Construction on the Tron-themed roller coaster coming to Tomorrowland at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom has been notoriously slow. Tron Lightcycle / Run was first announced at the D23 Expo in July of 2017, and will be a cloned attraction from Shanghai Disneyland. With delays, pauses, and construction slowdowns, there seems to be no end in sight for when it will be opening.
Work on the pathway ramp and entrance areas for the attraction seemed to have picked up steam in recent months, giving some hope that we may actually see the ride open some time in 2022, however, Disney has not yet announced any opening time frame at all.
Along with the construction of the roller coaster, some adjustments are being made to the Walt Disney World Railroad, which has been closed for three full years while work has been ongoing. With work ramping up on exterior areas of the Tron coaster, it appears that work related to getting the railroad back up and running is also speeding up.
Let’s dig into a photo update for the roller coaster project, as well as the new train tunnel being constructed, in today’s photo and video update. See the video below for additional visuals.
We’ll check in on the railroad work first, starting in Fantasyland at the back of the Magic Kingdom.
If you walk to the right of the Fantasyland Train Station, you can find a sign promoting the upcoming Tron attraction. Here is where the train tracks usually travel from left to right, but they have been removed and have been missing for years now.
If you walk a few more feet to the right, you can see through a large gap in the bushes that some supplies are staged and ready to be installed for the train tracks.
I could be mistaken, but what appear to be new railroad ties are stacked up here. You can see a few leftover old wooden ties on the left nearby as well.
Continuing on to the right, we can see where they are starting to construct what will be a train tunnel below the Tron ride. The metal and rebar framing seen running left to right at the bottom of this next photo will be this tunnel.
In the next photo, taken from the PeopleMover on the other side, the circled area is this train tunnel starting to take shape.
The next photo shows a closer view of the tunnel, seen on bottom-left.
The official concept art from Disney, seen below, shows the train tunnel in the middle, along with the guest walkway ramp and entry sign seen to its left.
That entry ramp and sign area are already recognizable at the work site, as seen below!
New work is also visible at one of the points where the track enters the building.
The view from the queue of the Barnstormer kiddie coaster in Fantasyland gives us a great view of a structure being built along the guest walkway under the large ride canopy at Tron.
Other incomplete structures can be seen in front of this new building as well.
This is also a great angle for looking at the canopy and ride track, which was receiving some work while I was there.
From Tomorrowland Speedway, we can see a different angle of that new structure.
That’s going to do it for this update on Tron Lightcycle / Run. We still have no idea when it will be opening, but if I were to bet, I’d say there’s a very good chance the WDW Railroad will reopen in 2022, but no idea about the Tron coaster. We’ll just have to wait and see.
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Be sure to check out the video update for additional visuals and angles for construction on this project, and stay tuned for more updates coming soon.
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