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Credit: Erica Lauren, Inside the MagicSoarin’ has been one of EPCOT’s most beloved attractions for years. The sensation of lifting out of your seat and gliding over sweeping aerial footage, surrounded by scents matched to the landscape below, has a way of landing with guests that few other park experiences replicate. Soarin’ Over California remains the gold standard for much of the fanbase after more than two decades, and Soarin’ Around the World built on the format with a globe-spanning scope that made it a consistent must-do at EPCOT.
Soarin’ Across America officially opens at EPCOT on May 26th and at Disneyland Resort on July 2nd. Annual Passholders will get their first chance to experience it during preview days on May 19th and 20th, followed by Disney Vacation Club member priority access on May 21st. But cast member previews have already run, and the reactions being shared across social media have raised three specific criticisms that are getting harder to ignore.
Before getting into those, the full ride experience itself is worth understanding. The film opens with an Artemis II rocket launch from Kennedy Space Center before sweeping guests over the Statue of Liberty and the New York City skyline, then past the Maine coastline and the Portland Head Light lighthouse, down over the National Mall and Washington Monument, through a Louisiana bayou, across the Great Plains and Mount Rushmore, to the hibiscus-scented shores of Diamond Head in Waikiki, and over the Los Angeles skyline past the Griffith Observatory and Hollywood Sign. It ends at EPCOT, where Spaceship Earth is wrapped in a projection of the American flag as fireworks form eagle shapes, stars, and a hidden Mickey in the night sky.
The queue inside The Land Pavilion received an update including brighter blue LED lighting and new carpet, and a new interactive trivia game called The Soarin’ Challenge Across America, developed with National Geographic, was added. Patrick Warburton also reprises his role in the pre-show as a new character called Captain Patrick. Those additions have been generally well received. What comes after takeoff is where the feedback gets more complicated.
Problem One: The Transitions Are Not Working the Way They Should
Anyone who rode Soarin’ Around the World regularly knows the transitions: a plane cutting across your field of vision to launch you into the next scene, a wave rolling in to wash the image away, physical seat movement that mirrors the shift. Those transitions do not just move the story forward. They are what make the ride feel like you are actually flying somewhere rather than watching a very large screen.
Soarin’ Across America pulls back significantly on those moments. The version is quieter and more peaceful by design, which is a legitimate creative choice, but the result is that some guests are coming off the ride feeling like it was a little disjointed. The scenes feel more like individual episodes than a continuous flight. Early riders who were expecting the physical sensation and immersive whiplash of the previous versions are reporting that this one does not deliver that same feeling of movement.
Problem Two: The Scent Experience Is Significantly Reduced
The smells in Soarin’ have always been one of those features that guests talk about more than they expected to. The orange groves in Soarin’ Over California, the sea air and pine and other scents in Soarin’ Around the World, these sensory elements are a big part of what makes the attraction feel like a genuinely immersive experience rather than a themed film.
Soarin’ Across America currently offers three scents across the entire film: fresh grass over the prairie, an earthy swamp scent in Louisiana, and hibiscus in Hawaii. Three is a notable reduction from what previous versions offered. For guests who have come to expect scent as a consistent thread woven through the experience, the gaps are noticeable and they pull you out of the immersion at the points where you would typically be deepest in it.
Problem Three: Soarin’ Over California Still Wins
This is the criticism that should probably concern Disney the most. Twenty-five years after it opened as a launch day attraction at Disney California Adventure in 2001, Soarin’ Over California is still being cited by a significant portion of the fanbase as the best version of this ride. Not the most technically advanced. Not the most geographically ambitious. The best, full stop.
The absence of responses from early preview riders saying that Soarin’ Across America has become their new favorite is conspicuous. Technology has advanced substantially in the quarter century since the California film was made, and Disney has invested considerable resources into this update. The question being asked across theme park communities is why those advantages have not translated into a version that at least competes with 2001’s original.
The Political Reception Is a Separate but Real Issue
Beyond the ride mechanics, Soarin’ Across America has run into a reception problem that no amount of technical polish can fix. The ride’s patriotic framing, specifically the choices around what to include and how to frame it, has generated significant pushback online.
The inclusion of Mount Rushmore, a site with a genuinely complicated history in American culture, alongside Branson, Missouri, which carries its own specific cultural associations, struck a portion of the Disney fan community as a set of choices that were not accidental. The finale image of Spaceship Earth wrapped entirely in an American flag is the moment that drew the sharpest criticism. Spaceship Earth was built to symbolize global communication and the shared progress of humanity. Covering it in a national flag at the climax of a ride about American greatness reads differently to different people, and many of the guests who found it jarring are making that feeling known publicly.
The nickname “Soarin’ Over MAGA” has surfaced across social media and stuck enough to generate its own conversations in Disney communities. Whether that label fades once the general public can actually ride the attraction starting May 26th remains to be seen, but the fact that it exists and is circulating before the public opening is a reputational challenge Disney did not face with previous versions of the film.
Walt Disney Imagineering was facing a genuinely difficult creative assignment: capture the spirit of the United States for the country’s 250th anniversary celebration in a format that was designed for universal appeal. The early feedback suggests those two goals may have been harder to reconcile than anticipated.
How This Affects a Disney Vacation at EPCOT
For guests with EPCOT visits planned around Memorial Day and beyond, Soarin’ Across America is the most-talked-about new thing at the park right now and it will draw significant attention and wait times immediately after the public opening on May 26th. Whether the early preview criticisms translate into a broadly negative public response or whether general audiences react more warmly than the enthusiast community is the open question.
The Annual Passholder preview days on May 19th and 20th will be the next significant data point. If the scent and transition criticism from cast member previews holds, those guests will likely amplify it further before the public opening. If the experience lands better with a larger sample size, the early reviews may prove to be an outlier.
Guests who are specifically Soarin’ fans and are visiting EPCOT around the opening should ride with realistic expectations calibrated to what the preview responses describe: a quieter, more peaceful version of the experience with fewer scents and less dramatic transitions than previous iterations, and a more explicitly patriotic framing that will resonate differently depending on who is watching.
If EPCOT is on your itinerary around the Memorial Day opening or later this summer, check current wait times and guest reviews closer to your visit date to get the most accurate read on how Soarin’ Across America is landing with the general public. The Annual Passholder preview days on May 19th and 20th will generate a wave of fresh reviews that should give you a clearer picture before you go. Our EPCOT guide has current attraction information and will be updated as guest feedback develops.
