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Disneyland Ride Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin Is Getting An Overhaul

Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin Disney
By Josh Spiegel/

The last few years for the Disney theme parks have been full of change, which is to be expected and embraced. Some of those changes have focused on updating current attractions to become more culturally relevant. In some cases, as with Pirates of the Caribbean, it means revising show scenes to eliminate unpleasant stereotypes. In others, as with the forthcoming update to Splash Mountain, it means updating a ride from stem to stern. Now, another ride is getting an update, in the former style: Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin from Disneyland will now have a much different protagonist.

First reported by the Orange County Register, the news centers not on the garrulous Roger, one of the stars of the masterpiece Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but on his beautiful wife Jessica. The gorgeous redhead who, you may recall, isn't bad (she's just drawn that way), is now on the case. Per this tweet from Scott Gustin, a new poster will help reframe the ride's focus away from Roger and over to Jessica, who's following in the footsteps of Eddie Valiant and has become a private investigator to catch the nefarious weasels of Toontown as they run rampant. As the "news story" in the poster calls out, "Jessica Rabbit has determined it is past time for her to throw her fedora into the ring by starting her own private investigations service."

This change means that both a scene early in the ride with Jessica being bound and gagged in a car, as well as the finale, are being updated. (A few days ago, an intrepid Instgrammer captured the update to the scene with Jessica in the car, whose trunk is now person-free.) Mickey's Toontown is getting a much larger overhaul, with the impending arrival of Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway in 2023, but clearly, the Car Toon Spin update is coming up much sooner.

The Right Change at the Right Time?

Anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the Disney theme parks knows the old adage that Disneyland, as Walt himself said, is not a museum. The parks are designed to be updated over time (and of course, Toontown itself was an addition decades ago). In that same vein, there are plenty of attractions that desperately need to be revised to become more relevant, or become less culturally insensitive, or both. Placing Car Toon Spin near the top of that list, though, is...well, frankly, it's just weird.

Here are two other attractions, at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, that could arguably get updated and have needed it for a while: Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room and Peter Pan's Flight. Here are two attractions (beloved, for sure) that both traffic in painful racial stereotypes. Peter Pan's Flight is a short attraction to start, so the brief appearance of Tiger Lily and her chieftain father could be gutted. More importantly, it should be.

Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin getting the update just feels weird both because its own relevancy, or lack thereof, never felt particularly galling. Also, while taking out the scene with Jessica bound and gagged is perfectly reasonable, shifting the entire focus of the ride to her just feels like an attempt to undercut an attraction based on a movie that focuses on ... Roger Rabbit. There are far worse changes that Disney could make to its attractions. But this is one of the more baffling and least pressing in a while.

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