I recently made a fun discovery while surfing the web… in one scene of the 1990 TV special “The Muppets at Walt Disney World”, Beauregard the janitor (played by Dave Goelz) and Miss Piggy (Frank Oz) ride several attractions, including Star Tours. So, in a weird way, Yoda was riding Star Tours!
If you’re a fan of Disney and the Muppets and Star Wars like I am– and like Kris is– you can understand why I was excited to discover this clip. I was very happy to find the special, broken into five segments, posted on a popular upload site, even though the picture and sound quality were somewhat lacking.
This was the last project which Jim Henson finished before his death in 1990. In fact, he passed away less than two weeks after it originally aired. (Although his scenes for Muppet*Vision 3-D were already filmed, he did not live to see that production finished.)
Charles Grodin, the villain from the motion picture The Great Muppet Caper, guest-stars here as a bumbling Magic Kingdom security guard. At one point, he must enlist the Seven Dwarves to help him find the Muppet gang, who have inadvertently crashed the gates without paying.
The show is a little slow to get started and dry in places. But it really coalesces nicely in the climax, when Kermit ‘volunteers’ at the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular. So that’s where they got the idea for the Adventure Kermit action figure!
Henson is hilarious as Kermit, assuring the viewers that he does not believe violence is a solution to conflict, even as he blasts the Nazis. (He then, of course, asks if they are all right, and the stunt men all stand up and wave that they’re okay.)
Best of all, at the end, the original Kermit interacts with an animated Mickey Mouse, voiced by Wayne Allwine. Talk about an iconic image.
