With just one more day of soft opening left, TRON Lightcycle Run Cast Members and operational teams are finalizing plans for how the attraction will run when it officially opens on April 4th. During the soft opening period, Cast Members have been quite strict on only allowing guests to ride TRON Lightcycle Run during their 1-hour Boarding Group window. If guests show up late to the ride, they are turned away and Cast Members are citing limited operations and capacity restrictions during the soft opening period.
Today, we were late to our Boarding Group and were turned away. The Guest Experience Cast Member explained, unprompted, that TRON Lightcycle Run will not operate like Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. That is, they will not be accommodating late arrivals. For context, if guests show up late to Cosmic Rewind, they are often waived through without an issue. At TRON Lightcycle Run, Cast Members have told us that there is a very narrow grace period for a missed Boarding Group and that late arrivals cannot be accommodated.
As explained to us, the current plan is to continue to be very strict on the 1-hour return window when the attraction officially opens April 4th. Cast Members told us, in no uncertain terms, that TRON Lightcycle Run is unique and will need to keep the strict Boarding Group return window. We have largely remained silent on the anti-vacation policy of enforcing the strict return window given the operational nature of a soft opening. While there is a valid argument to be made that this “soft opening” is really not a traditional soft opening, the ride wasn’t scheduled to open until April 4th so we’ve been saving our breath.
That said, if the TRON Lightcycle Run and Magic Kingdom operations teams go through with the strict 1-hour window, we think it’ll be a big mistake. Magic Kingdom is a difficult theme park to get to and we’ve seen some wild swings with an estimated return time of up to two hours. When the estimated return time is 11:30am and then changes to 9:45am while you’re sitting at breakfast, it is unbelievable that Cast Members will turn you away when you inevitably miss your Boarding Group window. Combine that with a difference in “late arrival policy” between one Virtual Queue at Cosmic Rewind, and another Virtual Queue at TRON Lightcycle Run, and it becomes quite confusing to guests. We’ll have more to say later this week should the policy remain in place.
Here are our front-row and back-row POV ride-through videos for TRON Lightcycle Run at Magic Kingdom!
For the latest on TRON Lightcycle Run, including our review of the attraction, check out our attraction page below!
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The problem is that, unlike EVERY OTHER RIDE, Tron has features only visible at night. This means people will prefer to wait until night to ride, causing a lot of back up if CMs were allowing guests to do this. I hate the fact I probably will not be able to ride at night, but this might mean that, as people realize they need to try for the 1 pm rather than 7 am VQ, I might get to ride during the day.
Agreed. Which is exactly why they should lighten up on the daytime returns. I had a virtual cue call back estimated at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday when I booked it at 7:00 a.m. . I had lunch at 12:30. But when I arrived at the park I found my call back time was actually 11:30 a.m. so I had missed my window. That’s just ridiculous!
Fortunately I was smart enough to buy a lightning lane for 4:00 p.m. because I knew this would happen. All you’re really doing is forcing guests to pay for this ride rather than bother with the virtual cue. And I think that’s a scam.
I talked to the cast members later and they said the number one complaint was the strict callback time for the virtual cue. I think they’re going to see enough guest complaints that they’ll have to give on this policy.
The fair option would be to let daytime callbacks be redeemed up until 5:00 p.m. then have a new cutoff window for the afternoon call backs.
I do think the 1:00 p.m. q is going to be a lot busier than the 7:00 a.m. if they stick to this policy. People will want to ride this at night and that gives you only about 3 hours of summertime ride time.
So, you wasted an VQ for your experiment when someone who has not ridden it could have gotten your spot? I, for one, am glad they are going to hard enforce this. It should at Guardians, as well. You don’t reserve a table at a restaurant and then when your table is called, expect to be sat 2 hours later, do you? If you cannot show up when your group is called for an entire hour, sorry but maybe you shouldn’t be in the queue from the beginning.
The issue I see is that very often a non-resort guest who gets a very early return group and that group gets called before the park is even open to them. This happens frequently with Cosmic Rewind.