Cars Land - soft opening vs hard opening?

[sonjaandsue]

We are thinking of going mid-June so may be there around the opening of Cars Land. What is a soft opening? And how are hard openings handled? Are there different procedures than just waiting in really long lines and going on the rides? Thx!

 

[joelnkelly]

I live in Orlando and we deal with Disney and Universal's soft openings and offical open dates all the time. With a soft opening typically the park will open the ride or ride's about a month in advance to work out any kinks. In some cases the ride or rides are open for a few hours a day to all day. You dont know its open unless you are at the park, this isnt something that is typically announced. If you are lucky enough to be at the park that day and its open you get to ride it.

I am guessing with carsland it they are trying to open it by mid-june they will have the soft opening sometime in april/may. they will want all the kinks worked out before this goes live to the entire public and marketing pushes people to visit.

I remember years ago when they opened test track at epcot, it was a disaster because they didnt test it enough and the ride was down more than it was open. I doubt disney wants another debacle like that.

 

[CrazyDuck]

Soft openings are great if you are there when they are open... I was in DL the week leading up to the opening of the new Little Mermaid ride and there were soft openings happening nearly every day. The most I had to wait was 10 minutes to ride it and even walked on a couple of times... Compare that to the hard (official) opening on June 3rd which had lines in excess of 3 hours. The thing about soft openings is that it can open and close multiple times a day... I'm not sure how they are going to handle soft openings for Cars Land... I mean how do you soft open a land? It would take a lot more manpower to shuffle people out of a land that it would a ride!

 

[joelnkelly]

Soft openings are great if you are there when they are open... I was in DL the week leading up to the opening of the new Little Mermaid ride and there were soft openings happening nearly every day. The most I had to wait was 10 minutes to ride it and even walked on a couple of times... Compare that to the hard (official) opening on June 3rd which had lines in excess of 3 hours. The thing about soft openings is that it can open and close multiple times a day... I'm not sure how they are going to handle soft openings for Cars Land... I mean how do you soft open a land? It would take a lot more manpower to shuffle people out of a land that it would a ride!

I think they will open up the land, shops and food areas for a soft opening, and have the rides opened to a varying degree. No way they open this all one day and expect everything to work perfectly. They have to test this area and rides out so I would expect a soft opening to test the rides and everything but officially open it at a late date. Once word gets out that they have opened up the land people will make a mad dash to the park and check it out.

 

[skiingfast]

We are thinking of going mid-June so may be there around the opening of Cars Land. What is a soft opening? And how are hard openings handled? Are there different procedures than just waiting in really long lines and going on the rides? Thx!

Hard open is when it's officially open.

Soft opening may be done in a far different way and is unnanounced
Let AP holders on.
Let Resort Guests on.
Let anyone on.

There may be contests to ride early like they did for ST last year as well.

Mid June it will probably be open. The land's construction is progressing very well, with many months to go much of the details are already done. All the new rides have over a month of testing already done.

 

[sonjaandsue]

Thanks for the info. Glad to hear they are making progress. Living in WI I forget that construction can be 365 in SoCal!

 

[jaurban]

Would there be a good twitter to follow in case of a report of a soft opening of some portion of Carsland. We will be there in April, and while I have no real hope of seeing it, if the chance should arise, I would try to get over there.

 

[skiingfast]

Would there be a good twitter to follow in case of a report of a soft opening of some portion of Carsland. We will be there in April, and while I have no real hope of seeing it, if the chance should arise, I would try to get over there.

Try Mousewait. I think it's one of the worst apps there is because of the people that post on it, but they will relay information quickly.

You could also do.
Disneyland Blog
Disneyland Live

or a hundred others.