Here at Theme Park Tourist, we pride ourselves on having plenty to help the casual theme park fan. But for true industry enthusiasts, it’s all about our In-Depth Collections, dedicated to telling the complete, full, unabridged stories of the best (and worst) rides on Earth and the interwoven stories of the industry that made them possible.
From a simple sketch to a world-class E-Ticket, our Modern Marvels features trace the behind-the-scenes stories of the making-of these masterpiece rides and how they came to be, then head in for a first-person ride-through to catch every detail along the way. Frequent readers have gotten up-close and personal with some of the best rides on the planet, traveling into the beguiling Mystic Manor, braving the curse of Shiriki Utundu in Tokyo DisneySea’s Tower of Terror, raced through the Grid aboard the incredible TRON Lightcycle Power Run, and many more.
Image: Disney, via Mint Crocodile
But today’s feature is perhaps one of the most important rides Disney’s ever designed… Because Radiator Springs Racers saved an entire theme park, reversing the fortunes of Disney’s costliest mistake ever. When this high-octance family thrill ride opened in 2012, some said that it stood amongst the best Disney dark rides on Earth – a return to Disney’s dominance and an example of what Imagineering can do. So today, we’ll dig into Disney’s automotive history, from cars to – well – Cars, and how this larger-than-life E-Ticket at Disney California Adventure set a new standard for the industry.
In the immortal words of Luigi himself, “Now you will have the chance to make this the most glorious race of your lives! Uno for the money; due for the show; tre to get ready and quattro to… go!“
Disney’s cars
While it’s Walt’s long-standing affinity for trains that most Disney Parks fans are aware of, Disneyland’s connection to cars goes back about as far.
The reign of the automobile on the West Coast kicked off in the 1940s with the opening of the Arroyo Seco Parkway linking Los Angeles with Pasadena – the first freeway in the Western United States (and a part of the fabled U.S. Route 66). Were it not for the emergence of California’s renowned “car culture” in the ‘50s, Disneyland wouldn’t have even taken shape. After all, those emerging freeways are what made Walt and his location scouts take notice of the pristine, orange-grove covered town of Anaheim thirty miles outside of Los Angeles. Plus, the rise of Walt’s little park in Orange County is practically its own chapter in the decades-long rise of the American middle class and the new “family road trip” vacations taking society by storm.
Put simply, cars were a major part of American society by time Disneyland opened, and it was clear that they’d remain an icon of American ingenuity and innovation, deserving a place in “a world of wondrous ideas, signifying Man’s achievement.”
Autopia
Image: Disney
Even though fans today may balk at the gas-guzzling Autopia that covers nearly four acres of the infamously landlocked park’s Tomorrowland, the seemingly simple car ride was a living demonstration of the future when it opened alongside Disneyland on July 17, 1955. At that time, America’s multilane, limited-access highway system was still being designed, and President Eisenhower wouldn’t sign the Federal-Aid Highway Act (establishing interstate highways) until a year after the park’s opening!
Image: Disneyland
So Autopia was ahead of its time. But more importantly, it become a hallmark attraction of the park – a first real chance for generations of Disneyland guests to get behind the wheel and test out the open road (albeit, not-so-open given that bumpers were added just before the park’s opening and a guide rail was added in 1956 for now-obvious reasons). A product of – and living advertisement for – California’s car culture, Autopia was a hit and required a C-Ticket to ride.
In fact, children of all ages were invited to get behind the wheel in no less than four attractions during Disneyland’s earliest years. The Tomorrowland Autopia opened in 1955, then was joined by Fantasyland’s Junior Autopia in 1956, and the Midget Autopia in 1957 (in this case, referring to the diminutive size of the cars; the ride itself was for those too small to drive the Junior Autopia cars, with no adults allowed!). The grander Fantasyland Autopia then replaced the Junior version in 1959.
Image: Disney
The Disneyland Autopia we know today is a combination and restructuring of both the Tomorrowland and Fantasyland versions, and spin-offs of the ride are, of course, located at Magic Kingdom, Tokyo Disneyland, Hong Kong Disneyland (where the cars are all-electric), and even in the retro-futuristic Discoveryland of Disneyland Paris.
But cars were only the beginning. Naturally, Walt’s Tomorrowland changed with the times, culminating in the grand re-opening of a New Tomorrowland in 1967. Dubbed a “World on the Move,” this kinetic paradise continued to feature the Autopia, but now highlighted new prototypes for transportation of the future and the mass-transit systems that could sincerely mark our cities of tomorrow: the Monorail and the Lost Legend: The Peoplemover streaming overhead. And that brings us to our next car ride…
Future World (of Motion)
Image: Disney
From Autopia to the Peoplemover, it’s clear that Walt had always been fascinated with transportation. And while the Disneyland versions of the Monorail and the Peoplemover were meant to act as “gee-whiz” inducing showcases of what the future could hold, he planned to actually apply those technologies in the urban setting of his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.
Images: Disney
To his thinking, Monorails would be the main transportation of his ‘Florida Project,’ carrying guests from a purpose-built airport to EPCOT and then to Magic Kingdom, with Peoplemover spurs then branching off from each stop to pulse into the finer corners of the resort and city. Walt hoped that his EPCOT – a real, functioning city – would act as a test bed, informing any world city to be built after.
Of course, we know that Walt’s death sidelined any hopes of EPCOT, though its core tenets of futurism, idealism, and industry became a backbone of the first major project explored without Walt: EPCOT Center. Disney’s own, permanent World’s Fair, EPCOT Center would highlight areas of science and innovation in massive pavilions, dispensing entirely with cartoons, castles, and fantasy in favor of real aspirations for what the future of industry could bring.
Image: Disney
And true to Walt’s DNA, the first partnership Disney secured for EPCOT Center’s Future World was with General Motors to build a pavilion dedicated to the history and future of transportation. From humble stone-age beginnings, to automobiles, flight, and the limitless possibilities of the future, the Lost Legend: World of Motion remains one of the most humorous and substantial dark rides in Epcot’s long list of closed classics.
But as the new millennium neared, the renamed Epcot entered a period of change. If you ask many guests, the sincere attempts at futurism based back in the park’s 1982 opening had… well… aged. As sponsors dropped out of the park and Disney sought cheap-and-cheerful answers to its once-educational Epcot, General Motors stepped forward with their own requirement.
Image: Disney
Times had been tough for the automaker, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to justify to shareholders and to laid-off employees that GM should continue to sponsor a dark ride through the history of transportation at Walt Disney World. GM offered to renew their sponsorship of Epcot’s transportation pavilion, but only if it would be updated to feature a headlining ride that would highlight – and sell – GM vehicles…
TEST TRACK
Officially opened in March 1999, Epcot’s newest entry looked quite unlike anything the park had done before. While each of its futuristic pavilions had opened with a lengthy, informative dark ride through its highlighted area of industry, the new TEST TRACK was different. Rather than leading guests through a feel-good, sing-song retrospective of Marc Davis-produced Audio Animatronic scenes, the ride was a thrilling tour of a GM safety testing facility aboard a car being put through the paces… with guests in the seat of test dummies.
Image: Disney
TEST TRACK was an unusually unskinned dark ride for Disney, hollowing out the former World of Motion showbuilding to create a cavernous, industrial proving ground filled with in-your-face tests sending’s vehicles swerving through cones, rumbling over rugged terrain, accelerating up hairpin inclines, and passing through environmental chambers of hot and cold just like a real test car would endure.
The real innovation of TEST TRACK, though, was in its hardware. Building off of the technology Disney had designed for the Modern Marvel: Indiana Jones Adventure and its DINOSAUR clone, TEST TRACK would feature a new, revolutionary ride system.
Imagine the slot car tracks you might’ve had as a child, where small model cars are affixed to a track using a pin inside of a center guide groove. In these pint-sized slot cars, battery power charges the track, energizing a small motor inside the car through electrical pickups.
Image: Disney
On a human-sized scale, TEST TRACK’s six-passenger vehicles would ride along a track with a bus-bar fed down a central slot to guide tires and power supplied beneath. Each of Disney’s vehicles would include three on-board computers to track the ride’s progress and speed, activate show scenes and lightning, and control on-board audio and video cues. But this innovative new ride system really showed off its strength in the ride’s finale, accelerating from 0 – 65 miles per hour – the fastest ride at Walt Disney World.
Admittedly, the high-tech hardware turned out to be a little more temperamental than Disney had expected. You can read more about the ride, its original incarnation, and its subsequent 21st century transformation in its own in-depth feature, Lost Legends: TEST TRACK.
But know that at an estimated cost of $100 million – one of the most expensive rides ever developed – Test Track opened on March 17, 1999… almost two years after its scheduled debut. Even still, it was far from the biggest disaster Disney would face at the crest of the new millennium. Disney’s costliest mistake ever was on the horizon, and it’s there that the promise of celebrating California’s car culture would return on a massive scale… but not in the way you’re expecting…
Scheming
In the mere three decades since its opening, Walt Disney World in Florida had become a true international destination comprised of four theme parks, two water parks, a downtown shopping district, and nearly two dozen resort hotels.
Image: Disney
Meanwhile, Walt’s original park back in Anaheim was still a single theme park, a parking lot, and a hotel across the street. Then-CEO Michael Eisner had a plan to change that. He wanted to grow the miniscule Disneyland into a resort in its own right, and knew that a second theme park was the way to do it. Suffice it to say that the plans developed for the property during the ‘90s included the gargantuan Westcot, which met the ire of locals and ballooned to a budget well exceeding Eisner’s allowable expenses.
Westcot wouldn’t be. Instead, Eisner and his executives flew off to an Aspen retreat to determine a more cost-effective plan for a second gate at Disneyland. Eventually, they decided that Disneyland could never trump Disney World for one simple reason: Disney World was a destination unto itself – the reason most visitors found themselves landing at Orlando International Airport. But Disneyland was merely one of the hundred thousand things worth seeing in California thanks to that damnable car.
A trip to Disneyland was usually just a part of a larger trip to the Golden State, which offered seaside piers, the international city of Los Angeles, the wonders of Hollywood, the High Sierras… in California, you could ski in the morning and surf in the afternoon! Disneyland could never compete with all the wonders of California…!
Or could it?
Image: Disney
It hit like lightning: the way to keep guests from leaving Disneyland to see California was to bring the rest of California to Disneyland.
Disney’s California Misadventure
At the dawn of the new millennium, Disneyland was renamed Disneyland Park – part of the larger Disneyland Resort that would also include the Downtown Disney District (a downsized version of the shopping area that had debuted at Disney World decades earlier, more snugly fit within the still-small resort). As well, Disney acquired the Pan-Pacific Hotel just west of the new shopping area (renaming it Disney’s Pacific Hotel, then Disney’s Paradise Pier Hotel), constructed a new deluxe resort (Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel and Spa), and – oh, yeah – opened a new theme park.
Image: Disney
Disney’s California Adventure debuted in February 2001 with warnings spread far and wide that the new, cutting edge park would likely draw bumper-to-bumper traffic to the freshly-poured Mickey & Friends parking garage; that California Adventure would max out at its 33,000 guest capacity on most weekends; that the old Disneyland next door would practically be a ghost town as new international guests descended on the bright, shiny, new park.
The reality was a little different.
In 2001 – California Adventure’s worldwide debut year – about 5 million guests stepped through its gates.
That doesn’t sound bad at all, until you know that during the same period, more than 12 million visited that “old-fashioned” and “tired” Disneyland.
But why? The answer to that question is its own in-depth feature here – one of the most-read on Theme Park Tourist, and a favorite for theme park industry fans, Declassified Disaster: Disney’s California Adventure. But the short version is that California Adventure tried to be the opposite of Disneyland.
Image: Disney
Disneyland’s strength has always been that its themed lands feel transportive; that guests are stepping into a long-since-forgotten time; Adventureland, Frontierland, New Orleans Square, Fantasyland… they all feel like real worlds that could’ve existed, but are now brought to life in their idealized, romanticized, “perfected” form; habitable, historic, and real, but infused with just enough fantasy as to be impossible.
And that’s where California Adventure could’ve really shined! After all, who but Disney could make guests feel that they’ve stepped back into the Golden Age of Hollywood, mingling among the stars and cars of Tinseltown? Couldn’t Disney take guests to a turn-of-the-century Victorian-era Californian boardwalk lit by warm-glowing strings of the new incandescent Edison bulb? Disney’s portfolio tells us that they could create an entire land that lets guests explore an idealized 1920s Los Angeles, alive with the ding of the Red Car electric trolley as it glides down the street.
Image: Disney
Instead, California Adventure’s lands were play-ups of modern California. The time is now; the place is here. Instead of transporting you back in time as only Disney can, the park’s Hollywood Pictures Backlot land is supposed to be a modern Hollywood set… of Hollywood. It may seem like you’re on modern Hollywood Blvd. lined with punny plastic surgeon shops, hair salons, and casting couches, until you notice that the shops are merely plywood facades with scaffolds and camera rigs all around! The same goes for a ‘70s inspired pier of stucco and neon with off-the-shelf unthemed carnival rides; corrugated-steel industrial gift shops and concrete plazas.
Image: Disney
Maybe that would’ve been excusable if it had still given guests phenomenal things to do, but the relatively few people who gave California Adventure a chance reported that it contained only three noteworthy rides –two standouts (California Screamin’ – a bare steel roller coaster – and the Lost Legend: Soarin’ Over California) and one of the most abysmal rides Disney has ever created, the park’s only dark ride and subject of a Declassified Disaster: Superstar Limo.
Given that California Adventure’s already-low attendance dropped a further 15% in its second year, executives had to realize that this problem was not going away. They quickly tried super-charging the park with brand new attractions like the family-focused A Bug’s Land and the headlining E-Ticket Lost Legend: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. But behind the scenes, Imagineers were toying with a big fix to bring something new to the Californian park… an entirely new land that would celebrate California’s mid-century car culture – a whole land dedicated to cars. No, not Cars. Cars.
Carland
Though it may be hard to believe, Disney Imagineers were hard at word developing an entirely new themed land to be built on a last bit of parking lot remaining south of the California Adventure site.
Now, Disney had erected tributes to California car culture before, like the massive “roadside attraction” style Gertie the Dinosaur stand resting in Echo Lake at the Disney-MGM Studios. California Adventure’s own Paradise Pier also featured a section seemingly dedicated to the sometimes-whacky wonders of the great American road trip, including a sunglasses shop inside a dinosaur of its own.
But of course, the history of America’s roadside attractions and their connection to that great American pastime of the family vacation was nearly endless. After all, Disneyland had been one of those tourist traps forty years earlier, back when Cadillacs and station wagons criss-crossed the country.
Image: Disney
In particular, Disney’s Carland would celebrate the Mother Road itself – Route 66. Originally running from Chicago, Illinois to the Pacific Coast Highway in Santa Monica, California, the legendary “Main Street of America” was 2,448 miles of opportunity – a “yellow brick road” to the West for those who headed to the coast during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Route 66’s story is forever tied to the many communities that resided along its path, who fought to save their towns from being bypassed by Eisenhower’s Interstates.
Naturally, the land would highlight an imaginary Route 66 town brought to life with mid-century music, “drive-in” diners, and kitschy shops selling souvenirs and tchotchkes. Bringing to life a neon stretch of “Cruise Street” between 1955 and 1965, Carland would’ve been like stepping into a ’60s diner and being teleported into the past. It would also feature at least one new headlining ride.
Image: Disney
From what fans can gather, the main attraction in the land would’ve been Road Trip U.S.A. On board, guests would drive along a comical, post-card perspective Route 66 passing preposterous roadside attractions set in the desert mountains that enveloped the town.
Image: Disney
Chugging along highway ramps, rumbling over bridges, and swerving through the natural and manmade wonders of the West, Road Trip U.S.A. would’ve likely been a new take on Autopia; a drive-‘em-yourself family ride through the west to the tune of the Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, and the road trip-ready playlists of the era.
Image: Disney
Of course, they’d also sputter through a car wash, where onlooking guests could activate wind and water effects.
Image: Disney
One particularly thoughtful moment would come when the cars would drive into the “Carland Caverns” set inside of the rocky backdrop to the land to explore glistening caverns clearly modeled after the Mine Train Thru Nature’s Wonderland that once chugged through Frontierland, with its iconic and beloved Rainbow Caverns scene.
As development of Carland progressed, it seems that Imagineers decided that, for the land to truly revitalize Disney’s California Adventure, its headliner would need to be a real draw. That seems to be why, later on in the land’s concept phase, the Autopia-style drive through exaggerated comic roadside attractions was reduced in scope and given a character overlay (since, if you can believe it, back then people criticized California Adventure for not having enough Disney characters – quite the opposite of today) to become…
Image: Disney
Goofy About Roadtrips, now casting the ride as a complement to 1995’s A Goofy Movie.
That seems to be the point when the land’s anchoring ride became a full-on E-Ticket, bringing TEST TRACK’s technology to Anaheim in a new racing ride through the desert…
Image: Disney
Looking more familiar?
Of course, Carland never came to be. At least, not in the form Imagineers originally envisioned… Why? We’ll dissect three major points that shifted the land’s focus forever on the next page, then head into California Adventure’s one-of-a-kind E-Ticket land to step aboard its anchoring attraction…
Obviously, we know that the Carland Imagineers initially planned for California Adventure didn’t come to be. But the reasons why may be more numerous than you think.
1) A new philosophy
Image: Disney
As we discussed in the Declassified Disaster: Disney’s California Adventure feature and a little earlier here, the clumsy, cartoonish representation of California that the park embodied didn’t make many fans. It’s that persistent and unfortunate undertone to the entire thesis of California Adventure that was destined to hold the park back. In other words, it was true that the park didn’t have enough E-Tickets to justify a day away from Disneyland; it was true that California Adventure lacked the recognizable Disney characters people wanted… but even if Disney added a dozen E-Tickets and pushed cartoons into the park’s lands, it still wouldn’t fix California Adventure’s flawed concept: it’s lack of timelessness; its lack of reverence and romance and idealism; its spoof-like delivery.
Image: Disney
So at Imagineering, designers were tasked with making a big shift: rethinking the park at its foundation and reorienting the ship entirely. Going forward, California Adventure would need an infusion of the secret ingredients that made Disneyland so beloved. Its themed lands would need to be timeless, romantic, cinematic, and habitable rather than being cartoony spoofs of modern Californian culture.
While the mid-century styling of Carland wasn’t inherently bad, its reliance on cartoonified clutter and outlandish roadside attractions would double down on California Adventure’s flaws rather than leading the park in a new direction. Simply, Carland lacked both the reverence that the park needed and the truly-groundbreaking E-Ticket to make the park a must-see.
2) From cars to Cars
Image: Disney / Pixar
Most obviously, Disney / Pixar’s 2006 film Cars changed the game. Released in December 2006, it’s almost hard to believe how close Cars comes to fulfilling all that Carland promised, anyway, but in the more timeless, reverent, and “real” skin that California Adventure now needed.
The film takes place in a world populated exclusively by anthropomorphic cars and follows hot rod racing legend Lightning McQueen who becomes hopelessly lost on the interstate at night (his headlights are merely stickers, after all) and makes a desperate detour along Route 66. There, he stumbles upon the sleepy and washed-up town of Radiator Springs, long-since surpassed by progress with its residents relegated to rusting.
Image: Disney / Pixar
Though he initially tries to make a quick escape from the town and its Sheriff, he soon finds himself forging a connection with the washed up Doc Hudson (a Hudson Hornet, played by Paul Newman in his last film role), Mater the tow truck, Luigi (the ever-Italian 1959 Fiat 500), diner proprietor Flo, Sally (a 2002 Porsche who’s settled into the unassuming town herself) and the town’s ragtag cast of cars.
McQueen, of course, charges himself with revitalizing Radiator Springs, triumphantly ending with the town’s rebirth as a neon paradise of mid-century allure made aglow at sundown to the irresistible doo-wop tunes of The Chord’s “Sh-boom (Life Could be a Dream).”
Image: Disney
Back at Imagineering, Cars became an obvious property to include in the still-gestating Carland concept. One proposal, for example, changed Road Trip U.S.A. / Goofy About Roadtrips again to become Sally’s Road Rally, reformatting the Autopia-style journey as a trip past cars and shops from Radiator Springs.
As the land continued to develop, Cars became more and more prominent in the land, informing its style and reshaping the town and its desert mountain range backdrop.
Image: Disney
But even if Carland was increasingly borrowing from the sights and settings of Cars, it was still Carland, just as Adventureland revolves around Indiana Jones, but is still Adventureland. After all, what was the alternative? An entire land dedicated to a single movie? Unprecedented… so far.
By the way, Cars made nearly $500 million in its international theatrical run. Admittedly, that’s not much for a modern Disney film (for perspective, it puts Cars in 15th place out of Pixar’s 19 big screen releases…) but it’s important to note that Cars merchandise reportedly topped $10 billion (that’s billion with b) in the five years after its debut alone (which might also help make clear why Cars 2 and Cars 3 exist). As a general rule, kids love cars… And that would be important when a new land debuting across the country and at Disney’s competitor showed the power of merchandising…
3) The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
Image: Universal / Warner Bros.
In May 2007, Disney’s longstanding quasi-competitor in the Orlando market – Universal Parks & Resorts – announced something big. They had secured the worldwide global rights to build attractions based on the multi-billion dollar Harry Potter film series that had enchanted a generation and become arguably one of the most recognized and enduring brands on Earth (right up there with Star Wars).
It was a coup for a number of reasons, of course, but one of the biggest blessings must’ve been series creator J.K. Rowling. Not content to simply sign her name on the dotted line and watch as the revenue came rolling in, Rowling allegedly took a wildly hands-on approach to the design of any attractions Universal would propose. The enigmatic author’s protective stance toward her characters had allegedly been the source of a falling out with Disney, who refused to agree to her hard-line demands.
Image: Universal / Warner Bros.
But Rowling was right to stay the course, and the Wizarding World she shephereded revolutionized the themed entertainment industry. That’s because she insisted that there be absolutely no intrusion of the outside world in the snow-covered village of Hogsmeade. Harry Potter and his friends didn’t drink Coca-Cola, so neither would guests in the Wizarding World. A magical village nestled at the base of a legendary School of Witchcraft and Wizardry wouldn’t have Dr Pepper on tap, would it? Instead, visitors would take their pick of Fizzy Otters, Pumpkin Juice, and Butterbeer.
Shops would not sell Harry Potter LEGO sets or Blu-Rays of the films, but house robes, textbooks, and wands. And most revolutionary, the shops of Hogsmeade would not be supersized to accomodate theme park crowds. Rather, they’d be tiny, cozy, and intimate, just the way they would be in the “real world,” the efficiencies of theme parks be damned. The goal was to bring the world of Harry Potter to life, not to create a “theme park”-sized version of it.
Image: Universal / Warner Bros.
The most amazing part? It worked. Disney must’ve looked on in astonishment as guests queued for hours not to ride attractions, but to get into gift shops. Fans tripped over themselves to drink Butterbeer, to eat fish and chips at the Three Broomsticks, and to purchase their own $40 wands. The Wizarding World wasn’t just a ride or even a land. It was a world, inviting guests to become a part of the story they knew and loved, completely immersing them in a to-scale recreation of a “real” place they’d longed to visit, with every nook and cranny intact.
Though it’s hard to believe now, the Wizarding World was the first example of a major themed land in one of Disney or Universal’s parks that was entirely centered around a single intellectual property, and that brought the physical “world” of that story to life for guests to inhabit. As luck would have it, that formula blended very well with a merchandise-based model, as well, making it the de facto formula for theme park additions from then on. Universal followed it up with lands dedicated to The Simpsons and Despicable Me, while Disney followed suited later with lands wholly dedicated to AVATAR, Star Wars, Toy Story, Ratatouille, Marvel, Frozen, and more.
But Disney’s first foray into an “IP land” wasn’t at Walt Disney World…
Bringing it all together
In review:
- Disney was determined to right the sinking California Adventure ship, and recognized that a foundational turn away from its “hip, irreverent, MTV attitude” and toward Disneyland’s more cinematic, stylized, reverent, and historic lands was the only path forward. E-Tickets alone were merely Band-Aids on a broken bone, and would never truly fix the park.
- Though Cars wasn’t Disney’s best film of the 21st century, it provided a built-in billion-dollar merchandising franchise while giving the once-proposed “Carland” a more cinematic, stylized, reverent, and historic foundation.
- The success of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter demonstrated to Disney that the next evolution of theme park design might lie in simply recreating beloved worlds so that guests could step into the scaled settings and stories they already knew and loved, and where they’d be tempted by “in-universe” food, drink, and souveniers.
Image: Disney
The stars had aligned. On October 17, 2007 – five months after Universal’s Wizarding World announcement – Disney made an unprecedented call of its own and did the unthinkable: they admitted defeat. CEO Bob Iger told the Washington Post, “Steve Jobs is fond of talking about brand deposits and brand withdrawals. Any time you do something mediocre with your brand, that’s a withdrawal. California Adventure was a brand withdrawal.”
Rather than chasing E-Tickets and masking the already-dated remains of the ’90s-designed California Adventure, Iger announced a $1.2 billion reconstruction effort that would systematically strip each of the park’s themed lands to its creative bolts, rebuilding them in the style of Disneyland’s – those transportive, thoughtful lands of Hollywood and Los Angeles and Santa Montica we described earlier, finally re-skinned as the historical and character-infused lands they could’ve been all along.
Image: Disney / Pixar
But Iger trumpeted one addition as “the big kahuna.” Constructed on the remains of the Timon parking lot where Carland had once been planned, Cars Land would now take shape. And the addition of an “s” made all the difference… On the next page, we’ll step into the land that saved California Adventure and board its spectacular, $200 million E-Ticket through Radiator Springs. Strap in…
Cars Land
Image: Disney / Pixar
Hang a right at the Carthay Circle Theater and make your way alongside Grizzy Peak – Radiator Springs is the second exit on your left… you can’t miss it! But really, you can’t.
From your first glimpse of Cars Land, you may be instantly converted to the belief that the town of Radiator Springs incarnate here is indeed the most spectacular land at any Disney Park – or maybe any theme park in the United States. It’s not just that the 12-acre land (technically, the largest at Disneyland Resort) appears as a shot-for-shot recreation of the town from the film, it’s that it feels entirely real.
Each and every location along Route 66 appears in surprisingly well-scaled form, even as two family flat rides fit in without being intrusive. It’s all here – Mater’s tow yard, Fillmore’s Taste-In, Sarge’s Supply Hut, Ramone’s, Luigi’s…
Image: Disney
Stepping down the street, you can stop by the Cozy Cone Motel, with each cone-shaped sleepaway garage serving a different kind of cone-related treat (pop-cone, chili cone queso, ice cream cones… and Red’s Apple Freeze, a sort of “Butterbeer” equivalent for this vehicular world. (You can get Coca-Cola here, but that’s probably fair given that the cars from the film only drink motor oil.)
But the land’s most beloved eatery must be Flo’s V-8 Cafe, right at the corner of Route 66 and Cross Street.
Image: Disney
This is the land’s go-to diner, serving diner favorites.
While Radiator Springs is one of the most surprisingly spectacular projects in Imagineering’s portfolio, it’s somehow not even the highlight of Cars Land. Because they don’t call Radiator Springs the “Gatway to Ornament Valley” for nothing.
Image: Disney
It may truly be that Disney has never tackled a project as breathtaking as this. The backdrop to Cars Land is Ornament Valley, a seemingly endless expanse of Southwestern desert cliffs covered in 300,000 square feet of rockwork. A masterpiece of forced perspective, the world-enveloping mountain range is – to say the least – as breathtaking as most actual natural wonders. And like those true feats of Mother Nature, its scale is simply impossible to capture in photographs. That’s why it ranked high on our list of the Seven “Natural” Wonders of the Theme Park World.
Most prominently, the legendary “Cadillac Range” reigns over the town, forever obscured in a distant, dusty desert haze. The six peaks, by the way, are Cadillac tail fins representing the car models from 1957 – 1962 (with 1959 as the pinnacle). Yet somehow, they feel convincingly… possible?
All encompassing, the Ornament Valley literally wraps around Radiator Springs and acts as a backdrop for all of the new Disney California Adventure.
Image: Disney
And it’s in the winding desert roads through and around the natural landforms of Ornament Valley that today’s Modern Marvel resides… As you walk along Cross Street, the sudden hum of energy breaks the desert’s still silence as suddenly, two vehicles come tearing over the bleached blacktop, leaping over the hilly terrain and racing off into the deep desert.
It’s race day in Radiator Springs…! And it’s time to put the pedal to the metal.
Radiator Springs Racers
Image: Ken Lund, Flickr (license)
Just past the Radiator Springs Fire Station that sits at the far end of town lies the entrance to Radiator Springs Racers. But to get there is quite a hike. Literally. The queue for this high-octane adventure passes through the acres of desert that make up Ornament Valley, with revving cars bolting by alongside and overhead waiting guests. Weaving through the desert buttes and bluffs, the line even leads through the remnants of Radiator Springs as it was established by the lovable Stanley the steam car.
And it’s only here at Disney California Adventure that we can also glimpse the Radiator Spring from which the town was named! It’s a curiously-shaped natural wellspring that created this town by serving as an engine-cooling stopover in the midst of the endless desert.
Finally, the weaving queue makes its way toward a spectacular natural cavern carved away into the foot of Ornament Valley’s iron-rich red rock faces. And there in the naturally cooled Comfy Caverns Motor Court, a line-up of friendly faces are waiting for us.
Image: Disney
Radiator Springs Racers makes use of the same technology that powered TEST TRACK, including the six-passenger vehicles (seated three-by-three). And with ballet-like choreography, they all advance, bumper-to-bumper, and invite us to step inside. After all, it’s Race Day… And we’re not quite ready for the starting line yet.
Advancing out of the Comfy Caverns, the idyllic and acoustic tunes of Randy Newman’s score from the film, our car hums its way up through the desert landscape, providing unparalleled views of Radiator Springs and – with a flourish of strings – turns to reveal a magnificent waterfall pouring down from a cliff face. This first 30 seconds of Radiator Springs Racers alone is a breathtaking and tranquil journey through the desert perhaps on par with Disneyland’s long-lost Mine Train Thru Nature’s Wonderland, rising higher and higher against the red rocked backdrop.
But now, the vehicle diverts into a cliff-side cavern, enveloped in darkness with the familiar Wisconsin-tinged voices of the perenially lost couple, Van and Minnie, in the darkness. “Van, are we lost again?”
Suddenly, ahead, the headlights of Mack the 18-wheeler illuminate as he looks on in shock and blares his horn. The car darts to the right to avoid the near-collision. (It’s a classic dark ride gag, and one used even on TEST TRACK!) Swerving momentarily through the darkened desert and between a startled Van and Minnie, we narrowly avoid a close call with a train and find ourselves surrounded with the sound of a police claxon, as Sheriff himself pulls out from behind a billboard.
Image: Disney / Pixar
The fluidity of Sheriff and the rest of the Cars cast we’ll see earned them a spot in our must-read Countdown: Best Animatronics on Earth, but there’s no time to celebrate. “Whoa!” Sheriff halts us, “Slow down! You’re not racin’ yet! Follow Mater into town to get ready!”
Naturally, Mater ensures we have a little fun first, by inviting us tractor-tipping. “Just don’t let Frank catch ya!” Oops. With a honk, we awaken Frank the red combine harvester, and with a screech, the car bolts away from the fields and back toward town. Racing under the trees and through the night, we round the corner and find ourselves in Radiator Springs once more, alight with neon.
Image: Disney
Each of the town’s residents is here, but our true destination is ahead, where Lightning and Sally await. This is where our journey to Race Day takes a turn. Luigi’s Casa della Tire is ahead on the left; Ramone’s Body Shop on the right. And Lightning and Sally are on hand to send us in the right direction by way of a fork in the road.
“A champion needs speed…” “…and style!” “Luigi! Give our friends your best!”
As the car peels to the left, it pulls into Luigi’s shop alongside a large mirror. “Buongiorno! For you, my friends? Only the best!” Luigi cries as a dramatic red curtain falls to block the mirror. “Pitstop!” Guido calls, descending into the floor with a lug wrench. The parked car rumbled and wiggles for a moment, then the red curtain parts once more, displaying in our reflection our brand-new whitewall tires! “Now you looka like-a real race car! Guido? To the starting line!”
(In the alternate scene – Ramone’s – the car gets a new, fresh coat of paint. After all, “you don’t just need to be fast, you need to look fast!”)
But now, advancing out of Luigi’s, the car enters a garage with Doc Hudson on a lift. “It takes more than shiny paint to win a race,” he offers as his voice transfers to our in-car speakers. “Now get out there and do us proud!”
Image: Disney
Luigi and Guido are indeed waiting at the Starting Line, as another car joins alongside us… It’s time to put the pedal to the metal. “Now you will have the chance to make this the most glorious race of your lives! Uno for the money; due for the show; tre to get ready and quattro to… go!“
Read to ride? Take a virtual race through Radiator Springs in the point of view video here:
Naturally, the adventure concludes randomly each time, with each car of passengers cheering as its vehicle pulls ahead along the winding, racing desert course at speeds reportedly up to 45 miles per hour. Ultimately, both vehicles end up in the picturesque Tail Light Caverns for a final touch base with Lightning and Mater.
Somewhat predictably, our take-home message from the duo? We’re all winners because we’re friends. Though secretly, you and I know we’re literally winners given that the car next to us lost.
Image: Disney
Radiator Springs Racers is one of the most spectacular dark rides Disney has ever designed, and its place in Disney California Adventure’s line-up is essential. It’s a wild family adventure that literally saved Disneyland’s sinking second gate and finally gave the Californian resort a “must-see” E-Ticket of its own.
The Future
Image: Disney
When Cars Land was announced as the keystone land that would save Disney California Adventure, fans fought against the Pixar proposal with nearly as much fervor and fury as they had with AVATAR’s inclusion in Animal Kingdom. An entire themed land dedicated to Pixar’s 15th most successful animated film? An American southwest town – though observably not a Californian one – as the anchor of California Adventure? If this was Disney’s coup to save Disneyland’s second gate, they’d better think bigger! Right?!
Now we can safely see that Cars Land feels like a piece of the puzzle California Adventure was missing. Not only does it give the park a much-needed anchoring headliner for families, but it also represents some of the best combined efforts of Imagineering ever. Picturesque, larger-than-life, and headlined by the E-Ticket Radiator Springs Racers, there’s simply no doubt that Cars Land has become a must-see icon of Imagineering across the globe.
At least so far, it appears that Radiator Springs Racers (and all of Cars Land) is set to remain a California Adventure exclusive… and that’s a spectacular finish line win for a park that’s spent much of its short life trying to catch up.
Image: Disney
As for Disney California Adventure and its transformation? That’s a story that’s still being written. But we picked up on the must-read story of Disneyland’s second gate after its grand re-opening in Declassified Disaster: Disney California Adventure – Part II exploring the way that Disney might just be actively undoing the $1.2 billion they just spent crafting a distinctly Californian narrative for the reborn park… That’s just one of the must-read stories in our In-Depth Collection Library, stocked with still more full features for Disney Parks enthusiasts. Make the jump there to set course for another Modern Marvel, Lost Legend, or Declassified Disaster’s tale.
Then, use the comments below to share your thoughts on Radiator Springs Racers and how it fits (or fumbles) Disney California Adventure’s story.
