It’s not every day that a ride revolutionizes an entire resort… but that just may be on the horizon at Walt Disney World thanks to a controversial new ride that’s already thrilling guests on the other side of the planet… Technologically cutting-edge, this 21st century coaster finally brings to life a fan-favorite, cult classic intellectual property, and in the form of its own Tomorrowland E-Ticket. The question is, will it be worth the wait?
Our Modern Marvels series was designed to dive deep into the behind-the-ride stories of some of the most spectacular theme park attractions in the world today. In in-depth features, we went from “Once Upon a Time” to Frozen Ever After to explore disney’s long pursuit of The Snow Queen story, tackled the curse behind Revenge of the Mummy, dug into two of Disney’s best rides ever – Mystic Manor and Journey to the Center of the Earth – and many more in our In-Depth Collection Library.
Image: Disney
Today, we race into another living classic… one destined to change Walt Disney World forever. Join us as we sail through tomorrow and explore the history of headlining Tomorrowland thrill rides from Space Mountain to the incredible TRON Lightcycle Power Run due to join Walt Disney World’s lineup sooner than you think. From outer space to the neon glow of the Grid, it’s time to ride through this amazing Modern Marvel.
Thrills of Tomorrow
At least in Tomorrowland’s earliest years, Walt and his designers intended for Tomorrowland to be a living, breathing showcase of sincerely-scientific endeavors – “a vista into a world of woundrous ideas, signifying man’s achievements… new frontiers in science, adventure, and ideals; the Atomic Age, the challenge of Outer Space, and the hope for a peaceful, unified world.”
Image: Disney
That vision of Walt’s is probably most fully incarnate in the New Tomorrowland that debuted in 1967 at Disneyland Park – a blissful, geometric land of streamlined towers, silver, white, and pastel accents, geometric planters, and kinetic energy. Though Walt died several months before this New Tomorrowland debuted, his fingerprints dotted the land.
He wanted it to be a “World on the Move” both figuratively and literally – an ambitiously smart, optimistic, and forward-thinking showcase featuring phenomenal Lost Legends: Adventure Thru Inner Space, Carousel of Progress, and the beloved and fan-favorite Peoplemover.
Image: Disney
As a centerpiece for the land, Walt had briefly worked with John Hench on a design for a roller coaster through space… a groundbreaking, indoor, steel roller coaster through the stars, taking all that had been learned from Disneyland’s Matterhorn a decade earlier (the first modern steel coaster on Earth). Briefly, Imagineers considered this “Space Port” coaster with up to four separate tracks weaving through the darkness, but in light of the growing ambitions of the “Florida Project” about to be undertaken, the Space Port was put on hold… at least, temporarily.
From the Snow to the Stars
After Walt’s death, a period of relative instability overtook Walt Disney Productions and the Disney Parks. Without Walt’s creative lead, projects fizzled and the parks stagnated. That’s why the ‘70s are largely marked by lightly-themed roller coasters.
Image: Disney
Don’t misunderstand – roller coasters have been a part of Disney Parks from the earliest years. 1959’s Matterhorn Bobsleds – the first modern, tubular steel-tracked coaster in the world – was groundbreaking in every way. On the other end of the spectrum, its own “spiritual sequel” and another Modern Marvel: Expedition Everest is nothing short of a technological powerhouse and a highly-themed, story-centered dark ride all in one.
Particularly in the ‘70s, though, new executives were looking for quick turnarounds on easy-to-build, low-cost attractions; light on Audio Animatronics and instead banking on the new steel roller coaster craze, such “cheap and cheerful” rides would earn great returns with much less investment than a ride like Pirates of the Caribbean or its never-built Magic Kingdom counterpart, Western River Expedition.
And given that Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland was more or less vacant, and that more pre-teens than expected had descended on the Vacation Kingdom of the World looking for thrill rides, plans for “Space Port” were dusted off and migrated to Florida.
Space Mountains
Image: Disney
Space Mountain had its grand opening at Magic Kingdom on January 15, 1975, with the iconic, conical white structure housing two side-by-side, mirror-image roller coasters modeled off of Disneyland’s Matterhorn. More than just a headlining attraction for the young park, Space Mountain also set the visual style for Magic Kingdom’s own Tomorrowland – an evolution of Disneyland’s 1967, but given the benefit of hindsight… and an additional 8 years of gestation to adjust for changing views of the future.
Naturally, Space Mountain found its way home, opening at Disneyland in May 1977 – a decade after Walt’s death and his New Tomorrowland’s debut. Since Magic Kingdom’s Space Mountain had borrowed from Disneyland’s Matterhorn, engineers went back to the drawing board and created an original, single-tracked Space Mountain for Disneyland.
Image: Disney
That Space Mountain was duplicated for Tokyo Disneyland’s 1983 opening (the first Disney Park to open with a Space Mountain, thus purposefully positioning the mountain at the end of the land’s entry corridor).
At the pinnacle of the Space Age, Space Mountain may have been an icon… an interstellar adventure turning a generation into astronauts at the height of the Space Race. In ‘60s-inspired Tomorrowlands shaped by the ‘70s, these two Space Mountains would become classics.
Image: Disney
And even today, their styles and stories are reflections a period in history they helped shape. Which is why Space Mountain retains a sort of timelessness that such a time-anchored attraction usually wouldn’t, recreated in its distinctly-’70s dressings even in the 21st century Hong Kong Disneyland in 2005. Space Mountain is somehow ageless… Each installation feels nostalgic, but current – able to withstand even the most dramatic changes in pop culture’s vision of what “tomorrow” might really bring.
That’s why the real story here is how the world around each Space Mountain changed… And as the ‘70s gave way to the ‘80s, the “future” wasn’t looking quite as bright as it had in Walt’s day… And a new Disney film released at the start of the decade would help shape that new kind of future… and help shape the new kind of thrill ride to join Disney Parks… Read on…
Future in film
Walt and his peers had been the products of mid-century optimism, envisioning the wonder of atomic energy, the enormity of space, the hopes of progress, and the vision of a world at peace through expanding communication. Fittingly, the Tomorrowlands they designed were bright, geometric, hopeful places of pastel Peoplemovers, whizzing rockets, cheerful chemicals, modern conveniences, and living examples of the era’s carefree, utilitarian, smart, stylish design.
Image: 21st Century Fox / Lucasfilm
In 1977, Star Wars lit up the big screen. George Lucas had brilliantly crafted a new take on space: it was a vast, dark, gritty world of used-up industrial ships, scrap metal, planets of poverty, and a repressive Empire ruling the galaxy. (This groundbreaking new style of space is also evident in his creations for Disney – Lost Legends: Captain EO, the original STAR TOURS, and Alien Encounter.)
Then came 1979’s Alien. The gleaming, silver halls of a spaceship decayed into a labyrinth of hissing steam, alarms, flashing lights, body horror, and terror – a decided dark and horrific take on the previously sterile images of space.
Image: 21st Century Fox
You’ll see it again and again in Blade Runner, The Terminator, The Thing, The Return of the Jedi, Dune… throughout the 1980s, a new vision of tomorrow was coming to light: that it was a dark, grimy, dystopian, gritty, industrial place… maybe even apocolyptic. In the future, humans would find their cities overpopulated and polluted, overrun with advertising, seemingly under perpetual night skies…
In retrospect, this dismal, gloomy, sci-fi future is so obviously a hallmark of the 1980s that’s come and gone (and indeed, fans wish Disney’s Tomorrowlands retained their simple, optimistic, retro-nostalgia…) but then and there in the midst of ‘80s grunge, it must’ve felt that humans stood at the precipice of this dark, neon world of the unknown…
Disney, meanwhile, stood at the precipice to its own entry into the pop culture canon of this unusual tomorrow…
TRON
Image: Disney
When Tron was released in 1982, it was only a moderate success at the box office, earning a measly $33 million against a $17 million budget. But speaking of forward-thinking, Tron was perhaps one of the most visionary films of the decade. At a time when living rooms were still dominated by Atari consoles and kids saved up to play Dig Dug in the arcade after school, Tron imagined what then seemed inconcievable: an entire world inside of a video game.
The mile-a-minute film propels Jeff Bridges’ Kevin Flynn into a glowing, pulsating digital mainframe called “The Grid” populated by “programs” – human likenesses of the game’s developers and designers. There, he faces off against the digital incarnation of the man who stole his ideas and the imposing MCP – Master Control Program. Alongside freedom fighter Tron, Flynn sets out to free the oppressed programs of the Grid.
One of its most iconic scenes is a chase across the game grid on virtual “light cycles,” leaving trails of stretched light behind them as they race dangerously in three dimensions through the virtual world.
Unforgettably, Tron was assembled by means of backlit animation, live action, and cutting-edge computer animation that set a new stylistic standard and made the day-glo, neon film look and feel like something from another planet… unlike anything seen before.
Image: Disney
Flickering, high contrast, glowing circuitry, and an entirely electronic score made Tron so unlike anything else, renowned Chicago Times film critic Roger Ebert decreed it “a dazzling movie from Walt Disney in which computers have been used to make themselves romantic and glamorous. Here’s a technological sound-and-light show that is sensational and brainy, stylish, and fun.”
Though its initial box office earnings were considered a disappointment, over time Tron became a bonafide cult hit, winning the Academy Award for Technical Achievement fourteen years after its release. That’s to say nothing of the world that developed around it, including comic books, video games, and even a World of TRON segment aboard Disneyland’s Peoplemover!
Fast-forward
Image: Disney
To really understand TRON’s cult appreciation and simmering, long-lasting appeal, we have to fast-forward twenty-eight years later to 2010’s TRON: Legacy. Picking up where the first film left off and reuniting much of the cast and crew from 1982, TRON: Legacy had a budget literally ten times larger than its predecessor ($170 million) and earned $400 million at the box office, not to mention the sales of its award-winning soundtrack and score by Daft Punk and its spin-off TRON: Uprising animated television series.
Naturally, TRON: Legacy also revived the famed Lightcycles in a distinctly 21st century arrangement: a new, three-dimensional race through a sleek, digital world, which you can see here.
Image: Disney
Disney California Adventure even hosted a nightly street party called ElecTRONica, turning the park’s Hollywood Pictures Backlot into a glowing, neon paradise of lasers, projections, racing Lightcycles, Flynn’s Arcade, and electronic music. Meanwhile, the park’s then-new World of Color had its own must-see “TRONcore” finale, seemingly hacking, digitizing, and rebooting the park’s Paradise Pier.
At least momentarily, Tron was back in the spotlight. And there in 2010, at perhaps the newfound pinnacle of its popularity, Disney’s executives were hard at work crafting a deal that would open the most elaborate new Disney Park since Tokyo DisneySea…
Thinking globally
It’s no surprise to fans of Disney Parks that the early 2000s were a rough time. In those last few uncomfortable and uninspiring years with Michael Eisner as CEO, things were at an all-time low. After the devestating financial losses suffered by Disneyland Paris (all the way back in 1992), Eisner became infamously averse to any large scale projects, slicing budgets, cutting funding, and closing classic rides. Instead, he hedged his bets with “cheap and cheerful” parks, straight-to-video sequels that withdrew from generations-old brands, and made enemies of longstanding partners like Pixar, all with the approval of penny-pinching yes-men.
Image: Disney
When Bob Iger stepped into the CEO role in 2005, he was committed to reversing Eisner’s cost-cutting. He launched a complete redesign of Disney’s first failed park and the subject of a Disaster File: Disney’s California Adventure and began investing in another, Disneyland Paris’ Walt Disney Studios; he kicked off an unprecedented era of acquisition (buying Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox), and he vastly expanded the company’s footprint globally.
It’s that last part that’s the most important, because under Iger’s regime, Disney began to set its sights to the next frontier: China. Though Michael Eisner had overseen construction of a tiny, underbuilt, underfunded Hong Kong Disneyland, mainland China was a target for a few very important reasons. As the world’s most populated country, China had otherwise been a sort of untapped resource whose extreme censorship had made Disney a relative unknown… which meant a market of more than a billion potential customers.
Image: Disney
In 2008, Disney English was established, essentially (and controversially) creating English-language classes for high-income Chinese children built almost exclusively around Disney characters and stories… In 2015, an all-Disney, Chinese-exclusive streaming service called DisneyLife was launched (and subsequently shut down by China’s government regulars six months later when they cracked down on foreign content).
And in 2010 – right at the height of TRON’s resurgance, Iger’s long-game in China came full circle with an astounding announcement…
Authentically Disney, distinctly Chinese
Image: Disney
Announced in 2010, the Shanghai Disney Resort would be one-of-a-kind for a number of reasons. First and foremost, Iger (who was deeply involved with the project and whose legacy would be tied closely to its success) coined the phrase “Authentically Disney and Distinctly Chinese,” referring to the resort’s classic Disney appeal with accomodations for Chinese culture and taste.
…and Chinese Communist sensabilities and censorship. After all, the resort is only 43% owned by the Walt Disney Company, with the Shanghai Shendi Group (a government-owned company) controlling with a 57% stake. Disney also agreed to:
- let China’s Communist party set entrance prices for the park;
- let the Shanghai Shendi Group own the property surrounding the park to develop their own resorts, shopping, and dining complexes;
- let China’s government even approve the roster of rides… specifically, duplicates of American attractions were allegedly forbidden, given that importing Jungle Cruise, “it’s a small world,” and Space Mountain would earn claims of American imperialism.
Image: Disney
So if Shanghai Disneyland couldn’t feature any clones from American parks, what would it have? Taking a look at the concept art above, you’ll notice one of the tremendous strengths of Disney’s artists: when called upon, they can produce beautiful concept art that strategically shows almost nothing. Given that they couldn’t rely on classics, designers were tasked with coming up with a new slate of personalized attractions for the park… and when Imagineers are given a blue-sky budget and a challenge for originality, they can sure show up…
Image: Disney
At the 2016 IAAPA Attractions Expo in Orlando, Imagineering’s Chief Design & Project Delivery Executive, Craig Russel, said, “I don’t think I’ve seen such a crystal clear mission statement from the top. Bob Iger’s ‘authentically Disney and distinctly Chinese’ was part of that but it went beyond that. It was not really that we were building a project in China. It was that we were defining the Disney brand for 1.4 billion people. That was an historic opportunity. We get one shot at it, and we will leave nothing to chance.”
When Shanghai Disneyland opened on June 16, 2016, it looked unlike any Disneyland-style park to come before… and in particular offered an E-Ticket that left Disney Parks fans salivating… Read on…
Shanghai Disneyland
Shanghai Disneyland opened on June 16, 2016.
Click and expand for a larger and more detailed view. Image: Disney
For the first time since Disneyland’s opening sixty years earlier, the rulebook had been shredded. Disneyland’s tried-and-true layout was shuffled; Adventureland, Frontierland, and Main Street were entirely absent (replaced with Adventure Isle, Treasure Cove, and Mickey Avenue). We walked through the park’s new lands, new classics, and new rides in our In-Depth: Shanghai Disneyland walkthrough, but know this: no conventions were safe. This was a new park for a new century.
Which meant that – even when familiar tropes reappeared, they were entirely redesigned.
Image: Disney
Put another way, no one could’ve prepared for the Tomorrowland that would debut alongside the brand-new, precedent-shattering Shanghai Disneyland when it opened in 2016… Its Tomorrowland didn’t had an overarching story; a timeless theme; or even a Space Mountain… Its replacement headlining E-Ticket, though, just may change the course of Disney Parks history, and it’s coming to Walt Disney World sooner rather than later…
New, New Tomorrowland
Whatever Disney Parks resort you call home, a few tried-and-true conventions typically remain about Tomorrowland (or its cousin). For example, it’s always located on the right-most path when standing at the park’s hub and facing the castle; it’s always entered via an “Avenue of Planets” or equivalent; it’s always got its classics, like spinning rockets or saucers, fanciful architecture, retro-fitted Star Wars attractions, and – of course, Space Mountain looming over it all.
Image: Jeremy Thompson, Flickr (license)
Not anymore.
In fact, this new kind of land has more in common with the namesake of Disney’s 2015 Tomorrowland film than with any version of the theme park land to come before.
Designed by Imagineer Scot Drake, this Tomorrowland was a major piece of the park’s $5.5 billion budget and, to hear Drake himself say it to Fortune, “The biggest challenge we had was, ‘How do we tell the story of Tomorrowland in a city that is already the city of the future?’”
The answer? A return to optimsim. Tomorrowland is sleek again, but this time it’s not in the now-nostalgic dressings of a mid-century Space Race. Tomorrowland has been transformed into a glowing urban oasis; a sleek, glimmering park of glass and grass. Black stepped fountains, twisted steel trellaces covered in climbing vines, open pits yeilding either rising fountains, vine-covered metal, or billowing fog. Ramps gracefully rise to the land’s second story providing overlooks of hillsides of wildflowers beyond, paths curving and twisting under the land’s signature element: a sprawling, twisting, glass canopy.
It’s a wild departure from Disney’s recent efforts – including elsewhere in Shanghai Disneyland – where building photorealistic landscapes and immersive, lived-in words has become the norm. Unlike Cars Land, Buena Vista Street, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, or Pandora, this isn’t a land rooted in time or place or even story. It’s a dynamic, fluid landscape tailor made for housing intellectual properties.
Naturally, the geometric, white, conical, 70s-styled Space Mountain wouldn’t fit here; it’s a non sequitor amid the fluid, shimmering land.
Image: Dan Brace, TwoLostBoys.com
The glass canopy – stretching like a dragon across the land’s facades – replaces it. And while its billowing, white, cloud-like structure outlines the land’s sleek silhouette by day, each night becomes transluscent, betraying its honeycomb structure beneath and alive with pulses of light and shadow; rainbow colors that sync with dancing fountains. Those pulses of light racing through the canopy, though, aren’t just for show… they’re the land’s headlining E-Ticket… and perhaps one of the top three highlights of the entire park…
TRON Lightcycle Power Run
Image: Jeremy Thompson, Flickr (license)
The glass canopy that underscores the rest of Tomorrowland isn’t as simple as it appears… passing beneath its elegant curves, a sudden roar signals the arrival of something fast. With a high-pitched electrical whir, a speeding chain of sleek, glowing vehicles races past.
They’re Lightcycles – the two-wheeled digital speeders from the world of TRON, their perfectly circular tires glowing a neon blue as they glide past.
Image: Jeremy Thompson, Flickr (license)
The glass canopy is an Upload Circuit, beaming this chain of fourteen Lightcycles (side by side in seven rows) into the mainframe. Neon hexagons illuminate against the Circuit, “chasing” each train as it twists, dips, and turns along the innards of the structure. As hypnotic to watch as it is to ride, the path forward leads into TRON Lightcycle Power Run… Ready?
The queue begins in a darkened hallway of pulsing lights before guests are led into a very small pre-show room, facing glowing, floor-to-ceiling display panels.
Their clouded, transluscent surfaces pulse in flipping hexagons and glowing blue until, with a burst, the screen becomes instantly transparent. It’s an almost-unbelievable effect that you can see in the video above. Unbeknownst to us, we’ve been on a balcony all along, overlooking the launch area where a train of Lightcycles at once blasts away beneath us.
There’s no denying, this is one of the most spectacular and surprising reveals in any Disney Parks queue.
Image: Disney
A new portal opens up to the catwalks encircling this neon loading area, leading to successive hallways through the dark, digital world of TRON. Then, we arrive…
Image: Jeremy Thompson, Flickr (license)
For most Disney Parks guests, it’s almost certain that the Lightcycles are unlike anything they’ve experienced before. Guests straddle the Lightcycle like a real motorcycle, kneeling against a leg restraint and leaning forward. As the train readies for upload, a ray-shaped restraint rises from behind, pressing against rider’s backs to hold them securely in the unique configuration. Of note to fans of TRON, this restraint also equips each rider with a glowing Identity Disk ring.
As the soft, electronic score of TRON anxiously begins, the train of Lightcycles are swiftly and smoothly propelled out of the load station, heading off into the darkness. As flashing blue arrows guide our train forward, it turns in the darkness and aligns with the launch area we’d seen before from overhead… Only now, we’re the ones about to be propelled through the Grid.
As the score picks up and the symmetrical chamber begins to pulse, tensions rise… until finally, the Lightcycles are electrified.
Image: Disney
The ride blasts from 0 – 60 miles per hour (making it the fastest Disney roller coaster) and races toward the outside world. It practically smashes out of the building, at once leaping over a pedestrian path and up an 80 foot arc into the heights of the Upload Circuit, the sound of humming electrical motors and bleeps and bloops (reminiscent of a certified Disney Disaster File: Rocket Rods for long-time fans) as it twists and sails over the crowds beneath.
To be fair, some fans take issue with this part of the ride both because it breaks the careful world-building of the day-glo, digital TRON landscape and because it marks the rare appearance of an exposed, unthemed steel coaster in a Disney Park. But the truth is, the race through the Upload Circuit is fun, fast, beautiful, and exciting as onlookers gaze up in awe.
Image: ABC News / Disney
But of course, the ride’s just getting started. The train levels out high up into the canopy and enters a darkened tunnel into a showbuilding. Passing under a Recognizer, it dives into the Grid – a digital, pulsating world of shapes and sounds. Like the iconic race from TRON, our blue lightcycles will be pitted against an orange nemesis here in this computer world. The train sails sideways down a drop, twisting through glowing neon obstacles with grace and speed, then arcs up through a boost that speeds us forward.
Next comes one of the ride’s most clever tricks. The orange train appears far away to the left, though its path is on course to intersect ours. At once, we plummet, and it matches us inch for inch. At the last second before collision, we each helix away from each other. This harrowing encounter – a true standout – is in fact achieved by our own train momentarily blacking out with the left wheels turning orange as we pass a mirror!
Image: Disney
Still, the train accelerates away, racing through progressive scenes as it twists through the darkness. The orange cycles come into view again, this time brought to life via projection technology in an enveloped, curved tunnel. They speed ahead and try to race into our path, but our train leaps over the deadly trail of orange light left behind like a game of Snake. We’re propelled into another projection tunnel just as the orange Lightcycles lose control, smashing to digital bits and falling around us via fragmented mirrors.
A tunnel of pulsing circuits signals our deceleration as the world around us powers down. The trains continue ahead in darkness and silence for a moment until their triumphant blue hue returns, illuminating a final, victorious hall of mirrors.
As always, we end our in-depth look at this spectacular Modern Marvel with the best point-of-view video we can find. Naturally, it comes from our friends at SoCal Attractions 360, whose spectacular camerawork can capture the dark world of TRON with a level of detail and color that even the human eye can’t. Race through the Lightcycle Power Run here:
As the Lightcycles return to an unload area, our journey through the world of TRON is finished… and probably quicker than most thrillseekers would like with a brisk one-minute ride.
But TRON Lightcycle Power Run is more than just an unusual experiment in fusing thrills with a four-decade-old intellectual property. It’s a new kind of experience that just may signal the next generation of Walt Disney World thrills… In fact, this spectacular, multi-million-dollar E-Ticket isn’t just a Modern Marvel a world away… it’s coming to a Disney Park near you… On the next page, we’ll look at how this phenomenal thrill will translate when it moves to the United States… Read on…
Meanwhile, at Magic Kingdom
The real question remains – when, where, why, and how is this stunning E-Ticket coming to the United States?
Image: Disney
And to answer that question, consider what ended up happening to that Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. Opened in 1971, the classic Tomorrowland of simple geometry, concrete towers, white rockets, and pastel patterns lived through the ’70s it was designed for, then through the ’80s as an admittedly dated design in the face of the era’s darker futurism. By the ’90s, it was clear that the “Great, Big, Beautiful Tomorrow” envisioned in Walt’s time was simply not going to cut it in the approaching 21st century. And worse, Disney could drop big bucks in a floor-to-ceiling rebuild of the outdated Tomorrowlands in California and Florida… only to have those become “Yesterlands” in a matter of years, too. In other words, any attempt to actually keep up with real science and pop culture’s current and ever-changing view of the future would require constant, continuous, and costly updates.
Luckily, the incredible work being done on the new Disneyland Paris was a beacon of hope.
Image: Disney
The new French park wouldn’t have a Tomorrowland at all. Instead, it hosted “Discoveryland,” dropping the science in favor of a fantasy future. Instead of trying to predict what the world might actually look like decades from now, Discoveryland brought to life a future as envisioned by the past… A steampunk, fantasy, seaside port of zephyrs and submarines, this golden future showed a world at one with nature, not a sterile, concrete, white future opposed to it. Even the land’s headlining Lost Legend: Space Mountain – De la Terre à la Lune put a convincingly literary twist on the formerly-futuristic ride, theming it to the Jules Verne novel From the Earth to the Moon.
That promise – of a Tomorrowland that would never need updated – ignited Imagineers who set to work designing equally timeless futures for the still-60s-stylized Tomorrowlands at Disneyland and Magic Kingdom. Plans for a Possibilityland: Tomorrowland 2055 at the former were dropped when budgets swelled, but Magic Kingdom did get a New Tomorrowland, opening in 1994.
Image: Disney
Though it’s actually fairly controversial among Disney Parks fans, Magic Kingdom’s New Tomorrowland was, in many ways, beautiful and brilliant. The entire land was recast as a sci-fi city of the future – a land of industrial art-deco, comic book cogs, gears, and rivets, electro-mechanical palm trees, landed alien saucers, and a level of world-building exceeding even Disney’s best. This New Tomorrowland wasn’t just a collection of rides, it was a place… one overarching continuity connected each of land’s rides, attractions, and even restaurants into one story.
Consider how brilliant it was: entering town via the Avenue of Planets (featuring all of the city’s municipal signs), one would be flanked by the Tomorrowland Science Center (hosting a new time travel exhibit centered around the Lost Legend: The Timekeeper)…
Image: Disney
…and Tomorrowland’s Interplanetary Convention Center (currently rented out by Martian company X-S Tech showing off their new interstellar teleportation technology, used in the park’s most famous Lost Legend: Alien Encounter).
The city’s public transit (the Tomorrowland Transit Authority Peoplemover) would whisk guests through downtown while advertising stops and stations that exist only for world-building. The city even featured a nightclub run by aliens (Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café), a municipal Light & Power Company (the arcade), and a space port (Space Mountain) to connect Tomorrowalnd to the rest of the galaxy.
Image: Disney
Even if the rear half of the land was only lightly dressed in the comic book silver sci-fi port story, surely you can see the storytelling smarts of a land that so thoughtfully connects all of its occupants – all original stories with no intellectual properties, by the way – into one carefully constructed universe.
The problem is that it didn’t last. First, the Lost Legend: If You Had Wings (and its aviation-themed successors) disappeared to make way for Toy Story 2. Then, Alien Encounter exited for the worst attraction Disney World’s ever hosted – Disaster File: Stitch’s Great Escape – based on Lilo & Stitch. The Timekeeper was evicted for Monsters Inc., and The Incredibles moved in for a non sequitor dance party. Pretty soon, the Peoplemover stopped referring to the land’s locations by their in-world names, and the storytelling simply stopped. Now, like all of its sister lands (including Discoveryland), Tomorrowland became a cartoon catch-all for Pixar properties, simply dressed in a beautiful art deco shell…
Image: Disney
Imported
Once TRON hit the rails in Shanghai, it was only a matter of time until rumors began to rumble. Fans of Disney Parks began to coalesce around where this phenomenal thrill could end up next… Now, don’t misunderstand – this same “rumbling” is typical whenever Disney opens an exciting, original E-Ticket outside of the United States. We saw the same endless optimism when another Modern Marvel: Mystic Manor opened, sending “armchair Imagineers” scuttling for the message baords to proclaim where the ride could fit at Disneyland and Disney World.
And likewise, insiders quickly began to report that TRON Lightcycle Power Run would come to both US resorts, albeit, dressed a bit differently in each.
Image: Marvel / Disney
At Disneyland Resort, insiders say that the ride was expected to be built in the new Marvel land taking shape at Disney California Adventure, perhaps dressed as a Captain America ride on motorcycles. (That may or may not happen since a failed expansion to the landlocked Disneyland Resort’s eastern border necessitated a radical shift in plans for the super hero land… Though the comic book land is set to squash the park’s Bug’s Land, it’s unclear what attractions may debut alongside it and join the Guardians of the Galaxy takeover of the park’s Lost Legend: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.)
While that may or may not come about, the second proposed clone will.
Image: Disney
At the semiannual D23 Expo in 2017, Disney announced that TRON Lightcycle Power Run would be coming to Magic Kingdom. While many expected the ride to replace either the long-lived Tomorrowland Speedway or – more unthinkably – the long-running Modern Marvel: Carousel of Progress, concept art shows the attraction – copied-and-pasted from Shanghai – nuzzled into previously-backstage area behind the Speedway and next to Space Mountain.
It’s expected to open “in time for the resort’s 50th anniversary,” which would be in 2021.
Designed… or just dropped-in?
Image: Disney
There’s no question at all that at Magic Kingdom, a copy of TRON Lightcycle Power Run will be smash hit; a stellar E-Ticket that redefines the resort; a must-see experience that brings people back to Walt Disney World. We cannot wait for this ride to make its way closer to us. But one question does remain…
Curiously, in Shanghai, TRON Lightcycle Power Run is the cornerstone of the design of the park’s Tomorrowland… the rest of the land, it seems, it built off of and based on its gleaming, curved, glass canopy and its glowing, incandescent aesthetic.
Weirdly, concept art so far shows that the attraction is being “plopped” into Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland without much care for the land already built there. On one hand, it’s great – the canopy is an attraction in and of itself for onlookers. But how will this distinctly modern design feel soaring over the fifty-year-old tracks of the Tomorrowland Speedway and its puttering racecars? How at home can this 2021 ride look when set literally against and next to the Space Age, Googie-stylized, 1970s Space Mountain?
Image: Disney
One of the most interesting things we’ll be watch for in an otherwise copy-and-paste cloning is how (or – yikes – if) Disney bothers to extend the style to the rest of the land. That’ll be important, because Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland right now is a bit of a mutt… Its front end retains the beautiful sci-fi / art-deco style of its 1995 renovation (albeit with every original ride torn out and replaced with Toy Story, Lilo and Stitch, and Monsters Inc.), and the entire back half of the land is still decked in ‘70s simplicity.
TRON Lightcycle Power Run is beautiful; Space Mountain and Carousel of Progress are beautiful; the Avenue of Planets and the Astro Orbiter are beautiful; but none look like they were meant to inhabit the same world.
Will Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland receive a fitting, land-wide redesign by time TRON opens? Or will this new and distinctly-different attraction simply be tucked away in its own corner of the mismatched land?
Derezzed
Image: Disney
When TRON Lightcycle Power Run opens at Magic Kingdom (allegedly aiming for a 2021 debut), it’ll be a much-needed, well-loved, and spectacular thrill ride that will bring Magic Kingdom to the next level. It’s a stunning E-Ticket that’s as fun to watch as it is to ride. Of course detractors will (correctly) decry it as the first “exposed” steel coaster at Walt Disney World; another step of the IP invasion; a ride whose placement is evidence of Disney’s thoughtless rush to stuff the parks with hot properties and big, flashy rides with little care for their long-term sense.
But all those (legitimate) concerns aside, do you agree that this flashy new roller coaster is the right fit for Magic Kingdom? Did you know about its Chinese origins and the way it was meant to introduce a new kind of Tomorrowland? Do you have any hesitations about such a modern ride and its juxtaposition against the rest of Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland and its once-headlining Space Mountain? Share your comments in the thoughts below.
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