Concept sketches revealed for new "Cars" area at Walt Disney World

ORLANDO, Florida: A new "Cars" themed area, based on the hit movie series, is speeding in to Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World.

Recently, Pixar Animation Studios’ chief creative officer Pete Docter, and Imagineer Michael Hundgen teased that guests will need to strap in because they’re in the process of creating a new type of ride vehicle for this experience.

“Our primary goal is creating an emotional experience for our guests,” Hundgen told the crowd at the SXSW Conference and Festivals in Austin, Texas.

“For this Cars attraction, we need to invent a new type of ride vehicle. No one builds these in a factory because it has to do so much more than just carrying you from one place to another. We have to create a car that conveys a feeling when you ride in it.”

The team took a trip out to the Arizona desert to jump in a real off-road vehicle to see what it felt like driving over the rocky terrain.

These are all things Lightning McQueen and Mater haven’t experienced before, like racing over rocky terrain, ascending to mountain peaks, and dodging around geysers.

From there, the Imagineers worked with a motocross company to build a real dirt track to race around on and took that data back to begin work on creating how the ride vehicles will eventually move and race.

“We’re using a customized production vehicle,” Hundgen continued. “It has sensors all over it, and we’re taking it for test drives on our dirt track to gather data on how the vehicle responds to different terrain. This is where we turn that feeling we want into real-world engineering,” Michael explained.

For some show and tell to get the crowd revved up, Docter shared some early concept sketches with the audience, teasing that they’re creating “new race car personalities for this attraction. Each vehicle in the ride will have its own name and number, just like a real race.”