Disneyland Review: Honey, I Shrunk the Audience

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Fun 3D show with good in theater effects

Cons: It isn't there any more

The Bottom Line: 

Become much smaller

In the shrinking audience

Fun experience

"You Think She'd be Used to this by Now."

True confessions time: I love the Disney movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.  There’s just something about it that really captivated me as an early teen, and I still enjoy watching it.  So you can imagine my delight when Disneyland finally got Honey, I Shrunk the Audience.  It replaced Captain EO in the late 90’s rehab of Tomorrowland, and it has been replaced now by…Captain EO.  Man, do I miss it.

The attraction featured the Szalinski family, or at least most of them.  Amy wasn’t around.  It must have been filmed not too long after the sequel movie, Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, since it features all the actors from that movie, including the same twins as toddler Adam.

The attraction itself was located just to the right of Space Mountain.  There was never a large crowd for this one – the longest I ever had to wait was the amount of time it took for the next show to start.

The premise is that the Imagination Institute has opened their doors for their annual Inventor of the Year Award, and this year the winner is Wayne Szalinski (Rick Moranis).  Naturally, his wife Diane (Marcia Strassman) and sons Nick (Robert Oliveri) and Adam (Daniel & Jonathan Shalikar) are there as well.  And, naturally, things don’t go as planned.  First, Adam puts his pet mouse in the multi-dimensional duplicator.  Then we, along with Nick, are accidentally shrunk.  Will we survive a snake and Adam moving us while Wayne fixes his machine?

Yes, this was one of Disney’s 3D plus shows.  Air jets in your seat let you feel the mice roaming through the audience.  I always got a kick out of hearing the screams start in one section and move throughout the theater.  And we get various things, like the snake, Diane’s arm, and Wayne on a personal hover craft, coming out at us.  When we are shrunk, the theater shakes at appropriate times.  Oh yeah, and at the end we get sprayed with a giant dog sneezing on us, I mean water.

No, this was never a must do for me, fan that I am of the characters.  But I always enjoyed it when I did, which was about half of my visits to the park.  The show lasted roughly 15 minutes, and it was great to take a break and enjoy sitting inside no matter what the weather was like outside.

Considering Captain EO doesn’t seem to be much more popular than this show was, maybe I can start a campaign to get them to bring it back.  Hey, don’t crush my tiny dreams.

Sadly, this will probably never come back.  Maybe on a Blu-Ray release for the movies?  But I will always have fond memories of Honey, I Shrunk the Audience.