A brand-new Cars themed area is racing into Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. First announced at last year’s D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event, the Cars crew will leave Radiator Springs in the dust and head off into the frontier to put their wheels to the test.
At The Future of World-Building at Disney panel at South by Southwest (SXSW), Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter and Imagineer Michael Handgen teased that guests will need to strap in because they’re in the process of creating a new type of ride vehicle for this experience.
“Our primary goal is creating an emotional experience for our guests,” Hundgen told the crowd. “For this Cars attraction, we need to invent a new type of ride vehicle. No one builds these in a factory because it has to do so much more than just carrying you from one place to another. We have to create a car that conveys a feeling when you ride in it.”
To see what it felt like to drive over rocky terrain, the team took a trip to the Arizona desert to jump in a real off-road vehicle. Racing over rocky terrain, ascending mountain peaks, and dodging around geysers is uncharted territory for Lightning McQueen and Mater. How do you take these real-world elements and put a Cars spin on them?
Following their road trip to Arizona, the Imagineers worked with a motocross company to build a real dirt track to race around on. They then carried that data back to begin working on creating how the ride vehicles would eventually move and race.
“We’re using a customized production vehicle,” Hundgen continued. “It has sensors all over it, and we’re taking it for test drives on our dirt track to gather data on how the vehicle responds to different terrain. This is where we turn that feeling we want into real-world engineering,” Michael explained.
As for what the cars will look like, this is where the Pixar team stepped in. To get the crowd at SXSW pumped up, Docter shared some early concept sketches with the audience. He teased that they are creating “new race car personalities for this attraction. Each vehicle in the ride will have its own name and number, just like a real race.”
Excited about the new Cars-themed attraction coming to Frontierland in Magic Kingdom?