Walt Disney World guests will soon be able to step into Monstropolis, the city from Pixar’s Monsters, Inc., to explore the monsters’ aesthetically whimsical world and take a wild ride on a roller coaster through the door vault from the movie. The new land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios will also include an indoor theater show and a sushi restaurant inspired by the film. Disney shared more insight on the city and the coaster in newly revealed details.
Disney World’s upcoming Monsters, Inc. roller coaster and cityscape will be different from its movie inspiration. In this article, we’re taking a look at those changes and recent details revealed by diving deep into the Imagineers’ creative process in developing this highly anticipated theme park land. Mickey Visit brings you the latest Disney news and planning resources, including the reopening date of a top Disney World restaurant after a multi-month closure and all the popcorn buckets available at Disney World this month.
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The Storyline of the Door Vault Coaster
Monstropolis at Disney’s Hollywood Studios will take place after the events of Monsters, Inc. Following the resolution of the film, Monstropolis’s citizens no longer believe humans to be toxic. We, the guests, are visiting on H.U.M.A.N. Day, a goodwill holiday to help “humans understand monsters are nice.”
This fixed point in the timeline includes the land’s main attraction, a suspended roller coaster through the door vault of the Monsters, Inc. factory. In the movie, Mike and Sulley chase Randall through the door vault to rescue Boo, the human little girl. This scene is more or less depicted in the coaster’s primary concept art revealed so far, pictured above. However, while the coaster will tread the same physical space as that adventurous sequence, it is not meant to repeat the events from the film. Riders will be part of a new story, set after the movie, rather than a recreation of that exact moment.
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Riders will also play an active role in the narrative rather than just observe it. Our visit to the Monsters, Inc. factory is another initiative as part of H.U.M.A.N. Day, and this part of the holiday is being planned by Mike Wazowski.
Michael Hundgen, Walt Disney Imagineering VP Creative of the Walt Disney World Portfolio, elaborated in an interview with Variety.
Hundgen said that “guests will be placed into contraptions that Mike has created to harness both laughs and screams. The idea is that if you combine those two things — well, screams are powerful, but laughs are even more powerful.” Guests’ screams on the coaster are part of the backbone of the story!
In this way, the doors coaster will be the rare Disney attraction that acknowledges its own existence as a ride. This contrasts with, for example, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at EPCOT. In the case of Cosmic Rewind, guests ride a roller coaster that’s meant to be a spaceship within the confines of the storyline. For the Monsters, Inc. coaster, though, the reality of the ride mechanism is the same as the fiction of the storyline: a vehicle on a rail.
The continuation rather than recreation of the movie’s climactic doors scene isn’t the only way the Monstropolis theme park land will differ from the movie.
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Imagineers Aren’t Building Pixar’s Monstropolis, But a New Version
Beyond the roller coaster and other attractions of Monstropolis, Disney’s Hollywood Studios will encounter a cityscape rich in architectural details that speak to the intentionality of the Imagineers’ storytelling.
Scott Mallwitz, Walt Disney Imagineering Executive Creative Director, extrapolated the creative process behind Monstropolis’s city in a video on the Imagineering YouTube channel.
“Real cities are born in different places,” Mallwitz said. “We had to create a sensible logic to it, like, ‘What’s here from the Victorian age?’ and ‘What’s here in the Industrial age?’ and bring those little tweaks of what makes it monster-fied.”
“A lot of the architecture in the monster world parallels our own,” added Jen Serna, Walt Disney Imagineering Senior Creative Director, “but it’s monster-fied with the teeth, the horns, the eyes.”
In what makes for a fascinating design thesis, Mallwitz revealed that the Imagineers aren’t setting out to duplicate the city from the Pixar movie. “We’re making the place that would’ve influenced the animators.”
Mallwitz, Serna, and their teams are following three key principles in designing the theme park version of Monstropolis:
“Set the tonality from the materiality and the expectation about what’s here.” Guests know Monstropolis from Monsters, Inc., so this should feel like Monstropolis from Monsters, Inc.
“Expand the universe by giving people places to go that they never saw on film, but would make sense in a city.” This is part of the Imagineers’ effort to reverse-engineer the Monstropolis of the Pixar film, to not recreate that place, but build the place that would’ve inspired the movie’s setting and go deeper than the environments shown on screen in the film.
“Amplify it and surprise [guests] along the way.” You never know what, or who, you might run into as you explore Monstropolis!
There’s Much More to Monstropolis
Monstropolis at Disney’s Hollywood Studios won’t debut all at once.
Monstropolis Phase 1 will open in 2027 with:
- Welcome to Monstropolis, an indoor show with special effects and illusions
- Harryhausen’s, a table service restaurant
- Archie’s Scare Pig Pizza, a quick service restaurant
- Scareporium, a gift shop
We got to tour the construction site of Monstropolis Phase 1 with Imagineers to check in on progress and hear more about the land’s backstory. Disney also revealed key details about Welcome to Monstropolis and Harryhausen’s.
Monstropolis Phase 2 will include the door vault roller coaster. Disney has not announced an opening timeframe for Phase 2 yet.
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