6.
HINTS:
- Nearly every "Castle Park" on Earth has a ride with this name, but only one version has this layout.
- Despite the sensation most guests report, this coaster's top speed is actually less than Seven Dwarfs Mine Train's.
- "Based on" the Matterhorn, this coaster also includes two separate tracks, but they're nearly perfect mirror images of each other.
ANSWER: You're looking at the jaw-dropping interior of Magic Kingdom's Space Mountain... Which kinda sorta helps explain why "near-miss" illusions cause most guests to keep their hands and arms well inside the "rocket" during flight... Opened in 1975, Magic Kingdom's version of the ride is the only one that uses the mirrored double coaster layout. Despite leaving many children and parents shrieking with memories of their white knuckle interstellar journey, Magic Kingdom's Space Mountain only reaches speeds of 27 miles per hour – typically, the speed limit on a residential street.
7.
HINTS:
- Three rides of this name exist across Disney Parks, but only one has this layout so figure out the ride and the park.
- This coaster features three lift hills along its 2,780 foot course.
- The coaster is so beautifully cradled in the rockwork of a Disney "mountain," it's hard to tell whether the coaster or the landscape was designed first.
ANSWER: This is Magic Kingdom's Big Thunder Mountain. You can tell it's Florida's version of the ride because Disneyland's is mirrored (and is missing an extended straightaway that's used for the "flood" scene) and Paris' version takes place on an island, requiring a dive under the Rivers of the Far West on the way out and back.
8.
HINTS:
- This coaster's layout may look sprawling and disorganized, but that's because it's got a story to tell.
- On our layout graphic, gray track is outdoors while brown track is indoors.
- Portions of this roller coaster travel backward (indicated above by reversed arrowheads) thanks to two switch tracks during the course of the ride.
ANSWER: Peel away the elaborate decoration and this is what you'd see from above at Animal Kingdom's Expedition Everest. The sensational E-Ticket ride isn't just the last IP-free major addition at Walt Disney World; it's also the king of Disney's "Mountains" thanks to an 80 foot drop and speeds of 50 miles per hour – twice as fast as Space Mountain. Some report that from above, Expedition Everest is designed to resemble a giant Hidden Mickey. Any resemblance is likely coincidental. But in any case, with the "mountain" lifted off and your head tilted, it looks more like Winnie the Pooh with antlers or a very tall cowboy hat.
9.
HINTS:
- This coaster can easily be identified by a launch into a sweeping turnaround followed by a nimble, compact second half
- Most – but not all – of this ride takes place indoors
- Reaching 60 miles per hour, this ride officially bests Rock 'n' Roller Coaster, becoming the fastest Disney coaster on Earth.
ANSWER: TRON Lightcycle Run may be the most-anticipated new ride at Walt Disney World in years. Given that it's a copy of a ride that's already been thrilling guests at Shanghai Disneyland since 2016, it's easy to see why. The new coaster debuting Spring 2023 is meant to give guests the experience of riding aboard the glowing, digital motorcycles found in the computerized landscape of the Game Grid seen in the 1982 film TRON.
10.
HINTS:
- This compact roller coaster packs a lot into a small footprint including a single inversion.
- You won't find this roller coaster at a Disney Park unless you travel outside of the United States.
- There are two correct answers for this one...
ANSWER: When it comes to this layout, there are two Disney coasters that use it. The first is Indiana Jones et le Temple du Péril at Disneyland Paris. Famously the first Disney coaster to send riders upside down, the Temple of Peril was a quick-fix, low-cost addition to the park (opening just a year after the park's 1992 launch) meant to draw more visitors in and generate enough cash flow to keep the park running. In 2005, a near-identical clone of the coaster was installed at Tokyo DisneySea as Raging Spirits. Ironically, the coaster in Tokyo is not explicitly themed to Indiana Jones even though it's in the park's Indiana Jones themed Lost River Delta land.
Frankly, neither Temple of Peril nor Raging Spirits is a particularly good roller coaster, but the ride's compact layout and multi-tier support structure does lend itself well to a "mine carts around an excavation site" aesthetic which is clearly what Disney wanted. And by nature of being "off-the-shelf" coasters, they're quick, easy, and inexpensive to install when a park needs a capacity boost. Interestingly, though both coasters were manufactured by well-known coaster company Intamin, the blueprints were lifted from an Italian ride manufacturer named Pinfari who produced 3 of its "TL-59" coasters in the '80s. So technically, you can find a practically-identical version of this ride outside of Disney Parks, too.
Comments
This quiz was fun, but it would have been helpful to know where the rides start and end (or where riders load/unload). Since all of the arrows lead one to another in an unbroken loop, it was harder to envision the rides.