The Sights and Smells of America: Inside Disneyland's New US-Themed Soarin' Ride

Soarin' has taken flight over California and across the world. Now, to celebrate the USA's 250th, it's visiting landmarks from sea to shining sea.

Corinne Reichert Senior Editor

Corinne Reichert (she/her) grew up in Sydney, Australia and moved to California in 2019. She holds degrees in law and communications, and currently writes news, analysis and features for CNET across the topics of electric vehicles, broadband networks, mobile devices, big tech, artificial intelligence, home technology and entertainment. In her spare time, she watches soccer games and F1 races, and goes to Disneyland as often as possible.

I've been covering technology and mobile for 12 years, first as a telecommunications reporter and assistant editor at ZDNet in Australia, then as CNET's West Coast head of breaking news, and now in the Thought Leadership team.

3 min read

The first time I ever experienced Soarin' Over California, I was just 14 years old. Almost 25 years later, I still vividly remember the aroma of fresh oranges pumped through the Disneyland ride system as the flight simulator whisked me over California's famous groves.

Everyone who's been to Disneyland can list their favorite nostalgia-laden scents of the parks -- the water in Pirates of the Caribbean, freshly baked churros on Main Street USA, gingerbread-scented "snow" drifting over the crowds during the holiday fireworks show.

Disney knows that the key to memory-making is not only sight and sound; it's also smell. That's why it pumps scents out all over its theme parks and attractions through a patented scent-dispersing system.

In 2001, Disneyland opened its second California-based theme park with a marquee attraction called Soarin' Over California. A flight simulator with three levels that lift you off the ground, legs dangling, as you watch a giant screen in front of you, Soarin' makes it feel like you're flying across the state's most famous landmarks. It remains one of the most popular rides at the park to this day, with other versions at Epcot, Shanghai Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea.

A second version of the ride called Soarin' Around the World, with the video swapped out for global landmarks, launched in 2016. And now, for the 250th anniversary of the United States this month, it has been transformed into a third version: Soarin' Across America.

I got to experience Soarin' Across America on its opening morning on July 2 at Disney's California Adventure. The flight opens with a breathtaking shot of the launch of Artemis II, followed by a flyby of the Statue of Liberty and the New York City skyline, a dip past the New England coastline, a flight over the Washington Monument, a look at the Louisiana bayou as you follow an airboat, fall forests, grassy plains, the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, snow-capped Alaskan mountains, Los Angeles and, finally, Disneyland during its nightly fireworks spectacular.

With the wind blowing through your hair, you do, of course, also get to smell a lot of these places: fresh grass as you chase cattle over the plains, sea salt when you soar above New England, the earthy bayou, and the one that I haven't been able to forget, and perhaps won't for another 25 years, fresh pineapple and coconut as you take in the tropical Hawaiian paradise.

To film these locations across the US, Disney's production team traveled more than 28,000 miles, with almost 900 helicopter passes and more than 60 drone flights by landmarks.

Once the footage was captured, Imagineers had less than a year to create the new overlay. The ride programming team worked 40 hours a week after park close at Epcot, riding the attraction repeatedly for hours with the new footage as they worked out how much wind to blow in your face at each point -- more for when you're flying over Washington DC because kites are flying alongside you, less when you're gliding above the Grand Canyon -- and a 103-piece orchestra adapted the original Soarin' Over California score and added new elements for the locations across America.

Using that score and other ambient noises, the sound mixers also rode the attraction repeatedly to get everything sounding just right. Megan Duncan, senior sound editor and mixer at Walt Disney Imagineering, spoke in a video about using a desk attached to one of the seats with a mouse, keyboard, sound mixer and a VR headset, so that she could finish the job without needing any actual monitors.

"Usually for a Soarin' attraction we need to build scaffolding, but that was a no-can-do for this park because we were on such an accelerated schedule," Duncan said. Because of her setup, "I don't have to bring up a bunch of screens, and I just use this mouse and keyboard to control it through Bluetooth in my headset. We can actually be … mixing in the carriage, instead of actually having to lug up a bunch of things onto a scaffolding."

Despite it being a relatively quiet summer's day at the park on July 2, wait times for the new Soarin' were sky-high. Riders were willing to spend more than an hour in line before Patrick Warburton told them to strap in and take in the sights, sounds and smells of America.

Read more: I Tried These Turbocharged Sunglasses at Disney and Got a Stunning New View

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CORINNE REICHERT

Senior Editor

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