My Ode to Muppet-Vision 3D
Disney announced it would be closing Muppet-Vision 3D, this is why that is one of the worst decisions the company has ever made.
A photo of writer Brett Schutt working at Muppet-Vision 3D, taken March of 2024.
This will be a little more informal than most of my posts on Workshopping Humanity, so here’s a moment where I can introduce myself. My name is Brett Schutt and as well as being a huge fan of movies and movie theatres, I’m also a big theme park buff. The path to my love for film stemmed from my vacations I would take to Orlando Florida when I was a kid. No attraction for me captured my imagination quite like Muppet-Vision 3D. I gravitated to The Muppets at an early age because I found their quirky sense of humor really funny. I also found myself gravitating and relating to the pathos of Kermit and his friends and understanding them on a deeper level. These Muppets were artists, trying to get their irreverent art made in a world that rejected it and getting it made anyways. The Muppets were the underdogs I looked up to.
A dream of mine was to one day be able to work at Walt Disney World, but even more specifically than that was to work at Muppet-Vision 3D. Thankfully, after working at the park for about a year that dream came true and I became a cast member at Muppet-Vision. I worked in the building for a year and a half and it was genuinely some of the best memories of my life. The building to me felt like a safe haven for a long time. So when I heard about Disney’s decision to close the attraction - something we all feared was coming for years, it was absolutely devastating. I got messages from several people asking how I was holding up, akin to grieving the loss of a loved one. I want to make this clear, the closure of your favorite attraction doesn’t even remotely get close to the loss of someone you love, but, the amount of grief I did feel about Muppet-Vision 3D did make me question the power that art and cinema can have on our lives. How places can represent so much more than the what they are in the physical sense.
Muppet-Vision 3D the show is glorious. It’s The Muppets in their truest form. The state of the art effects for 1991 were simply groundbreaking. The script is so witty and filled with iconic bits that are quoted by Disney Parks enthusiasts to this day. It’s simply a towering achievement. That isn’t all it is though- to me at least. It’s a place that represents somewhere that I figured out a lot about myself. I learned to love in Muppet-Vision, I learned to let go in Muppet-Vision, I learned to embrace the little things in this building. I know maybe to the casual reader, that sounds a little extreme. However, when you move nine hundred miles away from home for the first time and find a place that gives you peace and stability even with stress all around you - it becomes home. Kermit, Fozzie and Gonzo became friends I saw on a regular basis.
This has put something in perspective to me about art in general. Let’s not be so harsh to it. Someone might pass Muppet-Vision off as an attraction that’s always at a ten minute wait. It means a whole lot more to a lot of us. Art, in its truest form, can become a reflection of who we are and what we’ve become in a certain era of our life. Muppet-Vision 3D is that to me and it will always mean a lot to me. My love for it has only grown since I saw it for the first time as a kid. Don’t always pass off art that doesn’t have the same affect on you as meaningless, because for someone else it might mean the world to them and if that’s the case - that means it was successful.
That’s enough about me. Muppet-Vision 3D is also a historical piece of film. There was a push this summer for the film to be registered as a National Heritage Site. Rebecca Alter, a writer for Vulture, explained how Muppet-Vision 3D is the last piece of art that Jim Henson made before his untimely death in 1990. That if Walt Disney’s childhood home and James Baldwin’s Upper West Side Apartment building were marked as National Heritage Sites for their influence on the current post modern influence on art and media- than surely Jim Henson’s opus should get the same treatment. Along with Jim Henson, this is also the last project that Richard Hunt would perform with the Muppets. He would pass way from complications with AIDS two years after Jim Henson’t passing. Even the fan hated character Waldo C. Graphic is one of the earliest uses of CGI animation, Jim Henson was testing the waters of being able to integrate puppetry and computer technology and Waldo is one of the only examples of this working in real time the way Henson has imagined it. The removal of this attraction is a disservice to both men and technology that shaped pop culture as we know it. Disney creative, when making this decision, as desecrated something that has true significance in the field of media. I think this decision is purely short sided and irresponsible on all accounts.
It also shows a troubling path into Disney’s future. Walt Disney World started not only as a place to have fun but a themed land that had artistic and cultural heritage behind it. In Magic Kingdom, you can find Walt Disney’s ode to America and his love for the Country. Rather you agree or disagree with Walt’s actions and thoughts - this is his representation for what he believes on full display. Epcot is filled with representations of different cultures, bringing us all closer together to understand how we have more in common than we do different. Future World and Tomorrowland are idealistic visions of the future. While 2024 doesn’t look like what Walt and company had in mind in the mid 60’s, it still shows us how we can innovate in the future. It’s a hopeful look on how we can aspire and create.
Disney isn’t just a theme park, it’s an experience that is supposed to leave you inspired to go out and create and appreciate the world we live in. Getting rid of a show that is a piece of film with deep cultural significance is a troubling sign of the direction Disney’s creative team is heading. They are wanting to build bigger rides and bigger spectacle without remembering the roots of what they have become. The potential dollar signs have gotten in the way of what is truly important - what made Disney the juggernaut they are today. Which is why in my opinion, Disney truly needs to be humbled.
With the opening of Epic Universe by Universal this summer in Orlando Florida, I hope this scares Disney. So they can regroup and understand why their passionate fanbase is starting to be more critical of them within the last few years. Disney has taken the route of trying to appeal to a broader audience, people who might visit their parks once. However, Disney needs to understand a lot of their revenue comes from the people who visit their parks multiple times of year. Who have built memories in the parks, who have grown up in the parks, who have shared the parks with their children. These people are off put because the parks are becoming something they don’t recognize anymore. This isn’t to say Disney should never change, Walt Disney always claimed Disney World would never be finished. It’s a never ending project. However, Disney needs to understand that it needs to stay close to the original mission statement of what the parks have meant to so many people.
The Jim Henson Company recently released a statement saying that Muppet-Vision 3D would have a new chapter, leaving many of us Muppet-Vision enthusiasts optimistic that the show will live on in the future, even if it has to be moved somewhere else. However, this doesn’t fix the fact that the building, one with historical significance, will be repurposed to be something else. I still feel like that is disrespectful, but I would take that over never being able to see this show in any form ever again.
I will end this rant with optimism - something we all need right now. Muppet-Vision 3D has, for over thirty years, provided laughs and warm fuzzies to millions of people. It has been a reminder of the power The Muppets have had on pop cultural for over fifty years now. I think Jim Henson and Richard Hunt would be ecstatic to see the way their little film has survived and thrived in changing cultural climates and still continues to bring people together. So I thank them both for their contributions to the media landscape and for bringing me to a workplace that helped me grow as a person myself. Their work will continue to live on and us Muppet fans will continue to shout the praises of a show that will stand the test of time no matter what iteration it is in.