The Muppets Just Took Over Hollywood Studios and It Rules

Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring the Muppets Is Here

After months of anticipation, soft openings, annual passholder previews, and one very insistent cease-and-desist from Joe from Legal, Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring the Muppets officially opens today at Disney's Hollywood Studios. The attraction sends guests on a high-speed dash across Hollywood, helping Scooter get The Electric Mayhem to their concert on time, and it represents one of the most significant attraction reimaginings Walt Disney World has delivered in years.

MickeyBlog reports that the attraction soft opened to all guests yesterday, giving lucky parkgoers an early taste of the chaos. In true Muppet fashion, the rollout came with a perfectly deadpan social media video from Joe from Legal, who, on behalf of his clients the Muppets, clarified for "all press, dignitaries, government officials, influencers, fans, and humanity as a whole" that the official name is Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring the Muppets. Joe noted he would be spending the rest of his time near the attraction entrance, trying to pass the height requirement. He has, at least, already passed the bar.

The real story, though, is what Walt Disney Imagineering did with the queue. Disney Parks Blog published a deep look at the Easter eggs layered throughout the reimagined G-Force Records building, and the detail is staggering. The building, now under the management of Muppet real estate tycoon J.P. Grosse, functions as a backstage museum of Muppet history. Miss Piggy gets a gallery case featuring one of her iconic pink and green polka dot looks. Kermit's original banjo from "The Rainbow Connection" was recently donated to the Walt Disney Archives, and Imagineers recreated it for display. Both Floyd and Janice's guitars on display are originals from The Muppet Show.

The nods to Muppet*Vision 3D are everywhere, and intentionally so. Shipping crates from the former attraction have been placed throughout the alley. Statler and Waldorf's balcony chairs are there. Gonzo's stunt airplane, the cannon the penguins used to aim at Swedish Chef, and "The Great Gonzo" banner from the pre-show all made the move. Disney Parks Blog also notes pizza boxes from PizzeRizzo and the Mona Lisa from Mama Melrose, tucked into the scenery like gifts for fans who linger. The Squeakeasy, a new fictional establishment in the queue, was established in 1936, tying the lore to the Muppets' long history.

WDW News Today reports that the adjacent gift shop, Rock Around the Shop, has also opened with a full line of Muppets merchandise. For a franchise that some fans worried Disney had sidelined, this is a loud, fast, zero-to-sixty-in-three-seconds statement of commitment.

Expect the attraction to be enormously popular this week. Inside the Magic notes that Lightning Lane Premier Pass is already sold out for both May 26 and May 27 at Hollywood Studios, and Disney is running a traditional standby queue with Lightning Lane access rather than a virtual queue for general operation. WDW Prep School advises guests to prepare for very long lines during this launch week and recommends strategic planning to avoid wasting vacation time.

The Parks

The Muppets are not the only new arrivals pulling crowds today. Bluey's Wild World officially opens at Disney's Animal Kingdom, transforming Conservation Station at Rafiki's Planet Watch into an interactive show experience built around the Heeler family. BlogMickey reports that the experience actually opened a day early, on May 25, with a standby queue in place for the soft opening. Beginning today, access shifts to a virtual queue system covering the Wildlife Express Train, Bluey's Wild World itself, Jumping Junction, and the existing Animal Care experiences at Conservation Station. Two daily windows are available through My Disney Experience: 7:00 AM (no park entry required) and 10:00 AM (valid park admission and park entry required).

BlogMickey's first look describes an experience built around interactive games inspired by fan-favorite Bluey episodes, each given an animal-themed twist. Keepy Uppy has been reimagined as butterfly keepy uppy. Magic Asparagus makes an appearance, magically turning guests into animals. There is also Copycat Charades, where guests act out animals, and Mums and Dads, where little ones sort colored balls as if collecting eggs for mom and dad birds. Bluey and Bingo are present throughout, roaming through what BlogMickey affectionately describes as a "toddler mosh pit." The Wildlife Express Train audio has been updated to feature Bluey characters, setting the tone before guests even arrive. WDW News Today confirms that Disney has clarified how many times guests can see the Bluey show through the virtual queue system.

Disney Food Blog has a full rundown of the new Bluey merchandise arriving at Animal Kingdom, available at Island Mercantile on Discovery Island and at Conservation Station. Highlights include a kids' Bluey raincoat (genuinely practical for Florida's summer thunderstorms), kids' and adult Bluey sweatshirts and tees, Bluey blind boxes, and adult shirt options. Disney has also promised more souvenirs later in the summer, including Bluey and Bingo plushes for the Create-Your-Own Headbands and plush Bluey and Bingo headbands.

Over at Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run has received a substantial update. Disney Experiences reports that a brand-new mission featuring Din Djarin and Grogu is now available, timed to coincide with the theatrical release of The Mandalorian and Grogu. The update includes a significant technical upgrade, moving the attraction from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 with new compute hardware and Nvidia graphics cards. Asa Kalama, Executive of Creative and Interactive Experiences at Walt Disney Imagineering, told Disney Experiences that the team collaborated closely with Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni to develop a story that extends the film rather than simply retelling it. For the first time, guests can see a Star Wars film and then experience a connected attraction adventure on the same day. Flight crews can now also choose which mission they take, a new feature enabled by the technology upgrade. The mission is available at both Walt Disney World and Disneyland Resort.

Meanwhile, the Memorial Day crowds at Walt Disney World delivered a counterintuitive split yesterday. Three of four parks came in below their 30-day averages. Magic Kingdom posted a 4/10 (Moderate) crowd level with a 12.8-minute median wait, well below what a holiday Monday would suggest. EPCOT was the outlier, climbing to 5/10 (Average) with a 19.2-minute median, running 28 percent above its baseline. The Flower and Garden Festival, the reopening of Soarin' Across America, and Memorial Day Soccer Tournament families all converged there. The peak came at 8:00 AM with a 40-minute median, an unusually early surge pointing directly at Soarin'. Spaceship Earth was offline for a 257-minute stretch from 8:32 AM until nearly 1:00 PM, funneling morning guests into the remaining headliners. Remy's Ratatouille Adventure went down twice during midday, and Test Track closed at 7:32 PM without reopening.

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Disneyland is also participating in the summer festivities. Disney Tourist Blog reports that Disneyland has launched Kids Rule Summer with 15 new or returning experiences of its own, a parallel slate designed to keep the West Coast parks competitive during the season.

The Screen

The Mandalorian and Grogu is officially back in theaters, and the numbers tell a complicated story. According to reports from The DisInsider citing Variety, the film opened to an estimated $102 million domestically over the Memorial Day holiday weekend. WDW News Today, however, notes that the film carries the distinction of the lowest Star Wars box office opening. Both things can be true simultaneously. A $102 million holiday weekend is a significant commercial result by almost any standard, but for a franchise that has historically commanded the highest opening weekends in the industry, the number registers as a shift in scale. The film's real impact may ultimately be measured less in raw box office and more in how effectively it drives engagement across Disney's broader ecosystem, from the new Smugglers Run mission to merchandise lines to park attendance.

On the small screen, a different kind of legacy story is unfolding. D23 reports that Sofia the First: Royal Magic, a brand-new series set in the world of the Emmy Award-winning original, premiered yesterday on Disney Jr. with the first eight episodes available to stream on Disney+ today. Creator and executive producer Craig Gerber, who developed the original series, returns to continue Sofia's story. Ariel Winter reprises her role as Sofia. Gerber told D23 that the new series places Sofia at The Charmswell School for Royal Magic, leaning further into the magical elements that were always part of her world. The original Sofia the First, which premiered in 2012, has generated more than 3 billion hours watched and over $1 billion in retail sales, according to D23. The new series features updated CG animation that Gerber says gets "much closer to that feature animation quality than ever before."

Disney Consumer Products used Licensing Expo in Las Vegas to preview its broader franchise strategy. The Walt Disney Company announced its showcase theme "Icons Unleashed," framing Disney's portfolio as living cultural forces designed to be reinterpreted across generations and markets. The event brought together senior leaders including Kevin Feige, Dave Filoni, and Lisa Baldzicki, alongside talent from the upcoming Camp Rock 3 and performers from Disney's Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical. Paul Gitter, EVP of Global Brand Commercialization, described licensing as "a central way Disney storytelling shows up in consumers' everyday lives." The roadmap extends through holiday 2027 and beyond.

The Vault

The Smugglers Run update deserves a second look through a different lens, because the technical details Asa Kalama shared with Disney Experiences reveal something about where Imagineering is headed. The move from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 with new Nvidia hardware is a fundamental change to how the attraction works. It enabled flight crews to choose their mission, and the visual fidelity of the experience has been pushed beyond what the original hardware could deliver. Kalama described the creative philosophy behind the update as rooted in Walt Disney's own approach to extending stories across mediums. "We like to find opportunities to not just retell the exact same story that you might have seen on screen, but use this as an opportunity to extend that story," Kalama said. "It's an inherently unique medium. It's the physical world. And so we try to lean into the things that it does best."

That philosophy, content driving park updates in real time, with day-and-date releases syncing theatrical premieres to attraction launches, is a model Disney has been building toward for years. If the Smugglers Run update works as intended, expect Imagineering to apply the same playbook to future film releases. The infrastructure is now in place to make attractions living, evolving extensions of the stories Disney tells on screen.

Sources

MickeyBlog · Disney Parks Blog · WDW News Today · BlogMickey · Disney Food Blog · Disney Experiences · Disney Tourist Blog · Inside the Magic · WDW Prep School · The DisInsider · D23 · The Walt Disney Company · Lightning Brain