News Tron coaster coming to the Magic Kingdom

Josh Hendy

Well-Known Member
Saw this and thought it would be fun to share here. Enjoy a ride via Mine Craft :) I am quite impressed with the person who did this. It must have taken a lot of time to do!



But would you want your son or daughter to marry him or her??? 😄😄😄

Two things jump out at me when I watched this plus a youtube POV of the real thing ...

1) it's going to be a lot better at night because of the balanced light levels.

2) Space Mountain might seem jarringly clunky and primitive in comparison ... still a great ride but I think they're going to have to close it and rebuild with new track, lights and sound. I hope they keep the Wild Mouse feel though and the gist of the "plot".
 

DDLand

Well-Known Member
They‘re both custom designs and Slinky Dog Dash also has rather limited theming.
I think you were the first person to share that SDD was a Mack coaster in the first place. Do you have any insight into why the gap is so large between Silver-Dollar City and Disney? Sometimes defense contractors will extract enormous sums from the government because they know government has huge budgets. Is Disney getting ripped off like the DoD? Or does Mack deliver both products at similar prices and Disney just manages to add tons of bloat?

Obviously, any physical entertainment company is going to be thrilled to work for Disney because of their scope and reputation. But do these companies also look at Disney as a sucker? Or is the industry just as confused by Disney’s ineptitude as anyone?

One day, you should write up an essay and delve into this topic. This issue is super interesting and super impactful. I still struggle to wrap my head around it...
 

TrainsOfDisney

Well-Known Member
I think you were the first person to share that SDD was a Mack coaster in the first place. Do you have any insight into why the gap is so large between Silver-Dollar City and Disney? Sometimes defense contractors will extract enormous sums from the government because they know government has huge budgets. Is Disney getting ripped off like the DoD? Or does Mack deliver both products at similar prices and Disney just manages to add tons of bloat?

Obviously, any physical entertainment company is going to be thrilled to work for Disney because of their scope and reputation. But do these companies also look at Disney as a sucker? Or is the industry just as confused by Disney’s ineptitude as anyone?

One day, you should write up an essay and delve into this topic. This issue is super interesting and super impactful. I still struggle to wrap my head around it...

Herschends other park, Dollywood built the fire chaser express coaster for $15 million. It has just as much theming as slinky dog, complete with real antique gas pumps and firefighting equipment... 2 launches, switches for forward / backward movement, and multiple pyro and Cryo effects.

To be fair, it does 750 riders per hour vs. 900+ for slinky dog but still.
 

corran horn

Well-Known Member
Just thought it was worth mentioning that there's concrete in place that's different from Shanghai. For example, the poles in the center of the loop are new, suggesting they changed the walkways at to jive with the crowd flow at WDW. It's not surprising, but it's good to see.

Nice call. Also shows the danger of using a drop-in of Shanghai to assume sight-lines at WDW. (which I have done myself)

I figure $100M of the cost is them tunneling under the TRON trusses to make a path for the train, right? :p
 

Josh Hendy

Well-Known Member
I figure $100M of the cost is them tunneling under the TRON trusses to make a path for the train, right?
Imagine if the smoke and steam from the train gets swirling around under the TRON awning (TRAWNing). That could be unpleasant. How is it vented from the other tunnels? (PotC and Splash)?
 

MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
Nice call. Also shows the danger of using a drop-in of Shanghai to assume sight-lines at WDW. (which I have done myself)

The footprint of TRON in MK, according to the water management blueprints, is exactly the same as Shanghai. And looking at what's being built and where it is, it is comporting with those blueprints.

So... we do know what the sightlines will be minus any attempt to add trees.
 

corran horn

Well-Known Member
Imagine if the smoke and steam from the train gets swirling around under the TRON awning (TRAWNing). That could be unpleasant. How is it vented from the other tunnels? (PotC and Splash)?

It stained the WEDway track for years and, to be honest, they didn't really spend a lot of time cleaning it.
 

BubbaisSleep

Well-Known Member
Imagine if the smoke and steam from the train gets swirling around under the TRON awning (TRAWNing). That could be unpleasant. How is it vented from the other tunnels? (PotC and Splash)?
I'm sure it's been figured out as we've been lucky to have plenty of tunnels over at Disneyland. I'm sure they just woke release the steam during the Tron portion of the train track.
 

TrainsOfDisney

Well-Known Member
I'm sure it's been figured out as we've been lucky to have plenty of tunnels over at Disneyland. I'm sure they just woke release the steam during the Tron portion of the train track.

It doesn’t work like that. There is always a fire in the firebox so there will always be exhaust. And actually the locomotives are working the hardest between fantasyland and Main Street.
 

BubbaisSleep

Well-Known Member
It doesn’t work like that. There is always a fire in the firebox so there will always be exhaust. And actually the locomotives are working the hardest between fantasyland and Main Street.
I figured as I don't know much about trains but I know enough to know they've had this problem handled at Disneyland for decades. Either way, not really a problem.
 

begood524

Well-Known Member
The newest piece of concept art (from D23 this year) has what looks like a tunnel for the railroad all the way through the canopy
 

lazyboy97o

Well-Known Member
I think you were the first person to share that SDD was a Mack coaster in the first place. Do you have any insight into why the gap is so large between Silver-Dollar City and Disney? Sometimes defense contractors will extract enormous sums from the government because they know government has huge budgets. Is Disney getting ripped off like the DoD? Or does Mack deliver both products at similar prices and Disney just manages to add tons of bloat?

Obviously, any physical entertainment company is going to be thrilled to work for Disney because of their scope and reputation. But do these companies also look at Disney as a sucker? Or is the industry just as confused by Disney’s ineptitude as anyone?

One day, you should write up an essay and delve into this topic. This issue is super interesting and super impactful. I still struggle to wrap my head around it...
Steel roller coasters are typically sold ex-works, the parts will be waiting for you at the factory and it is your responsibility to pick them up, get them to your park and assemble them into a coaster. The costs are fairly well known and easier to compare. It makes sense that Disney would have a higher base cost for a very similar roller coaster due to their demanding operating schedule and even location, but they would be easily aware of a large difference and would be able to go elsewhere for a better price.

In terms of vendors, it is actually the opposite when it comes to Disney and Universal. So many want the work that they will struggle to make money because of the prestige of being a Disney or Universal vendor, the scale of the work and promises of more work. @whylightbulb had a good post years ago discussing how Universal used to be particularly adept at squeezing free and discounted work from vendors who used to be responsible for more of the design of the product.

The big problem is the number of people involved and the inability to make decisions. This is not something that is easy to fix because so many stakeholders often became involved in the first place for a reason. There are plenty of stories from across the industry of designs that had to be reworked because they just didn’t work with the realities of operations but could have been avoided if the operating team had been consulted. Of course in a large organization you eventually start to get layers who all want to stay involved. A new store in a land may have someone from that land’s retail team who is directly involved, but he may have a boss who gets a say, and there is probably a person/team at the park level who gets a say, and a person/team at the resort level who gets a say and maybe even someone at the global level who gets a say. That’s a lot of people giving input and as you move up the ladder there is an inverse correlation between degree of involvement and weight of input. Even worse, in too many cases these people further up don’t know how to read design documents so you get Disney building large mock-ups like entire hotel rooms and that is the first time some executives are seeing the design and they can and will reject all of the work that went into it. That means starting over but the project completion date doesn’t change. In The Imagineering Story there is a clip of Iger asking for more trees in Cars Land. I know I and some others laughed at this being highlighted as Iger’s big creative contribution, but depending on when in the process it occurs even something as simple as adding trees can have a ripple effect impacting things like below ground utility locations. Early in the thread I have a post going into the details of all of the potential impacts of moving a toilet. The later in the design process, the bigger the potential ripple of seemingly innocuous changes. It’s not just small things though. Look at Ratatouille where a whole building was moved and a dining venue added after permit drawings were done, submitted and approved. While the actual restroom building itself may not have changed too much, there is still a lot of surrounding work that goes into placing a building. On top of the lost work in the change, that new building had to be rushed through development so that it opening as closely as possible with everything else. Each little change has a cost and Disney will make big changes with a big cost.

Then on the design side increasing specialization increases the number of designers involved. Even in areas where Disney is relying more on vendors, there are design managers supervising their work who are themselves specialists. Disney is also a lot more controlling and involved in outsourced work, so you need more labor to do that greater level of specific and detailed work. This used to be where Universal Creative had a time and cost advantage. They outsourced a lot of work and entrusted their vendors to do a lot of design; they had a small team that more managed than designed. Universal Creative has exploded in size in many of the same ways, the days of an entire attraction being outsourced are over. They could not do another Transformers: The Ride - 3D which required repeating mistakes and cutting out most of the layers of management.

This sort of thing happens to organizations as they grow. It makes sense in a lot of ways but it becomes problematic. For Disney, years of stagnating capacity have become a problem but they are simply incapable of adding the sort of small scale attractions that would really help by offering something to do without inducing more demand. A $100 million C-Ticket just doesn’t make sense. Disney compounds the problem by insisting on leadership without experience. Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: Breakout! is the direct result of Chapek trying to something done fast and cheap. Even then, he didn’t really repeat the strategy or make drastic changes to Walt Disney Imagineering. Same with Staggs before him. It makes sense though, they wouldn’t know who to cut out of the increasingly complicated process of developing world class attractions. It would take a level of knowledge, responsibility and ownership that could easily go sideways and sink a career.
 
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Kman

Well-Known Member
you all keep saying that but the cost me building restaurants has gone up 30-35 percent in 15 years.

so I would assume they would have the same issues.
So has their hotel rates and park fees and that's being kind...still no excuse
 

TrainsOfDisney

Well-Known Member
I figured as I don't know much about trains but I know enough to know they've had this problem handled at Disneyland for decades. Either way, not really a problem.

It shouldn’t be a problem, no. But neither should a fog effect on a 100M coaster. Hopefully they’ve taken everything into account in the design.
 

corran horn

Well-Known Member
I saw somewhere where Vortex at King's Island was closed down at the end of last year not because it wasn't a draw but because it had ended its expected 25-30 year lifespan. It made me wonder if something like TRON (or Slinky) is made of sterner stuff. They've got to have their lifetimes well past 25 years I figure. (Space Mountain is at least fully covered)
 

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