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It’s one of the most infamous new builds at Walt Disney World in Florida.
Guests have been waiting a long time to ride Disney’s new TRON Lightcycle Power Run, with the new Tomorrowland ride affected by pandemic labor shortages and supply chain issues.
In a wild comparison, the TRON attraction has now taken longer to build than the Magic Kingdom Park itself! Construction on the new theme park ride started four years ago, while it only took around 18 months to build the entire Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort.
Now, Disney is reaching a new milestone on the coaster ride – a milestone that Guests are going to get to see!
Credit: Disney
TRON originally made its appearance at Shanghai Disneyland back in June 2016, when its innovative design and engineering were met with positive reviews.
The steel motorbike roller coaster is based on the TRON movie franchise and features a semi-enclosed track where Guests ride through ‘the Grid” on a light cycle – something that looks really unique!
Today, March 10, it was revealed that the Walt Disney Imagineering project team will soon celebrate a significant milestone on the construction of the TRON Lightcycle attraction, as Guests at Magic Kingdom Park will be getting their first glimpses of ride vehicles on the track.
The new ride will be entering the next phase of ride testing, in a process known as “push/pull,” where sections of the seven-vehicle train are slowly moved through the entire ride track. Once the track is completely ready, trains will begin launch tests at incremental speeds, with the team eventually working their way up to full-speed launches.
This testing process will be visible to Disney Guests in Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom as ride vehicles make their way out of the launch zone and underneath the attraction’s iconic canopy.
Credit: ITM
Executive Ride Engineer, Jerold Kaplan, explained the process of a new attraction in a new glimpse into the TRON Lightcycle ride:
We’re getting ready to start our next phase of ride testing, which is the basic setup of the system. Now we’re moving into what we’re referring to as phase two, which is gonna start with our push-pull testing. You’re gonna see us dragging a train up and around the track and making sure that everything fits we’ve got appropriate clearances, every place.
How exciting! This means that we’re soon going to be able to see the new ride vehicles zooming around the track from Tomorrowland. Because part of the attraction is outdoors, we’ll get a unique look at the “push-pull testing” of the new ride process. Kaplan went on to reveal that:
The first thing that we’ll end up doing is starting commissioning of our high-speed launch system. We will approach it in incremental steps until we’re launching trains at full speed. After that, we’ll do it with test weights.
Several months later, once we’ve done some additional testing and we’re approved for ridership, we’ll start putting our ride Team Members on board, which is quite a thrill in and of itself, but that’s all part of our typical process being a part of the ride team.
Credit: Disney
Who wants to be on the ride team for Disney? We know we do! What an amazing and rare experience, to be able to ride the attraction before anyone else. It’s been a long time coming, but we’re excited to finally see the hard work from the Disney project Cast Members, controls engineers, mechanical engineers, operations team, and maintenance partners.
Check out Disney’s new video for a behind-the-scenes look at the new Magic Kingdom ride, as the team prepares for this important milestone:
The new ride joins new experiences like Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure at EPCOT, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s KiteTails at Disney’s Animal Kingdom as part of Walt Disney World’s 50th anniversary celebrations.
