Lights, Motors, Action!: Extreme Stunt Show | |
---|---|
![]() | |
![]() | |
Walt Disney Studios Park | |
Area | Backlot [1] |
Coordinates | 48°51′54″N2°46′41″E / 48.865°N 2.778°E |
Status | Removed |
Opening date | March 16, 2002 |
Closing date | March 13, 2020 |
Replaced by | Alice & The Queen of Hearts: Back to Wonderland (Production Courtyard) |
Disney's Hollywood Studios | |
Name | Lights, Motors... Action! Stunt Show Spectacular |
Area | Streets of America [2] |
Coordinates | 28°21′14″N81°33′41″W / 28.3538°N 81.5615°W |
Status | Removed |
Opening date | May 5, 2005 |
Closing date | April 2, 2016 |
Replaced | Studio Backlot Tour - Residential Street |
Replaced by | Millennium Falcon – Smugglers Run (Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge) |
Ride statistics | |
Attraction type | Stunt show |
Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering Walt Disney Creative Entertainment |
Site area | 53,949 m2 (580,700 sq ft) |
Audience capacity | 5000 per show |
Duration | 38 minutes [2] |
The Lights, Motors, Action!: Extreme Stunt Show (or sometimes referred to as Moteurs... Action!: Stunt Show Spectacular), was a stunt show performed at Walt Disney Studios Park in Disneyland Paris and at Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. The show was designed to be and look like a movie set, and the show is dedicated to show the process of how action movies are created.
Revolving around a series of energetic stunts featuring automobiles, the show runs for just under 40 minutes, and includes scenes of car-based action, pyrotechnics, jet ski chases, and physical stuntwork. The cars are followed by cameras, and film, both shot during the show and pre-recorded, is shown to the audience on a billboard television screen.
The Moteurs... Action! version of the show originally opened on time with the premiere of Walt Disney Studios Park on March 16, 2002. The Lights, Motors, Action! version of the show debuted three years later at Disney's Hollywood Studios during the Happiest Celebration on Earth festival, in which each of the four Walt Disney World theme parks opened a new attraction that have been copied from another Disney resort. The entire show has now been demolished.
Herbie, the Volkswagen from The Love Bug , previously made an appearance in an intermission in the middle of the show, but was replaced by Lightning McQueen from Cars in 2011. [3] The show arena has scenery inspired by Villefranche-sur-Mer; a Mediterranean village in the south of France. The arena's construction at Disney's Hollywood Studios forced the Studio Tram Tour: Behind the Magic at the theme park to be almost halved in length, as the arena was built inside locations used by the backlot tour.
The show was previously sponsored at Walt Disney Studios Park by General Motors through its Opel division and at Disney's Hollywood Studios by Koch Industries through its Brawny division. [4] [5] On January 15, 2016, Disney announced that the Hollywood Studios location would close on April 3 for the construction of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge and Toy Story Land. [6] The Paris version of the show closed on March 13, 2020; nearly 18 years after it initially opened; the closure was expected as part of the Walt Disney Studios park expansion, but the closure date was moved up owing to the COVID-19 pandemic in France, until it announced that was replaced by a new stunt shows, Alice and the Queen of Hearts: Back to Wonderland, and a new outdoor area called Theater of the Stars, which will premiere on May 25, 2024, and it will run until September 29, 2024, and located behind Avengers Campus. [7]
When the show is not running and when the audience is exiting or entering the stadium, queue music is played, while the billboard television screen shows trivia questions about films and movies with car chases and destruction in them.
The pre-show features clips of action scenes involving car chases from various action thriller films including The Rock (1996), Con Air (1997), Enemy of the State (1998), Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), Speed (1994), and Ronin (1998). The Disney's Hollywood Studios location does not include the clips from the latter two films.
The main show starts off with the "Ballet Chase," featuring a red "hero car" being chased by five black pursuit cars. This scene ends with the hero car jumping backwards off of a ramp, and the fifth pursuit car being blown in half.
While the next scene is being set up, it is explained how they film the action. They also introduce the hero car driver, and explain how a second hero car, designed so that the driver faces out the back, was used for the backwards jump.
The next scene, the "Blockade Chase," is set in a marketplace, with the car chase taking place around obstacles such as trucks and market stalls. The scene ends with the hero car driving up the back of a truck bed, over a second truck, and landing on an airbag.
As the third scene is being set up, a driverless hero car is shown, and an audience volunteer is brought down to drive it via remote control. After the volunteer appears to lose control of the vehicle, it is revealed that the car actually does have a driver, who is hidden on the far side of the vehicle out of sight of the audience.
The fourth sequence, the "Motorcycle Chase," begins with the hero running across the stage while being shot at by teo villains on black bikes. He runs into a motorcycle shop and commandeers a blue bike, then is chased by the two pursuit motorcycles and three cars. The hero later switches to a jet ski, and eventually faces his pursuers on foot. This scene features a stuntman falling thirty feet from a building into an airbag, as well as the rider of one of the pursuit motorcycles catching on fire.
As the final scene is set up, they explain the specially treated clothing that allowed the final rider to be safely set on fire.
The final scene begins with footage being shown on the large video screen of the previous stunt sequences edited into a finished film. As the film on the screen reaches its climax, fire erupts in the canal area at the front of the stage. The hero car appears on stage, being chased by a black pursuit car, and heads behind one of the buildings. A few seconds later, the hero car reenters from the second story of the building, down the bed of a truck parked in front of the building, and jumps a ramp across the canal directly towards the audience. Fireworks and explosions are set off as the car exits through a tunnel under the grandstands.
Afterward, a curtain call of all of the vehicles used in the movie shoot is shown, with the black pursuit cars and motorcycles, and the three red hero cars and the blue motorcycle.
The show maintained a fleet of more than 40 vehicles. The primary "hero" car, which the action revolves around, was custom-built for the show, while the pursuit cars were designed to resemble Opel Corsas. The hero cars were all painted red while the pursuit cars were painted black, to easily allow guests to tell the difference between them.
The show included multiple red "hero" cars. One had the bodyshell oriented backwards to allow the driver to appear to be driving in reverse; the other had a seat and steering wheel bolted onto the side of the car away from the audience, so that the car appeared to be driving without anyone inside.
One of the black "pursuit" cars was cut in half behind the front doors, so that it appeared to explode during a scene in the show.
All the cars were reinforced with roll cages for driver safety and were powered by Suzuki Hayabusa 1300 cc 175 horsepower (130 kW) motorcycle engines mounted directly behind the driver's seat. The cars' transmissions had four sequential forward and reverse gears, allowing them to be driven backwards at high speed.
The cars had a bump shift for easier gear shifting: the driver bumped the shifter forward to go up a gear, and back to go back a gear. In order to reverse, the driver twisted the top of the shifter and bumped it forwards or backwards. The handbrake automatically released when the driver let go.
The show cars weighed 1,322 pounds (600 kg), and were rear-wheel drive to allow the cars to drift. The drivers wore fireproof nomex suits, as well as a cool shirt to keep them cool – a cooling system in the front of the cars pumped cold water through the shirt.
The show also featured jet skis on the small canal at the front of the theater, and Yamaha motorcycles which maneuvered around the cars.
A dark ride or ghost train is an indoor amusement ride on which passengers aboard guided vehicles travel through specially lit scenes that typically contain animation, sound, music and special effects. Appearing as early as the 19th century, such exhibits include tunnels of love, scary themes and interactive stories. Dark rides are intended to tell stories with thematic elements that immerse riders, which unfold throughout course of the attraction.
Disney's Hollywood Studios is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, near Orlando. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Experiences division. Based on a concept by Marty Sklar, Randy Bright, and Michael Eisner, the park opened on May 1, 1989, as the Disney–MGM Studios Theme Park, and was the third of four theme parks built at Walt Disney World. Spanning 135 acres (55 ha), the park is themed to an idealized version of Hollywood, California, and is dedicated to the imagined worlds from film, television, music, and theatre, drawing inspiration from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire – Play It! was a game show taping mock-up at Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida, and Disney California Adventure at Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. The attraction was a modified version of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire television game show.
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, or simply Tower of Terror, is a series of similar accelerated drop tower dark rides located at Disney's Hollywood Studios, Tokyo DisneySea, Walt Disney Studios Park, and formerly located at Disney California Adventure. The attraction is inspired by Rod Serling's anthology television series, The Twilight Zone, and takes place in the fictional Hollywood Tower Hotel in Hollywood, California. The Tokyo version features an original storyline not related to The Twilight Zone and takes place in the fictional Hotel Hightower. All versions of the attraction place riders in a seemingly ordinary hotel elevator, and present a fictional backstory in which people have mysteriously disappeared from the elevator under the influence of a supernatural element many years previously.
Walt Disney Studios Park is the second of two theme parks built at Disneyland Paris in Marne-la-Vallée, France. which opened on 16 March 2002. It is owned and operated by The Walt Disney Company through its Experiences division. Upon opening, it was dedicated to show business, movie themes, production, and behind-the-scenes, but in the 2010s, in a similar manner to Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World in Florida, it began to distance itself from the original studio backlot theming and entered a new direction of attraction development inspired by iconic Disney stories. In 2019, the park hosted approximately 5.2 million guests. The park is represented by the Earffel Tower, a water tower with Mickey Mouse ears similar to the one formerly located at Disney's Hollywood Studios, which in turn was inspired by the water tower at the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California.
Fantasmic! is a nighttime show at Disneyland and Disney's Hollywood Studios. The show formerly operated at Tokyo DisneySea. It features fireworks, characters, live actors, water effects, pyrotechnics, lasers, music, audio-animatronics, searchlights, decorated boat floats, and mist screen projections. The narrative of Fantasmic! is a voyage through Mickey Mouse's imagination that culminates in a battle against the Disney Villains.
The Happiest Homecoming on Earth or the Happiest Celebration on Earth was the eighteen-month-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Disneyland theme park, which opened on July 17, 1955. It commemorated fifty years of Disney theme parks and celebrated Disneyland's milestone throughout Disney parks all over the globe. The "Homecoming" name was only used for Disneyland Resort; all the other Disney Parks resorts used the "Celebration" name.
William Carey Loftin was an American professional stuntman, stunt coordinator and actor in the U.S. film industry. He is considered to be one of the film industry's most accomplished stunt drivers. In a lengthy career spanning 61 years, his body of work included classic films such as Thunder Road, Bullitt, Vanishing Point, Duel, and The French Connection. He was posthumously inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2001.
Ronald Logan was an American businessman who served as executive vice president of Walt Disney Entertainment. After retiring from the company in 2001, he was formally a professor at the University of Central Florida Rosen College of Hospitality Management in Orlando, Florida, United States.
Rémy Julienne was a French driving stunt performer and coordinator, assistant director and occasional actor. He was also a rallycross champion and 1956 French motorcross champion.
"A Bug's Land" was an area of Disney California Adventure themed after the 1998 Disney·Pixar film A Bug's Life. The land consisted of Flik's Fun Fair, which opened on October 7, 2002, and was set in a representation of the film's fictional universe with four rides targeted towards young children; Flik's Flyers, Francis' Ladybug Boogie, Tuck and Roll's Drive 'Em Buggies, and Heimlich's Chew Chew Train. The area also included a water play area targeted towards young children. An outside area contained the It's Tough to Be a Bug! theater, which was an original area of the park when it opened on February 8, 2001.
Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular! is a live amusement show at Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Based on the popular and successful Indiana Jones film franchise, it includes various stunts and live reenacted scenes from the series's first film, Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is executive produced by George Lucas and directed by Jerry Rees, with stunt coordination by Glenn Randall.
William Hickman was an American professional stunt driver, stunt coordinator and actor in the U.S. film industry. His film career spanned from the 1950s through to the late 1970s, and included films such as Bullitt, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups.
The Studio Backlot Tour was an attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. It was a combination of a walking and tram tour of the backlot area of the park.
Hollywood Stunt Driver is a stunt show at Warner Bros. Movie World, which originally opened on 26 December 2008. A sequel to the show, titled Hollywood Stunt Driver 2 made its debut in February 2014.
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: Movie Set Adventure was a playground at Disney's Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. It was located in the Streets of America area and was based on Disney's 1989 film, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. The playground, which opened a year and a half after the film, featured 30-foot-tall (9.1 m) blades of grass, and was themed as a movie set for the giant backyard scenes from the film. Children could roam through the playground, exploring giant ants and a huge dog's nose.
Thierry Jean-Andre Coup is the Chief Experiential Futurist at JOCOUP Creative. Coup began his career working in the film industry, performing set design and visual effects. He moved into theme park design in the early 1990s when Walt Disney Parks and Resorts offered him a position with Walt Disney Imagineering. In 1995, he transferred over to Universal Creative and led projects such as The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, Transformers: The Ride, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter - Diagon Alley and Super Nintendo World.
Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular was a nighttime show at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World. The show is based on the Star Wars film series and features fireworks, projection mapping, fire, lasers, fog effects, and searchlights. During the show, Star Wars imagery is projected onto the park's Chinese Theater facade and surrounding buildings around the park's hub on Hollywood Boulevard. The show had its celebrity-filled World Premiere on Friday, June 17, 2016, replacing the park's similarly-themed display, Symphony in the Stars: A Galactic Spectacular.
The Herbie franchise consists of American sports adventure comedy theatrical feature films, one television film, a television series, and other multimedia releases. The overall story centers around the titular Herbie, a sentient anthropomorphic 1963 Volkswagen Beetle with a mind of his own and capable of driving himself. The vehicle is oftentimes a legitimate contender, though the underdog contestant in competitive races, but to a greater degree assists his human owners in bettering their lives.