Walt Disney World this morning announced the reopening date for EPCOT's Test Track.
Disney has been redesigning the World Discovery attraction, which again will be sponsored by General Motors. Originally the site of GM's World of Motion dark ride, Test Track opened in 1999. The ride got a major refurb in 2012, after which the ride was sponsored by GM's Chevrolet brand. Test Track has been closed for the past year while Disney has installed its latest round of changes on the ride.
"This attraction update will debut an all-new musical score, as well as new scenes that highlight technology making our cars smarter and our lives more fun," Disney said in its press release.
Test Track will be reopening on July 22 - just two days after the debut of the new Disney Starlight nighttime parade at the Magic Kingdom, on July 20. Disney has been promoting both attractions as debuting this summer, but with the summer vacation season wrapping up for most families at the beginning of August, Disney will have just made it in under that deadline.
Walt Disney World is promising previews on Test Track for cast members, annual passholders, Disney Vacation Club members, Golden Oak residents, and Club 33 members. More details to come later on that.
For assistance in planning a Walt Disney World vacation, please contact our travel agent for a free, no-obligation vacation quote.
To see what is available at the Walt Disney World theme parks, please check out our one-page visitors guides, which include our reader rankings as well as on-ride videos and links to reviews:
Remember that whenever you buy tickets or book vacations through our partners, a small portion of that goes to support Theme Park Insider. So you can support independent media while getting a great deal at the same time.
Finally, to keep up with more theme park news, please sign up for Theme Park Insider's weekly newsletter.
Anybody here remember World of Motion? Man, for people like myself who enjoy lengthy indoor dark rides it was the bees knees. Test Track is an obvious upgrade. But I still miss it lol
I agree with the first poster! I hope this new version is a lot closer to the first version that ran for almost two decades as opposed to the 2.0 which was not as good. Glad Test Track is opening sooner rather than later. It will do a lot to alleviate the crowds and lightning lanes for other attractions at Epcot.
I see a lot of people snarking "give it 10-15 years and it will be changed again" as if that's a bad thing. It should be updated every 10-15 years! I wish more attractions at Epcot (in Future World at least) would be updated every 10-15 years! Epcot has always supposed to be about celebrating technology and the promise of the future. It can't continue to do that without updates. Certain attractions will need updates at least every 10-15 years to keep up with technology and new visions of the future. Walt always intended Epcot, be it an actual community or a theme park, to be constantly updating and never a finished product to showcase the newest advances and innovations.
So I am glad they consistently invest in updating Test Track, and I'm glad they're updating Spaceship Earth too. Frankly more rides in Future World could use updates to reflect new technology and new visions of the future, such as Journey into Imagination, Living with the Land, and Mission: Space.
I just can't get excited about this attraction, and the refocus that seems to make this even more brand-forward than anything else. It was novel back in the 90's to pull the curtain back on automobile testing and design, but I don't think people really care about stuff like this anymore, nor do they care about technological advancements in cars. This is why interest in EPCOT's FutureWorld has waned, not because WDI hasn't been updating their attractions. People ride TestTrack, because it goes really fast at the end, and anything that Disney can shoehorn into the existing ride layout isn't going to change much. Yeah, it will be new and fresh, but it's not going to be dramatically different, just as TestTrack 2.0 really didn't differ much from the OG version.
It will be nice to get the attraction back in the lineup to reduce demand for other rides in the EPCOT, but I just don't know what they could do to this ride without do a full demo and rebuild.
Test Track 4.0 coming 2038?
I agree with Russell there's only so much you can do with this old ride system. I was glad to see it be updated (hard to believe that the original version closed 14 years ago) and thought version 2 was decent enough, and I think this upgrade will be a welcome change. But after another 10 years or so I think they should be looking at an actual replacement and not another reskin. The ride is just not very exciting anymore.
I used to work on Test Track version 1 as a cast member and will say the amount of maintenance it requires is absolutely staggering, like other than Kilimanjaro Safari I think this has to be one of the most expensive rides in the world to operate. Although I have no inside knowledge of RSR I think there had to be major modifications to this ride system to make it more maintenance friendly otherwise they wouldn't have built another one. I think the only thing keeping it around is the fact that it still draws huge lines, but if I were in charge of things i'd be looking at a more modern/exciting ride that isn't so maintenance heavy.
Also this may be obvious but I feel Spaceship Earth was definitely more overdue for an overhaul than Test Track, but because Test Track still has a sugar daddy (GM) they are funding this while Spaceship Earth continues to be kicked down the road.
Hopefully without a Virtual Queue.
This right here is the problem with future world- it's always been about the sponsors. Even though they've been mostly dropped everywhere else, Future world's attractions still rely on sponsors and honestly seem to prioritize them. Where there are no sponsors, there are random bits of Disney IP. I propose we tear the whole thing down and have, I dunno, seven pavilions based on technology and innovation. I'm talking: communication, space, transportation, agriculture, energy, the body, and nature. Start fresh if you ask me.
@fattyackin: Oh I loved World of Motion, still a fave of classic Epcot
@the_man25: I can believe the maintenance issues as it took three years before it fully opened, and there are still constant breakdowns.
This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
Looking forward to a take closer to the original than the Tron-inspired version.