Studio Backlot Tour

Studio Backlot Tour Review

The first stop on this tour, which you enter at the far end of Pixar Place where it meets Streets of America, is an outdoor special-effects water tank, where some of you are recruited for an unforgettable (and very wet) video moment. (In winter, when guests aren't fond of walking through the park with damp clothing, this audience-participation scene is canceled.) The line for the tram ride passes through a huge prop warehouse, which stores everything you could possibly imagine, from chairs to traffic lights to British phone booths.

Board the tram for a tour of different departments—set design, costumes, props, lighting—as well as the movie set for Catastrophe Canyon. The tram's announcer swears that shooting for this film is taking a break. But next thing, you experience a simulated earthquake, an oil tanker explodes in a mass of smoke and flame, and a water tower crashes to the ground, touching off a flash flood. As the tram pulls out, you see the backstage workings of the catastrophe: the canyon is actually a mammoth steel slide wrapped in copper-color concrete, and the 70,000 gallons of floodwater—enough to fill 10 Olympic-size swimming pools—are recycled 100 times a day, or every 3½ minutes.

You also ride past the Streets of America back lot, where you can glimpse New York Street, with its brownstones, marble, brick, and stained glass that are actually expertly painted fiberglass and Styrofoam facades. Grips can slide the Empire State and Chrysler buildings out of the way anytime. You'll have to walk the Streets set after exiting the tram to see the San Francisco and Chicago side streets. For people with disabilities: Wheelchair accessible and equipped for handheld- and video-captioning devices. Come early (it closes at dusk) and remember that people sitting on the left side of the tram get wet.