the attractions

TTC Stables/Carriage Rides 🐴

Taking over part of the old tram station now that the parking process has been fully redone, the TTC Stables will feature live horses. They aren't just for show, they are there for magical carriage rides around the Seven Seas Lagoon! For a small fee, you can travel from the TTC to the Magic Kingdom in royal style on a carriage ride along the newly widened path weaving along the Polynesian and Grand Floridian resorts. Not going to the park or just looking for a more secluded journey? Carriage rides through Mickey Mouse Park and along the Nature Trail are available as well for a smaller cost. Not only is this an unforgettable, magical experience, but it also adds to the vibe of Mickey Mouse Park giving it kinetic energy and breathing more life into it.

Carousel 🎠

Attached to the picnic area and main plaza, guests can find an open air carousel (has a roof to protect in the weather). With a wide range of horse, and bench seating options, guests of all ages can enjoy the carousel, while also getting great views of the bandstand stage, and large grassy picnic area.

The Mary Blair 🎨

Musuem of Color

Every large scale public park should have at least one museum, and that's exactly the role the Mary Blair Museum of Color aims to fill in the overall fabric of Mickey Mouse Park. The museum is an all encompassing look at one of Walt Disney's most personally cherished artists, and a woman who even outside of Disney defined the visual pallet of children's book illustrations for over half a century.

Nestled in an unassuming two story building covered in pastel shades of pink and blue, the exterior of the museum is meant to be modest at first glance but pop with more and more color the closer guests get. The front porch will feature tables and chairs where guest can enjoy their meals from the museum's small cafe or just people watch and relax in the public park setting.

Walking in past the main lobby, the first gallery incorporates Mary's pre-Disney watercolor works, many of which she crafted during her time at the Chouinard Art Institute where she got her start. Heading into the next gallery, guests see a collection of works Mary completed at the California School of Watercolor, illustrating a clear evolution in her work to becoming more whimsical and child-like as a contrast to the more realistic and naturalistic watercolor works in the first gallery.

Guests will then take an elevator to the rest of the galleries located on the second floor. Emerging in the third gallery, guests take in a large scale room filled literally from the floor to the ceiling with iconic pieces of concept art for Disney classics such as Cinderella, The Three Caballeros, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. The more well known pieces will be in effect as well as many pieces never before seen by the general public and freshly unearthed from the Disney archives. The scale of this room and all encompassing nature of the way the pieces of art literally surround the guests on all sides puts a big emphasis on how important this early part of her time at Disney was to her overall career.

The fourth gallery is even more large scale and focuses on Mary's work within the theme parks. The biggest fixture and perhaps the most popular draw of the entire museum will be a complete tile - for -tile recreation of Mary's iconic Tomorrowland mural. Many pieces of Park concept art, mostly related to It's a Small World, line the walls. A mini recreation of Small World's iconic Disneyland exterior sporting its original 1960s color scheme can be seen at the bottom of a ramp that gets guests back down to the first story of the building.

At this point guests can choose to either enter the Small World exterior or keep going straight through to the final galleries. The Small World exterior leads to a mini museum dedicated to Alice Davis and featuring many of the original costumes she designed for the attraction, all of which were inspired by Mary's iconic color pallet. The gallery also features a recreation of the Mary Blair doll flying in a hot air balloon that can be seen in Disneyland's version of the attraction.

The final two galleries are dedicated to Mary's contribution to the industry of children's book illustrations through her iconic work with the Little Golden Books (featuring a large scale collection of antique first editions featuring her art) and one last gallery showcasing the influence her art has had all across pop culture, including many examples of how other pieces of popular media have been inspired by her style.

Exiting out into the museum gift shop (appropriately titled the Little Golden Gift Shop) guests can shop through an extensive collection of prints of Mary's art, museum exclusive pins, copies of the book "Magic Color Flair: The World of Mary Blair", and a large collection of reprints of Mary's Little Golden Books, including many which have been out of print for years.

The Mary Blair Museum of Color aims to be a cultural touchstone within the larger fabric of Mickey Mouse Park. It's a journey through the mind and inspiration of a singular artist who has inspired countless others, and an tribute to a style Mary made all her own that has been recreated and paid homage to countless times throughout all different forms of media.

The Carolwood Railroad 🚂

A crown jewel of Mickey Mouse Park is the Carolwood Railroad. This is a miniature train ride through a Storybookland style setting inspired by 1950s Southern California. The ride pays homage to Walt Disney's private miniature railroad as well as the initial idea of the pre-Disneyland "Mickey Mouse Park" concept being anchored to a train ride.

The train loads in a small open air barn and begins with a trip through a partial recreation of Lillian Disney's gardens that Walt's train famously passed through. This area of the ride is fully visible to the public, but the miniature Southern California is hidden behind a small berm. While there's a few walking paths around the gardens, guests will not be able to access the other part of the attraction in order to keep the miniatures in tact.

One of the most unsung elements of Disneyland attraction design is the tunnel that was located on Walt's original Carolwood Pacific Railway. The tunnel curved slightly, a very simple effect that gave the illusion of blocking out the light from the other side of the tunnel and making it appear much longer than it actually was. This exact same effect will be used as the transition into the miniatures, with the tunnel acting as the equivalent to Storybook Land's Monstro transition

Emerging into the miniature Southern California, guests climb to the mid point of the Hollywood Hills with a miniature Chinese Theater below them. From this vantage point they can take in the entirety of this section and get a sneak preview of everything they'll be experiencing. From there, guests travel past all sorts of Southern California landmarks that are enhanced with elements of a botanical garden. For example, the "Anaheim" section features real orange trees collected into a small "Grove", the Joshua Tree National Park section contains a small collection of redwood trees, and the Death Valley selection features a large collection of cacti and other desert plants.

Other notable sites include a miniature recreation of the La Brea tar pits, the iconic Griffith Park observatory and carousel, a trip through Temecula Valley with a miniature collection of vineyards, and a complete miniature recreation of the Walt Disney Studios in the early 1950s. Each of these sights will be accompanied by a large variety of different floral arrangements and topiaries, with the rolling green hills the train travels through giving the whole ride a whimsical feel and the elevation changes throughout the layout giving guests several optimal vantage points to view each of the landmarks.

The Carolwood Railroad promises to be one of the most exciting and popular experiences guests can have within Mickey Mouse Park, and acts as a loving homage to the very earliest inspiration that served as the spark for what would become Disneyland.

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