical worlds. But losing this attraction would mean something very specific and very important to those who adore it. It would be saying goodbye to Jim. Something that few are still ready to do. Muppet*Vision stands as a towering testament to the man and all that he created.
And in a very Muppets-like twist, there are only a few weeks left to save it.
