EPCOT Test Track to be reimagined

[Professortango1]

Fit what theme? it wasn't futuristic at all

Who says Epcot has to be futuristic? Epcot has pavilions devoted to certain ideas. This is the transportation pavilion and it featured an attraction centered around how car safety is tested in a modern age. It was themed to a testing facility.

 

[Andrew C]

i guess the look of a soulless ugly warehouse was our actual future, but not the optimistic one that Epcot usually promises.

dot-com bubble...9/11...our frutiger aero "future" started to take shape. It was a time.

 

[AidenRodriguez731]

dot-com bubble...9/11...our frutiger aero "future" started to take shape. It was a time.

Uh if I’m not mistaken, 9/11 happened 2 years after the attraction opening (3 after soft opening) and the dot com bubble burst a year or so after? Right?

It didn’t influence the attraction but certainly influenced how depressing this future is now

 

[ChrisFL]

Who says Epcot has to be futuristic? Epcot has pavilions devoted to certain ideas. This is the transportation pavilion and it featured an attraction centered around how car safety is tested in a modern age. It was themed to a testing facility.

Well for one thing it was located in "Future World"

 

[Tha Realest]

I don't understand..... JK

Oh Boy!!!!! you skipped a couple of good decades and came back into the cr@ppiest time!!!

This actually makes me sad.

Maybe? College/grad school/marriage/having kids pushed WDW down the priority list. At least I got in the 90’s and all it’s glory (Epcot wasn’t a complete embarrassment, PI was new and so were a bunch of resort hotels)

 

[disney fan 13]

I haven't ridden nor viewed any footage of 3.0, but 1.0 was a lot better than 2.0. The functionality of the create a car function wasn't great, and if the line was short enough you'd just walk right past it. As others have mentioned, the problem with the retrofits is that the track layout is very specific to the “story” of 1.0 such that 2.0 felt more like an overlay then anything. At some point in one of these overlays they should just enclose the loop imo.

 

[Figments Friend]

I really liked the attraction that came before Test Track

View attachment 907029

Me too.

World of Motion was the best of all.

Awesome, detailed, and entertaining ride through Attraction.
Catching theme song.
Amazing and beautiful ‘CenterCore’.
The still legendary TransCenter.
And of course….
Bird and Robot!

-

 

[Biff215]

Fit what theme? it wasn't futuristic at all

The original ride’s theme: a vehicle testing center. You felt it from the time you walked in the queue to the moment you stepped off the ride.

 

[AidenRodriguez731]

Who says Epcot has to be futuristic? Epcot has pavilions devoted to certain ideas. This is the transportation pavilion and it featured an attraction centered around how car safety is tested in a modern age. It was themed to a testing facility.

Perhaps that it was the Experiment Prototype Community of TOMORROW with a ride in FUTURE World. I can imagine where some confusion may come up

 

[trainplane3]

Still think 1 was the best but 3 beats out 2 by a margin.

Though the post show of 3 is genuinely bad.

 

[AidenRodriguez731]

Still think 1 was the best but 3 beats out 2 by a margin.

Though the post show of 3 is genuinely bad.

Agreed on Post Show of 3, its definitely the worst out of the 3 from what I know.

 

[Biff215]

Still think 1 was the best but 3 beats out 2 by a margin.

Though the post show of 3 is genuinely bad.

And let’s not forget, no preshow also. TT 1.0 queue and preshow really helped tell the story. Now there’s practically nothing. Very obvious that the funding fell short there and the postshow.

 

[Professortango1]

Perhaps that it was the Experiment Prototype Community of TOMORROW with a ride in FUTURE World. I can imagine where some confusion may come up

When did E.P.C.O.T. Center become Epcot? Started in 1994 and by 1996 it was fully rebranded. Test Track would open in 1999.

Soarin, Living with the Land, Journey to Imagination, Universe of Energy, Food Rocks....none of these felt/feel futuristic but all feel VERY Epcot.

Epcot, as a theme park, has never been a prototype community of tomorrow. It has always been a world's showcase with half of the park focused on pavillions devoted to teaching us about the world culturally and the other half devoted to teaching us about the world scientifically.

Test Track 1.0 was a ride which taught people about all the science and testing which goes into modern car design. The new one teaches us about smart roads and car sensor systems and then....oh, I guess that's all it really teaches and the rest of the ride is filler until the speed portion around an unthemed parking lot. But the set design for the fake garages is clean. Between this and the HM gift shop at Disneyland, Disney is entering their She-Shed era of design.

 

[Raineman]

I never rode 1.0, but wasn't the purpose of the theming to mimic an actual vehicle test facility? From what I've seen in POV videos, it seems like it did the job in that regard. You can argue whether that kind of theme fit in Future World, but you can't argue with the execution as related to the theme of the attraction. Actual vehicle testing facilities have that industrial/warehouse/garage/racetrack setup and vibe that TT 1.0 had.

 

[Ayla]

I never rode 1.0, but wasn't the purpose of the theming to mimic an actual vehicle test facility? From what I've seen in POV videos, it seems like it did the job in that regard. You can argue whether that kind of theme fit in Future World, but you can't argue with the execution as related to the theme of the attraction. Actual vehicle testing facilities have that industrial/warehouse/garage/racetrack setup and vibe that TT 1.0 had.

Yes. It was probably some of the best theming WDI has ever done.

 

[DisneyDodo]

This is the same debate that always came up regarding DinoRama. One one hand, Disney recreated a setting that is very true to the thing it’s based on. On the other hand, that thing is kind of ugly and uninspiring, and so the replica is too.

Painstaking accuracy is only valuable insofar as the location they are replicating is one that people are clamoring to go to. Hogsmeade at IOA really feels like you have been thrown into the middle of a Harry Potter film, which is so effective because that is a dream come true for many Potterheads. OTOH people who spend thousands of dollars to visit the world’s most preeminent theme park resort don’t want to be transported to a crappy carnival in a parking lot. Yes, DinoRama really felt like the thing it was supposed to be (even down to the overpriced rigged carnival games). That’s precisely why I hated it! Imagine asking someone how their Disney trip was, only for them to respond “It was incredible! I really felt like I was at a dingy, run-down amusement park!”

This is similar to what they did with SWGE, except instead of location, it was the timeline they adhered to as gospel. As evidenced by the changes coming to Disneyland’s version, guests are happy to have a land that deviates from the chronology of the source material if it allows them to see the things they want to see.

Disney could build an attraction called “DMV” where you walk through a building themed to a DMV. They could deploy a team of grumpy cast members (and not in the fun Whispering Canyon kind of way), artificially increase wait times so you always wait at least 2 hours, and make you fill out a bunch of forms. And some people would defend it as one of WDI’s great masterpieces because it really captures the ambiance of a DMV!

To be clear, I never rode TT 1.0 and I’m not saying it was a bad overall attraction. I’m just suggesting that maybe instead of accurately recreating a warehouse, they could have leveraged some artistic license to conjure up a cooler, more engaging, “futuristic” version of a testing facility and riders would have enjoyed it even more!

 

[AidenRodriguez731]

When did E.P.C.O.T. Center become Epcot? Started in 1994 and by 1996 it was fully rebranded. Test Track would open in 1999.

Soarin, Living with the Land, Journey to Imagination, Universe of Energy, Food Rocks....none of these felt/feel futuristic but all feel VERY Epcot.

Epcot, as a theme park, has never been a prototype community of tomorrow. It has always been a world's showcase with half of the park focused on pavillions devoted to teaching us about the world culturally and the other half devoted to teaching us about the world scientifically.

Test Track 1.0 was a ride which taught people about all the science and testing which goes into modern car design. The new one teaches us about smart roads and car sensor systems and then....oh, I guess that's all it really teaches and the rest of the ride is filler until the speed portion around an unthemed parking lot. But the set design for the fake garages is clean. Between this and the HM gift shop at Disneyland, Disney is entering their She-Shed era of design.

Hey I mean you said it, none of those attractions truthfully fit in a "Future World", that was a bad name for the land. World Nature, Discovery, and Celebration are far more accurate to what is actually depicted among them. But the fact is it was in future world. Notice how all of those attractions are gone or have been renamed into a more fitting area.

Now I will say things like Living with the Land imo should be let slide because its still actively talking about our future atleast.

TT 1.0 was also just a very ugly attraction. It's supposed to be ugly but its not optimistic, the joke was you're being sent to die. Sorry but eh, it was bold but ugly and crude imo. I'm glad we got 3.0 and hoping the ride continues to update with the times.

 

[StarWarsGirl]

To be clear, I never rode TT 1.0

You missed out

 

[StarWarsGirl]

Disney could build an attraction called “DMV” where you walk through a building themed to a DMV. They could deploy a team of grumpy cast members

They'd need to be dressed up as sloths, though...

 

[Professortango1]

Hey I mean you said it, none of those attractions truthfully fit in a "Future World", that was a bad name for the land. World Nature, Discovery, and Celebration are far more accurate to what is actually depicted among them. But the fact is it was in future world. Notice how all of those attractions are gone or have been renamed into a more fitting area.

Now I will say things like Living with the Land imo should be let slide because its still actively talking about our future atleast.

TT 1.0 was also just a very ugly attraction. It's supposed to be ugly but its not optimistic, the joke was you're being sent to die. Sorry but eh, it was bold but ugly and crude imo. I'm glad we got 3.0 and hoping the ride continues to update with the times.

TT 1.0 felt consistent and fun. TT 3.0 has some pretty sets of garages and a womp womp finale as you race from the city of tomorrow to an ugly parking lot. Which wasn't a tonal shift originally, as the whole thing was a testing facility.

I'll take interesting, consistent, and purposeful over lifeless, aimless, and patchworked every time, regardless of how pretty those sheds look.

What tests are on this Test Track? it's a Franken-Attraction where they changed what the parts are, but haven't changed them into anything that tells a new story. Why do we learn about redesigning our car and why is that between the sensor technology display and the discount version of RSR's opening shoved in the middle of the ride? I can tell you why the ABS Break test went into the climate test and then escalated into the racheting up with the handling test which led to a jump scare near miss and reminded us of the final test which has been built up since the start. If they wanted to ditch the reasons and storytelling of the original, they should have taken the time and effort to change the ride's anatomy.

Modern Disney cleary thinks that jangling keys is easier and just as effective as actually writing something with structure and form