Color me impressed. The new Test Track is no mere reboot
from a tired industrial setting to a multi-hued digital world that would look
right at home in the movie Tron, a concept that struck many fans as lackluster
when they heard the news or saw the concept art. But it delivers. Boy, does it
ever deliver. In fact, after I rode the attraction I felt like I do following
the debut of a major E ticket ride. This was no mere repainting of a few
plywood façades – – it was a full-scale reimagining and it blows New Fantasyland
out of the water.
The hype in almost all press releases and media reports so
far has been centered on New Fantasyland, perhaps because Disney wanted to
reveal little about Test Track, or more likely, because they felt it would be
foolish to promote a re-skinned attraction over something brand-new. Thus, Test
Track has been flying under the radar for almost everybody. But in many ways,
it exceeds its mandate, and it soars where New Fantasyland merely glides. My
first visit to New Fantasyland was very positive. I liked the mermaid ride,
partly because it has Audio-Animatronics, but mostly because it's a dark ride
with an Omnimover. I also liked the meet and greet experiences, especially that
vexing magic mirror effect. Most of all, I liked the sets and the atmosphere.
New Fantasyland feels like an actual place and it just exudes that Disney vibe.
But I left the land after my first visit in a kind of warm afterglow, grinning
about the very effective atmospheric details. When I left Test Track, however,
I was feeling pumped, energized, and jabbering away excitedly. I needed to go
on the ride again, which I did. And again. I realized later that New Fantasyland
had very little of that effect on me that I had to immediately return.
Test Track 2.0 improves in a million different ways over Test
Track 1.0, and it's the sort of renovation that could have gone wrong in
hundreds of tiny ways, but didn't. That's a real testament to the Imagineers in
charge of this redo. Test Track now reclaims the crown from Soarin' as the
parks premier attraction. As the evening ended, I found myself doubting that I
would trade the new Test Track to have world of motion back. I would have
traded the old Test Track for World of Motion in a heartbeat, but not the new
one. Such a decision would cause me many long, agonizing nights of
sleeplessness if I had to make it.
Ride Description —
spoilers
The ride itself is unchanged from the old version, meaning
the track layout is identical, and the cars have just been repainted that blue-white
color we saw in a few early tests. As long as you know to expect a similar ride
in terms of excitement and feeling, you ought to come away feeling very
positive about this new experience. Based on the press releases, I thought
perhaps we would see a Pepper's Ghost effect showing a reflection of our ride
vehicles, but this is not what they meant when they said every person can
customize his own car. It's not a physical effect, but rather a customization
of an on-screen car that is compared to every car in your party on several
factors, such as handling or power. This is the other major factor to keep in
mind when setting your expectations. A few reviews online have been negative,
and I think that might be because they were expecting the wrong thing. The car
you're traveling in does not change, and its route and speeds are identical to
the old version of the ride.
The queue is one thing that does look dramatically new and
different. Here they kept essentially nothing from the old version. There is a
warren of new rooms and walls and on a few occasions I became slightly disoriented
about where we were versus the old version of the queue.
The first room is a modest show room with a new Chevy front
and center, but also a new concept car that is essentially the Segway
technology applied to an automobile (you stand up?!) The line winds around
these two central exhibits, but there are also smaller cabinets and wall
displays, making the place also feel just a little bit like a museum. The color
scheme and the curbing handrails reminded me of the Men in Black attraction
married to the old queue for Adventure thru Inner Space.
After passing by a small white model of the car onto which
are projected designs and patterns (using the castle projection technology), we
come to touch screen walls that show how to use your finger to trace a line as
if designing a new car. This isn't yet the personalized experience, but it does
show you how it will be done in a few moments, and thus saves a bit of time.
You are assigned to a design station and given an RFID card
with a rubber band to identify you. Up to three people can share one design
station, or every person can design his own. You have two minutes to craft the
body of the car, and a further two minutes to choose accessories and colors.
Then it's off to the merge points in the final stretch of the queue.
FASTPASS holders do not get the same customization
opportunity. They get 30 seconds to adjust a few things from a template, but
the focus is on getting them on to the attraction. This delighted me, because
it meant that the attraction designers found a way to make the standby line
better than the FASTPASS line. Having your own car design makes the ride more
fun in several small but real ways, and it vastly changes how much you care
about three of the post-show experiences. The integration of personalized
elements into the show and the post-show offers the best example yet of how to
use creativity to make the FASTPASS line seem like a bad idea. Bravo!
The ride itself has been redone with plywood back drops and
cutouts next to the track, lit by neon and glowing with black light paint.
Pause and picture that for a second. You can probably imagine how this might
look incredibly stupid if done wrong. But it's not done wrong. It looks
exciting and inviting and yes, it looks like you're in the world of Tron. There
isn't much music to the attraction, and certainly not anything from Tron
itself, though I wish it had that.
The overall sense I got from the lighted sets was that they
did not cut corners, and it shows. To give you only one example, I need not
look further than the top of the very first hill climb, which is now punctuated
by faintly glowing purple orbs in the ceiling that generated alien starfield.
Its subtle, but not too subtle.
I did not detect any tributes to World of Motion on my three
rides, but maybe I don’t know where to look (tell me in the comments if you
find any!) The truck that almost hit us in the old Test Track is still there,
but you can’t see the LBJ cutout since the windows are now blacked out.
The high speed loop is the same as always. I wonder what it
would take to enclose this whole section of track; I know they considered it
already. That would be truly awesome. They could make a tunnel out of it, with
racing lights, maybe even the technology you see in water-slide tunnels… too
awesome to contemplate. Since it’s not here now, I’m guessing it will never
happen. Maybe they can do that in a few years to plus the ride even further.
Certainly it will have amazing word of mouth. This ride is everything that Disneyland ’s Rocket Rods SHOULD have been.
The ride ends with a comparison of your individual car
designs to all the other designs on the track right now (so it’s not just yours
on the screen). Your lack of ultimate victory may depress you, but hold onto
your RFID for a second. In the post-show, you can see your ultimate car score
on a giant screen. It’s the sort of thing that will goad you into a second
trip, to try to increase your score (and beat your buddy’s). They obviously
know what they are doing here.
In the next post-show room, you can create a music video
with your car—I didn’t have time for this one, but it looked engaging enough.
The post show room after that was the one I look forward to
the most. Picture a motocross-type figure-eight racing track about the size of
a baby hippo… projected on the floor. That’s what you get to race on, courtesy
of some steering wheels stationed around the track. It’s a video game… with the
very car you designed earlier!
The show room is next, and there are a few Chevy cars, but
the side walls are now taken up by giant green screen photo booths, where you
pose with props (yes, Chevy cars) and have photos sent to your email, all for
free. It’s amazingly engaging.
I found the whole experience to be exciting, exhilarating,
and rejuvenating. I went three times in 90 minutes (it was cast-and-friends
preview night) and I was nowhere close to bored with it. I could have gone ten
more times.
The new Test Track is better than New Fantasyland. It’s
better even than World of Motion. I’d go so far as to say that it would be a
coin toss if I wanted Test Track 2.0 or Cars Land
In fact, looking back at recent WDW history, I’m hard
pressed to say when another attraction exceeded my expectations quite this
much. Toy Story Mania? Maybe, but it’s so small in comparison. Everest? It’s so
dilapidated, and not in a good way. Frankly, we might have to go all the way
back to 1994 to find a similar watershed, in the form of Tower of Terror Tower
of Terror
I close with a caveat. For the first time in many months, my
wife and I disagree about a Disney attraction. Usually we agree in lockstep so
much that we hardly need to give voice to the praise or the objections, but
this time, she felt the ride was “just OK.” It’s possible her expectations were
much higher than mine, and if so, you should calibrate your own expectations
and don’t let my messianic praise build it up too much for you.
Click any picture below for a larger version.
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Kevin Yee is the author of numerous independent Disney books, including the popular Walt Disney World Earbook series and Walt Disney World Hidden History.
