Putting the Motors in Lights, Motors, Action!

It's easy to take for granted some of the things that happen during a performance of Lights, Motors, Action! Extreme Stunt Show. After all, any show within a theme park environment automatically takes on a patina of artificiality. The stunts on display at Lights, Motors, Action!, though, are real. They're performed in real time, and there's real danger. The professionals who work the stage, from Technicians to Precision Drivers, are among the most skilled anywhere... and safety is always the top priority.

The show is pretty spectacular, but just as fascinating is what goes into each production. I recently had an opportunity to step behind the scenes at Lights, Motors, Action! It gave me a whole new appreciation for what the team there pulls off every day.

Backstage, the Cast has a lot of fun. When the Stage Manager calls "Places," though, it's all business. They take their jobs seriously. Many of the Drivers and other Stunt Performers on the show have also worked on real film and TV productions, everything from The Fast & the Furious movies to the USA network series "Burn Notice."

All the vehicles used in the show are maintained by a team of Mechanics and Engineers working out of a fully-equiped garage (visible from the Guest queue).

The cars are modified Opels from Europe, adapted to be lighter weight and have a better center of gravity. They are equipped with 1300 CC motors and weigh less than half that of a regular car, but they have more than twice as much power.

To keep the weight down, there's nothing in the cars that isn't necessary to get the job done. That includes air conditioning. In the photo below (that's our tour guide, Driver Ron Fox), you may notice a small blue cooler under the hood. That's filled with ice water at the top of the show and plugged into tubes that feed cool suits worn by the drivers. According to Ron, though, it gets so hot the ice melts and the water turns warm after just a few minutes.

The vehicles for the show were designed by Walt Disney Imagineering and produced in the Opel Live design workshops in Frankfurt, Germany. In fact, while the "villain cars" (the black ones) are based on production models, the "hero car" (the red one) is a one-of-a-kind model designed by WDI.

Inside each car is a reinforced steel roll cage, designed to protect the driver in the event of an accident. Fortunately, with as good as this team is, incidents are rare.