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The Great Movie Ride debuts Turner Classic Movie sponsor updates

tcm-great-movie-ride-dhs

This weekend Disney’s Hollywood Studios officially welcomed a new sponsor, Turner Classic Movies, to its popular Great Movie Ride attraction. The sponsorship has brought several updates to the attraction.

We swung over to DHS to take some video to give you a sense of the changes:

Changes include:

  • New magic posters, similar to the magic art on the Disney Cruise Line. Each poster has a little section that is animated.
  • Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne not only provides detailed information on classic Hollywood films during the new longer pre-show film, he now provides narration along the ride.
  • There is still a driver on the tram, but their role in the narration is reduced to offering mostly ‘color commentary.’
  • New exterior signage announces the TCM partnership, and there’s even a step-and-repeat like you would find at a Hollywood Premiere to take that perfect family photo at your ride.
  • The final video montage has been updated once again. You’ll have to see it for yourself to judge if its worse or better than the previous version. It does include a few more recent films at the sacrifice of some old classics.

There are no new scenes or audio-animatronics, but the Turner Classic Movies sponsorship of The Great Movie Ride has added a lot more depth of information to the attraction. This is largely due to host Robert Osborne’s new narration during the preview room screening and on the attraction.

All in all, this is a good update for an attraction that was rumored to be on the chopping block before TCM came on the scene. I really enjoyed Robert Osborne’s in-depth movie history provided in the expanded pre-show and his on-ride narration adds a new tidbit here and there too. My biggest concern was the volume of the narration clashing with the volume of the ride’s sound effects. Sometimes one or the other got lost.

Is The Great Movie Ride one of your must-do attractions, or do you generally skip it?

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2 thoughts on “The Great Movie Ride debuts Turner Classic Movie sponsor updates”

  1. Mark

    Have to chuckle at your skip it question. DHS is our skip it. We go to EPCOT 15 to 20 times a year. The Kingdoms 5 or 6 each and Hollywood Studios twice for Star Wars and Osborne Lights. The whole place needs some serious updating.

  2. Disney Mike

    Well, in answer to the question, I’d say that the Great Movie Ride is one we never skip, but that’s not saying much, because there’s so little we do in DHS. We always do the Great Movie Ride, always do Star Tours, and always do MuppetVision 3D, but that’s about it. We’ll do one of the two stunt shows every third trip or so, and we’ll do Toy Story Mania maybe once every other trip, and that’s pretty much it. I don’t think I’ve done Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster or Tower of Terror in several years, nor have we done any of the stage shows or the Animation “tour” in years and years.

    And we’re people who visit WDW three times a year for 8-10 days at a time.

    Like Mark’s comment, we’re really ready for some major overhauling of DHS. We also spend most of our time at Epcot, with the Magic Kingdom coming in a rather distant second — unless we’re staying at the Contemporary, in which case we’ll drop by the Magic Kingdom almost daily for at least a short period of time.

    So, yes, the Great Movie Ride is a “must-do” for us, I guess. We love it, and can’t wait to see the updates. It, too, has needed some updates for quite some time.

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