The artists carrying on Walt Disney’s vision for theme park storytelling are responsible for the tricky challenge of maintaining what makes the parks’ most classic rides so great while ensuring those beloved experiences stay relevant to future generations of riders and avoid closing permanently. Reinvesting in classic attractions is a priority for Walt Disney World teams right now, and Imagineers just revealed the next legacy ride that will receive updates.
A classic Disney World ride will be reimagined for a new generation. We have news on what’s changing and how Disney has been approaching ride updates lately. Mickey Visit brings you the latest Disney news and planning resources, including 13 ride reveals for Disney’s biggest theme park projects and 14 movie and TV show announcements.
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Disney World Ride to Close for Major Transformation
Disney theme park attractions routinely close temporarily for regular maintenance and refurbishments, but sometimes Disney opts to close a ride for a longer period than a typical refurbishment to implement major changes to the ride experience. These changes could include technology upgrades, safety enhancements, new special effects, or significant transformations to the ride’s story, characters, and scenes.
Walt Disney World has made this initiative a priority for its classic attractions in the past few years, with Imagineers recently telling Mickey Visit that reinvesting in classics is just as important to them right now as building major expansions like Villains Land or Monstropolis.
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Recent examples of reimaginings include Test Track at EPCOT, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Magic Kingdom. In all of those attractions, guests now experience varying degrees of refreshed cosmetics, new scripts, new music, and/or revamped infrastructure.
Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress at Magic Kingdom is currently closed for a similar update, which will change every scene of the ride and introduce an Audio-Animatronics figure depicting Walt Disney himself.
Continuing a cadence of reinvesting in classic rides, Spaceship Earth at EPCOT will be reimagined.
Disney announced the changes during Horizons: A Carousel of Progress, the Disney Experiences Showcase presentation at D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, Disney’s official convention.
This EPCOT classic is located inside the park’s icon, the giant geodesic sphere. The attraction opened with the park in 1982 and takes riders on a 20-minute journey through the history and future of communication. The current version of the attraction, featuring Dame Judi Dench as the narrator, was introduced in 2008.
For the reimagining of Spaceship Earth, Imagineers will swap the communication theme for one of “human connection,” journeying through time to show all the progress made possible by that ideal. Imagineers stressed that the ride will “remain classically EPCOT” while taking the ride’s narrative “into the Internet age and beyond.”
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Disney has not shared a timeline for the transformation of Spaceship Earth. News will come later about the closing date for the current version of Spaceship Earth and how long the refurbishment will take.
Disney had previously announced a reimagining of Spaceship Earth in 2020, focused on the concept of following light through time, but that overhaul was canceled due to the pandemic.
The Spaceship Earth news is one of many Disney theme park announcements just revealed. Click here to see all the news revealed at D23 with our ongoing coverage.
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