Disney Parks are never done and it seems like every time we turn around now there's something new happening. While we wait for scheduled changes at Disneyland Resort like an update to Splash Mountain and the completion of Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway, an unexpected change has already gotten underway. Next door to the new Mickey and Minnie ride inside Mickey's Toontown the Roger Rabbit Car Toon Spin attraction is seeing a significant change that has already begun.
Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin is a dark ride that more less tells the story of the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but now the OC Register is reporting that the ride is undergoing changes. The story is going to be modified and it will now focus on Jessica Rabbit, who has decided to become a private investigator herself and is chasing after the cartoon weasels who are responsible for a rise in crime. A scene in the attraction showing Jessica being thrown into the back of a car by the weasels has already been replaced. Now the back of the car is full of the cartoon erasing Dip.
According to the OC Register, Disneyland officials say that in addition to the scene that has already changed, the finale sequence featuring Jessica will also undergo a change at some point. If the complete story of the ride is changing it would seem like more would need to be done to make that story work, but only these two scenes have been specified as changing.
Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin opened with Mickey's Toontown in 1993 and has remained unchanged since then, so the ride was probably due for an update. And making Jessica Rabbit a more active participant in the story falls in line with other changes made to rides that have tried to make them more relevant to a modern audience. We've seen similar changes made in recent years to rides like Pirates of the Caribbean and Jungle Cruise.
And like the Jungle Cruise update at Walt Disney World, this one appears to be planned to take place without ever shutting down the ride. Instead changes are simply made overnight and are there the next day when one goes on the ride. I happened to be at Disneyland yesterday so I got to see the one change that already took place.
Honestly, a new story using the popular Who Framed Roger Rabbit characters sounds like a pretty great idea. Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin isn't exactly the most beloved attraction at Disneyland. It's frequently overlooked and so if nothing else this has the potential to give people a reason to give it a fresh look. The Roger Rabbit characters are co-owned by Disney and Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, and while Roger Rabbit used to be a bigger presence in the park, in recent years it's really just been this one ride keeping the character going in the parks.
If Jessica Rabbit is going to become the focus of the story, then one wonders if there might not be at least one more change for the ride at some point, it could end up getting a new name. If it's Jessica's story, shouldn't it also be Jessica's ride?
