Pooh's Hunny Hunt

Last updated
Pooh's Hunny Hunt
Pooh hunny hunt entrance.jpg
Tokyo Disneyland
AreaFantasyland
Coordinates 35°37′54″N139°52′53″E / 35.6318°N 139.8814°E / 35.6318; 139.8814
StatusOperating
Opening dateSeptember 4, 2000
Replaced Skyway
Ride statistics
Attraction typeTrackless dark ride
Designer Walt Disney Imagineering
Theme The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
Wheelchair symbol.svg Wheelchair accessible

Pooh's Hunny Hunt is a unique trackless dark ride located at Tokyo Disneyland. It is based on the 1977 Disney animated film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh .

Contents

History

After the rise in popularity of Walt Disney's film adaptation of Winnie-the-Pooh, Disney Imagineers made plans in the late 1970s for a Winnie the Pooh attraction at Disneyland's soon-to-be renovated Fantasyland. However, in 1983, when the renovated Fantasyland reopened, a Winnie the Pooh attraction was absent. Seven years later, during a period when the character was undergoing a resurgence in popularity, plans for a Winnie the Pooh attraction were approved at Walt Disney World. Planners used an existing structure of the Fantasyland attraction Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

The next version of the attraction, different in configuration, was Pooh's Hunny Hunt, which opened in Tokyo Disneyland. Due to a closure of all of the Skyways at Disney Parks across the world, including Tokyo, a space was left where the Fantasyland Skyway station once stood. With a budget of over $130 million, and featuring a never-before-used 'trackless' ride technology, Pooh's Hunny Hunt opened in late 2000 to large crowds and praise by many Disney internet fansites. To date, the attraction continues to have some of the longest wait times of any attraction at the Tokyo Disneyland Resort. [1]

Ride-through

The queue for the ride zig-zags in front of the entrance, which is shaped like a giant story book. Once inside, the rest of the line is made up of the pages of the story book which tell various parts of the story. Guests then board big, five-seater honey pots. These honey pots travel through the ride in groups of three.

Upon leaving the station, and making a left into the ride, the Honey pots stop in a line in front of a short video which has Christopher Robin giving Pooh a balloon. The vehicles then enter a very large room themed to the blustery day. There are many sights in this room, and the vehicles take turns visiting the various scenes. Pooh is seen flying around on his balloon. Kanga and Roo, Eeyore, Owl, Rabbit, and Piglet are getting blown about the wind. As the vehicles unite to leave the room, Tigger bounces from the bushes.

The honey pots then enter a dark room with three screens surrounded by trees. A swarm of bees flies through all three before Tigger comes in and starts singing and bouncing. The entire room, the trees, and the honey pots then begin to bounce with Tigger as he bounces from screen to screen. He then jumps up into one of the trees and the swarm of bees reemerges. The honey pots then go backward down a hallway filled with branches with Tigger seen clinging to one with a beehive stuck to his head.

The honey pots enter Pooh's house, where he is seen asleep with the balloon next to him. As he mumbles, the balloon grows the ears and eyes of a heffalump and the entire room vanishes into a starfield. Pooh then floats up into the air.

The vehicles then enter Pooh's dream sequence filled with the Heffalumps and Woozles that Pooh dreams about. This room is by far the most vibrant as the honey pots dance in circles with each other to a jazzy Heffalump band as colored lights and disco balls spin throughout the room. In a mirror found in the room, a balloon-like Heffalump can be seen sucking up honey from a honey pot before deflating. A Woozle can also be seen lighting a cannon shaped like a honey pot. Pooh is also seen hanging onto a living hot air balloon with a honey pot-like basket trying to reach for a beehive. There are many vehicles (one of them has a Heffalump and Woozle family riding in it) in this room and whenever three enter, three leave. The leaving vehicles exit through the trunk of a giant Heffalump which contains a tunnel. The vehicles go down the tunnel backward as Pooh spins above with projections of Heffalumps and Woozles.

The last room the vehicles pass through is the Honey Tree, where Pooh is eating his fill while singing how much he loves honey amidst its scent. The narrator then explains that, while Pooh was dreaming, the wind blew Pooh and the balloon all the way up to the honey tree, where he woke up, and ate honey until he was full. The vehicles then pass a big, closed storybook of the adventure and then return to the unloading area.

Ride system

Pooh's Hunny Hunt uses a trackless ride system developed by Walt Disney Imagineering. Although other trackless ride systems do exist on the market (such as ETF's Mystic Mover), Pooh's Hunny Hunt differs in that it uses an array of sensors as opposed to a dedicated wire embedded in the floor. [2] [3] [4] A custom local positioning system (LPS; not to be confused with GPS) is used to manage these sensors. The patented control system [2] works by directional data being relayed from a master control computer directly to the vehicles which are fashioned to resemble honey pots. This data is then used to move an individual honey pot car through a complicated matrix embedded within the actual floor tiles. Every few seconds, the master computer generates a random path and ‘steers’ the honey pot in real-time, so as the cars roll through the ride the vehicles are, in fact, being told where to go. Because this system is in real-time, they can maneuver accordingly in just fractions of a second. This also allows for spontaneous yet synchronized ‘honey pot choreography’ with groups of honey pots (as many as 8 in a single show scene) appearing to ‘dance’ with the others, often timed with ‘beats’ in the music. [5] Due to limitless variations possible, each journey through the attraction is unique. Overall, Pooh's Hunny Hunt is reported to have had a budget of $130 million. [6]

Similar rides

Tokyo DisneySea, an amusement park adjacent to Tokyo Disneyland, features Aquatopia. The ride uses the same trackless technology as Pooh's Hunny Hunt; however, it runs in a shallow pool. [6]

Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, Shanghai Disneyland and Hong Kong Disneyland all feature dark rides based on Pooh. These rides operate as The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and feature a more traditional track-based dark ride system.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tigger</span> Fictional tiger-like character

Tigger is a fictional character in A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh books and their adaptations. An anthropomorphic toy tiger, he was originally introduced in the 1928-story collection The House at Pooh Corner, the sequel to the 1926 book Winnie-the-Pooh. Like other Pooh characters, Tigger is based on one of Christopher Robin Milne's stuffed toy animals. He appears in the Disney animated versions of Winnie the Pooh and has also appeared in his own film, The Tigger Movie (2000).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heffalump</span> Fictional species from Milnes Winnie the Pooh stories

A Heffalump is an elephant-like creature in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories by A. A. Milne. Heffalumps are mentioned, and only appear, in Pooh and Piglet's dreams in Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and are seen again in The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Physically, they resemble elephants; E. H. Shepard's illustration shows an Indian elephant. They are later featured in the animated television series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1988–1991), followed by two animated films in 2005, Pooh's Heffalump Movie and Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Piglet (Winnie-the-Pooh)</span> Fictional character

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dark ride</span> Type of amusement ride

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<i>The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh</i> 1977 American animated anthology film produced by Walt Disney Productions

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a 1977 American animated musical anthology fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and distributed by Buena Vista Distribution. It was first released on a double bill with The Littlest Horse Thieves on March 11, 1977.

<i>Poohs Heffalump Movie</i> 2005 animated film directed by Frank Nissen

Pooh's Heffalump Movie is a 2005 American animated musical adventure comedy-drama film produced by the Japanese office of Disneytoon Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Featuring characters from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, the film is the fourth theatrical animated film in Disney's Winnie the Pooh franchise and DisneyToon Studios's third adaptation of Winnie the Pooh stories, following Piglet's Big Movie (2003) and Springtime with Roo (2004). The film was released on February 11, 2005, to generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $52.9 million worldwide. It was followed by a direct-to-video Halloween sequel, titled Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie which came out seven months after the film's release.

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<i>Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day</i> 1968 short film directed by Wolfgang Reitherman

Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day is a 1968 American animated musical fantasy short film based on the third, fifth, ninth, and tenth chapters of Winnie-the-Pooh and the second, eighth, and ninth chapters from The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne. The featurette was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, produced by Walt Disney Productions, and released by Buena Vista Distribution Company on December 20, 1968, having been shown in theaters with The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit. This was the second of the studio's Winnie the Pooh theatrical featurettes. It was later added as a segment to the 1977 film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The music was written by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman. It was notable for being the last Disney animated short to be produced by Walt Disney, who died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966, two years before its release.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (attraction)</span> Dark ride at Disney theme parks

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winnie the Pooh (Disney character)</span> Fictional teddy bear created by A. A. Milne

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<i>Tiggers Honey Hunt</i> 2000 video game

Tigger's Honey Hunt is a platform game based on the Winnie the Pooh franchise that was released in 2000 for the Nintendo 64, PlayStation and Microsoft Windows. The game was developed by DokiDenki Studio for Disney Interactive, which published the Windows version and co-released the game on home consoles through NewKidCo in North America, while the European release was published by Ubi Soft. In 2002, the game was re-released in the UK as part of a two pack of Disney PlayStation games along with the game Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers. A spiritual successor titled Pooh and Tigger's Hunny Safari was later released, with different mini games but otherwise sharing much of the same story.

<i>Winnie the Poohs Rumbly Tumbly Adventure</i> 2005 video game

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mystic Manor</span> Hong Kong Disneyland dark ride

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<i>Winnie the Pooh</i> (franchise) Disney media franchise

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luigi's Rollickin' Roadsters</span> Attraction at Disney California Adventure

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References

  1. ↑ "Luigi's Rollickin' Roadsters and Disney's History of Trackless Ride Vehicles". Oh My Disney. March 31, 2016.
  2. 1 2 USpatent 7739006,Gillula, Jeremy,"System and method for autonomous navigation in a ride vehicle",issued 2010-06-15, assigned to Disney Enterprises, Inc.
  3. ↑ Koppens, Ruud (15 November 2011). "ETF Ride Systems". The Coaster Crew (Interview). Orlando, Florida. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21. Retrieved 12 May 2013.
  4. ↑ "Mystic Mover". ETF Ride Systems. Archived from the original on 23 May 2013. Retrieved 9 May 2013.
  5. ↑ Niles, Robert (21 April 2013). "Pooh's Hunny Hunt reviews". Theme Park Insider. Retrieved 16 May 2013.
  6. 1 2 Sim, Nick (3 September 2012). "Pooh's Hunny Hunt at Tokyo Disneyland". Theme Park Tourist. Retrieved 16 May 2013.
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