Disney World’s Newest Attraction Brings Futuristic Thrills To The Magic Kingdom

Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom is about to get a whole lot sexier.

After years of hype, TRON Lightcycle / Run officially opens in the Magic Kingdom on April 4. Themed to the early-CG fantasy of “Tron” (1982) and “Tron: Legacy” (2010), the motorcycle-style coaster invites guests to hop onto a gleaming lightcycle and race through the digital frontier known as The Grid. A replica of an attraction in Shanghai Disneyland, it’s shiny, smooth, and sleek, and quite unlike any attraction in the Disney Parks in the United States.

It’s a bonus that the attraction happens to add a stunning landmark to the Tomorrowland section of the park. The structure, which spans 10 acres, was constructed with more than 3,800 pieces of steel weighing nearly 1,900 tons, and comprises 3,000 feet of track. The attraction canopy — a gorgeous, curvaceous structure, looking like Zaha Hadid in space, or something peeled off of the EPCOT globe — covers more than 50,000 square feet, reaches a height of 105 feet, and features more than 1,200 light fixtures.

By day, the structure is a utopian vision in gleaming white, the sumptuous undulations of the canopy a counterpoint to the attraction’s spiky, steely next-door neighbor, Space Mountain. But it is especially breathtaking after dark, when the fiberglass panels glow a dazzling hyperlink blue (and occasionally other colors). As Missy Renard, a creative director with Walt Disney Imagineering, puts it: “It comes alive at night.”

Most spectacularly of all, queuers and bystanders get to gawp as fleets of lightcycles periodically shoot out of the building and execute an elegant U-turn — triggering glowing hexagons in the canopy — before they plunge back into the show building.

None of those clickety-clack roller coaster sounds, either: the vehicles generate a satisfying wrrrhhhoomm sound as they zoom by. (Original “Tron” sound designer Frank Serafine has described the sound of the lightcycles as being a combination of motorcycles, synthesizers, and the engine of a Saab Sonett four-cylinder sports car.) Before 6pm, you can hear the tooting horn of the vintage steam trains as they chug by on the Disney World Railroad — tunneling under the new attraction, in fact — in a happy and peculiar mingling of past and future.

The show’s loading area — the first glimpse of it is a jaw-dropper — is illuminated with glowing neon, bathing guests in blue light. The ambience evokes the innards of a computer but also feels like a Berlin nightclub on a Friday night. That feeling is augmented by the pulsating electronic-orchestral music by Joseph Trapanese. (Trapanese, arranger/orchestrator of the “Tron: Legacy” soundtrack album by Daft Punk, is credited as composer here.)

In the story, guests get digitized and “derezzed,” are launched into the Upload Conduit, then race on behalf of Team Blue against Team Orange, passing through a series of Energy Gates to claim victory. The ride itself takes around two minutes from load to unload, with riders gripping handlebars and pitched forward at an angle of about 35-50°. That headlong posture was reportedly the starting point for the Imagineers’ conception of this coaster, and it’s easy to see why — it gives guests an invigorating sense of driving their experience.

For the interior portion of the ride, riders dip and swoop around a dark digital dreamscape. This must be what it’s like to be the turbo-charged protagonist of an ’80s arcade game. But the initialization sequence and launch out of the building, with Trapanese’s score reaching a feverish intensity, is now probably the best rush on offer in the Magic Kingdom — again, especially at night.

TRON Lightcycle / Run provides Magic Kingdom with something it needed: an adrenaline-pumping attraction with thrills comparable to Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster at Hollywood Studios, Expedition Everest at Animal Kingdom, and the recently opened Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at EPCOT. Together with its Shanghai counterpart, it’s the fastest Disney coaster in the world, reaching nearly 60 miles per hour compared to Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster’s 57 mph and Expedition Everest’s 50 mph, walloping riders with around 4Gs. Perhaps even more importantly, it exudes a sexy cyberpunk cool that’s sure to entice teens and twenty-somethings (and looks sick on TikTok).

Exiting the attraction, guests will glimpse Cinderella’s Castle in the distance, nicely framed through the coaster steelwork. But the most exciting thing about the attraction is that it feels light years away from the painted plaster elsewhere in the Magic Kingdom — bringing a high-tech allure and something genuinely futuristic to Tomorrowland.

And of course, TRON Lightcycle / Run confirms the Walt Disney Imagineers’ commitment to continuous innovation and to bringing new kinds of ride experiences to the parks. Theme park fans and coaster connoisseurs can look forward to a great, big, beautiful tomorrow.