Toy Story Midway Mania

About a month ago, I entered my name into the Annual Passholder lottery for a sneak preview on the new Toy Story Midway Mania ride, opening at DCA on June 17th. For last year's similar contest for the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, myself and four people I know entered and none of us won, so needless to say, I didn't have very high hopes for this year's lottery. However, on the morning of June 2nd, I was more than delighted to see an email proclaiming I had won a sneak preview on the ride, on June 10th between 10am and 3pm. I think describing myself as incredibly ecstatic would be a bit of an understatement. I did my best to keep my excitement to myself and not brag to my friends TOO much in the week between the email and my date to ride, as I was only allowed to bring a fellow passholder with me to ride, and unfortuantely, my fellow passholder friends all had prior engagements for the special day. But would that stop me from fulfilling my destiny as one of the first to ride this spectacular ride?! I DON'T THINK SO!

I got to the parks around 1:15 and went straight to the booth in Downtown Disney to be awarded my pass to preview the ride. From there, it was off to the pier to make my dream a reality. At the front of the line, a couple CM's were stationed to make sure that you had a pass for the preview, as well as an annual pass for each member of your group. The line and theming are very impressive, except for the fact that a decent portion of the line is uncovered from the sun, which will not be fun for the long lines expected this summer. The first covered room of the queue features a number of posters, previewing the various games that you get to play on the ride (a picture of my favorite poster is included later in this post). Upon getting in line and eavesdropping on other people's conversations, I learned that CM's were allowing people to re-ride as much as they wanted, as long as the line stayed relatively short. Luckily for me, it did, and I got to ride not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE times in a row, waiting only about 10 minutes each time. By my last trip, the CM's started joking around with me about going on so many times in a row, but really, how could I resist?!

The ride itself is absolutely incredible. I had a pretty good idea of what the actual games were going to be like, but really didn't know what to expect for the surrounding areas and the actual movement of the cars between games. The attention to detail is stunning of the sets is stunning for a Toy Story fanatic like myself, and I especially enjoyed seeing the blue wallpaper with white clouds on it, just like in Andy's room in the movies. As much as I want to, I don't feel I should give anything else away, but just know that you will all be extremely impressed once the ride opens to the public next week.

Here are some pictures from the queue, ride, and my final score screen on four of my five rides (my fourth ride's score didn't show up on my screen unfortunately).

My special pass!

My favorite poster from the queue.

The beginning of the ride!

My first score.

My second score.

My third score.

My final, and best score!


[For the record- I hate the fact that Adam was able to ride it while I was stuck at work. He was sending me text messages that made me wish I was able to get that day off -Ruben]