The Halloween Tribute Store at Universal Studios Florida for Halloween Horror Nights 32 has brought a moment from The Great Movie Ride back from the dead six years after the iconic Disney’s Hollywood Studios attraction closed.

Halloween Horror Nights Pays Homage to The Great Movie Ride

The Great Movie Ride was housed in the Chinese Theater at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It took guests into the movies, riding through classic scenes from “Mary Poppins,” “Fantasia,” “Alien,” and several more films. The Great Movie Ride closed permanently on August 13, 2017, and Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway took over the space, opening in 2020.

Halloween Horror Nights is held annually at Universal Studios Florida, Universal’s own movie-themed park. This year’s Tribute Store invites guests to step right into the pages of an original horror comic book — not unlike Disney’s Hollywood Studios guests once rode into the movies. The Tribute Store’s second story, “False Idols: Part 1 — A Boris Shuster Mystery,” is a detective film noir with gangster elements.

Guests enter the story through a tunnel-like room, passing a loading zone and a freaky-looking fish person. The Tribute Store’s Curator character and the fish person are both dressed in dark trench coats and fedoras. Everything in this section of the store is black and white.

If guests turn around in this tunnel before moving on, they’ll notice a sign above the previous doorway reading “One Way Tunnel Wait for Green Light.” Below that is a black-and-white pair of lights, one lightly colored and the other dark with a bullet hole through it.

The props pay tribute to a famous scene in the Great Movie Ride. Vehicles would come to a stop in either a room themed to 1930s gangster films or a room inspired by Westerns. The ride vehicle would then be taken over by either a gangster (Mugsy) or a cowboy on the run from the law.

In the more common gangster version, the tour guide stopped the ride at a red light before being attacked by gangsters. The tour guide would escape and Mugsy would take over, hopping in the ride vehicle and saying something along the lines of “Running a red light is against the law and I never break the law. Watch this.” Then they would shoot out the light and say, “No more red light.”

It seems there are some Great Movie Ride fans on the Halloween Horror Nights 32 team who wanted to reference the classic attraction. Click here for our full tour of the Halloween Tribute Store this year.

If you, too, miss The Great Movie Ride, watch its final performance (featuring the cowboy version, not the gangster) in our video below.

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