If you find yourself wandering Pixar Pier, there are probably three major structures that you notice right away: the Ferris wheel, the roller coaster, and the restaurant on the water. But if you walk through the boardwalk section, you’ll notice a more subtle building that takes up a lot of real estate and does some heavy lifting in land theming: the Midway.
The Midway, home to Toy Story Midway Mania, is a Victorian-inspired building that helps immerse guests into an early 1900s seaside boardwalk. This style includes ornate details, pastel colors, and bright strings of lightbulbs.
But Imagineers had a challenge with this building. Toy Story does not take place at a 1900s seaside town, so they had to blend in some more contemporary elements to reflect the attraction. These touches include woodwork patterns, a bolder color scheme, and some colorful attraction murals throughout the queue. The end result? Toy Story starts to look like it somehow fits on a boardwalk, almost like an arcade game come to life.
While the pretty exterior might suggest otherwise, this building also has two complicated jobs to do. First, it has to accommodate thousands of daily guests, while still appearing homey and inviting. To solve this challenge, much of the queue is indoors, masking the winding line from the main thoroughfare.
And second, the building has to house complex ride mechanisms, including a fleet of spinning vehicles and 3D projection systems. If you look around while you race through the ride, you’ll see the show building is much, much larger than it appears from the boardwalk area. What you see as the Midway as a guest is really just a small section of a much larger structure, but it had to look small and approachable so it would fit within the land’s storytelling.
It’s easy to overlook buildings like The Midway, especially with larger attractions nearby like the stunning Incredicoaster. But this quiet little building is worth appreciating. After all, how many other structures can you think of that manage to merge two different worlds (a 1990s era story with a 1900s backdrop) seamlessly?
