They'll Be No Treks To Space This Year!

After like a year of rumors and talk, it's finally official! Space Mountain will be down for refurb starting in April!!!! (April 19th to be exact.) So, all the wondering if it was going down or not can now officially stop.

Now, from what I can gather...the extent of this refurb is really unknown, in more than one way. First is how long it will be down for. Disney says it will return for launches in late 2009. From the rumors I'm hearing though...this refurb will last at least 10 months and could last up to a year. It basically depends on how quickly Disney can get the work done.

The other unknown is what the scope of work is that is to be done. This is the biggest unknown of them all. I'm hearing it's not going to be the full megilla as was done over at Disneyland. Instead, I'm hearing the work will be somewhere between Disneyland's version and Disneyland Paris' version. However, with that being said, I'm also hearing that it could just be a fixing of major structural problems both with the building (no one wants messothelioma) and with the actual coaster, itself. So, I guess we'll have to wait for more information to leak out on that. Edit: a little more info has come out thanks to the Orlando Sentinal. They report that there will be some new track work put in, although the track layout will remain the same. The refurb will also include a new enclosure for the Queue area and a new ceiling.

This refurb makes me excited though. Even though Space is one of my favorites, it makes me happy to see it's finally getting the much deserved (and LONG overdue) love it desperately needs. It's been entirely too long since Space has had a quality refurb, so I can only hope they didn't decide to go for the cheap (something they seem to be doing a lot of recently) and really do this thing right.

My other fear is that I hope they don't decide to open it early because of the outcry of the public. I don't want them to do like they did with Spaceship Earth and open it during the holidays because of "the people". People survived 1994 without the whole land of Tomorrowland...they'll be able to survive the disappointment of just one ride, signature it might be, being down for a brief time period.

So, 2009 is starting out relatively promising...let's just hope Disney doesn't get even more terrified of the economic woes our country is facing, because now is the time to really invest in the company and especially the theme parks. They deserve a little love.