Two Popular Attractions at Walt Disney World to Receive Expansions
If you’ve been paying attention to the rumor mill lately, you’ll likely have heard about the supposed expansions for two major attractions at Walt Disney World. One was for Soarin’ and one was for Toy Story Midway Mania! It seems as if those rumors were indeed true, because today, Disney officially announced both of those expansions were coming to fruition.
At Epcot, Soarin’ will be adding a third theater; currently there are two theaters in use with the popular attraction. In addition to the extra theater, there will be updates to the screens, as well as the projection system. (Let’s hope this means we will finally stop Soarin’ with big random spots floating on the screen.)
Over at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, the extremely popular Toy Story Midway Mania! will also see an addition in the form of an extra track. If you’ve been to the park lately, you’ll notice that the Soundstage 1 (the recent former location of both Wandering Oaken’s Trading Post and Darth’s Mall) has walls around it, which was done in preparation of the expansion.
Both of these expansions are in an effort to increase guest throughput, as both are extremely popular with very long waits most days and FastPass+ reservations often difficult to obtain, especially if you are trying to get one on the day you are visiting the park.
These expansions are expected to be completed by late 2016 and as of right now, both attractions are currently open for guests to enjoy with no refurbishment dates announced.
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We did the undiscovered future world tour in Epcot at the end of January, and the guide did mention the Soarin’ upgrade when we went through the facility. He also mentioned that the new attraction would no longer feature just the ride over California but would include a semi-star tours style experience from different places around the world, which were much easier to get now because they were filming with drones.
Interesting! That would be very cool…but not help much with wait times. I also look forward to an upgraded film quality. It always makes me feel like there is something wrong with my contacts. LOL!
Here’s hoping for 4k/IMAX resolution!
It will be interesting to see the footprint for these expansions.
Also, I assume the Toy Story expansion will also include an expansion of the loading area, as the current loading area can’t double its throughput just by moving the vehicles out more quickly. This will mean that the ride will probably have to shut down for at least a brief time, unless there is an entirely separate loading area built for the expansion track.
Not sure yet…the rumor is that that third track will be either all FastPass+ OR that the that one will be for all standby and the other two will be all FastPass+. It depends on where they decide to split the line, I’d guess. I’m sure there will likely be brief shut downs for both Soarin and TSM though at some point to get everything running smoothly.
If they invested that money in NEW attractions wouldn’t lines go down at the older rides? I was probably alone in hoping these rumours were false.
This is great news! This should double the capacity for TSMM, right? Or am I mistaken that it currently has a single track?
It has two currently. This will take it to three.
Where is the current second track?
They fork inside the current attraction right at the start. Sometimes you go one way, sometimes you go the other. 🙂