The orange groves hit my nose first.
I was fourteen. It’s been twenty-five years and the scent still triggers the memory instantly. That’s how Disneyland works.
We all know the park smells. Pirates water. Main Street churros. The gingerbread snow. It’s not an accident. Disney engineers memory through olfaction, using a patented system that pumps scent into the air right when your brain expects it.
Soarin’ started as Soarin’ Over California in 2001. It lifts you up, legs dangling, in front of a screen. It feels real enough to make your stomach drop. The concept traveled fast, appearing at Epcot, Shanghai, and Tokyo.
Then came the global update. Soarin’ Around the World launched in 2016, swapping local landmarks for international icons.
Now the ride has morphed again. For the US’s 250th anniversary, it’s Soarin’ Across America.
I rode it on July 2. Opening day. The film starts with the Artemis II rocket launch, a hard cut from silence to power. Then New York. Statue of Liberty. The skyline. You glide over Washington, dip through a Louisiana airboat path, and skim the Grand Canyon. You see Mount Rushmore. You fly over snow-covered Alaska. You end in LA, watching the fireworks over the castle.
The wind hits you in the face. So do the smells.
Fresh grass when cattle charge by. Sea salt on the coast. Earthy bayou mud.
And then the pineapple.
Fresh pineapple and coconut for the Hawaiian segment. That one sticks. It lingers on your clothes. I’ll probably smell it for the next two decades.
Making this happened fast.
The crew flew nearly 900 helicopter times and over 60 drone flights to capture the footage, traveling 28,00 miles total. Once they had the film, Imagineers had less than twelve months to build the overlay.
They worked nights at Epcot. Forty-hour weeks just fine-tuning the wind. More air near the DC kites, less near the Canyon. A 103-piece orchestra reworked the original score to match the geography.
Sound mixing was a puzzle. How do you edit audio while sitting in the moving ride?
Megan Duncan, a senior sound editor at Walt Disney Imagineering, built a makeshift station attached to the rider seat. Mouse, keyboard, VR headset, mixer.
“Usually for a Soarin’ attraction we need to build scaffolding. That was a no-can-do… because we were on such an accelerating schedule.”
She didn’t need monitors. She just needed Bluetooth control inside the helmet. No lugging equipment. Just sitting there, riding the sim, adjusting levels while her legs dangled off the edge of the theater floor.
Does it work?
Wait times were sky-high on that quiet summer afternoon. People stood in line for over an hour just to hear Patrick Warburton’s voice and smell the country.
They got on the ride. They got lifted up.
The scent machines are probably still humming, preparing for the next group, while the previous riders sit in the exit hallway trying to wipe the coconut off their hair.
