TRON Preview at Magic Kingdom Reveals Serious Issues with Ride Vehicles
During Magic Kingdom’s preview of the new TRON Lightcycle/Run attraction, Cast Members were treated to a front-row seat (or close to it) aboard the brand-new coaster. But despite the fact that fans have waited nearly six years for the attraction to be completed, Friday’s preview revealed serious issues with the ride vehicles.
The TRON Lightcycle/Run attraction at Magic Kingdom was first announced at the D23 Expo in 2017, and though the coronavirus pandemic played a role in the delay in Disney’s completion of the new coaster, it isn’t all COVID’s fault. Over the past several months, Imagineers have shared updates about construction and ride testing at the TRON coaster in Tomorrowland. But at least a handful of times, those “updates” had little to do with construction and simply didn’t look, sound or feel like updates at all. Rather, they seemed like efforts to keep the masses pacified.
Surely each Disney Imagineer working on the new TRON coaster felt TRON was the project with no end.
Then, at the 2022 D23 Expo in Anaheim, California, Disney Parks President Josh D’Amaro announced the projected opening date for TRON. Well, he said it would open in Spring 2023. But in January, the official opening date for the attraction was finally unveiled, and fans were thrilled to learn that their years of patience would finally pay off, beginning on April 4, 2023.
But during a preview of the attraction on Friday at Magic Kingdom, several Guests who had likely hoped to be wowed by the new TRON-inspired coaster were instead shocked to discover that the ride vehicles in the attraction are not well-suited for all Guests.
Simply stated, the ride vehicles are not one-size-fits-all commodities.
On Twitter, Theme Park Express tweeted about the new ride vehicles, saying “I’m getting multiple reports from Cast Members at the Tron preview today saying that they do NOT fit in the standard Lightcycle seat and there is an additional 30+ minute wait for the “large guest” seat in the back. They’re saying it’s worse than Flight of Passage.”
The comments about the ride vehicles at the TRON Lightcycle/Run attraction aren’t good–to say the least. The vehicles, according to those who experienced the preview of the new ride, are “terribly restrictive” and left one rider wanting to “cut off [her] thighs and calves.”
Twitter user Liam from Orlando tweeted his understanding of the scenario, saying, “Disney finally decided to break their good record and built a new ride that less people can ride.”
Several who experienced the ride during Friday’s preview compared the ride vehicles at TRON to those at Animal Kingdom’s Avatar: Flight of Passage attraction, saying that the TRON vehicles are “way smaller” than those at the Flight of Passage attraction.
“If you don’t fit in [Flight of Passage], you def won’t fit [on the TRON vehicles],” another rider explained.
It’s frustrating for riders when they can’t fit into a ride vehicle, but the fact that those ride vehicles happen to be at the TRON attraction, which has taken more than 5 1/2 years to open to Guests, is extremely frustrating. After all, no one can honestly say that Imagineers didn’t have the time or opportunities to see that the ride vehicles could accommodate Guests of various heights and weights.
And it doesn’t seem likely that any major changes will be made to the ride at this point, only weeks from its grand opening.
