MiceChat has a DLR update story that includes a history of the flying Tires for those interested:
Tired of Being Tired
The first in these announcements, the closure of Luigi’s Flying Tires, came as no surprise to our regular readers. Although originally the closure of this unsuccessful ride was going to be marketed as part of “new magic” coming for the 60th. Wisely, TDA decided to divorce themselves from that painfully false 60th tie-in, and instead just pretend as if the tires are going away because park visitors would rather be on another spinning car ride than a flying tire.
The reality is that Luigi’s Flying Tires was a concept doomed from the start. Any Disney fan knows that the ride was shepherded into reality by John Lasseter, a huge Disneyland fan, who wanted to recreate Tomorrowland’s famed Flying Saucers from the 1960’s. The bloated and slower version of the ride that showed up in Cars Land wasn’t much like the smaller and nimbler Flying Saucers, and the ride experience at Luigi’s left much to be desired.
When Bob Iger and Tom Staggs took their first test ride of the completed Flying Tires attraction in March, 2012, an underwhelmed Bob exited his tire and marched over to the Imagineers and told them they needed to make the tires go faster and to turn up the music because he could barely hear it. The sheepish Imagineers had to break the news to Bob was that there was no way to make anything go faster, and he couldn’t hear the music because none was playing and the ride wasn’t planned to have music past the queue. After that rather disastrous executive review, less than 90 days before Cars Land was to open, an emergency plan was put in place to record eight new Italian-themed songs for the attraction and the Imagineers began brainstorming how to make the ponderous ride experience livelier. The Imagineers also added an extra 45 seconds of ride time, bumping it from its original 90 second ride length to the current 2:15 minutes, the thought being riders needed more opportunity to figure out how to get the vehicles to move.
The other result of that brainstorming was the infamous addition of dozens of huge, Italian-flag beach balls after John Lasseter remembered the old footage of the Flying Saucers when a savvy marketing guy dumped a bunch of beach balls onto the attraction for the TV cameras. TDA ordered thousands of custom-made Italian flag beach balls, and ride operators were staffed backstage every day blowing up new beach balls with air nozzles to keep the fleet of balls clean and freshly plumped. The result of all this new music and beach balls was a thematic overlay installed before the ride even opened, as the Imagineers worked with Pixar consultants to create the “Festival of the Flying Tires”, complete with a fabricated backstory about a musical festival Luigi’s family used to celebrate in the old country. Of course no one who goes on the ride picks up on that contrived backstory, but at least it made sense in panicky Glendale brainstorming sessions in the spring of 2012.
These last minute additions cost over a million dollars via Imagineering’s bloated budget processes, but that was chump change after the massive underground facility and custom-built ride system zoomed the Luigi’s attraction budget to just shy of 100 Million dollars. By comparison, Radiator Springs Racers as the epic E Ticket that ranks consistently in Anaheim’s Top 3 rides, cost just over 300 Million dollars.
But what works in an Imagineering brainstorming session often turns disastrous during daily theme park operation, with fewer and fewer Imagineers having any real theme park operating experience. And that was what happened to the beach balls, as their addition caused quite a few minor injuries, plus a daily parade at DCA’s Guest Relations from angry riders with injured egos after being smacked upside the head by a beach ball. More importantly, within 60 days of Cars Land’s opening there were several lawsuits regarding injuries allegedly related to the beach balls that have yet to be settled in or out of court. The beach balls were pulled by the end of the first summer, and Disney’s legal team insists that no one even mention that beach balls ever existed on that ride until the pending lawsuits are settled.
With the beach balls gone by August of 2012, Luigi’s Flying Tires settled in to a mellow pace for the last two and a half years of 600 underwhelmed riders per hour on a ride system that’s proven to be incredibly reliable, if not terribly entertaining. Break downs at Luigi’s have been very rare, making it the most reliable attraction in Anaheim month after month, second only to the human-powered canoes in Critter Country.
But the main reason the ride will close for good is the consistent first aid runs caused by people stumbling as they exit their tire at the end of the ride, once they forget they can’t step on the inflated tire like a step. It’s those pesky and non-stop small injuries, mostly just twisted ankles and skinned knees, which have convinced Disney’s legal department that the ride is an injury factory and a major lawsuit just waiting to happen. In 2013 WDI mocked up a new tire vehicle that had a retractable sidewall allowing for an easier step, but it was a nonstarter with the legal team. Couple the constant injuries with a series of customer research surveys in 2012 and 2013 that showed Luigi’s Flying Tires was one of the least liked attractions at the entire Resort, and the writing was on the wall, even if it did cost almost a hundred million to install.
In its place a new ride will be built, literally on the grave of the old ride system and its huge underground complex of giant fans, vaults, and air chambers. The new ride, with the working title “Luigi’s Festival of the Dance”, will be a WiFi controlled trackless car ride where jaunty Italian convertibles (but not Fiats, as Disney still tries to woo GM into new park sponsorships) spin and zip around the floor in a series of choreographed dance routines. This will be the third “dancing vehicle” spinner ride at DCA, after Francis Lady Bug Boogie and Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree. WDI will be working hard to make the ride experience notably different with Anaheim’s debut of a trackless vehicle system similar to those already in use in Hong Kong and Paris. It should be interesting to see if they succeed.
http://micechat.com/94360-disneyland-diamonds/
