Lights, Motors, Action!: Extreme Stunt Show

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 / 48.865; 2.778
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 / 28.3538; -81.5615
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]
Wheelchair accessible
Assistive listening available

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.

History

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]

Summary

Queue

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.

Pre-show

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.

Show

The show's finale

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.

Vehicles

A motorcycle performing a jump.

Stunt man falling.

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.

References

1. "Moteurs… Action! Stunt Show Spectacular". Disneyland Paris. Retrieved 15 January 2016.
2. "Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show". Walt Disney World. Retrieved 15 January 2016.
3. "Lightning McQueen joins Lights, Motors, Action! at Disney World".
4. Francois Piette (16 November 2013). "Actu - Opel sponsor principal du nouveau parc à thème de Disneyland Paris". Vroom.be. Archived from the original on 2 April 2017. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
5. Georgia-Pacific Corp. (14 January 2005). "Walt Disney Parks and Resorts and Georgia-Pacific Form 10-Year Strategic Alliance". prnewswire.com (Press release). Retrieved 3 February 2016.
6. Smith, Thomas. "Experience Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show One More Time at Disney's Hollywood Studios". Disney Parks Blog. Retrieved 15 January 2016.
7. "Disney cuts Moteurs... Action! after 18 years - Dominik Wilde".

External links

• Walt Disney World Resort - Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show
• Lights, Motors, Action! (Full Show) Disney World's Hollywood Studios on YouTube