One of the biggest
attractions at Epcot closed on Sunday the 15th, and will remain
closed for several months to undertake a full re-imagining.
The
Test Track as we know it is no more.
I figured I would mark
the occasion by sharing my thoughts on the version that closed on
Sunday, my thoughts on what I hear about the new version scheduled to
open in September.
Test track opened in March
of 1999, right between the two trips I took to WDW during college,
and I expressly recall not riding it on the family trip down in
December of 2000. Oh man… that trip.
One
of the things I’ll talk about some time is how that trip convinced
me to try to avoid peak times. I remember the line for Test Track,
the slick new ride at Epcot was a solid 2 hour wait. If you think
that seems crazy long, well… Imagine all of the people who
currently spread themselves out over Soarin, Mission Space, Spaceship
Earth, and Epcot… Now take away two of those. Then place yourself
squarely into the middle of the Christmas season. We’re talking
utter madness.
Anyway,
because of all that insanity, I didn’t get to ride Test Track until
the trip I took in January of 2005.
The
gap between trips from December 2000 to January 2005 is referred to
as “The Dark Times”
One of the
first things I found on my initial visit to Test Track is that it had
one of my all time favorite queue lines. Part of the concept of the
ride is that General Motors is using the Test Track to run road,
weather, and performance tests on their new vehicles.
(GM
has been the ride’s sponsor since the beginning… in fact, I
learned while writing this post that GM doesn’t just sponsor the
ride, but sponsors that tract of land at the park. Like.. no matter
what ride is there.)
The queue
line is an extension of that idea, where GM shows various pieces of
auto equipment, like the seats and doors, taking increasing levels of
abuse. I have to say, and perhaps it’s my inner pyromaniac or
something, but there’s nothing quite like watching a giant sack of
sand plummet ten feet into a test seat, or see a giant blow torch
flame up against a windshield, or watch a huge sledge hammer on a
pendulum slam into the passenger side door of a car.
I
readily admit I’m a bit of a destruction fan.
A big feature of Test Track is the staggered queue.
Now…Disney is the master of the staggered queue. They break up the
wait you have for a ride or whatever by filtering visitors from the
larger corral type areas into little rooms, or bays or the like.
Usually in these bays is a sort of introductory video or display of
some kind that essentially sets up the experience you’re about to
have, from a narrative perspective.
That’s
really the most important distinction between Disney and many other
theme parks… most of those other places just have you wind around
until you board a ride. There’s no theme. There’s no context.
Disney, on the other hand, creates a story for you.
I think my favorite iterations of this concept are in Haunted Mansion
(with the stretching room) and Soarin (the Patrick the Flight
Attendant). Staggering the line this way serves a couple of
purposes. It breaks up the wait for the customer, and makes the time
go by more quickly. Maybe more importantly, it helps the ride
operators control the flow of traffic and estimate wait times.
So
Test Track’s “Time Killer” is this video starring John Michael
Higgins (for whatever reason I always think it’s Wallace Langham,
but then I remember he’s the star of another of the video
“Dinosaur” in the Animal Kingdom) where he explains that we’re
going to have the chance to experience a test drive where GM puts our
car through its paces using different weather conditions and
terrains. It actually sounds kind of cool as is, but Disney puts
their little wrinkle of humor and mischief into it, and he decides
that we’ll get some extra fun tests. And of course, they’re
probably dangerous and ill-advised in some way.
I
think it’d be fun to have just people from Christopher Guest films,
and people who played tertiary characters on 1990s sitcoms. There
should be a whole cadre of people in these intro videos. Like… the
guy who played the main barista on Friends. Wayne Knight. The
curley-haired guy from The Ellen show. Eugene Levy. You get the
picture. Also.. I saw A Few Good Men recently… Christopher Guest
plays an expert witness and it’s so crazy watching him play a
normal person.
And indeed, after
going through a general obstacle course, and testing out different
functions, your car gets sent into the “Corrosive Rain” room or
whatever, and it’s cute and kinda funny, and there are indeed a
couple of decent thrills. At one point you almost get hit by an
oncoming semi-truck. At another, your car accelerates toward a
barrier, which falls away at the very last second. Fun times.
The
real attraction of the ride is the speed test where the car speeds
around an outdoor track at 65 miles per hour, which isn’t all that
fast, but it does feel fast in the context of the ride.
The
barrier thing also helps ramp up the heartbeat. Especially if it’s
your first time riding.
Overall,
it was a fun diversion, but I wouldn’t have ever counted it among
my favorite rides at Epcot. Of the main attractions in Future World,
it’s one I’d have considered skippable if the line wasn’t
short, but if the choices were to rush to Test Track or rush to
Soarin… there wasn’t really a choice.
I have to say that I think
my feelings (that Test Track isn’t in the league of the better
attractions) are fairly rare, because the ride was always crowded.
Not only that, but it’s fairly out of character for Disney to
institute a full overhaul on a ride that was only 12 years old. In
some cases, that kind of change is necessitated by the elements
becoming too dated (say… many of the elements of Tomorrowland), but
Test Track wasn’t dated. Cars are, essentially, the same as they
were. Sure there are hybrids and some other new kinds of options, but
for the most part, not much has changed in the automotive world.
Part of me wonders if this was a financial decision. Disney
hasn’t made a secret that the economy has made large additions
difficult. It’s really amazing, actually, that the Fantasyland
addition is progressing so quickly. I would imagine that overhauling
a pre-existing ride is less expensive than building a whole new one.
I’m pretty
excited about the Avatar plans too. I’m not even a fan of the movie
particularly, but I think it’s the kind of jolt Animal Kingdom
needs.
Anywhooo… here’s what
I’ve heard the new version will entail;
First… Instead of
being sponsored by the whole of GM, it’ll be specifically
Chevrolet, and all of the products in the final showroom will be
Chevy products. This is a minor change.
Second… it seems that
the plan is to a pre-show where riders will be able to "design"
a new car for testing in the Chevrolet Design Center (I assume this
will be all computerized, sort of like the thing on the new Spaceship
Earth). When they’re done, they will board the existing
six-passenger ride vehicles, to be known as "SimCars", to
see how their design fares on the Center's driving course.
This
sounds cool, but I do sometimes get concerned that Disney will rely
too much on computer hocus pocus, and lose their focus on theme and
story. If you think about the big additions lately, you’re looking
at (among others) Spaceship Earth re-do, Toy Story Mania, and Mission
Space. All of which are heavily reliant on computer simulation. Maybe
that’s just the way things are going.
It
all sounds very fancy, and definitely goes along with Disney’s
Epcot vision where interactivity is the new goal.
I’m
not sure that any of it appeals to me all that much, though. I think
it will depend greatly on how educational Disney tries to get with
all of it, versus how fun the ride is. I’m willing to be educated
on aerodynamics and tire performance and all that as long as the ride
itself is fun.
I can picture giving your car metal tires or
something that would cause all kinds of skidding and grinding and
whatnot, and that would be pretty entertaining. You see… I’m
totally the person that tries to be silly when given interactive
choices. So is the Tofu Muchacha, actually. When we ride Spaceship
Earth, it’s not unusual for us to listen to the whole ride in
German or Japanese, because we think it’s fun. It’s pretty common
for us to make crazy faces into the camera that takes our picture.
It’s certainly common for us to randomly select the “Lifestyle”
options at the end and just let the silliness flow.
C’mon…
tell me that giving your car brick tires wouldn’t be kinda fun. You
can’t do it.
I hope that the
new Test Track allows riders to mix in the silly along with the
educational. I’m sure there are going to be kids who want to design
the perfect race car, with perfect suspension and handling, and they
should be able to try to do just that, but if I want a car with
curved axels… that should be allowed too.
I
always thought of myself as the kind of person who would go into one
of those roller coaster simulators and try to break the track. (you
know… if I wasn’t terrified at the very thought of it.)
The
Test Track has never been one of my favorite attractions at Epcot,
but it has always been an enjoyable experience. I am excited about
the prospect of a more interactive ride where the guest is the tour
guide. I think maybe it’s just what the attraction needs. I think
at the start, the Imagineers were looking to build a thrill ride, and
it just doesn’t hold up that way. There are too many other more
thrilling rides out there. Maybe audiences are jaded, but that’s
just a fact.
What Disney is planning changes the entire
dynamic and encourages the inner nerd to come out and have a field
day. I am all for it.
