Imagineers Showcase Disney’s Trackless Magic and How Ride Vehicles Dance Without a Single Rail

Walt Disney Imagineering recently highlighted one of their most game-changing innovations: trackless ride systems. “Imagineer That!” delves further into Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, explaining how these vehicles move from zero to spin and groove with no visible tracks. The ride is incredibly effortless, despite the fact that below it is like a well tuned orchestra of perfection and unlimited potential waiting to be composed.

These vehicles use a secret network of tiny sensors placed throughout the attraction’s floor and walls. Each sensor contains enough information to tell an automobile where it is and what it should do next. When a car passes by or even comes close to one of these sensors, its internal computer detects the signal and immediately obtains directions. It’s as if the car receives a continual stream of instructions during the voyage, and the best part is that it never has to ask – it just gets on with the job.

This may sound similar to how GPS works, but what sets this technology apart is that it can guide the entire fleet at once rather than one car at a time. One of the Imagineers compares it to a brilliantly choreographed dance, in which several ‘cars’ may be ordered to accomplish the same thing at the same time, even if the task is hard, such as splitting into four different groups and then rejoining. That’s what happens in the classic dance studio scene in Runaway Railway: the ride’s rhythm is precisely synced with the music and effects.

What’s so interesting about all of this is the flexibility it allows designers, as they can have these vehicles move in all sorts of strange and fascinating ways. Cars can go forward and backward, slide sideways, and spin on the spot; this is entirely up to the designer, as there is no fixed rail to which these vehicles are linked. So the possibilities are endless; a car may “stop” to interact with a scene, then turn on the spot to join in with another vehicle, all perfectly timed to the music, projections, and effects.

The motors that power all of this movement are supplied by onboard batteries, so there are no visible overhead wires or special floor contact material, which is exactly what the Imagineers intended to make the show floor quiet. Safety is, of course, a primary consideration, with continual position checks to ensure that each automobile stays exactly where it should. If a car begins to wander off track, the system can quickly reset it or just bring it to a soft halt.

At the center of it all is a computer that connects everything together, taking control of the entire operation and timing each car’s activities down to fractions of a second. It’s one of those systems that can even account for things like how long it took everyone to get on board or any little delays that occurred along the route. With that amount of power, Imagineers can finally begin to push the boundaries of what a ride can do, and the possibilities become limitless.

The really exciting part is that we haven’t even scratched the surface of what this technology can do. The Imagineers are already talking about merging this trackless system with drop towers, motion bases, and even water elements, so we can expect some absolutely incredible new ride concepts in the future. The beauty of it is that everything’s meant to keep the technology absolutely invisible to the rider, allowing them to focus just on the excitement and amazement that is unfolding around them.