FANTASTIC WORLDS: A Land-by-Land Tour of Park Lore’s Blue Sky, Built-Out, Armchair Imagineered Disney Park

TRON: GAME GRID

Pitch

The streets of San Fransokyo disappear as a bridge over the Sea of Stars becomes a winding, metallic coil. Overhead, the serpantine glass of the Upload Circuit signals activity on the the Grid. As glowing lightcycles race overhead and prismatic lights trace the flow of data through the canopy, guests come across a pulsing portal into the digital frontier of TRON.

TRON: GAME GRID is a fully-enclosed land that invites guests into the humming, glowing, digital universe we carry in our pockets. Brought to life entirely through projection mapping and a custom score by Daft Punk, this land invites guests to become users, uploaded into a fantastic world of music and motion.

Inspiration & Concept

When TRON premiered in 1982, it presented a world never concieved before: a pulsating, glowing electronic landscape created by groundbreaking, jaw-dropping, cutting edge digital animation. Though the film itself was only a moderate success at the box office (business as usual for a then down-on-its-luck Disney), TRON is remembered as a cult classic. And more to the point, even forty years later, it’s arguably still TRON that established the prevailing visual language of the digital world: of infinite grids and day-glo colors against inky blackness.

Its 2010 sequel, TRON: Legacy (at that point, representing the longest gap between a film and its sequel at 28 years) provided a higher-resolution glimpse into the Grid, where Lightcycles and Identity Discs and Recognizers gained a whole new dimension. We’re lucky Legacy squeaked into theaters before Disney purchased Lucasfilm, completing its Disney+ Infinity Gauntlet of IPs and swearing off of big budget “risks” like TRON entirely. Because TRON: Legacy was itself a box office hit, and inspired one of the more unusual experiments in Disney Parks…

In October 2010, Disney California Adventure (still in the midst of its reimagining, so no Buena Vista Street or Cars Land) premiered a tie-in special event called ElecTRONica. Each night after dark, the park’s Hollywood Pictures Backlot would be transformed into the world of TRON, with texture-mapped projections covering the land’s soundstages.

As projected Lightcycles raced past, dancers, performers, DJs, and more would take to the streets. Guests could play in Flynn’s Arcade; watch Laserman; drink at the End of Line Club; view a preview of TRON: Legacy in the Muppet*Vision 3D theater… ElecTRONica was absolutely perfect, far outlasting the film’s theatrical run. (It finally closed in 2012 to be replaced with the Mad T Party.) But arguably, it was also a test run to see if TRON could connect with guests… and what tools Imagineering could use to bring its distinctive style to life. (That research no doubt paid off with 2012’s redesign of TEST TRACK.)

Even still, you would’ve been laughed off the Internet if you had suggested then that Disney’s next big E-Ticket would be based on TRON. Yet in 2016, the Modern Marvel: TRON Lightcycle Power Run was not just the anchor of Shanghai’s Tomorrowland, but arguably one of the most exciting rides in the park’s roster, with fans begging for it to be brought to the United States.

Long story short: TRON is highly theme-park-able not just as a headlining ride, but as an environment as proven by ElecTRONica-as-a-prototype. To be made permanent, that environment only needs to be moved indoors. Disney has constructed entirely indoor lands before (see DisneySea’s Mermaid Lagoon), but there’s probably no better property to come to life in an indoor space than TRON since it doesn’t need to bother with explaining away walls or ceilings, or trying to decorate itself into seeming to be outdoors. Instead, the space can be brought to life entirely by projection, creating an entire computerized landscape 360-degrees around visitors

Experience

First things first, I based the bridge that connects to TRON: GAME GRID on the BP Pedestrian Bridge in Chicago’s Millennium Park.

I’ve always been totally fascinated by this scaly, reflective, serpantine, Gehry-designed bridge because – like all of Millennium Park – there’s this incredible juxtaposition between steel and engineering and and glass with nature and wood and the classic stonework and plazas of a city park. The undulating shape of the BP Bridge also seemed to echo the Upload Circuit canopy and the sort of geometric-organic style of TRON.

Maybe more to the point, the idea of rising up above the coaster’s launch to get into the land felt like it fulfilled something psychologically. Like, if there was just a door into this building from a park, it wouldn’t read the same as being on this unusual elevated pathway feeding into the Grid. Of course, if this park were real, it would probably need to offer a bypass boardwalk both for capacity, flow, and guest comfort. But for the sake of this concept, I kept the bridge as the only means of rising up to the pulsing portal entrance…

Passing around a barrier that keeps light from entering, guests would emerge in the center of a glowing, pulsing, humming landscape. Right here at the entrance to the Grid, several experiences would be visible. First, trains from TRON LIGHTCYCLE POWER RUN would burst through a portal, humming with electricity as they circle overhead before diving back into the darkness. (The ride itself would be accessed from inside, though the entrance leads to a new accessory bridge that takes guests back outdoors, under the coaster, and into the above-launch pre-show space.)

The most noticable attraction would be DISCPACKS – the park’s version of Shanghai’s Jet Packs, which is itself a “floorless” version of the Astro Orbitor. The spinning, day-glo ride would be a visual centerpiece of the land, even when the Lightcycles aren’t dipping and helixing around it. Across the way, I included the LASER STAGE where, in the evenings, DJs and laser acts might turn the land into a living ElecTRONica.

Beyond that enty plaza, the land is essentially one straightaway “streetscape” brought to life through projection. To guests’ left would be the UPGRADE CENTER retail shop (where guests can equip themselves with their own glowing Identity Discs) and the END OF LINE CLUB restaurant.

The last attraction would be DEREZZERS: REBOOT BLAST. At this point, it probably sounds downright quaint to suggest that a park have a good, old-fashioned laser-blasting dark ride like Buzz Lightyear. I guess my argument for going “old school” here is that I really wanted a slow-moving dark ride through the TRON world for every member of the family, and even though it’s beautiful, I feel like it’s not a place you want to be so much as a place you want to interact with.

Arming guests with “Derezzers” to fight their way to the Master Control Program and reboot the Grid feels like a worthy mission, and even though there are high tech ways to do it, I felt like a laser-blasting, blacklight dark ride felt “video game” and “’80s” and “TRON” in a really unbeatable way. Maybe it’s because it could embrace just the right amount of cheesiness that comes with TRON while still feeling exciting.

TRON: GAME GRID is actually a fairly small land, with only a few attractions… but I feel like this well-earned ode to TRON is a perfect fit for Fantastic Worlds and the idea of guests stepping into impossible places drawn from stories… Speaking of which, the adventure continues in the next land around the lagoon…