Users and programs meet on Walt Disney World’s newest coaster Tron Lightcycle Run at Magic Kingdom. To kick off the attraction’s official opening on April 4 (heh, 404), Disney Parks invited Gizmodo to attend their All the Disney Thrills media days to get a sneak peek at the highly anticipated ride inspired by the ‘80s sci-fi movie and it’s sequel Tron Legacy.
io9 caught up with original Tron cast Bruce Boxleitner (Alan/Tron) and Cindy Morgan (Yori/Lora) after previewing the attraction. Boxleitner even rode the coaster right before we did so it was wild to go on the Tron ride with Tron himself! “What an experience. I haven’t moved that fast ever in my life,” Boxleitner said. “Don’t know if they should have guys over 60 doing this. I’m 72. Yeah, I was whipping through there. Hopefully, the camera they had on us [didn’t record me] screaming too loud, but it’s good.”
The enormous canopied coaster in Tomorrowland perfectly fits in its landing spot, reinforcing the park’s retro-futurism as a gateway to the Grid alongside Space Mountain and the Carousel of Progress, defining E-ticket attractions that speak to various eras hoping for an imagined future past. The Grid, however, is more real today than it was when the cast made the Steven Lisberger-directed film in 1982. “Well, the first time, [was] no more than 40 years ago and it was an imaginary Grid. We didn’t see it. It was all painted around,” Boxleitner said, in awe of the structural ingenuity around us inspired by Tron Legacy. Co-star Cindy Morgan shared that it looked similar to the white metal tubing of the original lab sets, “We were actually at Livermore Lab in San Francisco.” she said. “Livermore Lab is an actual lab they took us 19 floors down into the ground.”
Morgan reminisced about her other favourite sets that took her back. “In the real world Flynn’s apartment because it wasn’t as much techie and we could be a little more relaxed and a little more ourselves.” She particularly cited scenes she shot with the film’s star Jeff Bridges (Kevin Flynn, Clu). “And Jeff is very loose and it’s perfectly his character. Bruce is the serious one and Lora is in between them. They’re going to throw things at each other and she’s not moving. It was unbelievable.”
Meanwhile, the queue reminded Boxleitner of the digital space, “This one, it was an actual physical grid, which was more like the sets of Tron Legacy.” he said of the blue, black, and neon-lit areas the camera crew followed him through. “Obviously, it was more like that. And I did have the feeling of being on a film set because we had cameras, myself walking, and so that once I got strapped on to that thing. Hoo! I have never moved that fast. So it was crazy. Absolutely thrilling.”
Oh, just riding Tron Lightcycles with Tron er— Alan 👀 #TronLightcycleRun #AllTheDisneyThrills pic.twitter.com/tzAw7gc39X
— Sabina Graves (@SabinaHasNoR) March 14, 2023
Diving deeper into how Tron’s visions of the future hold today in the age of expanding digital landscapes in VR and immersive environments, Boxleitner agreed that the film got it more right in some ways than many other fictional sci-fi words. “I think in its own sweet and sort of naive way, it actually predicts, and it’s one of the few science fiction movies that we’re actually living.” he explained. “It’s not some distant star. It’s not a dystopian burnout world and things like what science fiction so often goes to. It’s actually predicted a lot. Remember at the very end where you look at the program and all the circuitry was starting to light up. It’s the Internet. It’s for everyone. Now we are all carrying these [smartphones]. It kind of predicted that in a fun sort of Alice in Wonderland type of story.”
Even down to the Tron ride’s gift shop’s futuristic toys, Morgan beamed at her little Yori merch. “I’ve got an action figure all in a package, that looks like me in that costume all those years ago,” she exclaimed when seeing it for the first time. “I did it,” she said proudly of the immortalization through Lori’s action figure. “I wasn’t very athletic. All of a sudden, you get up and you do it. As a little girl growing up you got to know it can be done.”
With the ever-in-development potential for more Tron sequels in the works, we asked Boxleitner what he hoped the franchise’s future would keep true to, and for the actor, it comes down to the hopeful nature of innovations. “I think [the films] always have a sense of a wonderment with the technology,” he said. ‘How far we can go with all this?’ And let’s hope for a good thing — for humanity. All this technology we have I’ve always said just because we have it doesn’t always make it right to use it, which some people have abused. The movies show that there’s always hope, [they’re] always reaching for a brighter future. And certainly Flynn was doing that. He has such great hopes. No more disease. No more of these things that plague.”
He added: “We could all use a Tron. Tron was always there to fight for the users.”