DCA Then and Now - Part 5: Go Speed Racers Go!
Tucked away at the far end of Cars Land, off to the right, sits the signature “E-Ticket” attraction for the area, Radiator Springs Racers. It’s a slot car dark ride, using the same technology initially developed for Epcot’s Test Track (1999) and later utilized for Journey to the Center of the Earth (2001) at Tokyo DisneySea.
Gateway to Ornament Valley
Between when Cars Land opened in 2012 until Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge debuted in 2019 this was probably the most popular attraction at the entire Disneyland Resort. Standby wait times are still routinely well over an hour. When I attended a Disneyland Annual Passholder (AP) preview event shortly before the land debuted to the public, the wait was over two hours. But that was a relatively small event. Local press reported wait times of over six hours during the week the Cars Land opened to the public at large.
Radiator Springs Racers, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google.
The way the attraction’s layout is integrated into the land is quite clever. There’s no one single vantage (except this satellite view) from which to see the entire expanse. Any glimpses that guests might get are all carefully managed and controlled.
In the background lies The Cadillac Range mountain formation from Cars (2006). It’s rumored that Pixar/Disney had to receive permission from General Motors to replicate the design of these various vintage Cadillac fins from the 1950s and 1960s. Disney claims it’s more than 280,000 square feet of rockwork (the most at any Disney park), and they posted a video about its construction back in 2012.
Here the design challenge was to link several strong visual elements that are rather disparate in the film itself—the town of Radiator Racer Springs, Radiator Cap Mountain, The Cadillac Range, Carburetor Canyon, Willy's Butte, and even parts of Ornament Valley that are much further afield.
The Cadillac Range in the distance in Cars. All screen caps are from my DVD.
Again, owing to the wit of the Pixar story team, The Cadillac Ranch combines Arizona’s Black Mountains with the famed Cadillac Ranch art installation of Amarillo, Texas. I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of it—a row of ten Cadillacs (from 1949 to 1963) buried in the desert in 1974 with their rear fins sticking out. They get covered in graffiti and then repainted clean every few years. Chip Lord, Doug Michels, and their avant-garde art and design collective Ant Farm were behind the piece, and they were thanked by Pixar in the credits for Cars.
There’s another cool feature from the movie which is cleverly hidden. You have to be well into the queue or be exiting the attraction to catch it. Radiator Cap Mountain.
Radiator Cap Mountain in the foreground of The Cadillac Range in Cars.
In Cars, Radiator Cap Mountain sits directly behind the courthouse / firehouse of Radiator Springs and is much larger than the town below it. Like The Cadillac Range, it’s a nod to a real place, in this case Tucumcari Mountain in New Mexico. But naturally, tweaked quite a bit to resemble a radiator cap.
The mountain in Cars Land is much smaller, and is tightly incorporated into the rockwork of Radiator Springs Racers. There is a large “RS” (for Radiator Springs) on Radiator Cap Mountain in both the film and the themed land, just like how Tucumcari Mountain in New Mexico has a large “T” painted on it. I was surprised to learn that that more than 500 Hillside letters and messages can be found across the United States.
McQueen challenges Doc to a race in Cars.
Stanley’s Oasis
As with all transmediated Disney theme park attractions, there are usually key scenes or sequences in a film which set up the premise for the whole experience. In terms of a high speed, slotcar-type ride, Cars presents an ideal scenario. At about 43 minutes into the story, Doc Hudson (whom McQueen doesn’t know yet is a retired 1951 Fabulous Hudson Hornet) challenges hot shot Lightning McQueen.
So the car racing scenario has a basis in the movie. But that’s all we see of racing, out there in the desert, far outside of town. What the Disney Imagineers do so successfully is they build an entire spatial narrative specific to the attraction they are designing, and then graft it onto to the material world of a film in a seamless way. Just like other aspects of Cars Land, these augmentations (mostly) work.
Tunnels and bridges are very effective ways of providing transitions for theme park guests, as Dr. Benjamin George of Utah State University and I argue in our paper in Landscape Research Record No. 9, the 2020 proceedings for the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture. In Cinematography in the Landscape: Transitional Zones in Themed Environments, we talk about how well the points of entry into Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge ease guests into what feels like an entirely different world than the themed lands of the rest of the park (something I’ll be discussing in an upcoming post).
One of the most common complaints about DCA upon its opening was that the park lacked a berm around its perimeter to shield guests from the outside world. Even today, there are plenty of places to see the sprawl of Anaheim just outside. The Cadillac Range effectively blocks all these intrusions when you’re inside Cars Land, keeping guests fully immersed in its visual narrative.
As you make your way further in, you cross under two separate bridges, and each “compress and release” guests in architectural terms, providing a visual and experiential reset. In From Image as Place to Image as Space, I argue that this technique has roots in Disney’s multiplane animation.
Queue of Big Thunder Mountain, Disneyland, 2008.
I would argue that the first Disney queue area to convey visual narrative elements to guests, provide a kind of “origin story” background context for an attraction, and successfully build anticipation for the experience itself was Disneyland’s Big Thunder Mountain (1979)
Queue of Indiana Jones Adventure, Disneyland, 2008.
Since then Disney attraction queues have grown more and more elaborate. The executional apex of the art form, in my opinion, is with Disneyland’s Indiana Jones Adventure (1995). The extremely narrative driven route, which takes you from a jungle into the bowels of a mysterious temple, is over half a mile long.
Radiator Springs Racers queue area, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google.
Still I was greatly impressed by the Radiator Springs Racers queue when I first walked it in 2012, and again in 2021 when I took the time to look closer and photograph it thoroughly.
There’s just enough backstory—suggestions here and there, nods to the films and its characters, as well to a broader Americana—to provide the proper context for the attraction, why it exists, and what its connections are to the lore of Radiator Springs as first seen in Cars.
The strongest story link is to the town’s founder, Stanley. This is only briefly suggested in the film, in mentioning that he is deceased husband of Lizzie who owns the Radiator Springs Curios shop. The backstory was explained as part of the supplemental features of the home video release for Cars on DVD and Blu-Ray disc:
As he was traveling west searching for a place to settle and make his fortune, Stanley stumbled upon a natural spring coming up from the earth. He stopped to fill his radiator and he never left. Soon afterward, Stanley met Lizzie, the love of his life, and together they founded Radiator Springs, which soon became a legendary resting spot for travelers making their way across Route 66.
Here, right in the middle of the queue area, is that very spring.
From there the environment fleshes out Stanley and Lizzie’s early years. Since they are depicted as Model T-style jalopies, this sets the period as the 1920s through perhaps the 1940s. Stanley’s name is used as the lead identifier on various businesses throughout, and the entire town is called Stanley’s Oasis—a precursor to Radiator Springs.
Since the backstory about the spring was never depicted in the film (and who knows if guests have seen that special feature on their blu-ray disc), there is some signage that recounts the basic details, succinctly, like you’d find at a state park.
Radiator Springs Racers queue buildings, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google.
After passing “The Original Radiator Spring” and “Stanley’s Oasis” water tower, the queue winds through three buildings. Presumably, these are the oldest structures in Radiator Springs.
First there’s a large billboard for the town declaring “This is It!” and that you’ve arrived in Radiator Springs where you can “fill up and cool down!” Like much of the graphic design in Cars Land, this is the work of Imagineer Laurel Scribner Abbott.
This first building is The Amazing Oil Bottle House, made of concrete and glass bottles of various colors. A sign inside reads:
This world famous structure is made from genuine oil bottles saved after being consumed by Route 66 travelers visiting Stanley’s Oasis. Stacked upwards from end to end, these bottles would tower past the tallest fin in the Cadillac Mountain Range and reach to almost one hundred and twenty six-thousandths the distance to the moon.
Bottle houses are a tradition that go back to both the ghost town era of California history and the history of local theme parks. When Walter Knott purchased the entire town of Calico in 1951 and added many of its buildings to his Knott’s Berry Farm, he decided to add a bottle house to the collection of structures being restored on-site.
The Bottle House at Knott’s Berry Farm, 2014. Roller Coaster Philosophy/Flickr.
Although these were common enough in the boomtowns of the Old West (bottles being more plentiful at times than more traditional building materials), Calico didn’t have one. Built in 1953–54, It stills stands today in the Ghost Town area at Knott’s.
The next building over is an antique service station / garage, once again owned by Stanley. There are colorful cacti plantings throughout.
As with the rest of the signage in Cars Land, there is great attention to detail.
The silhouette of this vehicle suggests the 1930s.
On front of the garage are a pair of antique gasoline pumps that are decades older than the ones outside Flo’s. It’s a great period touch that strongly establishes the age of the queue area. They also make for interesting things to look at while standing in line in the summer heat.
The fictional brand—Butte Gas—has a logo featuring Willy’s Butte (more on that in minute).
Still, Stanley’s name looms around every corner.
These are particularly clever. They are misters, employed more frequently out at Walt Disney World in the Florida humidity (in fact, I can’t recall any of them installed inside Disneyland at all). As the Imagineers are wont to do, if they need to include a practical feature in their design for guest comfort or accessibility reasons, they insist that it all fit with the visual narrative of the area.
They are off-the-shelf industrial models from a company called Fogco in Arizona, but they’ve been distressed and painted to fit the period look of the rest of the queue, and advertise “Stanley's Cap ‘n' Tap.”
Title card for “Time Travel Mater” (2012). All screen caps are from my DVD.
This business—or any of Stanley’s other ventures—is not mentioned in Cars, but rather debuted on an episode of the series Mater's Tall Tales (2008–2012) called “Time Travel Mater”. It aired just days before Cars Land opened to the public.
Stanley and a time travelling Mater meet back in 1909.
According to that episode (which retcons some of the history of the founding of Radiator Springs; Mater is a time traveller who convinces Stanley to stay in the area, ensuring the town’s future), Stanley's Cap ’n' Tap began in 1909 when Stanley was traveling radiator cap salesman.
Radiator Springs Racers show building, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google.
The attraction has a massive show building, completely concealed behind the tall façade of the Cadillac Range. I’m pleased to see Disney embracing solar in their operations; the show buildings for older attractions at the resort like the Indiana Jones Adventure and Pirates of the Caribbean still lack panels.
Tail Light Caverns & Time to Race
As you approach the load area, the entire narrative of the queue shifts. It’s not about Stanley and his oasis anymore. It’s about an interesting series of caves which, again, are not seen in the film.
The lighting treatment remind me very much of the winding temple queue for the Indiana Jones Adventure as well as those scattered all over the Asia and Africa portions of Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
Guests board their ride vehicles inside what appears to be a filling station built inside Tail Light Caverns, home to the famous “Stalac-Lights.” It’s presented as a National Park, much like Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.
Mater arrives in the Tail Light Caverns in 1909.
This location is once again from Mater’s Tall Tales. Disney was clever in setting up the backstory for basically the entire Radiator Springs Racers area with that single episode, “Time Travel Mater.” And of course, it was sheer media synergy savvy to air it a week before the land opened.
There are important references to Cars as well. Right after your board your racer and depart, the vehicle—which seats six passengers and has a generic resemblance to other cars seen in the film—approaches a familiar waterfall and bridge rendered in miniature and forced perspective so they seem rather far away.
Lightning and Sally’s day trip.
Here is where Lighting McQueen and Sally take a drive out of town to explore the rest of Ornament Valley. Just as in the film, riders on Radiator Springs Racers are treated to perhaps composer Randy Newman’s most famous bit of music from the film, “McQueen and Sally.” The visuals are paced carefully so that the cue that accompanies the majestic reveal of the waterfall is exactly the same.
Then you quickly disappear into a dark tunnel and begin the inside, show building portion of the attraction.
Here’s one of the many 4K POV videos of Radiator Springs Racers available, courtesy of the folks at ThemeParkHD. Skip to about 2:30 for the actual ride footage to start. The entire experience from load to unload lasts about four and half minutes.
After meeting the citizens of Radiator Springs (at night) as well as getting suped up for the big race with either a tire change at Luigi’s or a new paint job at Ramone’s, two cars pause side by side. Doc Hudson waves us on, and it’s race time. The route is entirely outdoors.
Doc and McQueen race around Willy Butte in Cars.
The rest of the attraction recalls the scene in which Doc challenges McQueen, saying that if he wins he doesn’t have to complete his community service sentence (repaving Route 66 through town) and is free to leave. The course they race is a banked curve around Willy's Butte, in a part of Ornament Valley.
The design of Willy's Butte is based on Mexican Hat Rock in Utah, but also resembles a classic Pontiac hood ornament. As it’s the centerpiece of the canyon racing scene in the film, it’s also the visual anchor for the entire Radiator Springs Racers portion of Cars Land. We race the same banked curve that Doc and McQueen did (and hopefully don’t end up at the bottom of a ditch like an overconfident Lightning).
The racer vehicles turn and dart around the course so quickly (at times over 40 miles per hour in short bursts) that it’s hard to take in the beauty of the rockwork of the Cadillac Range. But the spires are always in the background and give this entire outdoor portion of the attraction a strong sense of place.
It’s when you’re being hurled through this landscape that you get a sense of the geographical mélange that has been meticulously assembled. Recognizable parts of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and even New Mexico are slammed together. The cacti foregrounded here belong in the southern parts of Arizona, but the eroded canyon features in the background are from farther north.
Conversely, these peaks look closer to what I’ve seen in the National Parks of Utah than in Arizona.
The finale of this wild ride is two part. You race into a short tunnel for a flash photo opportunity, then accelerate one last time and head for the checkered finish line banner.
Which car wins each time is established randomly by computer. This banked curve finale is essentially identical to Epcot’s Test Track, though that attraction is arguably more thrilling in that the course is both longer and you go a lot faster (~65mph).
Once the vehicles slow you return to the Tail Light Caverns and realize that it’s not just a filling station—there’s an entire “clean & quiet” motor court here with “free cavern tours” and “good rates.” Upon exiting there are tons of rich details to check out, all the way on the return walk back to Radiator Springs.
Disney does this all the time. Because guests are typically so excited to board (especially first time riders) they often miss some of the more subtle world building going on in the themed space of a ride’s load / unload area. So the Imagineers save some of this visual storytelling for the exit out.
This also serves to “hold” guests in the narrative space as they leave, bringing them down from the high of what they experienced, and prepares them for the next thing they’re off to go do—whether it’s eat, shop, leave Cars Land for another themed area, or just ride Racers again.
Here the same trope from the Cozy Cone Motel is repeated. The “suites” of the motor inn are actually garages. This one is named after Lizzie, Stanley’s widow, who we meet in Cars.
Dinoco is yet another petroleum brand found in the Cars universe.
The name is both a verbal gag—a play on Conoco—and a visual gag referencing the famous Sinclair Oil brand which uses a Brontosaurus as its corporate logo. “Dinoco” substitutes a Stegosaurus (and, unfortunately, Copperplate Gothic).
Often guests must exit an attraction by going up and over the track of the ride vehicles. The Imagineers are always looking for interesting ways to do this. Here we walk the service corridors of the motor court.
There are fun bits of signage along the walls.
One of the few times you’ll ever see the designers break the fourth wall of their themed environments is with required notices like exit signs or employee only areas (“cast members” in Disney company parlance). However, these never stand out because they’re designed accordingly, all the way down to aging and rust.
The Imagineers are carefully to give you entirely new vistas on your walk out of an attraction than you saw standing in the queue on the way in.
It was here along the final banked curve where the winner is declared at the checkered banner that I found something very clever. Perhaps my favorite design element of the entire attraction.
Looking closely at the barbed wire along these fences, I noticed that the braided bailing wire strands themselves are real metal. But the “barbs” are fake, harmless rubber. I can’t imagine the extra effort and expense it took to fabricate thousands of these tiny rubber barbs and then glue them onto these strands of metal wire. Then paint them with artificial rust.
They look entirely convincing at a distant glance, and on close inspection. It’s remarkable. All to maintain—safely—the realism of some fencing.
Get Your Kicks Back On Route 66
The entrance into and exit from Cars Land on the east side of Disney California Adventure is nothing special. But on the west side it’s quite possibly the most charming part of the entire area. For one thing, guests have a panoramic view of the outdoor portion of Racers. But it took a narrative and spatial cheat to achieve this.
Route 66 intersecting with Cross Street.
In Cars, Route 66 intersects with Cross Street at Flo’s. Ramone’s, Luigi’s, and Lizzie’s businesses occupy the other three corners. But as you can see from the above vantage from the film’s finale, Radiator Springs is just a flat grid. Cross Street dead ends with another road. Route 66 bends right when it hits the courthouse / fire station at the end of town and then continues on.
What the Imagineers have done is create the look and feel of being back on Route 66—just like the drive that Lightning McQueen and Sally take out of town—yet the road leads off the intersection at Cross Street. The turn the highway takes in the movie instead leads to the queue entrance of Racers, so they had to find another way to make it out to the west side of DCA and still have guests recall vistas from Cars.
There’s a really fun gag along this stretch of highway. It’s a series of signs advertising Rust-eze (owned by Dinoco), a medicated bumper ointment for cars with rusty bumpers. This is a play on the very famous mid-century Burma-Shave campaign which was deployed all over the United States, including on Route 66, in which a series of signs along the road featured humorous verses. They were like advertising limericks, the poetic equivalent of a television jingle, and are very fondly remembered by Baby Boomers.
They were also double-sided, with different rhymes depending on which direction you were driving. Here are the Rust-eze signs, first walking east into Cars Land…
And then exiting to the west.
The first series references Mater, and the second warns you might get pulled over by Sheriff.
The road stretches along this panoramic view of Racers and the Cadillac Range, and then begins to curve to the right. Then you pass through an arch much like you’d find at a certain National Park in Utah.
Looking in from the other direction, you can clearly see how masterful the designers are at using tunnels to transition between different themed areas. It’s a threshold, a gateway. A magic portal. At first there is the Cadillac Range, at what appears to be miles distance, bright and out of focus. It’s the primary “wienie” drawing you closer and into the land.
As you get a bit closer and are about to walk under the arch, suddenly Willy’s Butte comes into view, having at first been obscured from your field of vision. It’s a fantastic trick. You’re drawn to one wienie, quite a ways away, and then abruptly you are given another one much closer, much larger. It’s thematic sleight of hand, and it works beautifully.
Next, we’ll return to Cars Land and see how different Radiator Springs is at night.