Space Mountain Rehab - (10/28/09) The latest whispers from the Ultidoors is that Disney fans may be highly disappointed when Space Mountain reopens next month. As we had been hearing for some time now, the scope of the once massive refurbishment project had been scaled back from a proposed total ride replacement, that would have taken 12-16 months, to a more modest technical refurbishment that could be accomplished in half the time. While budget cuts are always a factor in any project like this, the real killer was the refusal of WDW Management to allow for Space Mountain to be closed for the winter holidays. I’ve been baffled for years as to why they hold onto the short winter holiday season as some kind of golden goose that they are afraid or unwilling to close any major attraction during. Meanwhile they are more than willing to disappoint the millions of guests over the busy 3 month long summer season, rather than close anything during the 2 week winter holiday period. Go Figure...
Anyway… this preference, mixed with the recession and falling attendance figures, was enough to turn what was once proposed as totally rebuilt version of Space Mountain into a project where most guests wont even notice the majority of the improvements at all. As we’ve seen from the construction pictures, the track is still pretty much the same old system that has been there since the ‘70’s. Old track sections have been modified here and there, or replaced where needed to take care of the “problem spots” where maintenance has been welding and repairing the stress cracks for years. But once the total track replacement concept was thrown out the window, the on-board audio system went with it.
I’ve been told that the ride system itself is getting a new state of the art computer control system that is supposed to allow for the Mountain crew to get the ride restarted more quickly than ever from any E-Stops. Previously, the procedure to recover from an E-Stop was to send CMs out onto the track to release each stopped car one at a time, and only releasing the next car on the line once the previous one had reached the unload station. This was a very time consuming process that could take anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes to accomplish, so a new more automated system will increase the recovery time by quite a bit.
The inside of the dome will also have a number of new and improved special effects added, which will take advantage of the new “darker” interior of the Mountain, thanks to the newly enclosed loading stations that have been roofed over. While the lift hill may stay looking pretty much the same as it has for decades, the final “Re-Entry” tunnel effect is supposed to be upgraded, along with the addition of a camera system to take your picture. No word on if they are finally going to enclose or do something to that odd open section of track between the Re-Entry tunnel and the unload station.
Speaking of the stations, I’ve been told that we can expect to see station gates added to the loading stations as well. Unfortunately that is about all of the improvements you can expect to see from the ride experience itself… station gates and hopefully a few new special effects. I’ve been told that the rest of the noticeable improvements will be entirely spent on the ride queue itself. The good news is that all new cutting edge “interactive” elements will be added to the queue experience, taking what they’ve learned from the interactive games added to the Soarin’ queue. I’ve also been told that the plan is to alter the queue enough so that the Standby and FastPass riders don’t have to stare at each other for the entire queue into the mountain as well, which is good news as well, since hopefully this means Disney will start loading the entire queue once again with Stand-By riders instead of leaving them to stand out into the sun for so long before going inside. Otherwise, that’s about everything I’ve heard about so far about this refurbishment, so take it for what you will. Personally, while I’m always up for some good upgrades to an attraction, I’m a bit let down since the top #1 most requested feature everyone has been asking for to be added to the ride was the on-board audio system and we saw just how quickly that aspect was cut while keeping in things like adding a rider photo camera system.
