News imageImage (c) Disney/Cars Land

(News) In a grand welcome to the New Year, Southern California’s top theme parks are busy putting the finishing touches on new rides, shows and mega-attractions that promise to make spring and summer 2012 more exciting than ever.

In one of the biggest theme park expansion projects ever undertaken, the Disneyland Resort is pumping $1.4 billion into the transformation and expansion of Disney California Adventure Park. The project, slated for completion in summer 2012, will add an entirely new land — Cars Land. This 12-acre section of the park, based on the movie Cars, features three new attractions: Luigi’s Flying Tires, a spinning, bumper car-style ride; Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree; and the thrilling Radiator Springs Racers, a ride that includes lots of fun encounters with many of the Cars’ characters and ends with an electrifying race to the finish line.

These new additions will join several new attractions that came online last summer. On June 3, 2011, Disney unveiled both The Little Mermaid — Ariel’s Undersea Adventure (a fresh addition to the Disney California Adventure Park) and the newly revamped, 3-D-enhanced Star Tours — The Adventures Continue ride in Disneyland. Once aboard Star Tours, guests climb into a Starspeeder 3000 piloted by C-3PO. The gold-plated droid whisks his passengers away on an adventure whose time line takes place between the first and second Star Wars trilogies.

Looking beyond Disney and come spring 2012, Universal Studios Hollywood will unveil a thrilling conversion of its own: the transformation of this riveting film franchise into a white-knuckle motion-thrill ride that will drop fans smack-dab into the middle of the action. Transformers: The Ride — 3D will feature the integration of CGI and robotics, as well as one of the most elaborate roaming flight simulator ride systems ever designed. The ambitious mega-attraction tells an original story, developed in collaboration with Michael Bay, the director of all three Transformers movies. The ride’s pioneering, photo-realistic, 3-D effects are being created by Industrial Light & Magic, the Oscar-winning special-effects force behind such acclaimed films as Avatar, Iron Man and Star Wars.

At SeaWorld San Diego, 2012 will bring Manta, a new launch coaster that transitions riders from the awe of watching manta rays in underwater flight into the sensation of actually being one. Shaped like a giant manta ray, this exhilarating coaster includes such elements as a 100,000-gallon aquarium and an outdoor ray pool.

Promoting these attractions is CityPASS, a premier product for travelers who want to visit a destination’s top attractions while enjoying significant savings. CityPASS contains prepaid admission to the most popular attractions in 11 North American destinations: New York City, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Hollywood, Houston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto and Southern California.