The Wreck-It Ralph VR ride

Image: The VoidEven before Stitch’s Great Escape turned into a seasonal attraction, speculation centered on its replacement. Now that the Stitch is gone for good, many have wondered about when its successor would debut. And that answer is complex.

For a long time, insiders speculated that an augmented reality attraction would become a part of Tomorrowland. Even though that themed land is in the middle of an unprecedented change that will modernize it, the old Stitch space only has one purpose: A Stitch character greets.

What’s supposed to be hosted there? Based on rumors, the answer is a Wreck-It Ralph attraction, one that would involve some sort of Sugar Rush-style race. However, the current belief is that those plans are no longer applicable to Tomorrowland. Instead, they’ve transitioned to two other part of the Disney campus.

Image: The VoidA Wreck-It Ralph VR experience IS available at Walt Disney World. It’s just not something you receive with your Disney ticket. Instead, The Void at Disney Springs operates a simulation called Ralph Breaks VR. And it's precisely what it sounds like: a VR game set in the Wreck-It Ralph universe.

While Disney has no official connection to Ralph Breaks VR, a product of The Void, a virtual reality gaming center, your Mouse friends are doing something, too. The Play! pavilion at Epcot’s Future World will have features that sound eerily similar to storylines and visuals from Ralph Breaks the Internet.

Given the presence of these attractions, I struggle to envision a Wreck-It Ralph ride at Tomorrowland. It seems redundant at this point.

A new monorail fleet

Image: DisneyAround the time when I wrote this article, Disney had just suffered a public relations hit due to an incident involving the monorail. I’d add specificity about the details, but the statement is evergreen on its own.

At this point, it seems like a monorail snafu occurs every few months. Some of them are minor ones like a brief stoppage. Others are scarier, like the time when a door opened in the middle of the trip and remained that way for several minutes.

I’m not going out on a limb here when I say that the monorail situation at Walt Disney World is an embarrassment. The current fleet of Mark VI vehicles has operated since as early as 1989. Yes, that was 30 years ago. If you’re still driving a 30-year-old car today, you’re either an antique collector or your muffler smells like dead ostrich.

Image: DisneySeriously, 1989 was so long ago that the top new singer at the time was Paula Abdul. Batdance was also a #1 song that year. That was like seven Batman movies ago.

Thirty years is an eternity in the transportation industry, and Disney executives have no excuse leaving the Mark VI line in operation for this long. Every time a guest gets stranded and has to get lifted out of a train, the situation is totally Disney’s fault for ignoring the problem for too long.

As a Disney loyalist/apologist, I have to believe that the company will do something at some point soon. There’s been little hint of that over the past two years, though. Siemens reportedly offered to provide a new fleet back in 2017, an offer Disney rejected. Every time the monorail makes headlines for the wrong reasons, I wonder how Disney feels about that decision now.