Five years. 1,875 days. That’s how much time will have passed between the first signs of construction for TRON Lightcycle Run on February 14, 2018 and its opening on April 4, 2023.
For those of us who’ve seen TRON’s construction start and stop, ebb and flow, speed up and slow down, every day of the last five years has felt something like a big joke with us as the punchline… Why can’t Disney just open its cloned copy of an already existing off-the-shelf roller coaster in a box? It’s understandable to feel that TRON Lightcycle Run represents an agonizing new low when it comes to the time it takes to build a theme park attraction.
… But guess what? Today we’ve collected a list of long-delayed attractions whose infamously extended construction periods meet and even exceed TRON’s five year build. From rides that missed their announced openings by years to rides that sat closed for nearly a decade, these examples from Disney, Universal, and beyond might leave you thinking that TRON was actually a rush job!
1. Sylvester McMonkey McBean’s Very Unusual Driving Machines
LOCATION: Universal’s Islands of Adventure
CONSTRUCTION: 6 years
Combine the breezy heights of the PeopleMover, the thrilling joys of driving on the Autopia, and the chaos and crashing of bumper cars and you’ve got an idea of what Universal envisioned for its “Very Unusual Driving Machines” – an elevated, aerial attraction meant to debut alongside Islands of Adventure in 1999. The idea was that guests would board one of a handful of wacky, Seussian vehicles that traveled along elevated tracks winding through the land. But on this unique ride, guests could actually increase or decrease their vehicle’s speed, bumping into other riders like a chaotic cartoon highway in the sky.
Tremendous effort and huge expense when into the experimental ride, whose single-rail track weaved through the land, supported by custom-made bent and bulging steel supports (to match Seuss Landing’s commitment to having no right angles or straight lines.) But when the park opened, the overhead rails were curiously quiet.
Allegedly, Universal had run into two significant issues: a dispute with the ride’s manufacturer and an issue with emergency egress and how the ride would be safely stopped and evacuated during a power outage. (Fans of Disneyland’s Lost Legend: The PeopleMover can tell you all about the problems such rides face.) By summer of 2000, two ride vehicles had found their way onto the tracks – but there were merely props meant to carry waving characters, add to the land’s kinetics, and disguise the unused tracks in plain sight.
Especially when Islands of Adventure was criticized for having too few rides for kids, Universal doubled down on getting the Driving Machines working, apparently testing new vehicle arrangements and requesting proposals for how to make the ride work. It wasn’t until 2006 that they found the answer.
Trusted ride manufacturer Mack was hired to add new, tubular steel tracks over the single-railed originals and the ride was reimagined from single, guest-powered vehicles to self-driving, 20-passenger trains that slowly dip and drive through the land. After more than seven years, the tracks above Seuss Landing finally had an attraction: The High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride.
2. Mission: Ferrari
LOCATION: Ferrari World Abu Dhabi
CONSTRUCTION: 9 years
Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi opened in 2010 and pretty quickly made a name for itself with two particularly cutting edge attractions: The Speed of Magic (one of few rides then or now to re-use the still-spectacular SCOOP ride system developed for the Modern Marvel: The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man) and Formula Rossa, the world’s fastest roller coaster (launching from 0 to 149 miles per hour in less than 5 seconds).
But for the better part of the last decade, the most fascinating thing about Ferrari World was a ride that no one knew much about… Construction began on “Mission: Ferrari” in 2014, but aside from a single track element that pops out from a showbuilding, inverts, then dives back into the unknown, guests really didn’t know much about what the ride could entail. Designed by Dynamic Attractions (who, among many other projects, contributed to the high-tech KUKA arm technology in Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey and the “4D” track elements in Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts), Mission: Ferrari was said to be an unthinkably complex “SFX Coaster.”
Immense secrecy still surrounds this ride – which officially opened in January 2023 – but it involves a combination of 3D screens, launches, dark ride sections, forward and backwards motion, a tilt track section, and a unique sideways slide… No wonder it took nine years to open.
3. TEST TRACK
LOCATION: EPCOT
CONSTRUCTION: 3 years
Today, TEST TRACK is one of the most popular attractions at Walt Disney World. But in 1997, it was the cause of a whole lot of headaches, frustration, and anger for fans, executives, and Imagineers.
Disney had closed the Lost Legend: World of Motion in January 1996 with the expectation that its high-speed, high-thrill replacement would be ready to launch in May 1997. Suffice it to say that if you visited EPCOT in summer 1997, you did not ride Test Track. As we explored in our in-depth history of the original version of the ride, the highly advanced, high-speed slot car technology that powered Test Track was incredibly unreliable, allegedly frazzling computer systems that tried to keep track of each vehicle and its block spacing as each vehicle independently accelerates.
The ride was so frustrating that Disney allegedly fired the company they’d contracted to build the ride control software and decided to start from scratch on their own with an in-house program. General Motors – the company that sponsored Test Track – was so distraught about the mess that they famously pulled their funding of a planned Disneyland ride meant to use the same ride system – the Declassified Disaster: Rocket Rods.
Ultimately, Test Track didn’t just miss Summer 1997 crowds. It also missed the Summer of 1998. In fact, the ride only managed to soft open in December 1998, working intermittently as Disney fine-tuned the hardware, software, and operations for another half year. It wasn’t until March 1999 – nearly two years after its Grand Opening had initially been scheduled – that Test Track finally debuted.
But another Disney ride has been delayed even longer… Read on…
4. Haunted Mansion
LOCATION: Disneyland
CONSTRUCTION: 7 years
Given that the Haunted Mansion feels like it’s been a part of Disney Parks since opening day, it’s easy to forget that at one time, it was a ridiculously-delayed project that ultimately took seven years to finish. Of course, at least in the Haunted Mansion’s case, designers had an excuse.
Walt and his team of Imagineers had settled on the idea of a New Orleans-themed expansion to Disneyland’s Frontierland way back in the early ’60s. In fact, the Haunted Mansion itself was one of the very first hints of what was to come, and construction began in 1962. The stately white plantation house complete with wrought iron gate, lawn, and gardens actually appeared at the end of a proto-New-Orleans Street back in 1963. Of course, the house itself was empty, and the hidden showbuilding that would eventually hold the ride was not yet built. The Haunted Mansion was, in many ways, a very expensive, very empty set piece.
And before Walt and company could dig too deep into the Haunted Mansion, they were called away by big-pocketed sponsors of the 1964 – 65 New York World’s Fair, who hired Disney to design attractions for their pavilions in Queens. The mad dash at Imagineering saw “it’s a small world,” the Carousel of Progress, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, and the technology that powered the PeopleMover all conceived, designed, developed, and fabricated in a jaw-droppingly short time span.
Armed with the technologies they’d practiced at the fair, Walt returned to Disneyland with big plans for a 1967 New Tomorrowland and for New Orleans Square, where his pet project – Pirates of the Caribbean – was the focus. Unfortunately, Walt passed away unexpected in December 1966, with Pirates as the last attraction whose development he oversaw. As for that old white plantation house in New Orleans Square? Well… It was still empty. And worse, no one knew quite what Walt would’ve wanted to do with it.
You have to imagine that the Haunted Mansion was really the first attraction whose development was done largely without Walt’s input, instead tasking Imagineers with working backwards to imagine what the ride should contain. The result is that the house built and completed in 1963 didn’t open its wrought iron gates until August 1969.
5. Flying Turns
LOCATION: Knoebels
CONSTRUCTION: 7 years
Located in Elysburg, Pennsylvania, Knoebels (with a hard “k”) is one of those delightful, classic, old time amusement parks dating back to 1926. It’s also the largest free admission park in the country, requiring per-ride coupons or wristbands to experience the attractions. Its historic Haunted Mansion (not to be confused with Disney’s) is often ranked as one of the best classic dark rides on Earth. But Knoebels’ commitment to history and preservation is made most clear by one of its engineering marvels…
In the ’20s and ’30s (during the first Golden Age of the Roller Coaster), coaster designer John Miller and aviator John Norman Bartlett popularized a spectacular roller coaster model they called the Flying Turns. A bobsled coaster, all eight eventual installations of the Flying Turns placed guests in trains that were released into wooden troughs, bobbing and weaving, slaloming through banks and snaking along a winding, half-tube course. (The best documented was the version at Cleveland’s Euclid Beach, above.)
Interest in roller coasters bottomed out during World War II, and across the country, little boardwalks, picnic parks, and trolley parks flickered out of existence, with their wooden bobsleds closing with them. The last (at New York’s Coney Island) was demolished in 1974.
It really wasn’t until the ’70s that coasters came back into style, and by the 1980s and ’90s, a dozen steel bobsleds had been opened across the world. But in late 2005, Knoebels announced that they intended to open their own Flying Turns – the first in four decades. Using only archival photos of long-lost rides, the in-house team worked to backwards engineer a wooden bobsled ride to modern safety specifications.
Despite Knoebels best efforts, the ride wasn’t quite ready for its anticipated opening in fall 2007. First the trains needed new wheels. But the new wheels altered the ride’s planned speed. So it didn’t open in 2008. Then, further adjustments to the trains meant that it didn’t open in 2009. Or 2010. A brand new set of trains left the park “very encouraged” in 2011, but the ride didn’t open that year. Or 2012, when a section of track had to be removed and rebuilt to accommodate yet another new train design.
It took seven years of testing and adjusting, new wheels, new trains, and reprofiling, but on October 5, 2013, Flying Turns finally opened to the public. Knoebels classic coaster was a testament to the power of perseverance for both the park and the fans who waited all along.
6. TRON Lightcycle Run
LOCATION: Magic Kingdom
CONSTRUCTION: 5 years
Which brings us to TRON Lightcycle Run. Allegedly intended to be the centerpiece of Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary Celebration (perhaps even launching October 1, 2021), TRON Lightcycle Run at Magic Kingdom will open April 4, 2023 after breaking ground on February 14, 2018 – 1,875 days, or just over 5 years.
For sure, there are a few reasons we should give Disney a break here, not the least of which being that between 2018 and 2023, a global pandemic decimated the tourism industry, brought construction projects around the globe to a halt, and created supply shortages so vast and unthinkable, we’re still mired in them three years later. It’s totally fair to give Disney credit for that, and to acknowledge that slowing down or even fully stopping construction might’ve been a fair financial call at the time. It’s also good to remember that at some point, Disney likely chose to prioritize Guardians of the Galaxy – Cosmic Rewind, at which point there was no rush to complete TRON lest its pull be wasted with Guardians already drawing crowds.
Of course, in the same breath, we’d have to concede that Universal Orlando underwent the same pandemic, yet saw its VelociCoaster go from construction was to opening in 877 days – about half the time. Likewise, we can’t discount that Magic Kingdom’s Lightcycle ride is quite literally an identical copy of the Modern Marvel: TRON Lightcycle Power Run that already exists in Shanghai Disneyland, making a five year construction timeline somewhat embarrassing.
In any case, the opening of TRON Lightcycle Run in Florida will in many ways earn a collective exhale from Disney Parks fans who’ve been waiting for this E-Ticket coaster to finally open. Not only will it be nice to have a new ride to celebrate the Disney100 campaign… but frankly, it’ll end the five years of pulling this Band-Aid off one hair a time.
