Why Disney’s Next Generation of Rides Are Better

Disney recently announced a Cars-themed off-road attraction coming to Magic Kingdom.

Park officials are so confident about this E-ticket attraction that they believe it’ll anchor that side of the park for years to come.

We don’t have to guess about the ride’s quality, though. We already know that Disney has mastered a new technology.

Here’s why Disney’s new generation of rides are better.

The “Problem” With Older Rides

Let’s start by acknowledging an oddity about most of your favorite Disney attractions. They’re innately flawed.

I know that sounds ridiculous and a bit dismissive, but it’s true.

From a certain perspective, all of Disney’s most iconic rides face the same limitation. They’re on rails.

We call them tracks, but it’s the same concept. A ride cart may only go in a certain direction because that’s where the tracks are.

Otherwise, the ride cart would careen uncontrollably, and that would be…well, apocalyptically bad.

I’m being cheeky here, but there’s truth to the statement. Planning ride tracks always wreak havoc with a ride.

Have you ever played some sort of roller coaster simulator or at least watched one? Look at this ridiculousness:

In a way, the tracks in mid-air make anything possible, yet we still need the tracks. Otherwise, gravity takes over, which is bad.

Even so, Walt Disney himself understood the limitations of his own creations.

When Imagineers approached him with the concept for Space Mountain, everyone understood where the technology was going.

With better sensor relays, Disney’s tracked rides would operate more safely and efficiently. But they’d still be on tracks.

What’s the problem with that? Just think about how you walk around the room. You go wherever you want, right?

Disney’s classic rides don’t and simply cannot work like that. The track tells them where to go. It’s a natural limitation.

The Wonders of Trackless Technology

I mentioned Space Mountain because it’s one of Disney’s most impressive creations.

A full decade before the ride opened, park officials invented the concept of an outer space roller coaster.

The problem was that this concept came with safety concerns since it would take place entirely in the dark.

Imagineers knew that computers would eventually secure the tracks by shutting down the coaster cart in the event of a mishap.

The problem was that computers were the size of closets at the time. It wasn’t feasible to build a ride using computers in the mid-1960s.

So, Disney officials waited on Moore’s Law to make computers viable. Regrettably, Walt Disney never lived to see Space Mountain.

When the coaster opened in January 1975, it was light years ahead of anything else (no pun intended). But it still needed a track.

I thought about this during a recent ride on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover.

We watched with amusement as Space Mountain turned on the lights and evacuated guests. Getting them to a walkway was…problematic.

As a tracked roller coaster in an artificial mountain, parts of Space Mountain are challenging to access.

So, Disney spent a quarter-century trying to solve one problem: how to build a ride that isn’t reliant on tracks.

After all, a ride should have the same movements as a human does.

This philosophy comes with the added bonus of creating a wider environment for Disney to populate.

Think about Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway as an example.

Your ride cart enters an open room, and you can go anywhere. That’s how a ride should work, yet it didn’t until 2000.

Pooh’s Hunny Hunt Changes Everything

I know that few of you have ever traveled to Tokyo Disneyland, which is a shame. It is arguably THE best Disney theme park.

So, I’ll show you this on-ride video of Pooh’s Hunny Hunt, the ride that changed everything for Disney.

The 1:45 mark of this clip signifies the high point of the ride, as the cart bounces along with Tigger. It’s a joyous sensation.

But the groundbreaking part of the ride is what it doesn’t have: tracks.

By the turn of the century, computers had advanced to the point that Disney could create an entire room full of electronics.

This hub empowered Imagineers to control every ride cart as an autonomous unit.

Disney utilized an array of state-of-the-art technologies at the time, such as RFID chips, GPS, WiFi, and even barcodes.

Basically, Disney turned each ride cart into a computer on wheels.

In combination, all the onboard tech allowed unprecedented range of motion for the ride carts on Pooh’s Hunny Hunt.

While the results spoke for themselves, so did the price tag. At the time, this was Disney’s most expensive ride ever…BY FAR!

Reports at the time suggested an attraction budget of $120-$130 million, the equivalent of $224-$243 million today.

However, analysts have (correctly) noted that the Oriental Land Company likely spent more, with some suggesting a $200 million price tag.

Not coincidentally, American Disney fans waited more than 15 years for a trackless ride cart.

Disney waited for the tech to get a LOT cheaper, which is what happened around 2020.

The Start of Trackless Tech in America

You could argue that trackless tech in America started with the detachable elevator carts on Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.

I mean, you could even say that when Autopia was free form in its early, exceedingly dangerous days, it was trackless.

In truth, the first American ride that used true trackless tech was a child-friendly attraction: Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters.

That ride wasn’t even planned but rather the fallback option after the tech on Luigi’s Flying Tires proved unreliable. So, I don’t even count it.

In truth, Disney’s commitment to trackless tech started in earnest with Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure and Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway.

These two rides exemplify why trackless tech makes the new generation of rides better.

On each attraction, your ride cart may go anywhere on the set, which adds an air of unpredictability to the experience.

You never know when you might duck under an oven or plunge down a waterfall.

Disney can hide all its tricks in plain sight since the entire room becomes a potential part of the action. That’s the beauty of trackless tech.

You no longer know where you’re going. There isn’t that track providing visual clues about your future direction.

This problem has always bothered Imagineers, which explains the broken ride track on Expedition Everest.

Imagineers mislead the rider about where they’re going, only to show the broken tracks and create instant confusion.

With trackless technology, there’s no need for such subterfuge. Nobody ever knows where they’re going.

You never think about it this way, but you’re basically riding in a self-driving car with a taste for danger.

Your vehicle always directs you where the excitement is, which makes every moment more visceral.

What Comes Next?

International Disney fans have known for a long time that trackless technology changes everything.

Mystic Manor at Hong Kong Disneyland delights everyone with its endless wave of surprises.

Even after a quarter-century of this tech, we’re still merely scratching the surface, though.

The new Cars trackless ride coming to Frontierland at Magic Kingdom hints at a profound usage of the existing tech.

Thus far, Disney has primarily utilized trackless technology for indoor rides or outdoor ones in extremely small spaces.

Now, Imagineers will create an open-air attraction that covers the off-track countryside.

That’s a massive expansion of the idea, which makes something like Runaway Railway almost feel like proof of concept.

Disney plans to take the ideas from that ride and expand them into a much larger area.

The possibility of that explains why the new generation of rides will be just plain better.

We won’t know where we’re going, what’s coming next, or have any predisposed notions about the overall experience.

Trackless technology is unquestionably the future of Disney attractions, so much so that it won’t surprise me if some classics eventually upgrade.

Imagine Pirates of the Caribbean or It’s a Small World with trackless tech. You can get closer to the action than ever before!

This is the direction we’re heading, and I cannot wait.

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Feature Photo: Tokyo Disney