News Tron coaster coming to the Magic Kingdom

[Giss Neric]

Exactly. The Magic Kingdom is - whether justified or not - viewed as WDW's flagship/representative park. If Disney wants to show the world that it's still the "crème de la crème" of the theme park world, their first priority should be a RotR-level "E+ ticket" at The Magic Kingdom.



I really hope you're correct about this. Unfortunately, @marni1971 doesn't seem quite so optimistic. And we've heard surprisingly little in terms of judgments about the ride experience from people like @Magic Feather. My fingers are crossed, but my expectations are... moderate.

Wait, so lower our expectations about Cosmic Rewind? Will the Jurassic World coaster be better? I'm kinda sold about the backwards launch and the spinning plus it one of the longest indoor coasters, what is it that it won't be that good according to insiders?

 

[larryz]

FP+ has already been monetized.

In order to get FP+ at 60 days, you need to have a reservation at a Disney or Disney-partnered hotel, which has a baked in price increase for that perk.

Furthermore, you can get FP+ at 90 days by paying an even greater baked-in price increase for a club level room plus a fee for each FP+.

Overnight parking at the hotels used to be "baked in" as well. They didn't seem to flinch when they started charging up to $25 per night for it.

 

[larryz]

How it will look completed.

We know what it will look like...

Tron looks like a D ticket to me (like Ratatouille, actually).

More like a DDDDD ticket...

 

[MisterPenguin]

Exactly. The Magic Kingdom is - whether justified or not - viewed as WDW's flagship/representative park. If Disney wants to show the world that it's still the "crème de la crème" of the theme park world, their first priority should be a RotR-level "E+ ticket" at The Magic Kingdom.

I'd argue that a new E+ attraction is exactly what MK *doesn't* need *at this time*.

MK is overcrowded. It regularly gets more people than what the park's capacity is designed for. That's why there are so many long lines, even for lower tiered attractions.

A big E+ attraction will draw even more people into the park than such an attraction can handle, making the overcrowding even more pronounced.

It is the general wisdom that most of the WDW parks need more C and D rides. So TRON fits the bill of a D ride (the canopy is at an E level, but the box is a B).

This is the same situation for Ratatouille, which at the time it was made for Paris, was E level, but now that trackless is getting rather common, makes it more of a D.

Cosmic Rewind is the new E Ticket ride, but not because of thrills. In the new "more family friendly" parks, we're not going to get new 'thrill rides' (at least for the next decade).

 

[EricsBiscuit]

We know what it will look like...

Not from inside the park with the dome thing completed.

 

[Purduevian]

FP+ is a major ADVANTAGE?

lol

FP+ can be a major advantage for groups in they use the system to it's potential. I agree that this actually hurts the majority of park guests, but it 100% can be an advantage. During july 4th week (busy week) last year I was able to do the following in 1 day at MK.
FP+: Splash, BTMRR, HM, Pan, 7D, Meet Rapunzel/Tiana, LM, Meet Ariel, Dumbo, Teacups, Pooh (x2), Buzz (x2), Meet Tink, Meet Mickey and Minnie.
Along with non-FP activities: Sit down lunch, FoF Parade, Small World, Meet pluto and Daisy, Meet Donald and Goofy, Pirates, Aladdin, Jungle Cruise, COP, and HEA

IF FP+ was not around that day, there is no way I would have done that many things. Sure my Small world wait probably would have been shorter, but that was a 20 minute wait (longest I waited in line all day). I even had another FP for Pirates after the fireworks, but we decided to leave.

Loosing FP+ will be a huge bummer to me and honestly may make me consider alternative vacations. I really do view it as a major advantage after I was able to do that in MK and very similar success in the other 3 parks.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Of course, there can be no reinstatement of FP+ if FP's queue space continues to be needed for COVID distanced queues.

 

[rle4lunch]

The whole My Disney Experience web and apps cloudification of electronic info and reservations including FastPass+. Supposedly a $2B price tag for it (think of the infrastructure needed to have almost every ride in every park have FP tapstiles and a separate FP queue).

On Disney's end, they believed FP+ would move people around enough to give guests a chance to ride the big E-Ticket rides without waiting in several 2 hour queues, and thus solve their overcrowding problem.

The real problem, however, was the unending increase in guests year after year which surpassed MK's ability to give everyone a good experience. And so, FP+ didn't accomplish what Disney hoped for, and so Disney tried to find other ways to deal with overcrowding, like raising prices and discounting off-season, and making the other parks more attractive with more attractions.

Meanwhile, FP+ is being blamed for over crowding rather than crowds being over capacity. Which, in a way, it is in that it stalled Disney's opportunity to deal with the real reason of overcrowding, however, once you have too many people in the park, FP+ isn't the cause of long lines... too many people are.

Anyhoo... personally, with the ability to manage hotels, restaurants, FP, mobile ordering, maps, info, etc... I think Next Gen is great despite it not accomplishing what Disney wanted.

Disney still has an over capacity problem in MK still, tho (outside of a pandemic)...

I think they could control overcrowding by simply putting a lower number capacity cap on the parks per day. Instead, they built more and more on site resorts, shoving more and more people thru the gates (I'm sure someone knows what fire code capacity is on the parks) so that you could barely move.

Throw FP+ into the mix in where you're handcuffed to one park for 8 hours, forced to mill about smartly thru their shops and eateries for 2-3 hours in between your ride windows. It was a massive fail. They could've taken that 2 billion dollars and built 6 new E rides (2 per park), all on opposite sides of the parks (to spread crowd flow) and be done with it.

Slowly add a version of MaxPass to each park for that so-called missing revenue stream that they're supposed to be getting from merch sales to offset their "losses"...

 

[CastAStone]

Of course, there can be no reinstatement of FP+ if FP's queue space continues to be needed for COVID distanced queues.

Have the knitted the Standby and FP queues together? I haven't been paying attention to that aspect.

 

[MaximumEd]

Have the knitted the Standby and FP queues together? I haven't been paying attention to that aspect.

Not that I saw end of last month. The FP queues were just empty, so not sure what Penguin was getting at.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Not that I saw end of last month. The FP queues were just empty, so not sure what Penguin was getting at.

I was under the impression that FP lines in some attractions got roped into (pun intended) making an extended distanced queue.

I could be wrong.

 

[MaximumEd]

I was under the impression that FP lines in some attractions go roped into (pun intended) making an extended distanced queue.

I could be wrong.

I don’t remember seeing that anywhere, but could have missed something. I could see it becoming a need if capacity increases while still requiring distanced queues, though it would depend on the attraction how they would pull off the merge.

 

[UNCgolf]

I really hope you're correct about this. Unfortunately, @marni1971 doesn't seem quite so optimistic. And we've heard surprisingly little in terms of judgments about the ride experience from people like @Magic Feather. My fingers are crossed, but my expectations are... moderate.

My emphasis was really on the word "should". With that gigantic building and the amount of money they're spending, it would be a travesty if it's not something majorly impressive.

I personally don't have high expectations. It's a roller coaster -- and I'm not a big fan of them anyways -- which means it's going to be pretty difficult to have much going on beyond the physical thrill. There can be a few show scenes scattered around, but I don't think it's going to have that much story involved (at least on the ride itself). I suppose if the queue, setting, etc. are all really impressive that will help, because that's essentially what makes Expedition Everest an E-ticket to me (especially if the yeti was working).

I think something along the lines of Hagrid's is the absolute best they can do, and while I know a lot of people love that ride, it doesn't look especially great to me as someone who isn't too interested in coasters. Only has a little of what I care about in a theme park ride.

With that said, even if it only ends up as a D-ticket level ride, that's still beneficial to EPCOT (just like Ratatouille) in terms of attraction capacity. I personally think it's terrible overall for EPCOT for many reasons, but those have been rehashed ad nauseum here so no reason to delve into it again.

 

[Horizons '83]

So, I'm extremely biased here (nice precursor huh? ) but TRON is here, its not going anywhere we understand its limitations and we understand that from a capacity standpoint it doesn't help MK at all, it might actually hurt it.

With that said, I am really looking forward to another thrill ride at MK, I am actually not much of a coaster fan but between the lighting package, TRON soundtrack and the ride vehicle itself, I am pretty excited about being immersed in "the grid". I am a huge TRON fan in general hence my bias. We can't do anything to reverse their decision, so we might as well enjoy a pretty awesome thrill ride, come 2021.

 

[Buried20KLeague]

FP+ can be a major advantage for groups in they use the system to it's potential. I agree that this actually hurts the majority of park guests, but it 100% can be an advantage. During july 4th week (busy week) last year I was able to do the following in 1 day at MK.
FP+: Splash, BTMRR, HM, Pan, 7D, Meet Rapunzel/Tiana, LM, Meet Ariel, Dumbo, Teacups, Pooh (x2), Buzz (x2), Meet Tink, Meet Mickey and Minnie.
Along with non-FP activities: Sit down lunch, FoF Parade, Small World, Meet pluto and Daisy, Meet Donald and Goofy, Pirates, Aladdin, Jungle Cruise, COP, and HEA

IF FP+ was not around that day, there is no way I would have done that many things. Sure my Small world wait probably would have been shorter, but that was a 20 minute wait (longest I waited in line all day). I even had another FP for Pirates after the fireworks, but we decided to leave.

Loosing FP+ will be a huge bummer to me and honestly may make me consider alternative vacations. I really do view it as a major advantage after I was able to do that in MK and very similar success in the other 3 parks.

So in one day, during July 4th week, you did 16 things via FP+, and then 8 more things while waiting in standby lines (of which Small World was 20 minutes), watch a parade, plus at least one meal? Pardon me if I absolutely don't believe you. 26 activities in a day during July 4th week, 8 in standby, a parade, and at least one meal.

A word of advice... When you're going to bend the truth to try to back up a point you're trying to make, you might not want to go Whole Hog.

The only way this MIGHT be remotely possible is if you have a big group of people, all of which are booked for different FP attractions, and basically none of which plan on riding anything or using those FP's themselves and you used their band or card or whatever they had and used up all their rides instead of them. Which is hardly about the FP system, and more about the large group of people feeding you their rider slots and why they would bother to pay a ton of money to be at a crowded Disney park in the dead of summer and not ride anything.

 

[UNCgolf]

I'd argue that a new E+ attraction is exactly what MK *doesn't* need *at this time*.

MK is overcrowded. It regularly gets more people than what the park's capacity is designed for. That's why there are so many long lines, even for lower tiered attractions.

A big E+ attraction will draw even more people into the park than such an attraction can handle, making the overcrowding even more pronounced.

That's a fair point, although if they would open a big, impressive E ticket along with a new TS restaurant (maybe a QS too) and a D/C (or both), it would go a long way -- they certainly need the dining capacity as well.

But you're right that the other parks all need the capacity more, and if they're going to spend the money (and they aren't at the moment) it would be better to keep adding new attractions to the others. DHS still feels like a half-day park with all of the recent changes (partially because they just replaced existing things rather than actually adding), and while EPCOT actually still has a lot to do, too many of the attractions are mediocre especially compared to what was there before. It's not helpful to have attractions that many guests completely ignore (Mission: Space and Imagination being the biggest offenders). They're also lacking some of the previous post-ride areas that also increased capacity with interactive exhibits, shows, and so on.

 

[Buried20KLeague]

It can be a major advantage, especially to a local AP. Many locals won’t even go unless they have fastpasses for good rides

That's the only case I would agree with. And those people are in the VAST minority.

 

[CastAStone]

It is the general wisdom that most of the WDW parks need more C and D rides.

It would help if they stopped closing the railroad.

 

[UNCgolf]

That's the only case I would agree with. And those people are in the VAST minority.

It can also be advantageous to people who only care about certain rides and don't mind missing some. It was actually pretty helpful my last two trips because I could skip the line on one major ride at a couple of parks while not caring if I didn't get on the others.

It's still a terrible system overall, though, and I will be very glad to see it gone.

 

[Jon81uk]

I would rather them eliminating FREE Fastpass permanently and do Maxpass like Disneyland. It's a way better system (for me).

Except MaxPass is just regular FastPass booked through an app. There is no major difference between collecting a return time at the attraction and collecting it on the app, other than the amount of walking involved. Therefore forcing everyone to book it on the app won't make any overall difference.