RC Racer
| RC Racer | |
|---|---|
| Park | Walt Disney Studios Park; Hong Kong Disneyland |
| Land / area | Toy Story Playland (Paris); Toy Story Land (Hong Kong) |
| Type | Steel shuttle coaster — half pipe |
| Opened | August 17, 2010 (Paris); November 17, 2011 (Hong Kong) |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Height req. | 82 ft (25 m) |
| Status | Operating |
RC Racer is a steel shuttle roller coaster at Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris and at Hong Kong Disneyland, themed to RC, Andy's remote-control car from Pixar's Toy Story films. Built by Intamin to its Half Pipe Coaster model, it sends a single car back and forth along a tall, U-shaped orange track — a giant version of the toy track sets in the films — climbing higher with each pass until it settles back into the station. The Paris original opened on August 17, 2010, in Toy Story Playland; the Hong Kong version followed in Toy Story Land, its opening ceremony held on November 17, 2011, ahead of the land's public opening on November 18.[1][2] A third version opened at Shanghai Disneyland in 2018 under the name Rex's Racer.
History
RC Racer was created for Toy Story Playland, the small land that opened at Walt Disney Studios Park on August 17, 2010, alongside Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin and Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop. The Studios park had few family attractions at the time, and the Playland trio was designed to be added quickly and cheaply while still reading, at toy scale, as a coherent place: guests are shrunk to the size of toys in Andy's backyard, and RC's orange half-pipe track — inspired by Mattel's Hot Wheels track sets — towers over the land as its landmark and its main thrill ride. It was the Studios park's third roller coaster.
Hong Kong cloned the whole land, not just the ride. Toy Story Land there was the first phase of the park's three-land expansion, built west of Fantasyland and held as exclusive in Asia for five years from opening. Its RC Racer is mechanically and thematically the same attraction as the Paris one, installed at the back of the land among tall bamboo planted to read, at toy scale, as blades of grass. The Hong Kong land's grand opening ceremony took place on November 17, 2011, with the land opening to the public the following day, November 18 — the source of the two dates both attached to the Hong Kong ride in references.[3]
Experience
There is no circuit and no story sequence: the experience is the motion itself. Riders board the green RC car — a single vehicle seating 20 — in a station styled as a toy race set, complete with an oversized remote control. The car is launched forwards up one side of the U, falls back through the station and climbs the opposite arm, and repeats the cycle, travelling a little higher each time until it is climbing close to the top of the roughly 25-metre (82-foot) track on both ends. Each descent brings a brief float at the crests and a stomach-drop rush through the dip, before the passes gradually lose height and the car brakes to a stop.
That simplicity is the point and the limitation. RC Racer delivers the strongest physical sensation of any ride in its land at both parks — in Hong Kong it is regularly described as one of the most intense rides in the park despite its Toy Story dressing — but with one car and 20 seats, its hourly capacity is low and queues build quickly. Both installations therefore draw long waits relative to a ride cycle of about a minute, and Hong Kong's version has long offered a single-rider line to fill spare seats. The height requirement, 120 centimetres (48 inches), is also the highest of its land's three rides, underlining that this toy car is aimed at older children and adults rather than the youngest guests.
In Paris the ride sits at the back of Toy Story Playland among mature trees that double as overgrown garden shrubs; in Hong Kong the same orange track rises behind Andy's Toy Box shop and the Barrel of Fun, visible from well outside the land. In both places it functions as the land's exclamation mark — the one ride in a land of gentle spinners and drops that genuinely throws its riders around.