I’ll be honest… this redo didn’t exactly cut it for me. I can definitley see there was an effort to get a bit of inspiration from World of Motion in (like a more optimistic tone, the Fun to Be Free song, & the new futuristic finale) but that ride’s qualities are honestly barely noticeable to me in this, personally, I feel it’s currently too focused on the here & now, which is going to become quickly outdated and need to be updated once again soon. It lacks the same coherency the previous iterations of Test Track and even the World of Motion had.
The hope I had for this was they’d have followed a similar formula to how Cars Grand Prix at DCA was executed in regards to detail put into the show scenes, but imagine those scenes full of similar or even recreations of the very same scenes we remember from World of Motion but enhanced tastefully w new tech & spfx. To me it would’ve made alot more sense to have both the Queue and the earlier dark rides scenes show more of the history of transportation. Also, the narration worked in World of Motion so well because it was done ironically. It’s dead-pan delivery was funny because the scenes themselves were humorous and weren’t that serious. They still demonstrated what was being described and fit thematically, but again, they were funny. That’s particularly what made it stand out from Spaceship Earth and how that handled the history of communication. Perhaps it’d move a bit slower before the speed finale, sure but it’d ultimately make that finale worth it in the end. Infact, the projection scene before the testing of the vehicle is very cool and I like how that feels like a genuine, tasteful callback to the World of Motion finale scene, but more tied into vehicle design, which would make sense for this ride. With that though, the post show would’ve made a lot more sense then, as it would’ve shown that the sponsor’s cars was the next step, the best of transportation, just as it did during the World of Motion days and I feel like some truly fun & immersive activities in there also would be fun besides just seeing new cars. Imagine had they put the vehicle creation activity there, it’d sync to your magic band and thus would be the way your vehicle designs would be tested then scored in ththe ride, maybe even shown/integrated in the projection section, getting ready to go through the test track til the ride ends and you see how well it scored after. It’d be moreso a bonus to the ride rather than being a requirement.
‘Or’ another proposal (IMO the best one) would be to follow a similar philosophy as the top but to redesign and add more levels to the attraction building to accommodate more dark ride space that’d create a longer, more fulfilling ride (similar to what Journey Into Imagination had originally been planned to have, though ultimately the finalized plan it received in ‘83 benefited that specific pavilion better). Anyway, if you did that, you could recreate the classic World of Motion scenes (the song/original soundtrack intact), show scenes enhanced w new tech & spfx, then get into some history of how car design evolved in those eras, still funny w a similar style narration (maybe Corey Burton could do the second half?) . Perhaps bringing back the crash dummies from the original Test Track, the other more Tron inspired as 2.0 was, on the other sides of the show rooms, seeing how those faired in a funny manner, then the futuristic projection & the finale scenes I mentioned, we get to test our own vehicle design, will we fair better with our own innovative designs? Thankfully we do, but different scores are displayed at the end for each guest, depending on their unique designs, and it ends with exiting into the post show, of course, as I described above. Maybe the new attraction name could be called ‘The World of Motion: Test Tracktions’ or Test Tracktions : The World of Motion
