My Little Pony: Rainbow Roadtrip

For the song, see Rainbow Roadtrip (song).

My Little Pony: Rainbow Roadtrip
Directed by	Gillian Comerford
Produced by	Peter Lewis Therese Trujillo Eliza Hart Leslie Wishnevski
Written by	Kim Beyer-Johnson
Music by	William Anderson (score) Daniel Ingram (songs)
Release date(s)	May 23, 2019 (Odeon Cinema) June 29, 2019 (Discovery Family) December 13, 2019 (Japan)
Running time	60 minutes
Studio	Allspark Animation Boulder Media
Distributed by	Discovery Family (television) Hulu (online streaming, Japan)
Song(s)	Rainbow Roadtrip The End of the Rainbow Living in Color
See also
credits • transcript • gallery • allusions animation errors • statistics • speculation

My Little Pony: Rainbow Roadtrip, or simply titled Rainbow Road Trip in the opening credits, is an hour-long animated special based on My Little Pony Friendship is Magic.

In this special, the Mane Six travel to Hope Hollow, where Rainbow Dash has been invited to be the guest of honor at the Rainbow Festival, but they discover that the entire town and the ponies in it have been drained of color.

Production

Multiple books related to the special will be released, including a "Passport to Reading" Level 2 My Little Pony: Road Trip Event Reader on June 25, 2019. In the United Kingdom, My Little Pony Annual 2020 is set for an August 8 release, and My Little Pony: Essential Handbook: A Magical Guide for Everypony on September 5.

The special uses the same animation style as My Little Pony The Movie. It was added to the Discovery Family GO! mobile app on June 30, 2019, but it was removed on August 3.

Summary

Hope Hollow's guest of honor

The Mane Six take a hot air balloon to Hope Hollow.

The special begins with the Mane Six boarding a hot air balloon to a town called Hope Hollow, where Rainbow Dash has been invited as the guest of honor at the Rainbow Festival. Twilight Sparkle leaves Spike in charge of the School of Friendship in their absence. The ponies look forward to the multiple activities mentioned in Rainbow Dash's letter–a Rainbow Dash Fan Club with many members, a luxury resort and spa, a butterfly garden, a bakery booth, a karaoke competition, fishing, and an award ceremony–though Twilight is curious as to why they have never heard of this festival until now.

After several hours of traveling, the ponies have yet to arrive in Hope Hollow, and all they see is a large rainbow ahead of them. Expecting to pass right through it, they instead crash into it, causing the balloon to rupture and plummet toward the ground. Twilight teleports her friends to safety just before the crash. With the balloon destroyed, the Mane Six find themselves right outside Hope Hollow, but no one is there to welcome them. As they head into town to find their hotel, they notice no sign of activity, meeting only a single mare named Petunia Petals.

No Hope Hollow welcoming committee? Strange...

When asked about the Rainbow Festival, Petunia is completely unaware of such an event happening, suggesting the ponies speak with Mayor Sunny Skies. She gives the Mane Six lodgings for the night at the Hope Hollow hotel, which is far less luxurious than Rainbow's invitation letter advertised. The ponies also notice that Petunia Petals' body is very gray. Rainbow apologizes to her friends for how underwhelming their trip is turning out to be, but Twilight says the important thing is that they are all together.

The city of gray

Hope Hollow looks very... monochrome.

The next morning, the Mane Six walk into town and notice everyone and everything in Hope Hollow is mostly gray. As a result, the colorful ponies attract a lot of attention and strange looks. While looking for Mayor Sunny Skies, they encounter a pair of twin Pegasus foals who look at Rainbow Dash in awe before running away, and they notice a middle-aged unicorn couple and an elderly stallion acting unfriendly toward each other.

The ponies find Mayor Sunny Skies overseeing the repair of their hot air balloon, and he is overjoyed that Rainbow Dash accepted the invitation he sent. While repairpony Torque Wrench repairs the balloon and the rainbow sign that crashed into it, Sunny Skies offers to give the Mane Six a tour of Hope Hollow, dodging any questions related to its lack of color. As the mayor shows the ponies around town, they notice all the Rainbow Festival activities are underwhelming compared to how they were described in Rainbow's invitation.

Hope Hollow, the "end of the rainbow" it used to be.

When pressed about this, Sunny finally confesses that there is no Rainbow Festival. The Mane Six are shocked over being misled, with some of them wanting to leave immediately, but Fluttershy insists that they hear him out. Sunny explains through song that when his grandfather was the mayor, Hope Hollow was full of color, and the residents were all very friendly toward each other. To celebrate the town, Sunny's grandfather established the Rainbow Festival and invented a device called the Rainbow Generator to create an aurora of colors across the sky.

When Sunny became mayor and inherited the Generator, however, the townsponies slowly drifted apart. To fix this, Sunny made alterations to the Generator in order to generate a bigger rainbow aurora. Unfortunately, the magic in the Generator overloaded, causing the town's color to disappear. Since then, the mayor tried to get ponies interested in the Rainbow Festival again, but his efforts were in vain, and inviting Rainbow Dash was his last resort. Feeling sorry for the mayor and his poor town, the Mane Six offer to help bring color back to Hope Hollow.

Bringing the color back

As Rainbow Dash meets her biggest fans in Hope Hollow...

Twilight tries to undo the magic spell that drained Hope Hollow of its color, and Rainbow Dash tries bringing color back by performing a sonic rainboom, but neither method works. Just then, they encounter the twin foals from earlier, who try to do fancy flying maneuvers and crash into each other. The brother and sister twins—Pickle and Barley Barrel—are revealed to be Rainbow Dash's fan club. They ask Rainbow Dash to give them some flying lessons; Rainbow Dash agrees and decides if they show enough improvement, all three of them will put on a show together at the Rainbow Festival. As Pickle and Barley excitedly follow Rainbow, a single sail on a nearby windmill turns blue.

Applejack helps Torque Wrench repair the town's rainbow sign, commending her job on fixing the hot air balloon and showing respect for her profession as a repairpony. As they repair the sign together, a nearby bundle of wood turns brown. Meanwhile, Rarity meets a fellow fashion designer named Kerfuffle, who uses many of Rarity's designs as inspiration for her own but is too self-conscious about putting her original works on display. With Kerfuffle's keen eye for color in a town of gray, Rarity takes her on as an assistant designer for the Rainbow Festival. As Kerfuffle expresses her excitement at this opportunity, a nearby beret turns pink.

...Rarity meets HER biggest fan.

Twilight goes to the library inside the town hotel and, with Petunia Petals' assistance, does research on the magic that drained Hope Hollow of its color. Elsewhere, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy take on the duty of making food for the festival, but the local bakery is closed. They notice the unicorn couple from earlier—Mr. and Mrs. Hoofington—carrying an apricot pie and offer to make them the festival's official baking team.

Let the rainbow remind you

Fluttershy and Pinkie meets the Hoofingtons from Manehattan.

As Rainbow Dash coaches Pickle and Barley, instructing them to master the basics before moving on to more advanced maneuvers, a patch of grass turns green. Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy spend time with Mr. and Mrs. Hoofington. The couple uses their own apricots in their pies, but due to the lack of color, they are unable to tell when the apricots are ripe, usually resulting in pies that taste bad. Pinkie and Fluttershy encourage the couple to reach out to their neighbor Moody Root—the elderly stallion they were arguing with before—whose apricots are very ripe. As the Hoofingtons and Moody rekindle their friendship, some of Moody's apricots turn orange.

As Twilight struggles to find the exact magic that caused Hope Hollow's color to vanish, she discovers Sunny Skies in a secret room working on a speech. She also notices several color photos on the walls from before the town lost its color. When Petunia Petals enters the room, Sunny becomes flustered and quickly leaves to continue working on his speech. Petunia shows Twilight photos of the last Rainbow Festival, showing the town losing its color when the Rainbow Generator is activated. Despite Sunny blaming himself for the event, Petunia is certain that it was an accident. Petunia also shows Twilight the remains of the Rainbow Generator, and Twilight comes up with an idea.

The old Rainbow Generator.

As the town's rainbow sign is repaired and news about the Rainbow Festival starts to spread, more and more color starts to return. Twilight approaches Sunny Skies with the Rainbow Generator and theorizes that if they rebuild it and use it in conjunction with a reversal spell she found in the library, it should restore the town's color. Applejack recommends Torque Wrench for the job of rebuilding the Generator, and Torque accepts. Petunia offers to help Sunny Skies with his speech, but he nervously declines and leaves again.

The rainbow connection

Success!

A short while later, Torque Wrench finishes rebuilding the Rainbow Generator. As Applejack and Twilight commend and thank her for her help, Applejack notices some flowers on the windowsill regain their color. She tries to tell Twilight about this, but Twilight is more concerned with testing the Generator. When the Generator turns on and projects a rainbow, Twilight casts her reversal spell on the Generator, but nothing happens—the town is still colorless. Twilight, Petunia, and Torque believe they have failed and that the town's color is gone forever.

Just then, Pinkie and Fluttershy return with the Hoofingtons and Moody Root, who have worked together to bake treats for the Rainbow Festival. Rainbow Dash returns with Pickle and Barley, who have vastly improved their flying skills. Finally, Rarity returns with Kerfuffle, who has made numerous festival accessories for the ponies to wear, including a pair of rainbow wings for Twilight Sparkle.

There's something strange about these pictures.

When Twilight expresses guilt over failing to bring color back to Hope Hollow, Applejack shows her the flowers, revealing that color is returning to Hope Hollow on its own. As more and more color returns to the town, Twilight realizes the loss of color was caused by something else, and she races back to the library. Looking back at the photos of the last Rainbow Festival that Petunia showed her earlier, Twilight notices a discrepancy. Sunny Skies enters, having been working on his speech, and Twilight and Petunia take him into town to show him what has been happening.

Restoration of hope

The beauty of color returns.

As the ponies of Hope Hollow indulge in the Hoofingtons' baked treats and Kerfuffle's fashion designs, more color starts to return, even to the townsponies themselves. Sunny Skies is surprised by this, and Twilight and Petunia explain that he was never to blame for the town's loss of color. As revealed by the photos of the last Rainbow Festival—two of which were in the wrong order—the town started to lose its color before Sunny turned on the Rainbow Generator.

Twilight finally identifies the town's loss of color as a result of "hopeless magic"—the townsponies drifted apart and lost hope in one another, and the destruction of the Rainbow Generator pushed them over the edge, causing color to disappear. With the return of the Rainbow Festival, the town's hope—and its color—has started to come back. Mayor Sunny Skies addresses the townsponies and thanks Twilight and her friends for helping bring hope and friendship back to Hope Hollow. He activates the Rainbow Generator, and the sight of the rainbow aurora fully restores the town's color.

The Mane Six leave Hope Hollow with renewed and strengthened hope.

Petunia Petals congratulates Sunny on his speech, but he says that was not the speech he was working on. The speech Sunny was working on all day turns out to be a marriage proposal, and he asks Petunia to marry him, to which she happily says yes. Rainbow Dash, Pickle, and Barley put on their aerial performance, closing with a sonic rainboom, and the town comes together to sing Living in Color. At the end of the song, the Mane Six bid farewell to their new friends and leave in their repaired hot air balloon.

Merchandise

Rainbow Wings Twilight Sparkle, the Rainbow Tail Surprise Collection, and the Shimmering Friends Collection each feature on their packaging the same rainbow that My Little Pony: Road Trip Event Reader, My Little Pony Annual 2020, and My Little Pony: Essential Handbook: A Magical Guide for Everypony each show. The my little pony rainbow tail surprise Collection Pack is to be released in summer and/or fall 2019 as a tie-in with the special.

Quotes

For more quotes, see the episode's transcript.

Pinkie Pie: [singsongy] Road trip! [normal] Okay, not technically a road trip, because we're taking that. Uh-huh. Whoa!

Fluttershy: Um, why aren't we going anywhere?

Applejack: Hmm. The basket's too heavy.

Rainbow Dash: Rarity?

Rarity: How dare you! I brought the itsy-est valise!

Twilight Sparkle: Wow! That's the biggest rainbow I've ever seen.

Rarity: And we're headed right for it!

Rainbow Dash: Don't worry. We'll pass right through it. Rainbows aren't solid.

[thud]

Mane Six: [gasping]

Applejack: Tell that to the rainbow.

Twilight Sparkle: I don't think that's a rainbow. It's a rainbow billboard!

Fluttershy: Oh, no!

Twilight Sparkle: Hang on, everypony!

Fluttershy: Rainbow Dash, did your letter say where our hotel is?

Rainbow Dash: Uh... "The middle of town."

Twilight Sparkle: Hmm... Doesn't really help much when you don't know where the middle is.

Rarity: Uh, yes, please. Could you direct us to the Hope Hollow Luxury Resort?

Petunia Petals: [giggles] [beat] Oh, oh! You mean the hotel?

Mane Six: Mm-hmm.

Petunia Petals: That's easy. There's only one in town!

Applejack: Could you, uh, give us directions?

Petunia Petals: No need. You're there.

[doors open]

Petunia Petals: I mean here!

Rainbow Dash: I couldn't help noticing there are only three beds.

[thud]

Rainbow Dash: Okay, four.

Petunia Petals: Oh, there's a pop-out, too! [grunts] It kin be a little tricky.

[thud]

Petunia Petals: There she is, sleeps two.

Fluttershy: Why is everypony looking at us?

Applejack: Maybe they recognize Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow Dash: Or Princess Twilight, but probably me.

Fluttershy: We're very sorry about your rainbow billboard, Mr. Mayor. It was dark, and—

Mayor Sunny Skies: D'oooh, don't give it a second thought. That old thing needed repair anyway. I haven't used it since, uh, well, never mind. Uh, a-a-anyway, once your balloon's fixed up, Torque can take care of the billboard. Everypony, meet Torque Wrench, our town handypony. She offered ta repair yer balloon for ya.

Torque Wrench: He volunteered me.

Mayor Sunny Skies: She'll have it fixed in a jiffy.

Torque Wrench: If by "jiffy", ya mean, "this will take all day."

Applejack: I'm almost afraid to ask, but the brochure mentioned fishin'?

Mayor Sunny Skies: Fishin'? Oh, I'm not sure whacha mean?

Twilight Sparkle: [quoting brochure] "Our famous rainbow trout"?

Mayor Sunny Skies: Oh, yah, sure! Uh, well, yah, you don't fish fer 'im exactly, you just kinda, eh, talk to him. Eh, he's right over— uh... [sighs] That's funny, where'd our trout go?

Trout Pony: Oh, Mr. Mayor, uh, just, uh, taking my lunch now, okay? [slurp!]

Pinkie Pie: That's the saddest story song I've ever heard!

Rainbow Dash: Wait. So you're the fan club?

[doing!]

Barley Barrel: You've heard of us?

Pickle Barrel: Barley's the president.

Barley Barrel: And Pickle's the assistant president.

Rainbow Dash: Well, what do you know? The mayor was telling the truth about something!

Barley Barrel: Anyway, you're my brother's favorite Wonderbolt.

Pickle Barrel: And my sister's favorite Wonderbolt, too!

Barley Barrel: He knows all your best moves.

Pickle Barrel: So does she!

Barley Barrel: We practice all of 'em, every day!

Kerfuffle: [to Rarity] Thank yuh! [giggles] Those are Kerfuffle originals. I'm Kerfuffle, spelled like it sounds with a double "ff" fer the "fuff". [gasps] I should really stop talking now.

Twilight Sparkle: Mayor Sunny was right. You are something!

Petunia Petals: Did he really say that? [giggles] Oh, that silly unicorn. Did he say anythin' else?

Fluttershy: Your neighbors were just about to bake some pies. You know them, right? Mr. and Mrs. Hoofington, Mr. Moody Root.

Moody Root: Um, h-h-hello, uh.

Mr. Hoofington: Yes. Hello.

Mrs. Hoofington: Hello, Mr. Root.

Moody Root: [clears throat]

Fluttershy: But they're a little short on apricots.

Pinkie Pie: If only there was some apricots we can use... [clears throat, clears throat more irritably]

Mrs. Hoofington: Oh, yes, of course, we'd be happy to bake you a pie.

Mr. Hoofington: Two or... three pies even.

Moody Root: So ya mean if I give ya my apricots...

Pinkie Pie: [gasps] Oh, what a great idea!

Fluttershy: Then everypony can share.

Mayor Sunny Skies: [gasps] Oh! But colors... So you were able to reverse the generator?

Petunia Petals: The generator had nothin' ta do with it an' never did.

Mayor Sunny Skies: So none of it was my fault?

Petunia Petals: No, ya big doofus! How many times have I tried ta tell ya that? All those years, ya blamed yerself fer nuthin'.

Petunia Petals: That was a beautiful speech, Sunny.

Mayor Sunny Skies: What? Oh, uh, no, uh, that wasn't my speech.

Petunia Petals: Uh, but, uh, then what have you been writin' all day?

Mayor Sunny Skies: Well, uh, another speech. I mean, it's fer later, but... Oh, flapjacks. I guess now is as good a time as any. [sighs] Petunia, you've never given up on me or the town. You always had hope when we had none, and I can't imagine a day without you. You're the pony who brings color into my life. Petunia Petals, will you marry me?

Petunia Petals: Of course, ya silly goose!

Gallery

My Little Pony: Rainbow Roadtrip image gallery

Video

FULL MOVIE- Rainbow Roadtrip🌈 - My Little Pony- Friendship is Magic - 1 Hour SPECIAL

References

v • e Episodes, films, and animated shorts

Make Your Mark
Episode 1 Izzy Does It	Episode 2 Growing Pains	Episode 3 Portrait of a Princess	Episode 4 Ali-Conned
Episode 5 The Cutie Mark Mix-Up	Episode 6 The Traditional Unicorn Sleep-Over	Episode 7 Hoof Done It?	Episode 8 Have You Seen This Dragon?
Episode 9 Top Remodel	Episode 10 The Jinxie Games	Episode 11 Sunny Side Up	Episode 12 The Manesquerade Ball
Episode 13 A Little Horse	Episode 14 Missing the Mark	Episode 15 Cutie Blossom Bash	Episode 16 Family Trees Pt. 1
Episode 17 Family Trees Pt. 2	Episode 18 Father of the Bridlewood	Episode 19 Mane Smelody	Episode 20 Nightmare on Mane Street
Episode 21 The Isle of Scaly‎‎	Episode 22 Roots of All Evil Pt. 1‎	Episode 23 Roots of All Evil Pt. 2