Stitch's Great Escape! moves to seasonal operation

Sep 21, 2016 in "Stitch's Great Escape!"

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Posted: Wednesday September 21, 2016 10:50am EDT by WDWMAGIC Staff

Stitch's Great Escape! at the Magic Kingdom is moving to seasonal operation next month.

The attraction will have its final day of daily operations on October 1 2016, with its next scheduled opening on November 19 for the busy holiday week.

It will then close on November 27, reopening again on December 17 for the Christmas and New Year week. Even during those seasonal openings, the operating hours will be restricted to 10am to 8pm.

Stitch's Great Escape has been an unpopular attraction since its opening in 2004, where it replaced the highly rated Alien Encounter attraction.

The move to seasonal operation suggests that work may well begin on its replacement in the new year, with a Wreck It Ralph attraction rumored to move in. Read more about that on the WDWMAGIC Forums.

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UNCgolfApr 02, 2024

Asbestos isn't really dangerous until it's disturbed, so generally people are fine to be somewhere with asbestos insulation/whatever else. If you're going to renovate, though, it makes sense to remove it.

BocabearApr 02, 2024

That is it!! It did work for a brief time...

BocabearApr 02, 2024

Why not close down the Speedway now for a big new update and retrofit and redesign the entrance building to include a huge Quick serve overlooking the Speedway...boarding and operations for the Speedway would all be below the level for dining and kitchen etc..,It could be super sleek and futuristic...allowing a fresh new dining experience, and allowing the Stitch space to be expanded into Cosmic Ray's as needed. Use a smaller part of Cosmic Ray's restaurant footprint as a smaller drink and snack location maintaining a portion of the the original dining room and stage (Sonny Eclipse) to be part of that smaller quick serve...

DrdcmApr 01, 2024

Well said. There are little bits of where I think they were on to something, but they’re so isolated. Some examples are the robot palm tree things that open up during the day and close up at night. And the little futuristic vacation spot scenes in the space mountain exit.

doctornickApr 01, 2024

Tomorrowland is basically Sci-Fi fantasyland (as opposed to a theoretical real future) at this point. They should just lean into that which feels more appropriate for a castle park anyway - they work as an idealized/comforting version of their themes as opposed to realistic ones.

yensidtlaw1969Apr 01, 2024

In fairness, when have they ever really tried? Disneyland 1955 was really the only time a Tomorrowland attempted to genuinely predict anything, and even then it was still mostly reliant on demonstrations of cutting-edge technologies more than attractions based in an ever-expiring future. Since that version the Tomorrowlands have always been at good bit “out there”. People like to talk about how “the Future always catches up to you” but forget that it’s never really caught up to Space Mountain. The trick is to do roughly what you said - create a vision of a Tomorrow that always was and never will be - only they need to really renew their commitment and double down on that with an attraction lineup that is fun, exciting, and unified around the actual theme. When they’ve done that it has actually worked. And more than once! But over time they dilute it and screw it up, and THAT is the issue. The problem isn’t that Tomorrowland can’t work, it’s that they aren’t even trying to let it work.

peterwendyApr 01, 2024

Stitch is a breakroom now with tables in the queue area for CMs to sit at during break. Some water coolers in there too etc. Just a regular breakroom now. Theatre is still intact, and signs are still on queue walls and floors too. Pretty cool to see, but it doesn't seem like they're worried about asbestos, haha. At least this was the case as of a little over a year ago. Besides, there are multiple signs throughout the tunnels warning that you may be exposed to asbestos. The buildings are so old I think they legally have to put up warnings. I would assume most of the park is the same, maybe that's how the rumor started.

Splash4evaApr 01, 2024

We can say that about all social media lol

AylaApr 01, 2024

Isn't that basically the definition of reddit? That place is a cesspool.

J4546Apr 01, 2024

that would be pretty chill. A nice slow paced inside/outside darkride...I dont hate it. But I still want mary poppin carousel variant

Disney MadduxApr 01, 2024

FWIW, the recent somewhat revival of something possibly happening here was supposedly a retrofit of the current format.

Bill CipherApr 01, 2024

I feel like there's a degree of truth to this. Not necessarily true that they don't want to close Cosmic Rays because it makes too much money, but rather because there aren't enough large QSR locations in the park to offset its capacity. Rays serves so many guests its not even funny, often filling its dining room and overflow seating for hours on end. Since the Stitch/AE footprint is so small, it would make sense if designers want to eat into the Cosmic Rays footprint for attraction space, and if building codes require them to update the entire structure anyway then they might as well go all in. The big issue though, as mentioned, is where do you send the rest of those hungry guests? Pecos, Harbor House, and Pinocchio are all on the opposite side of the park. Opening Tomorrowland Terrace fulltime sounds like an option, but it would still need more to supplement it because it needs to close at dinner time for firework parties. Suffice to say, if the plan is for a Stitch replacement to overlay the existing theatre, it could come in the near-mid term; if the plan is for a Stitch replacement to alter the space significantly, it'll come much further down the line.

BocabearApr 01, 2024

Mr Toad was a lot of fun... a silly, fun attraction and staple of Fantasyland...I still mourn the loss and replacement by the lackluster Winnie The Pooh ride...but I am from a different era in Disney history and they have really done nothing with Mr. Toad since redoing the version in Disneyland back in the 80s... It would be a lot of fun to do something like that concept art, but as it is not tied to a currently running Disney Plus streaming kids show, it would never get built... Which is such a pity. They have an immense catalog of IP that is still classic Disney to work with, but we seem to only get the most recent ones.