Voyage to the Iron Reef makes for a fun excursion, but it’s not without its faults. First of all, it’s what those in the biz call a “slow-loader”. The individual cars hold very few people and take a long time for guests to both board and disembark. As I mentioned earlier, access to the ride was limited to press and annual passholders all day, but the wait time was still steadily above thirty minutes throughout the morning and into the afternoon. Extrapolating that to regular attendance, it could mean a lengthy queue for a relatively short affair. There were also a handful of technical problems very early on: I was able to ride Iron Reef three times during my visit, and on two of those occasions it broke down while I was waiting in line. The problems were resolved relatively quickly, but the fact that there were issues that soon after the initial rope-drop does not inspire a tremendous amount of confidence in the ride’s mechanical stability. Thirdly, I have to say the quality of the overall Iron Reef experience still feels a couple notches below something like Midway Mania, its most obvious antecedent. That ride (featuring a series of colorful carnival games starring everyone’s favorite Toy Story characters) always feels like something I could never get tired of. Don’t get me wrong: Voyage to the Iron Reef is definitely something you’ll want to partake in first-hand a few times, but it’s difficult to say how long it will endure. And if you’re in the business of emulating the Disney parks (regardless of which business was around first), endurance seems like the way to go.
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