Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin is now closed as part of a previously announced refurbishment at Magic Kingdom. The Tomorrowland attraction will remain closed into 2026 as Walt Disney Imagineering rolls up its sleeves to perform several upgrades to the 26-year-old attraction. Among the changes are new ride vehicles, handheld blasters, updated targets, and even a new scene with a new original character! Here’s a final look back at the now former version of Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin at Magic Kingdom.
Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin Old Version
Buzz Lightyear’s arch-nemesis from Toy Story 2 is stealing batteries from helpless toys to power a new weapon of destruction. Become a Junior Space Ranger and help stop Zurg!
Board your XP-37 star cruiser and voyage deep into the Gamma Quadrant, where you’ll take aim at the glowing “Z” targets with your infrared laser cannon. Use your cruiser’s joystick to spin a full 360 degrees, so you can blast all the targets in sight.
Do you have what it takes to stop Zurg and his rampaging robot army before it’s too late? The fate of the universe is in your hands!
Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin didn’t have a lot of queue space indoors, or rather, it was underutilized in recent years. That meant that a lot of queue space would be outdoors. Hopefully, Disney will take the time to readjust the indoor portion of the queue to allow for more efficient use of space, allowing more guests to enjoy some air conditioning while they wait. No changes to the queue have been announced at this time.
We’ll start our photo tour at the entrance, before walking inside to take a brief look at the queue, before boarding our ride vehicle for a roughly 5-minute ride through space.
The indoor portion of the queue featured some murals and sticker theming. It was quite basic and colorful.
The highlight of the queue was a Buzz Lightyear Audio-Animatronic that guests from the standby queue were able to walk right by. The Lightning Lane queue completely skipped this area.
The load area featured a large mural and a constantly-moving walkway belt, giving guests a few seconds to board the ride vehicle and get settled. This Omnimover ride system is similar to what you would find at Haunted Mansion. In the photo immediately below, we can see the old load area mural. A better look at the 2022 upgraded mural follows.
Once on board, a game panel would fold down to lock you into the ride vehicle and bring the vehicle-mounted blasters within reach. One of the upgrades coming to the next version of the attraction is that the blasters will no longer be affixed to the ride vehicle. Instead, they will be handheld, similar to other versions of this attraction found worldwide.
And, if you’ve ever wondered where you’re aiming (don’t worry, you’re not alone), these enhanced blasters will now include an always-on laser and come in two different colors per star cruiser, in addition to new lighting, sound, and vibration effects, so players know where they’re aiming throughout the mission.
The very first “room” of the ride will be updated, creating a brand new scene with a brand new original character. The old version of the room included the “Astro Accelerator” – a disco ball with some figures around it. The new scene, seen in the concept art below, will feature a brand new character named Buddy. Buddy was created by Walt Disney Imagineering and Pixar Animation Studios to play a key role on the Star Command team.
As a support-bot, Buddy makes sure departing Space Rangers are fully prepared for their mission, enthusiastically providing encouragement, final system checks on their Star Cruisers and a chance to hone their blaster aim. This will be a great time for guests to check out some of the new, interactive target features before blasting off to defeat the Evil Emperor Zurg and save the galaxy.
Here’s a look back at the scene before the upgrades.
Following the opening scene, guests were sent through various space battles, asked to aim at the ‘Z’ targets to score points, and defeat Zurg. Disney hasn’t announced any additional scene changes, but they have announced that the targets will be updated to allow for more interactivity and gameplay enhancements. The new targets will react and light up when hit. It also opens the door for a few other ideas Imagineers have in mind.
Here’s a final look at the ride before the upgrades debut in 2026!
We’ll close with a final thought. It’s interesting to see Walt Disney World continue to stick with the Toy Story IP for this ride when Tokyo Disneyland is currently in the process of changing its Tomorrowland blasting ride to a Wreck-It Ralph theme. In Hong Kong Disneyland, the Buzz Lightyear attraction was changed to an Ant-Man theme years ago.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!
