Disney’s Rocket Rods Get Green Light

Rocket Rods, a dragster-style ride grounded by glitches for three months at Disneyland’s revamped Tomorrowland, is scheduled to reopen today.

Buzzing and whining on its overhead track, the new ride was carrying paying customers Friday, the second day of testing with guests aboard.

“It only broke down once yesterday, and not at all today,” a ride attendant said. The ride will “reopen” at noon if further tests, which continued into the evening Friday, proved successful.

Rocket Rods, the most heavily promoted new attraction at the Magic Kingdom last summer, broke down with both mechanical and software problems, Walt Disney Co. officials said.

Another major new Tomorrowland attraction, the new-product demonstration show Innoventions, also proved to be glitch-prone and has had its official opening delayed until Nov. 10.

It has been open on a trial basis since July, however, as park officials work out bugs and see how audiences react to it.

Disneyland spokesman Ray Gomez said that for now, Rocket Rods is considered to be in “soft opening”--like Innoventions, still in the testing phase.

Tomorrowland’s slow start, Asia’s economic woes and heavy construction in the Disneyland area have made the last three months disappointing for the 43-year-old theme park, said Seidler Cos. leisure analyst Jeffrey B. Logsdon.

He estimated that Disneyland attendance fell 5% to 10% from last year.

The troubles coincided with the closure of a sentimental but aging favorite in Tomorrowland, Submarine Voyage. The ride, inspired by public fascination with nuclear subs during the Cold War, had shuttled riders past pleasantly phony fish, sea serpents, mermaids and the ruins of Atlantis.

The creative minds from Walt Disney Imagineering soon will begin testing ideas for a replacement, perhaps as early as the end of this month, Gomez said. But Disney officials say it will be 2003 before a submarine substitute is installed.

All of Tomorrowland’s current attractions are more or less in operating order--a state of affairs that pleased Ann Barkley of Mission Viejo on Friday.

Barkley’s three youngsters enjoyed the Rocket Rods so much that they prevailed upon her to endure the 50-minute wait and climb aboard for a second circuit. The ride uses the track of an old ride, the People Mover, but circles the renovated area of Disneyland in four minutes instead of 16.