TRON starts pull-through testing in Magic Kingdom

While Magic Kingdom opened Seven Dwarves Mine Train earlier, it was a later decision to clone the Shanghai Disneyland ride for the Magic Kingdom. Here is the timeline on this:

- Disney announced at the 2009 D23 expo a New Fantasyland for the Magic Kingdom. The center space of the new area was to be a collection of themed meet and greet buildings.

- In 2011, when Tom Staggs replaced Jay Rasulo as the head of Disney Parks and Resorts, they reevaluted what they had announced and building for New Fantasyland. As Shanghai Disneyland was well underway into its design process, they decided to replace the central meet and greet facilities with Seven Dwarves Mine Train, 95% cloned directly from Shanghai Disneyland. As a result, they closed down Snow White Adventure and relocated the planned meet and greets there.

- Seven Dwarves Mine Train opened in 2014 at the Magic Kingdom.

- Shanghai Disneyland ran into delays with construction quality, design issues and other things and only opened in 2016.

Differences between both rides: Magic Kingdom took the dancing Snow White and Seven Dwarves figures from the original dark ride and relocated them near the new coaster brake run, letting guests see them right before they disembark. In Shanghai, the chalet with the figures is not present. Instead, you have a tree with Sleepy popping out and a larger diorama on the right, with the Seven Dwarves cottage a forced perspective model in the distance.

One major technical difference between the original B&M Mega/Hyper Coaster and the recent one can be seen in the station release: Until recently, B&M used an electrical release to release and lock the lap bars in the station. Then, when they created new backward cars for Universal Studios Japan, which would run alongside forward facing trains, they went to a more standard mechanical release, like the Inverted, Floorless and sitdown coasters. Parks also go a little more paranoid with the restraint position: the trains running in Asia and the one at Port Aventura require a much deeper restraint position to lock, making those who fit perfectly on Mako and the likes now need to be stapled hard or simply can't fit on Hollywood Dream, Music Roller Coaster, Steel Dragon and Shambhala.

B&M in Asia has experimented a lot, notably taking a lot of inspiration from the Vekoma Suspended Family Coaster, like Fun Spot Freedom Flyers and building their own version at the request of Happy Valley, the largest chinese park operator. Picture the Banshee cars, two across and the overhead lap bar with no vest as the restraint.

I am curious how much is different between the Batman clones outside of the queue and orientation. Did they evolve the ride or just rubber stamp it into each park?

Jeff said:

Why can't the new ride be updated to better accommodate based on their previous learnings?

Or why can't parks just say "no loose articles, and that includes Refill bottles, toys, backpacks, purses, suitcases, basketballs, and all the other crap that kids think they should be bringing onto a rollercoaster?

Each Batman: The Ride has its minor differences. Six Flags Over Georgia loop-zero G roll-loop sequence is bent a little to clear Mindbender, while at SeaWorld San Antonio, Great White is slightly more compact to fit the site. Diavlo in Japan has custom supports, as its built on a hillsite. The lift hill goes up the hill and the train drops into a trench instead of staying up in the air like the others.

Even the prototype at Six Flags Great America has a unique feature it shares with Raptor at Cedar Point: it has a motorized cart to service and evacuate the lift versus the others that have the double staircase/metal grate under the lift hill.

Didn't know this. Very interesting to hear.