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----    THE LATEST BUZZ    ----
 
    (5/12/2026) Disneyland Was Actually Fined by CARB For The Honda Autopia Engines
    (5/8/2026) Disneyland to Retire Autopia Gas Engine Cars in 2027
    (5/7/2026) Disneyland Decides to Nerf Roger Rabbit Car-Toon Spin
    (3/28/2026) Disneyland To Close Pirates Of the Caribbean In May
    (3/17/2026) Bluey To Arrive at Disneyland Next Week

Ride Rehabs - These dates are subject to change:
 
Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters - NOW CLOSED - Apr 13 through TBD
Pirates of the Caribbean - May 4 - TDB
Blue Bayou Restaurant - May 4 through May 20
 

General Park News - (5/7/2026) Bad news for fans of the Roger Rabbit Car-Toon Spin dark ride at Disneyland. According to various reports on social media the went went down briefly for maintenance and when it reopened, the ability to spin the steering wheel and turn your cab around to face in any direction has now been disabled. The steering wheel is still there, it just does nothing at all now.
    So it is both annoying and disappointing that the very gimmick that set this dark ride apart from all the others, is now said to have been permanently disabled. The weird thing is, it isn’t like they installed a programmed version of the spinning module, so that while you ride the car will spin to face the appropriate things, like Haunted Mansion. No.. instead, now the cars apparently just sort of free-spin, willy-nilly, and face forwards, backwards or sideways at random, which now means that at times riders may be facing away from some of the more pivotal scenes.
    I’m hoping that this isn’t the final result for this ride and if they don’t want to allow guest-controlled spinning any longer, if they can at least come in and add a spinning program so that the cars spin and face where they should at the right time… not unlike how Universal’s Cat In The Hat works in Florida.
 
    (3/28/2026) Just a heads up, but right before the busy summer season begins it looks like Disneyland will be closing down the beloved Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, along with the attached Blue Bayou Restaurant, starting on May 4th. The refurbishment is currently for an unknown period of time, so we don’t know if it will reopen in time for summer or if the attraction is going to be down for several months. Anyone know more?
    Elsewhere on social media, it has been claimed that the Blue Bayou Restaurant may actually reopen just in time for Memorial Day Weekend in late may, but nothing has been confirmed about the Pirates attraction itself just yet.
 
    (3/17/2026) Bluey will be premiering at the Disneyland Resort on March 22 as part of the new “Bluey’s Best Dar Ever!” attraction space which will see Bluey and Bingo on stage throughout the day inside the park’s Fantasyland Theater show venue.
 
    (3/10/2026) An “hazmat” incident occurred at Disneyland earlier today that resulted in seven Cast Members being taken to a local hospital. According to this news report the incident took place around the backstage area of the Star Tours attraction around 12:30pm, when local firefighters were called in when a strange odor was reported. Seven Cast Members were taken in for medical treatment out of precaution after reportings issues of dizziness and shortness of breath. The cause of the odor is still unknown, though it is thought that it involved some kind of building materials being used backstage by a contractor that may have had some kind of reaction.
    The incident did not affect any guests, nor did it impact park operations, as it was entirely contained to the backstage area.
 
    (2/26/2026) It has been reported that Disneyland is ready to begin alternating the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln animatronic show with last year’s Walt Disney - A Magical Life show. It was announced that this was the long-term plan, to alternate between the two shows throughout the day, once the initial draw of the new Walt Disney based show wore off.
    And speaking of changes, it also seems that in the very near future the Disneyland Resort is planning on dropping the 11am wait-time before you can use those park hoppers. Until now guests with park-hopper tickets had to wait until after 11am before they could switch parks from the park that they initially made their reservation for. During the late COVID era, guests had to wait until after 1pm before swapping parks, so word has it that the restriction will be removed entirely very soon. 
    Unfortunately, no end of the reservation system yet, but at least this is a step in the right direction.
 
    (1/15/2026) Interesting changes are reported as coming to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland. According to the report, starting on April 29, the Galaxy’s Edge land will undergo something of a time warp, and move backwards in time several decades to now include characters and elements from the original film trilogy that will now be present within Batuu’s Black Spire Outpost.
   First and foremost… Darth Vader will arrive and make his presence known, along with an army of classic era Stormtroopers. This is thought to also include appearances by original characters like Luka, Leia and Han Solo. The era change will also be reflected in the music that guests will hear playing in the background as you stroll through the land as pieces of John Williams’ scores from those films will now be heard.
    The attractions themselves will remain unchanged… or at least until the new Mandalorian and Grogu mission becomes available on Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run later in the year. There will be some changes to a few shops however, with “First Order Cargo” turning into “Black Spire Surplus” for example.
    For Walt Disney World fans however… you’re being left out of this one. For now at least, these changes will only take place in the Disneyland version of Galaxy’s Edge.
 
    (11/4/2025) Big Thunder Mountain has now reopened at Disneyland after a lengthy refurbishment. You can check out the POV video below showing it off in action. For the most part, this looks to have been a restoration of the ride experience, as I didn’t really notice anything new. What has been noticed however is that the waterfall at the top of the first lift hill is either turned off, or has been replaced by a simple mist effect.
    Hopefully it just wasn’t turned on yet… I’d hate to think they removed the waterfall for that. (UPDATE: The Waterfall has returned...)

 
    (10/8/2025) Disney has confirmed that the closed Storybook Land Canal Boats attraction will be getting a new addition before it reopens. If  you’ve never ridden it the attraction takes guests on a boat ride through a waterway that features scale-model sized versions famous structures from Disney animated films. To this end a mini version of Rapunzel’s Tower from Tangled is being added to the attraction as part of the park’s 70th Anniversary celebration.
    Look for the new addition to be placed between Toad Hall and the Patchwork Quilt when it the attraction reopens this winter
 
    (7/2/2025) I’m going to list this as being a very good thing, but some of you may disagree. According to SFGate, as of July 1st Disneyland has removed the popular Pirates of the Caribbean attraction from their list of Lightning Lane attractions and is now offering just a single “Stand-By” only lane for access to ride.
    Long time readers know Screamscape has never been a huge fan of Disney’s various line-skipping services… not even the free for everyone FastPass system. While it worked out on some attractions, other attractions never needed it, and the addition actually caused attractions that rarely had long lines to suddenly have them all the time.
    In this case, Pirates was last added to the park’s Lightning Lane service at the start of 2024 as two other Lightning Lane attractions were going down for extensive refurbishments… in this case it was Splash Mountain closing to be converted into Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and the Haunted Mansion closing for a refurbishment that would change the outdoor queue as well as add a gift shop to the exit. As the article also confirms, the line of Pirates has since skyrocketed once the single-line was split to include Lightning Lane. By creating an artificial bottleneck the stand-by queue would then spill out into the pathways and make things look more crowded than ever.
    Now that both of those projects have been completed and returned to the Lightning Lane offerings, there really was no need to keep Pirates on the list any longer. Not that Pirates would ever need it, as the same thing happened back during the original FastPass era as well. Pirates is the highest capacity ride in Disneyland after all. While the popular roller coasters like Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain have theoretical capacities of 1,840 and 2,200 riders per hour, Pirates of the Caribbean is capable of handing up to 3,430 riders per hour. So even when Pirates appears to have a long line, that line is constantly moving due to the attraction’s design being quite literally the biggest people eater in the entire California resort. (Fun note: According to online stats, the only attraction with a higher capacity in all of Disney’s North American parks is the Tomorrowland Transit Authority (aka: Peoplemover) at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom which at full capacity is said to be able to handle up to 4,600 riders per hour.

2026 - Smugglers Run - Mando & Grogu - (11/25/2025) Blooloop reveals a few more details about the upgrades coming in 2026 to the Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run attraction. As you have guessed from the previous version of the attraction, Millennium Falcon works like a giant video game, which means all the visual action you see through the cockpit windows are rendered in real-time by a video-game software engine.
    And if you missed it, the engine itself was upgraded around August 2025 to use “Unreal Engine 5” from Epic Games (from Version 4) and they’re also in the process of upgrading graphic cards used to render all the graphics you see, which means even more detailed and realistic graphics are coming. It’s also fun to note that “The Volume”, the giant video screen soundstage used in the production of The Mandalorian itself, is also said to be powered by Epic’s Unreal Engine, so this should allow for the same graphic look to apply from the productions to the attraction itself.
    Another big reveal about the new updated version of the attraction is that while your adventure on the Falcon will apparently begin with a visit to Tatooine, your journey through the attraction itself will not be as linear as the previous version. Your choices along the journey will apparently unfold with your adventure ending with a finale sequence on one of three different locations: the Bespin Cloud City, galactic Capital planet of Coruscant, or an encounter at the wreckage of the Death Star. Once at any of these three locations, apparently there will be a few branching points to travel into different sections of each of these levels as well.
    So really the new version of the Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run attraction that arrived in 2026 will be something infinitely more fun and replay-able, so you can try to experience something new with each new ride experience.
 
    (3/9/2025) Disney has confirmed that a new adventure mission aboard Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run featuring Mando and Grogu in the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge lands at Disneyland and Disney Hollywood Studios will be available starting on May 22, 2026, the same day that The Mandalorian and Grogu fim will hit the silver screen in theaters.
    While we don’t know exactly what the experience will be line, it will play into the storyline told in the new movie apparently. Based on the concept artwork released, we see the Falcon flying towards the Cloud City at Bespin once again, a shot of a sand crawler, which means a stop by Tattooine, and what appears to be an image of the wreckage of the second Death Star floating in orbit over Endor.
    According to the post, the events you’ll experience in the new Smuggler’s Run mission won’t be a re-telling of the events of the new film, but instead will be “more like participating in something that’s happening just off-camera from what you see in the film.” I do admit, I like that idea, as it is what really makes the events of Universal’s “Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts” a really fun attraction. It places the riders on your own adventure within the Gringotts bank, at the same time that key events from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is taking place elsewhere within Gringotts, allowing your paths to cross at some key scenes along the way.

 
    (8/11/2024) Ever since I saw Millennium Falcon: Smuggler Run I’ve felt that the video-game style experience really needed to expand and add other ‘missions’ you could experience. At last, Disney agrees, and in 2026, just in time for the launch of The Mandalorian and Grogu movie hitting theatrers, a new new story/attraction featuring Mando and Grogu will also drop into the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run attraction at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

By 2027?? - Electric Autopia - Confirmed - (5/12/2026) While we know all electric engines are planned to come to the Autopia in 2027… would you believe that Disneyland was required to pay a fine to the California Air Resources Board of $56,250 over the use of the Honda engines? According to the OCRegister, Disney was fined in 2024 after it was discovered that the special Honda made go-kart style engines for the Autopia cars were “operating without certified emission controls.” Part of this settlement was an agreement by Disneyland to retire the current attraction’s gas engine cars by early 2027.
 
    (5/8/2026) Disneyland has confirmed that they have begun testing a fully electric vehicle for the Autopia car ride attraction. Way back in 2024 the park announced plans to eventually retire the current gas-powered engine fleet of cars on the attraction with electric vehicles, but until now there has been very little news about their progress. According to the latest updates, Disneyland has made an agreement with the California Air Resources Board to fully retire the current gas powered cars by early 2027.
    Many assumed that Disneyland would have moved a little more quickly on this concept, especially as they had already created an all electric vehicle version of the Autopia that opened at Hong Kong Disneyland and ran from 2006 until the park quietly closed the attraction in 2016. According to reports, the electric cars that ran in Hong Kong featured an on-board audio system and an array of built in lightning effects. So when the conversion of the Disneyland version was first announced in 2024, many felt that Disney could have simply just brought over the retired fleet of cars from Hong Kong and put them to use, or used the design to create a new fleet, but this never happened. Of course, with the only electric fleet of cars having only ran for 10 years in Hong Kong, it is entirely plausible that there could have been some flaws in that particular design that launched in 2006 that encouraged WDI to create a new or updated version of the concept for the Disneyland launch.
    However, the more likely cause of the delay most likely had more to do with the Sponsorship of the attraction itself in California. The same year that the Hong Kong park retired their attraction, on March 31, 2016 the Disneyland Autopia had just launched a sponsorship program with Honda. Typically Disney attraction sponsorship deals are signed for 10-year increments… and that does line up rather well with the “early 2027” closure of the current version of the attraction that Disney announced this week. Oh… and if you were wondering why Disneyland didn’t try to copy the electric car concept from Hong Kong right after that version opened in 2006… I’d point to a sponsorship problem once again as a guaranteed block for that concept, as from 1998 to 2012 the Disneyland Autopia was sponsored by Chevron. It just wouldn’t do to have electric powered vehicles when your attraction is sponsored by a gas company, no would it?
    There is an early rumor however saying that Disneyland and Honda may be renewing their sponsorship deal for the electric version of the Autopia that is expected to come in 2027. The rumor suggests that Honda themselves has been working with WDI to create the prototype vehicle(s) they are testing now and will likely use as the focus of a renewed sponsorship deal that ties into Honda’s own expansive fleet of electric powered vehicles on the roads today. We will likely hear a confirmation about this along with more details about the attraction plans later this year.
 
    (4/21/2024) Disneyland has now confirmed earlier comments that indicated a plan to convert the Autopia to feature an all electric vehicle fleet. The park has confirmed that these will be all electric vehicles and not hybrids, and you can expect it to be converted within the next 30 months (Fall 2026).
    It isn’t known if the attraction will close entirely to convert over to a new electric fleet all at once, or if this will be something of a phased conversion where cars are just replaced at few at a time as they arrive. Of course a full closure would represent a more lengthy process that could also indicate some possible thematic changes within the attraction itself, which might also be welcomed as very little has changed with the Autopia over the years, other than the sponsorship era from Chevron that started in 1998 that saw the Fantasyland station closed and the Tomorrowland side reformatted to serve as the solitary load-unload point for all four tracks.
    Yes, I’m showing my age, for those not aware, in the old days there were two Autopia attraction stations. Two of the roads would load in Tomorrowland and the other two would load in a second station located in ‘Fantasyland’ right across from the Matterhorn. On slow days, back when there was such a thing, the Fantasyland side would often remain closed, leaving just the Tomorrowland tracks open.

    (4/4/2024) The Autopia at Disneyland is now set to receive a makeover, as all the cars on the attraction will soon be replaced by a new fleet of electric cars, replacing the old gas engine vehicles for good. The details are very light at this time, as there is no timeline for the project to be completed, nor a confirmation if the new vehicles will be all electric or some kind of hybrid power system.