What's up with the wild rides at Disney?
I want to share some updates on recently reopened Disney attractions.
One of my former workplaces, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, reopened at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom yesterday. Thunder had been closed for more than a year while Disney retracked the Frontierland roller coaster. Fans swarmed the attraction at rope drop yesterday morning, leading to two-hour-plus waits.
Today, wait times are a bit more reasonable, even though the attraction has suffered down times on both days. Walt Disney Imagineering posted a full ride-through video of the new BTMRR.
I will be visiting Walt Disney World later this month and will post my review of the changes then, as well as my thoughts on the newly reopened Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin. If you have been on either of these attractions and would like to share a trip report, please post one over on our Discussion Forum. Trip reports are always welcomed and appreciated over there, especially for newly opened and reopened attractions.
But for now, I want to point out that the Imagineering video shows that WDW's Thunder now features a new glowing gold nugget in its C-lift show scene, rather than the explosive dynamite scene found on Disneyland's installation of the coaster.
Speaking of Disneyland, Roger Rabbit's Car-Toon Spin has reopened in Toontown. However, guests are reporting that Disney has removed the ability to spin the taxi cabs on the dark ride. The cabs still spin, but the rotation is now controlled by the ride system itself.
I don't think that is necessarily a huge loss, except that fans are reporting that all the cabs are not spinning in the same way. That leaves some readers reporting that they were facing backwards in some show scenes.
Roger Rabbit typically has the worst wait times in the park, thanks to its low throughput. If eliminating guest control of spinning can help that uptime, that's great. But any change to the ride should not come at the expense of the show quality.
Also at Disneyland, Pirates of the Caribbean starts a refurbishment today. There's no published end date for that yet, so expect the popular dark ride to be closed through at least June 15.
You can find the latest refurbishment schedules for Disneyland and Walt Disney World published on Theme Park Insider each weekend, in my Sunday "Rope Drop" column.
You also can find the refurb sked in Theme Park Insider's weekend newsletter. So please sign up for that free email, if you have not done so already. Thanks!
Replies (2)
I actually like Roger Rabbit specifically because it combined a teacup mechanism with a pretty cool dark ride. I do agree that the movie has definitely fallen from the public consciousness, but it was the spinning that made this attraction fun and unique. If the spinning is now gone, and vehicles are randomly turning guests away from important show scenes that help to convey a story that most folks don't already know because the film is almost 40 years old, then what's the point.
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I personally hope they get rid of Roger Rabbit eventually. It feels so dated sitting next to Runaway Railway, and while I like the movie, nobody really knows who the character is anymore.