With the news that TRON Lightcycle Run will open April 4, 2023, Disney also announced that preview opportunities would be available for Annual Passholders and Cast Members before the ride officially opens. In this article, we’re going to do a bit of speculating on when previews could begin by taking a look back at the last attraction to hold preview opportunities – Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind.
We’ll work our way backward to try and determine the amount of time that Disney might want to run previews for ahead of the official opening of TRON Lightcycle Run. First, let’s start with an opening date.
- Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind: May 27, 2022
- TRON Lightcycle Run: April 4, 2023
Ok, using the opening date, let’s try to predict the TRON Lightcycle Run Annual Passholder preview timeline based off of the timeline for Cosmic Rewind. For Cosmic Rewind, Annual Passholder previews began on May 8th, which was 19 days before the ride opened to the public. Previews took place up until May 21st – just 6 days before Cosmic Rewind opened.
If TRON Lightcycle Run were to follow that same timing, Passholder previews would start on March 16th and run through March 29th. Although not officially announced, there will likely be Disney Vacation Club previews and maybe even a D23 preview event sometime during that timeframe.
The only question mark is media previews. It’s likely that Disney will hold media previews just a few days before it opens so media can come into town and write about the return of Happily Ever After and EPCOT Forever, both of which take place on April 3rd – the night before TRON Lightcycle Run officially opens to the world. With Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, media was given a first look at the ride 22 days before it officially opened. That said Cosmic Rewind was a new concept and not a clone of an existing ride like TRON Lightcycle Run is. We could see Disney allowing some handpicked local media a chance to ride early, but the out-of-town media will likely ride just a few days before opening.
Because Disney likes to offer media something different than normal guests, we could actually see the predicted Passholder preview dates shifted a bit earlier than the dates listed above to allow for extra construction of a stage or something temporary for the media event like what we saw for Cosmic Rewind.
Ok, so the next question is: when will Annual Passholder preview signups begin for TRON Lightcycle Run? For Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, Passholder preview registration was 24 days before the first preview date. Following that logic, we’d expect Passholder previews to open on or around February 20, 2023.
Before we conclude, we want to stress that this is speculation. While Disney has announced that there will be Annual Passholder previews, they have not said when the previews will begin or how long the preview will run.
Are you excited to ride TRON Lightcycle Run? Let us know in the comments below or on social media!