Shanghai Disneyland
Shanghai Disneyland opened on June 16, 2016.
For the first time since Disneyland’s opening sixty years earlier, the rulebook had been shredded. Disneyland’s tried-and-true layout was shuffled; Adventureland, Frontierland, and Main Street were entirely absent (replaced with Adventure Isle, Treasure Cove, and Mickey Avenue). We walked through the park’s new lands, new classics, and new rides in our In-Depth: Shanghai Disneyland walkthrough, but know this: no conventions were safe. This was a new park for a new century.
Which meant that – even when familiar tropes reappeared, they were entirely redesigned.
Put another way, no one could’ve prepared for the Tomorrowland that would debut alongside the brand-new, precedent-shattering Shanghai Disneyland when it opened in 2016… Its Tomorrowland didn’t had an overarching story; a timeless theme; or even a Space Mountain… Its replacement headlining E-Ticket, though, just may change the course of Disney Parks history, and it’s coming to Walt Disney World sooner rather than later…
New New Tomorrowland
Whatever Disney Parks resort you call home, a few tried-and-true conventions typically remain about Tomorrowland (or its cousin). For example, it’s always located on the right-most path when standing at the park’s hub and facing the castle; it’s always entered via an “Avenue of Planets” or equivalent; it’s always got its classics, like spinning rockets or saucers, fanciful architecture, retro-fitted Star Wars attractions, and – of course, Space Mountain looming over it all.
Not anymore.
In fact, this new kind of land has more in common with the namesake of Disney’s 2015 Tomorrowland film than with any version of the theme park land to come before.
Designed by Imagineer Scot Drake, this Tomorrowland was a major piece of the park’s $5.5 billion budget and, to hear Drake himself say it to Fortune, “The biggest challenge we had was, ‘How do we tell the story of Tomorrowland in a city that is already the city of the future?’”
The answer? A return to optimsim. Tomorrowland is sleek again, but this time it’s not in the now-nostalgic dressings of a mid-century Space Race. Tomorrowland has been transformed into a glowing urban oasis; a sleek, glimmering park of glass and grass. Black stepped fountains, twisted steel trellaces covered in climbing vines, open pits yeilding either rising fountains, vine-covered metal, or billowing fog.
Ramps gracefully rise to the land’s second story providing overlooks of hillsides of wildflowers beyond, paths curving and twisting under the land’s signature element: a sprawling, twisting, glass canopy.
It’s a wild departure from Disney’s recent efforts – including elsewhere in Shanghai Disneyland – where building photorealistic landscapes and immersive, lived-in words has become the norm. Unlike Cars Land, Buena Vista Street, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, or Pandora, this isn’t a land rooted in time or place or even story. It’s a dynamic, fluid landscape tailor made for housing intellectual properties.
Naturally, the geometric, white, conical, 70s-styled Space Mountain wouldn’t fit here; it’s a non sequitor amid the fluid, shimmering land.
The glass canopy – stretching like a dragon across the land’s facades – replaces it. And while its billowing, white, cloud-like structure outlines the land’s sleek silhouette by day, each night becomes transluscent, betraying its honeycomb structure beneath and alive with pulses of light and shadow; rainbow colors that sync with dancing fountains. Those pulses of light racing through the canopy, though, aren’t just for show… they’re the land’s headlining E-Ticket… and perhaps one of the top three highlights of the entire park…
TRON Lightcycle Power Run
The glass canopy that underscores the rest of Tomorrowland isn’t as simple as it appears… passing beneath its elegant curves, a sudden roar signals the arrival of something fast. With a high-pitched electrical whir, a speeding chain of sleek, glowing vehicles races past.
They’re Lightcycles – the two-wheeled digital speeders from the world of TRON, their perfectly circular tires glowing a neon blue as they glide past.
The glass canopy is an Upload Circuit, beaming this chain of fourteen Lightcycles (side by side in seven rows) into the mainframe. Neon hexagons illuminate against the Circuit, “chasing” each train as it twists, dips, and turns along the innards of the structure. As hypnotic to watch as it is to ride, the path forward leads into TRON Lightcycle Power Run… Ready?
The queue begins in a darkened hallway of pulsing lights before guests are led into a very small pre-show room, facing glowing, floor-to-ceiling display panels.
Their clouded, transluscent surfaces pulse in flipping hexagons and glowing blue until, with a burst, the screen becomes instantly transparent. It’s an almost-unbelievable effect that you can see in the video above. Unbeknownst to us, we’ve been on a balcony all along, overlooking the launch area where a train of Lightcycles at once blasts away beneath us.
There’s no denying, this is one of the most spectacular and surprising reveals in any Disney Parks queue.
A new portal opens up to the catwalks encircling this neon loading area, leading to successive hallways through the dark, digital world of TRON. Then, we arrive…
For most Disney Parks guests, it’s almost certain that the Lightcycles are unlike anything they’ve experienced before. Guests straddle the Lightcycle like a real motorcycle, kneeling against a leg restraint and leaning forward. As the train readies for upload, a ray-shaped restraint rises from behind, pressing against rider’s backs to hold them securely in the unique configuration. Of note to fans of TRON, this restraint also equips each rider with a glowing Identity Disk ring.
As the soft, electronic score of TRON anxiously begins, the train of Lightcycles are swiftly and smoothly propelled out of the load station, heading off into the darkness. As flashing blue arrows guide our train forward, it turns in the darkness and aligns with the launch area we’d seen before from overhead… Only now, we’re the ones about to be propelled through the Grid.
As the score picks up and the symmetrical chamber begins to pulse, tensions rise… until finally, the Lightcycles are electrified.
The ride blasts from 0 – 60 miles per hour (making it the fastest Disney roller coaster) and races toward the outside world. It practically smashes out of the building, at once leaping over a pedestrian path and up an 80 foot arc into the heights of the Upload Circuit, the sound of humming electrical motors and bleeps and bloops (reminiscent of a certified Disney Declassified Disaster: The Rocket Rods for long-time fans) as it twists and sails over the crowds beneath.
To be fair, some fans take issue with this part of the ride both because it breaks the careful world-building of the day-glo, digital TRON landscape and because it marks the rare appearance of an exposed, unthemed steel coaster in a Disney Park. But the truth is, the race through the Upload Circuit is fun, fast, beautiful, and exciting as onlookers gaze up in awe.
But of course, the ride’s just getting started. The train levels out high up into the canopy and enters a darkened tunnel into a showbuilding. Passing under a Recognizer, it dives into the Grid – a digital, pulsating world of shapes and sounds. Like the iconic race from TRON, our blue lightcycles will be pitted against an orange nemesis here in this computer world. The train sails sideways down a drop, twisting through glowing neon obstacles with grace and speed, then arcs up through a boost that speeds us forward.
Next comes one of the ride’s most clever tricks. The orange train appears far away to the left, though its path is on course to intersect ours. At once, we plummet, and it matches us inch for inch. At the last second before collision, we each helix away from each other. This harrowing encounter – a true standout – is in fact achieved by our own train momentarily blacking out with the left wheels turning orange as we pass a mirror!
Still, the train accelerates away, racing through progressive scenes as it twists through the darkness. The orange cycles come into view again, this time brought to life via projection technology in an enveloped, curved tunnel. They speed ahead and try to race into our path, but our train leaps over the deadly trail of orange light left behind like a game of Snake. We’re propelled into another projection tunnel just as the orange Lightcycles lose control, smashing to digital bits and falling around us via fragmented mirrors.
A tunnel of pulsing circuits signals our deceleration as the world around us powers down. The trains continue ahead in darkness and silence for a moment until their triumphant blue hue returns, illuminating a final, victorious hall of mirrors.
As always, we end our in-depth look at this spectacular Modern Marvel with the best point-of-view video we can find. Naturally, it comes from our friends at SoCal Attractions 360, whose spectacular camerawork can capture the dark world of TRON with a level of detail and color that even the human eye can’t. Race through the Lightcycle Power Run here:
As the Lightcycles return to an unload area, our journey through the world of TRON is finished… and probably quicker than most thrillseekers would like with a brisk one-minute ride.
But TRON Lightcycle Power Run is more than just an unusual experiment in fusing thrills with a four-decade-old intellectual property. It’s a new kind of experience that just may signal the next generation of Walt Disney World thrills… In fact, this spectacular, multi-million-dollar E-Ticket isn’t just a Modern Marvel a world away… it’s coming to a Disney Park near you… On the next page, we’ll look at how this phenomenal thrill will translate when it moves to the United States… Read on…