IGN Visits Walt Disney World's New Fantasyland
There have been previous Disney park attractions based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, of course, most notably Snow White’s Scary Adventures. However, the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is a much more modern approach, integrating aspects of a rollercoaster thrill ride with a traditional Disney Fantasyland dark ride into one very entertaining experience.Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has an important place in Disney’s history, as the company’s first animated movie ever. That being the case, all involved wanted to make this ride special, with Walt Disney Imagineering’s Chad Stachnik telling me, “The film is significantly old, but we wanted to take new ride technology and new animation technology and bring it to everybody today and make it applicable to today's expectations of what we can do here.”
I had the opportunity to ride the attraction during a recent press event and was struck by how smooth the experience is compared to most coasters. The ride utilizes an unusual swinging bucket car, which swings back and forth, side-to-side, as you race along the track, but in a subtle manner; limiting the herky-jerky movements of other coasters knocking you back and forth, while still letting you feel all the drops and sudden bursts of speed. Said Stachnik, “It's very smooth. I keep saying, I could ride it over and over and over again. The swinging bucket just creates a very different dynamic. Your center of gravity's a little different compared to a traditional coaster, where you're following rails. I love riding it.”
I too found myself greatly enjoying the experience of riding the Mine Train, doing so four times in a row during the press event. My only quibble? I wish it lasted just a little longer, as it feels like it could use one more "thrill" moment at the end, perhaps. Overall though, it's a very fun ride that has a lot of clever aspects to it and really stands out for how it incorporates different elements in such a successful way.
The ride begins as a fast-paced, outdoor coaster, before slowing down for a middle section inside the mines, where you see the Dwarfs at work (well, mostly – Sleepy is taking a nap break, as you might expect), singing "Heigh-Ho", naturally - in a sequence which indeed functions as a sort of mini-dark ride and includes some really cool visuals, including the shadows of the dwarfs hiking uphill, just like in the film. From there, as you leave the mines, you again speed up as you race along outdoors, before the ride concludes – with a glimpse of another memorable moment from the Snow White film occurring alongside your car using audio-animatronic figures of the Snow White characters.
As Stachnik put it, “To me, it's a complete coaster, a complete attraction, really. You get a little bit of everything." He added, “It was challenging, but it was rewarding to see it all come together like that.”
Fantasyland’s attractions are ones very much designed with the entire family in mind, including young children. The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is notable in that it is certainly faster-paced and more of a thrill ride than anything else in that area of the park, without being too intense for most guests. Stachnik remarked, “Some children don't appreciate the dark ride and Space Mountain. [The Mine Train] is gentle in some areas, but it gives a little bit of a thrill, so we're setting the height restriction at 38 inches. You're going to get the whole family riding on this. It's gonna be fun.”
In recent years, new Disney park attractions have been notable for incorporating different entertaining components into their queue, so as not to make it simply standing in a line with nothing else occurring the entire time. This continues with the Mine Train, with Stachnik explaining, “We almost don't want you to think of it as a queue anymore. It's the start of the attraction, the start of the experience. You get off the promenade, you're in the forest, inside the mine. You get experience some of these fun things like sorting jewels and washing jewels inside the vaults, and the jewel barrels, which you get to spin and see the characters. So we want to start the experience early. It doesn't need to feel like a line anymore. So that's the objective, to bring it outside and make a line not seem like a line.”
The elements that are part of the Seven Dwarfs queue are all colorful, eye-catching, simple to figure out and fun. I especially enjoyed the Jewel Sorter, which allows those passing by to “grab” digital jewels and sort them for the dwarfs and had all around me quickly joining in.
The Wash Station has streams of water – lit up by vibrant beams of different colored light – which turn on when you put your hands under it – and as any visitor to Orlando will tell you, it’s never a bad thing to get some water on you on a hot day. As you move inside, and closer to boarding the actual ride, you see barrels which can be spun. Said Stachnik, “Kids will spin the barrels, and then a projection on the ceiling will come up from whatever dwarf owns that barrel, essentially.” And yes, plenty of non-kids were spinning the barrels as well.
When I visited New Fantasyland when it first opened, while I loved the experience, the construction site in the center, where the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train was still being built, was hard to miss. Stachnik said everyone at Walt Disney World were very happy to see the Mine Train open, noting, “It makes that expansion complete. It's satisfying for us to be able to share that. You know, you see all the immense theming we put into this and all the work we put into this. It sets a new standard I think for what we do.” The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train opens Wednesday, May 28th at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom.
Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @EricIGN, IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at Facebook.com/TheEricGoldman.
