Mickey's ToonTown at Disneyland has been closed down for a major renovation for several months. The entire land is completely shut down. Fans have been looking forward to the land reopening, not only because of all the expected design changes but also a brand new major attraction, Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway. We were expecting the new ride to open alongside the new land at some point early next year. But we just learned that the attraction will come first, and much earlier than we were expecting.
Disneyland Resort has announced that the long awaited Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway will open for guests on January 27, 2023, the first day of Disneyland's 100 Years of Wonder celebration. However, the rest of Mickey's Toontown is slated for a spring 2023 opening, so the ride will be opening alone.
Runaway Railway certainly won't be the only big thing happening on January 27. The 100 Years of Wonder event, set to celebrate the 100th anniversary of The Walt Disney Company, will also see a new Disneyland nighttime spectacular, Wonderous Journeys, a new version of Disney California Adventure's World of Color, called World of Color - One, all set to begin on that same day.
We knew all these various additions to Disneyland Resort were coming, they'd all been announced at the recent D23 Expo, but having a firm date for them is great. We also know the Magic Happens parade is set to come back in the spring, so possibly around the time that Mickey's Toontown actually opens fully. That parade debuted at Disneyland only two weeks before the pandemic shutdown, so very few people have ever actually seen it.
Disneyland had only ever given an "early 2023" date for the ToonTown reopening, but we certainly weren't expecting any of it to be ready within the first month of the year. The fact that the ride will now open prior to the rest of the land certainly gives the impression that the plan was for everything to open in the spring, but since the ride was ready somebody decided, why wait?
Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway opened at Disney's Hollywood Studios in March 2020, just prior to the pandemic shutdown. The Disneyland version is expected to largely be a clone of that version, though there will be some exterior and cosmetic differences to make the ride fit better with the Toontown theme.
It's perhaps not that surprising to see the new attraction open early. It's become somewhat standard practice at this point. Disney opened Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World without Rise of the Resistance. Avengers Campus opened at Disney California Adventure without it's major E-ticket, an attraction that was only recently confirmed by Disney to even be happening at all.
Hopefully Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway won't get too big a jump on the rest of Mickey's Toontown. Navigating guests to an attraction at the back of the land while the rest of it is still being worked on is probably going to be a logistics nightmare. Still, not having to wait for the new ride is nice. It's now less than four months away.
