As with the movie industry, the closures brought on by the global pandemic haven't simply kept us from enjoying the things we love, but they have caused a domino effect of delays meaning that all the new things we want to love are now even further away than they once were. If Disneyland Resort had anything approaching a normal summer we'd already been able to enjoy Avengers Campus, and while that new land will almost certainly be open shortly after Disneyland Resort is back, one major new attraction is a bit further off now. Disneyland has announced that its version of Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway has been pushed off until 2023.
Originally set for a 2022 opening, the attraction, which, saw an identical version open at Disney's Hollywood Studios just prior to the resort closure, will now open sometime the following year. Disneyland has been closed for six months and so it's likely that if the attraction itself is delayed by the same period, that simply pushed the opening into the next calendar year. It's not all bad news however as work on Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway is moving forward. In fact, the announcement of the delay was accompanied by a video that included the raising of the first wall of the new show building. Check it out.
A delay of some kind was almost inevitable considering we're approaching the six month anniversary of Disneyland closing and there's no real expectation as to when the park might open. California appears to be getting ready to try and start reopening things again, a new set of guidelines and criteria have been set out by the state for other businesses, but theme parks have largely been left out in the cold. There are no specific guidelines for what they need to reopen yet, and odds are they will be among the last places to open to the public simply because they draw in so many people.
The Disneyland version of Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway will be functionally identical to the one open at Disney's Hollywood Studios. The only real announced difference will be the facade. While The Hollywood Studios version is built inside the replica of the Chinese Theater, the Disneyland version will be located at Mickey's Toontown and will be built inside the El Capitoon Theater, the Toontown version of the Disney owned El Capitan Theater in Southern California.
The biggest disappointment in seeing Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway get delayed is that it likely means that the next couple of years at Disneyland Resort will be lacking in major new additions to the park. Assuming Avengers Campus does open in 2020, with Runaway Railway now set for sometime in 2023, we could go two years without anything new arriving in the parks. The only other major new initiative that we're aware of is the E-ticket attraction going into Avengers Campus' second phase, but there's no announced timeline for that. While the bit of downtime is probably a good thing for Disney from a financial standpoint it also means the park won't be able to leverage new rides to entice people on the fence to make the trip to the Happiest Place on Earth.
