Walt Disney World just opened a high profile roller coaster based on a science fiction property, but there’s another on its way, and while we are chomping at the bit to be able to ride it, right now we’re just staring in awe, because Tron Lightcycle Run just looks beautiful.
The Tron roller coaster at Magic Kingdom has been under construction for years and while every indication is that we’re less than a year away from it opening, nothing official has been announced. The good news is that until we can ride it, we can still look at it. Theme Park reporter Scott Gustin shared a short video on Twitter recently of the attraction fully lit up, and running, and it just looks incredible. Check it out.
Lights. Canopy. AcTRON. pic.twitter.com/FJ2ISA81m6August 30, 2022
If nothing else, the new Tron roller coaster is going to add something very nice to the night sky as guests wander through Magic Kingdom. We basically knew what this roller coaster was going to look like, it already exists at Shanghai Disneyland in China, but seeing it lit up at night at Walt Disney World makes it all feel more real.
Watching the ride vehicles zoom around the track also makes the coaster feel real, as does the fact that many of those vehicles are now including real people. Tron Lightcycle Run recently entered the next phase of ride testing by putting real people on the ride, rather than simply using dummies. While that certainly is not the final phase of testing before the ride is ready, is a major step in that direction.
At this point, fans are beginning to wonder if we might see the Tron coaster open this year. From a marketing perspective that seems unlikely, as Walt Disney World is still promoting the Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind coaster at Epcot that only opened a couple months ago. Opening another coaster so soon would seem unlikely.
At the same time, if the attraction is ready for the public before next summer, it’s certainly possible that the resort could go ahead and open it. A brand new E-ticket attraction will bring guests, and the guests that come will, one assumes, be spending money on Lightning Lane access, so the ride will make money when it opens, and it will only cost money until then.
Tron has been under construction since 2018 and it seemed to suffer from more significant delays due to the pandemic shutdown then the other Disney World projects that had been underway when everything closed. We never knew when it was originally supposed to open, and no date, or even an estimate has ever been publicly announced by Disney. But things are clearly close, which means that when D23 Expo arrives next weekend we will probably get some sort of official announcement, at least telling us what season, and year, this attraction will open.
