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Disney-MGM Studios Backlot Tour Review

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Disney-MGM Studios Backlot Tour

Fodor's Review:

Duration: 35 min.

Crowds: Steady through the afternoon, but lines seem to move quickly.

Strategy: As you enter the tram, remember that people sitting on the left get wet. Go early; it closes at dusk.

Audience: All but very young children, who might be scared in Catastrophe Canyon.

Rating: **

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 audience members 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 may be canceled.) Then it's time to line up for the tram ride. As you walk through the line, you're also touring 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 the back lot's different departments: set design, costumes, props, lighting, and a standout movie set—Catastrophe Canyon. The tram's announcer swears that the film that's supposedly shooting in there is taking a break. But the next thing you know, the tram is bouncing up and down in 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, which douses the tanker and threatens to drown the tram. 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'll 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 facades of fiberglass and Styrofoam. 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. Word on Pixar Place is that Catastrophe Canyon may be torn down by 2011 in preparation for a new thrill attraction, so see it now!

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