Extinct Attractions: Roger Rabbit's Dancing Time Warp
Welcome to Extinct Attractions. This week, I took a look back in time at an attraction all about time travel itself.
Last Sunday, Warner Bros. was the big winner at the Academy Awards with 12 awards, including the big one, Best Picture for One Battle After Another. Disney didn’t fare quite as well, taking home only the Oscar for Best Visual Effects for Avatar: Fire and Ash (and I mean if it didn’t win that, something would be wrong with the world). WIth that in mind, I started thinking about another Disney film that won Best Visual Effects, Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Via Amblin
Amazingly, the film won three Academy Awards out of six nominations, plus a special award for being such a ground-breaking achievement. On top of the awards, the movie finished 1988 as the second-highest grossing film of the year domestically, making more than Zootopia 2 did when adjusting for inflation. In other words, it was a massive hit and Disney treated it as such with Roger Rabbit immediately everywhere in the Disney parks, even internationally.
WIth that in mind, Tokyo Disneyland was looking for a replacement to its Tomorrowland Terrace show, Disco Disney, and they thought that it would be the perfect time to examine the popularity of Roger Rabbit in Japan. Opening in 1992, the show was part of the park before Toontown was brought to life, but in a way it served as a testing ground to make sure that the land would work with Japanese fans.
The show is in Japanese so it was a bit hard to understand exactly what was going on, but the general gist was Roger Rabbit would spin a giant wheel on stage that would bring in people and characters from different periods of time. The show jumped in quickly with Roger spinning the wheel to jump way back in time and a monkey popping out for a second before things moved to the 1920s with some flapper dancers.
Via YouTube
But the dancing in the show was just beginning with a mind-boggling segment up next in the 1960s as Disney characters kept coming out dressed as characters from the Blue Brothers. As a Universal property, I’m not quite sure how Disney had the rights to the characters, but it was a lot of fun to see Chip and Dale dressed up in their outfits to the Blues Brothers theme song of sorts before Minnie came out as Aretha Franklin for a rousing rendition of “Think.” Before you could think that it was a coincidence, Donald emerged as Ray Charles (all the way down to the glasses) for a version of “Shake Your Tail Feather” and I mean come on, is there a better song for Donald?
The 1970s were up next, with all of the awesome dancers in their fun outfits ready to rock out to “YMCA.” In fact, they had so much fun that the time machine temporarily broke and the stage went black because of all the jubilation. There was no reason to worry, though, because it was basically just a preamble for Mickey to come out dressed just like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and absolutely kill the dance from the movie to the titular song. It was kind of crazy how talented both the costumed dancers and the background dancers were, popping and locking with the best of them.
Minnie and some friends came out next to bring the 1980s to life with a jazzercise to “Flashdance … What a Feeling” before ending the number with Roger Rabbit pouring fake water on her like in Coyote Ugly of all films.
Via YouTube
Thriller was the next song to get the Time Warp treatment, this time with Chip and Dale popping in dressed as zombies to do the full dance from the music video, something I never thought that I’d see. Things moved along quickly though with Minnie coming back out to get her Madonna on with a little “Vogue” that culminated in Roger Rabbit doing the splits. Honestly, it was just so impressive.
To cap things off and get us close to the present (well 1992 present), Mickey came out in some MC Hammer style jeans to bust another move. From there, we got a bunch of characters emerging dressed in a variety of outfits, the craziest of which might have been Donald Duck in a rasta cap and dreads for some reason.
While it may not have aged the best, Roger Rabbit’s Dancing Time Warp was so much fun, with some awesome dancing and just overall chaos energy that I love. It’s a show that truly could have only been done at Tokyo Disneyland, who really know how to up the fun factor. Having been there last year, the shows continue to live to that level today.
But at the time, the show came to a close in 1996 because of the opening of Mickey’s Toontown at Tokyo Disneyland where a new show called Roger Rabbit’s Toontown Hour was created to help bring the new land to life. In the Time Warp’s place, we got the Toy Story Fun Party in Tomorrowland Terrace, which was a lot of fun, but couldn’t meet the level of the Dancing Time Warp.
Via No Guilt Disney
As always, don’t forget to check out my interactive maps of the Disney Parks throughout the years where you can watch or learn more about all the attractions from every Disney park around the world.
Thanks for reading and have a magical day!