Cars Land ready to roll next summer

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Disney’s California Adventure has begun testing ride vehicles for Cars Land, its newest themed land, scheduled to open this summer.

In an update Thursday, a top Disney official said construction crews working on the 12-acre expansion have completed many of the Cars Land buildings and infrastructure.

The land will be based on the stories and characters of the Pixar movies ‘Cars’ and ‘Cars 2.’

‘It’s really looking finished,’ Kathy Mangum, executive vice president for Walt Disney Imagineering and producer of the new land, told a gathering of tourism and hotel industries leaders at the Disneyland Hotel.

The new land will include three rides:

-- Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree, a ride that Mangum described as a square dance with mini tractors, in which guests ride in trailers pulled by the tractors.

-- Luigi’s Flying Tires, in which passengers maneuver tires that float on a cushion of air. The ride is a twist on a 1960s-era Disney ride, the Flying Saucers, that was closed because it malfunctioned too often.

-- Radiator Springs Racers, a car race around realistic-looking buttes and canyons. The small convertible cars that carry the guests are now being tested on the ride’s track, Mangum said.

Th car race ride will be different from most theme park attractions, Mangum said, because riders won’t know when they get into a car whether they will win or lose the race against other guests.

‘We are getting to the point where we can see how much fun it will be,’ she said.

RELATED:

How Disney’s imagineers transformed Carland into Cars Land

Preview: Luigi’s Flying Tires at Disney California Adventure

Scene-by-scene preview: Radiator Springs Racers at Disney California Adventure

-- Hugo Martin