Cars Land

An onslaught of visitors eager to see the new Cars Land area could force periodic closures of Disney California Adventure over the next two weekends. REVIEWS:  Cars Land  |  Radiator Springs Racers  |  Mater's Junkyard Jamboree  |  Luigi's Flying Tires  | Buena Vista Street The next two Sundays, June 17 and 24, appear to be the most worrisome dates on the calendar for park officials when up to a million annual passholders - in addition to regular park visitors - could inundate the Anaheim theme park.

The reinvention of Disney California Adventure begins at the front gate with a new entry promenade designed to make you forget the missteps of the recent past while recalling the Golden State's golden age. The reimagined Buena Vista Street will pay homage to the Los Angeles that Walt Disney encountered upon his 1923 arrival with Spanish Revival and Art Deco architecture that replicates the Los Feliz, Silver Lake and Wilshire Boulevard areas...

I always wished I could have ridden the Flying Saucers at Disneyland. Opened in 1961, the space-age bumper cars hovered like pucks on an enormous air hockey rink, a strange combination of retro and futuristic, like a scene from a Jules Verne novel. I imagined the spaceship-like saucers zipping about on a cushion of air, bouncing into each other as they wobbled across a silvery alien surface, just like Luke Skywalker's landspeeder or Doc Brown's time-traveling DeLorean. The short-lived Tomorrowland ride closed in 1966, a year before I was born, and got filed away in the Yesterland of my dreams.

Radiator Springs Racers is the kind of ride nobody but Disney can do. The new $200 million attraction in the 12-acre Cars Land at Disney California Adventure brings to bear all the theme park giant's strengths and abilities: immersive storytelling, detailed thematic scenery, life-like animatronic characters and the illusion of speed and thrill. PHOTOS:   Buena Vista Street  |  Cars Land  |  Radiator Springs Racers  |  Mater's Junkyard Jamboree  |  Luigi's Flying Tires  |  Carsland origins The E-ticket ride is so amazing that Disney may need to come up with a new attraction designation: F-ticket.

Like opening the door to Oz, walking into Cars Land at Disney California Adventure is like stepping into a real-life version of the fictional town of Radiator Springs from the 2006 animated movie. PHOTOS: Preview day | Buena Vista Street  |  Cars Land  |  Radiator Springs Racers  |  Mater's Junkyard Jamboree  |  Luigi's Flying Tires  |  Cars Land origins The enveloping and breathtaking new 12-acre land takes you to another world and makes you forget that the Anaheim Convention Center is just behind the towering, man-made mountain range.

Mater's Junkyard Jamboree combines an old-fashioned whip ride with a spinning teacup platform to deliver a truckload of thrills much wilder than you might expect from its mild appearance. The C-Ticket family ride is one of three new attractions opening June 15 in the 12-acre Cars Land at Disney California Adventure. PHOTOS:   Buena Vista Street  |  Cars Land  |  Radiator Springs Racers  |  Mater's Junkyard Jamboree  |  Luigi's Flying Tires  |  Cars Land origins The setup for Mater's Junkyard Jamboree looks kiddie-ride trite.

Cars Land opens Friday at Disney California Adventure Park -- and the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort and Spa is ready. The hotel offers a four-night family package that comes with two-day Disneyland Park Hopper passes to see the new "Cars" themed area (as well as both parks), bicycling, breakfast and other summer activities. The deal: The Five Best Days of Summer comes with two-day Disneyland Park Hopper passes for two adults and two children that provides access to Disneyland and California Adventure ($776)

Disney is opening its new Cars Land attraction at California Adventure on June 15. Reporter Hugo Martin explains in the video that Disney is hoping the 12-acre Southwestern-themed expansion will make California Adventure more of a destination than just a stopover on the way to next-door Disneyland. Cars Land is the center of Disney's a $1.1-billion investment in California Adventure. The video features photographs that give an early look at the attraction.  Read the full story here.

In the battle to lure summer tourists, the major Southern California theme parks are each offering something new, including a road trip with animated cars, a front-row seat for an epic battle of alien robots and a world-record plunge from a 400-foot tower. New attractions are key to bolstering attendance, analysts say, and can each cost tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Although local theme parks declined to disclose construction costs for this year's attractions, industry experts said the investment they made could be the most in about a decade.

For more than a decade, Disney California Adventure Park has been putt-putting along in the slow lane, trailing its neighbor Disneyland in the race for big attendance numbers. A new 12-acre expansion called Cars Land, set to be unveiled June 15, is the latest and by far biggest attempt to get the laggard theme park up to speed. Based on the hit animated "Cars" movies made by Walt Disney Co.'s Pixar studio, Cars Land will include a racing convertible ride, square-dancing tractors and plenty of opportunities to buy themed merchandise.