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DISNEYLAND
Anaheim, California (Abbreviation: DL)
Walt Disney Theme Parks
---- THE LATEST BUZZ ----
(6/24/2026) Teen Takes a 50 Foot Plunge Down Tiana's Bayou Adventure While Trying to Jump From Log
(6/17/2026) Disneyland's Deadline To Close Autopia Revealed
(5/24/2026) See The New Smuggler's Run In Action + Grogu Mode
(5/23/2026) Stars Get Sneak Peek at New Millennium Falcon Mission
(5/14/2026) Disneyland - Autopia Moving Away From Gas Engines
Ride Rehabs - These dates are subject to change:
Pirates of the Caribbean - NOW CLOSED - May 4 - June 25
King Arthur’s Carousel - July 3 through July 16
Matterhorn - July 20 through July 23
 General Park News - (6/24/2026) I couldn’t believe it at first, but there is now video footage showing a 13-year old who was attempting to jump out of a log just prior to the big drop on Tiana’s Bayou Adventure make a terrible miscalculation and ending up falling back into the flume drop right behind the log he had been seated in. Even harder to believe is the fact that apparently he was unharmed, other than a few scrapes and bruises, and was taken to a hospital for further evaluation which apparently found nothing else wrong.
No reason has been given for the stunt, though based on the fact that other riders have also jumped from their logs at various points on the attraction in California and Florida over the years while freaking out about the ride experience. Thankfully the ride was stopped immediately, stopping any further logs from taking the plunge after him, which certainly would have caused serious injury or death.
Keep in mind that this is a water ride and those generally don’t have restraints at all just in case something bad were to happen and a boat was to flip over or start to sink. In the rare cases where there is some kind of restraint, almost always they are loose enough to slip free if need be… and not something that would keep a determined rider from escaping.
(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.
(3/17/2026) 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.
2026 - Smugglers Run - Mando & Grogu - (5/24/2026) On the updated Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run attraction, now featuring The Mandolorian and Grogu, there are said to be three new mission destinations you can experience: Bespin’s Cloud City, into orbit over Endor around the wreckage of the second Death Star, or take a trip to the capital planet of Coruscant. The choice of your destination is actually made by the “left engineer” position after your run through the initial section of the ride experience.
The video below will show off all three of the new ride experiences and it is nice to see that there is more to do for the rear crew members than before. While the pilots obviously fly, and gunners have plenty of targets to shoot, the engineer seats not only choose the destination, but are busy with the tractor beams sucking in crates of goodies for Hondo to sell while the Mandalorian is focused on tracking down a bounty.
On the old version of the attraction, you may remember that there was a secret “Chewie” mode, where through a series of button pushes in the cockpit, you could be roared at by Chewbacca during the ride instead of berated by Hondo. On the updated mission there is now a Grogu mode instead. This is activated by the two gunner positions pressing and holding the rear white button under the gunner screen on each side prior to launch and then pressing the blinking button nearby that is surrounded by a green box. The activation of Grogu mode is confirmed when all the various button lights around the cockpit all light up green. You still get to hear the mission critical commands from the Mandalorian, but you get way more Grogu, plus he’ll call in more to your mini screens too.
(5/23/2026) Check out the video clip below of Pedro Pascal and Sigourney Weaver, Joe Favreau and Dave Filoni taking a test ride on the newly updated Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run attraction mission, now featuring The Mandalorian and 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.
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By 2027?? - Electric Autopia - (6/17/2026) A quick update from the OC Register confirms that Disneyland has a deadline of February 1st, 2027, to close down the current version of the Autopia with gas-powered cars, no matter if the new electric cars are ready or not.
(5/14/26) The days of smelling that iconic "Autopia exhaust" are officially numbered. Following the recent $56,000 settlement regarding engine emissions, Disney was said to have promised to update the classic Tomorrowland attraction. While all we know so far is that the plan is to retire the current fleet of gas-powered engines in favor of a new, fully electric vehicle system, this doesn’t mean that we might not see other changes to the attraction.
Long time Disneyland fans will remember that there was once two Autopia attractions stations, one in Tomorrowland and the other labeled as “Fantasyland”, located across the pathway from the Matterhorn, with each station offering 2 different paths. During the last major refurbishment of the attraction, the layout was restricted so that all four tracks would load and unload at the remodeled Tomorrowland station, thus retiring the need for the Fantasyland station, but those former tracks still run through that area even today. So it would be nice if we saw some kind of new layout or at the very least, refreshed theming along the way, as the attraction retrofit aligns with Disney's broader push toward electrification and sustainability.
Stay tuned!
(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.
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