What’s the most popular ride at EPCOT? Living With The Land. Okay, maybe it’s actually Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure followed by Frozen Ever After, then Test Track, Soarin’, and finally Living With The Land. But hey, it’s in the top 10 most popular rides at EPCOT! Now, the all so popular Living With The Land will undergo a significant change for 2024.
Living With The Land will be set to close for refurbishment in late 2023 to make way for a brand new and long overdue update to the attraction. The original ride was named Listen to The Land and opened on October 1, 1982, which was also the opening date of EPCOT. The ride later closed down and reopened with a few minor changes as Living With The Land in 1993.
There have been a few other minor changes in the history of the attraction like the removal of Cast Members narrating the second half of the attraction live on the boat, much like The Great Movie Ride, which we felt was actually a spectacular movie ride. They also more recently in 2019 updated the film in the barn scene, which was becoming out of date.
In 2024, the biggest change to the attraction is coming and it just makes sense. Living With The Land oftentimes has loading and capacity issues. While the boats are rather large and seat up to 40 guests, they rarely get filled. The boats also take a long time to load. Both of these issues lead to longer wait times. Disney wants to keep wait times as low as possible as that leads to more people walking around the park spending money.
The big change is turning Living With The Land into a Lazy River Ride. Instead of boarding into a boat, guests will get on a one or two person floating inner tube, much like lazy rivers at waterparks. The catch is these inner tubes will not have a hole in the bottom, but rather be solid, so guests won’t get wet during the ride. This of course makes sense as people don’t want to go on a ride at EPCOT that will get them soaked, that would not be fun.
Much like how Living With The Land works now, guests will just float down the river. The jets in the water will provide a downstream flow, so guests will always be going in the right direction. Disney will also be adding speakers throughout the attraction which projects the sound instead of having individual speakers in each inner tube.
The Living With The Land closure and refurbishment will last only a few months with Disney setting the attraction’s grand reopening date in 2024. This should not be too difficult of a project as most of the attraction is remaining the same. Disney just needs to swap out the boats for floating inner tubes and add speakers around the attraction.
Apparently Disney loves changing their slow moving rides. it’s a small world will soon be a walk-through attraction, which we reported on here. What do you think of Living With The Land becoming a lazy river ride with inner tubes? Lettuce know in the comments below!
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