Get Your TRON On!

It’s 8:00 pm on a Friday night and there’s nothing to do. You hop onto your light cycle, turn the 90 degree corner, and start maneuvering your way through rush hour traffic on the 15 freeway. Suddenly, IT hits you… Anaheim or bust! You arrive at Mickey and Friends Parking structure, kindly flash you “identity badge” and cruise up to Donald 4G. Parking your light cycle carefully on the grid you descend a set of moving stairways and enter the newly renovated Disneyland Tram. You quickly exit, on the driver’s right hand side and right hand side only, and you walk directly to the entrance of California Adventure theme park. Again, the CM’s ask to see your identity badge and you are quickly transported into a scene of a lifetime.

Welcome to Disney’s California Adventure: ElecTRONica Dance Party

As you enter, you look above you where glimpses of the grid surround you on huge building screens and blue neon envelopes you at every turn. Your ears are greeted by pleasant sounds from the film with Electronic Sounds from groups like Daft Punk and Paul Oakenfold being mixed on the fly. You make your way past a few small “programs” attempting to toss their identity disks into a large basket as they practice for upcoming battles on hopes of winning a delightful prize.

Directly beyond this practice space, there are several booths offering drinks, snacks and merchandise related to TRON Legacy. We purchased 2 Identity disks that light up and make sounds when you depress the buttons- $25.00 each plus 20% off merchandise with your annual pass.

You walk further and further into the grid and suddenly you are met by a huge Recognizer that scans your entire body and identifies you as “rectified” or “games.”
As you pass the huge replica, you step into the club atmosphere where a DJ stands high atop a circular booth complete with flashing neon lights and surrounded by pods of TRON clad dancers. They are really decked to the hilt! And of course dawning their identity disks on their backs. If I do say so myself, the ladies are very pleasing to the eyes and the men are more than physically fit. Complete with a dance floor and tons of programs dancing the night away like it were 1982, you quickly shoot across the grid to the “End of Line Club”.

At the “End of Line Club” you can purchase refreshments, snacks like nachos and other goodies to reenergize yourself, and alcoholic beverages in neon plastic cups. Now, if we could only convince Daft Punk to play there, that would be an awesome sight!

Next to the club, you can see an exclusive 3-D clip of TRON: Legacy. This is a great experience as it is held in the theater where Muppet Vision 3-D is continuously being shown. The movie comes alive as the Recognizer comes to land and surrounding you are lights that flash around the grid as well as huge fans that blow behind you in the theater. The movie, to put it lightly, looks SUPER FANTASTICALLY AMAZING! This is definitely a must see!

Continuing on along the path of awesome, you run into the best and brightest sign imaginable. I about cried when I saw it from afar and close up, was to die for. The sign, beaming from afar read “Flynn’s.” YES! As in Flynn’s Arcade of 1982! At the entrance to the Arcade there are several stations where you can test your skills on the Wii by playing demo versions of the new TRON game. As this didn’t interest me as much, we quickly bypassed the gamers and entered the Holy realm of gaming legacy. To my right, Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom, Galaga, Space Invaders, Ms. Pac Man, and Contra. To my left, Missile Command, Gauntlet (Wizard needs food badly) and the ultimate in gaming along the back wall in all it’s glory, TRON. Above this most perfect game, was a neon sign announcing “Home of TRON.” Could this be a more perfect Arcade Throwback? Umm yes!

So how do you and can you play these museum worthy hits of the 80s ad 90s? YES! Make your way to the coin changer machines that look exactly like the ones we used in the 1980’s and 90’s and insert a dollar. Out pops 4 coins each inscribed with “Flynn’s Arcade” on side one and “ElecTRONica” on the other. PERFECTION! Oh, one last thing, IF you can score an “I get next” play on one of the machines, it only costs a token to play… SCORE!

After taking in all of these beautiful sights of ElecTRONica you will leave there wanting to go back over and over again. How and when you ask? Good thing my identity disk was working overtime and recounted all of my adventure. Disney’s ElecTRONica runs through the Fall of 2010 awaiting the release of TRON: Legacy on December 17, 2010. This event takes place every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evening from 8:00pm –close. You can also enjoy it every night the weeks of Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays.

There is a special Meet-Up event scheduled for Thursday, October 28th a 4:00pm -Midnight,  including exclusive sneak peeks of items used in the movie, autograph sessions and commemorative coins will be passed out. The event is free and as of Friday October 21, it was at capacity but I will be sure to blog about the event so you can live vicariously through my TRON adventures if you do not get to see this spectacle first hand. I will also be live tweeting the event with photos so follow me on twitter @Rayvencure if you are interested!

Goodbye Programs!