News Tron coaster coming to the Magic Kingdom

J

J4546

Well-Known Member
I dunno about late 23, right now the majority of concrete work is done, still needs main concrete pathways to ramp poured and some backstage as well but they are filling planters with dirt in prep for landscaping. I feel like this ride might open before 2023. Also seeing people on the ride testing it
 
Rich Brownn

Rich Brownn

Well-Known Member
yensidtlaw1969 said:
People have been saying this for a long time, but I think people forget that seeing the plain, white roofs of the Fantasyland buildings really isn't the same as some of the things Disney's trying to get away with now. Some context is missing when that argument is made.

Look at the Peter Pan Facade for example:

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The ride is very clearly housed . . . inside a building. You can see the castle walls above it. This is not an accident - they are part of the idea. The original conceit for Fantasyland was that these were rides that took place inside buildings in a medieval faire within the courtyard of Cinderella Castle. While the roofs weren't anything special to look at, it's not like seeing the roof of the building took away from the illusion, because it being a ride housed within the kingdom's walls was the point. It's a fairground ride in a fantasy realm- the building is diegetic, so to speak.

This is very different from a ride that's trying to pretend it isn't in a building, the way something like Little Mermaid is in New Fantasyland. Mermaid buried its showbuilding in rockwork to conceal the fact of there being a building with a ride in it. Peter Pan, Small World, Snow White, Mr. Toad, The Mickey Mouse Revue . . . none of these attractions followed that conceit. They were rides that took place inside buildings in a medieval fairground within the courtyard of Cinderella Castle. It's not like you'd look and say "What do you MEAN Peter Pan's Flight has a roof??" the way you might with the Mermaid showbuilding, which when viewed from above might be expected to be covered more rocks and grass. Strangely enough, the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train does this, but that's sort of a happy coincidence.

I think, too, that people oversell how bad the views of the Fantasyland buildings really were. Here's the view from the Skyway of Mr. Toad:

View attachment 662934

Snow White:

View attachment 662935

And Peter Pan:

View attachment 662936

None of them are lookers, really, but not particularly egregious either when you consider the concept of the ride and the fact that these relatively unthemed angles could only be seen from the Skyway. I'd say they showed more respect for sightlines here in 1971 than they frequently do in the present day, despite the company being far smaller and having far fewer resources back then. The view of Ratatouille from the Skyliner is far more offensive, and totally destroys the illusion that the cityscape continues beyond what guests can explore.

For 1971, that's pretty good if this was the worst of it. Even 20,000 Leagues, whose show building was larger than a Football Field, was able to reduce its visibility down to almost nothing:

View attachment 662937

Now, the Matterhorn did originally have its internal structure visble . . . in 1959, four years after Disneyland opened. But even then, this was not quite to the extent people remember. There was lots of interior rockwork surrounding the supports, it just didn't amount to tunnels and caverns the way it does now.

View attachment 662932 View attachment 662933

Not their best work, but considering Disneyland was 4 years old and The Matterhorn was already such a massive undertaking with nothing else like it on earth, I think they deserve more credit than they get for their efforts on the inside. The way people talk, you'd have thought they didn't even try. But even then, this imperfect attempt was rectified less than 20 years later in 1977 when the pride in their work could be matched by their bank account. The Matterhorn has had a very handsome fully themed interior ever since.

Disneyland's Fantasyland Dark Rides originated with the same conceit that was used in WDW's Fantasyland, but that changed in the early 80's when the land was redone. This resulted in wonderfully elaborate new Village Building facades for most of the rides, and you could argue that the view from the Skyway sort of spoiled that this architecture didn't continue all across the top of the buildings. I'll give you that one, I guess - here's Mr. Toad and Peter Pan at Disneyland from the Skyway. Not perfect, but also not tragic considering they were still working with the bones from 1955:

View attachment 662938

Of course, hardly any of this is totally relevant, given that the roofs of these buildings at both DL and WDW have not been viewable to guests for 25+ years now, and all these buildings (at least the ones that remain) inarguably have fully healthy sightlines as a result.

The point is, even back in the day when Disney was working with comparatively very little they managed to make minimal mess of the showbuildings in Fantasyland, and where they couldn't they basically went back and bettered things before too long. That demonstrates a higher level of show quality standards than they're exhibiting with something like TRON, where minimal thought has been given to attempting to hide the building, to what the ride's building is meant to "be", where its visibility undermines the concept that the riders are getting sucked into a computer game, and where the show building can so clearly be seen from many places, up to and including the building's money angle.
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Wow ... thats quite a stretch there. Fantasyland at Disneyland looked like that because they ran out of funds. WDW just copied the cheap facades - and now we're stuck with them unlike Disneyland.

And saying you can see the backs of buildings from backstage - true at Disneyland too. On the monorail, or driving into the parking lot. What counts is what you see onstage. TRON has issues as does Guardians (although I'd say 99.9% of guests never even notice it one inside). As for the matterhorn, riding through the skyway you could definetly see steel beams holding up the facade - no rock work there.

If you're worried about seeing backstage while OUTSIDE the park, so be it. Of course if the spent $$$ theming backstage that would be even less funds for onstage.

The Rat building is backstage. Its not visible from within the park, any more than Pirates from the monorail, the view into the backlot from the train (which was even worse in 1971) or even the green backsides of the buildings on Main Street visible from certain areas onstage.

I mean, lets take the Rat building. So they spend a few million to theme the backside. Does that improve the onstage show? No. Does it make a wiff of difference to the skyline being better? nope. Does it make for a prettier view? Yes. But with the cost something else would have to go.

Sure, TRON could definertly use a bigger canopy and GUARDIANS is definetly and issue if you look for it. But even way back, there were issues that simply couldn't be fixed or couldn't at the time.

I guess the Rat thing bothers me so much because Disney rarely worried about theming backstage without a reason, and there really isn't a reason to theme a backstage building any more than trying to please a few "purists". Money spent elsewhere is always an issue and the cost to theme a building not visible except on a transport device isn't justified.
 
J

James Alucobond

Well-Known Member
Rich Brownn said:
And saying you can see the backs of buildings from backstage - true at Disneyland too. On the monorail, or driving into the parking lot. What counts is what you see onstage. TRON has issues as does Guardians (although I'd say 99.9% of guests never even notice it one inside). As for the matterhorn, riding through the skyway you could definetly see steel beams holding up the facade - no rock work there.

If you're worried about seeing backstage while OUTSIDE the park, so be it. Of course if the spent $$$ theming backstage that would be even less funds for onstage.

The Rat building is backstage. Its not visible from within the park, any more than Pirates from the monorail, the view into the backlot from the train (which was even worse in 1971) or even the green backsides of the buildings on Main Street visible from certain areas onstage.

I mean, lets take the Rat building. So they spend a few million to theme the backside. Does that improve the onstage show? No. Does it make a wiff of difference to the skyline being better? nope. Does it make for a prettier view? Yes. But with the cost something else would have to go.

Sure, TRON could definertly use a bigger canopy and GUARDIANS is definetly and issue if you look for it. But even way back, there were issues that simply couldn't be fixed or couldn't at the time.

I guess the Rat thing bothers me so much because Disney rarely worried about theming backstage without a reason, and there really isn't a reason to theme a backstage building any more than trying to please a few "purists". Money spent elsewhere is always an issue and the cost to theme a building not visible except on a transport device isn't justified.
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I would argue that, even if they fix all inside-the-park views of TRON, its show building is still technically on stage because it's so prominent when viewed from the Contemporary, and you have to consider that one big aspect of the allure of the Seven Seas Lagoon resorts is the ability to look out your window at the castle. You pay more for a room that looks toward the park, and a big box to the right kind of spoils that.

I can see where you're coming from on backstage views mostly only visible from transportation, but Ratatouille is really close to being a bit of extra magic as you zip out of EPCOT. They could seriously fix it with some landscaping, a gate, and a few yards of facade to wrap around the edge of the building to meet with the rooftop access stairwell. If they wanted to get fancy, they could continue it past that or maybe even create a simple parallax art installation on the rest of the show building with "goodbye" in various languages when leaving and "hello" when arriving, but even that wouldn't be necessary. Just resolving the edge and tidying things up would work wonders.
 
yensidtlaw1969

yensidtlaw1969

Well-Known Member
Rich Brownn said:
Wow ... thats quite a stretch there. Fantasyland at Disneyland looked like that because they ran out of funds. WDW just copied the cheap facades - and now we're stuck with them unlike Disneyland.

And saying you can see the backs of buildings from backstage - true at Disneyland too. On the monorail, or driving into the parking lot. What counts is what you see onstage. TRON has issues as does Guardians (although I'd say 99.9% of guests never even notice it one inside). As for the matterhorn, riding through the skyway you could definetly see steel beams holding up the facade - no rock work there.

If you're worried about seeing backstage while OUTSIDE the park, so be it. Of course if the spent $$$ theming backstage that would be even less funds for onstage.

The Rat building is backstage. Its not visible from within the park, any more than Pirates from the monorail, the view into the backlot from the train (which was even worse in 1971) or even the green backsides of the buildings on Main Street visible from certain areas onstage.

I mean, lets take the Rat building. So they spend a few million to theme the backside. Does that improve the onstage show? No. Does it make a wiff of difference to the skyline being better? nope. Does it make for a prettier view? Yes. But with the cost something else would have to go.

Sure, TRON could definertly use a bigger canopy and GUARDIANS is definetly and issue if you look for it. But even way back, there were issues that simply couldn't be fixed or couldn't at the time.

I guess the Rat thing bothers me so much because Disney rarely worried about theming backstage without a reason, and there really isn't a reason to theme a backstage building any more than trying to please a few "purists". Money spent elsewhere is always an issue and the cost to theme a building not visible except on a transport device isn't justified.
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I don't know how that first point contradicts anything I said. Just because the facades were cheap does not mean the idea behind them wasn't whole. Walt wanted to build a European Village, much like what was ultimately built in DL's Fantasyland in 1983, but since they couldn't afford that in the 50's they changed the idea to something more attainable. There's not really anything wrong with that. Changing plans to something that can be properly executed is a good thing - imagine if they had done that with TRON and built something that could be more easily concealed, or at least themed in a meaningful way.

That you can see buildings backstage at Disneyland is kind of inadmissible here, since one of the main points of the Florida Project was having enough space to manage such things in a way that couldn't be done within Disneyland's limitations. And again about The Matterhorn, the interior was themed from 77 onward, even for the Skyway portion. Once they were able to do better, they did:

Screen Shot 2022-08-28 at 7.36.36 PM.png


Walt Disney World managed for the first 40+ years of its operations to sufficiently theme buildings from inside the parks and outside the parks, or at the very least obscure anything that wasn't sufficiently themed. So, yes, I expect that either they allocate funds properly to continue accounting for both or design something whose unfavorable parts are easier to conceal. There are many trees already in place and many attractions have made smart use of them to hide things. TRON is among the top 5 most expensive attractions in Walt Disney World history - perhaps even the top 3 - and isn't well themed from in the park OR outside the park. If they don't have enough money to theme the building or at least hide the unthemed parts, then that's an indictment of the current systems of design. It's not for any lack of funds. They used to do plenty more with far less.

Ratatouille is similarly very expensive, around $270 Million. They couldn't afford to just plant some trees to block the big green building from the Skyliner? Of course they could, they just didn't think it mattered. But they used to take that level of pride. Contrary to your point about Disney not theming backstage buildings "unnecessarily", the backside of most of the other World Showcase Pavilions are, shockingly, simultaneously better themed AND better hidden than the Ratatouille building, despite Rat being a much more prominent, more expensive, and more vaunted attraction than any other in World Showcase:

Screen Shot 2022-08-28 at 8.05.05 PM.png


Your idea that "even way back" there were issues that couldn't be fixed doesn't hold up, because again, the company is larger and more profitable now than it has ever been. The lack of theming on the Guardians showbuilding is just comparable to the lack of theming inside The Matterhorn because the choice not to theme the Guardians building was wholly elective, and as said, Disney circled back to "finish" The Matterhorn later. They could have easily themed Guardians better, hid it better, or refused to build something that couldn't be themed or hidden well, and instead they chose none of those. This despite the attraction being the most expensive in WDW history and the company having more money to spend than ever.

They're not backed into any corners here, they just don't care the way they used to.
 
M

MissingDisney

Well-Known Member
ToTBellHop said:
November appears to be preview window although previews are by-invitation-only, lately. I still hear opening for all guests around December 1 (this can easily shift).
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From your lips, or rather, your typing fingertips, to God’s ears and eyes. I will be there starting 12/6 and holding all hope we’ll get to ride. 🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼
 
K

kiq815

New Member
Is there any chance of a soft opening during the Christmas holidays? 😬 Has this ever happened?
I'm going at the beginning of November, for the Christmas party and hoping to open until then
 

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