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A Spirited Dirty Dozen ...
- Thread starter WDW1974
- Start date
Prince-1
Well-Known Member
A couple of my siblings are engineers. They're insufferable.Thankfully, none of us are doctors.
Wait...I'm a doctor. And only somewhat insufferable.
Cesar R M
Well-Known Member
Doctor as in medic? or doctor as in PhD?
Prince-1
Well-Known Member
Doctor as in surgeon.
SorcererMC
Well-Known Member
and you're only 'somewhat insufferable'? That is either a. not likely or b. (more likely)- you need to kick it up a notch.*
*Unless of course you've been a surgeon long enough to know that a little humility goes a long way and keeps mistakes from happening...which is probably also true for pilots ("Don't get cocky, kid") and engineers, or any other profession I may or may not have disparaged.
Prince-1
Well-Known Member
Actually one of my New Year's resolutions is to try and be less insufferable....humility is overrated.
Kidding.
SorcererMC
Well-Known Member
Oh I said 'a little'. Let's not go overboard.
Ismael Flores
Well-Known Member
What theme parks over there I can visit that compare to WDW?
Off the top of my head:
Efteling in the Netherlands was a place that Walt Disney visited when he was researching places for Disneyland. Today, they have an incredible mix of fun roller coasters and dark rides in a beautiful green space. Their signature rides are Fata Morgana, a boat dark ride through the 1001 Nights on the scale of Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean, Droomvlucht, a beautiful suspended dark ride and the Baron 1898, a highly themed Dive Coaster with a dark ride portion and insane theming. Coming in 2017 is Symbolica, a 35 million Euros (around 40 millions USD) high tech dark ride.
Here is a video of Fata Morgana:
Next, we have the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Danemark. It has been open for hundreds of years and in addition to rides, it is filled with restaurants and is a popular meeting place.
Here is a picture at night:
Port Aventura as someone else mentioned. It was built by Busch Gardens and Tussaud back in the 1990's. Universal then took over and now, the park has local owners. It has incredible hotels, a neat water park and are opening a third gate next year called Ferrari World.
Over in Germany, might I recommend Phantasialand? Located near Cologne, this park has some strict noise and visual restrictions which forced them to be quite imaginative. Whereas Disney just bought off the shelf spinning coasters, Phantasialand went with custom spinning coasters in a large building with elevators, moving track 12 years before Gringotts and other things. Their latest ride is Taron, an incredible launched coaster through a beautiful environment.
Taron.
Europa Park is currently the second most visited park in Europe, ahead of Walt Disney Studios Paris. Owned by a ride manufacturer, it is used as a showcase for their ideas and their hotels are incredible true 4 stars experiences.
This is a room at the "El Andaluz", an older hotel there.
They opened a pretty dark ride experience a few years called "Arthur- The Ride". They have a ton of dark rides, over a dozen roller coasters and their efficiently at moving lines make today's WDW pale.
Thanks for sharing, I do lots of traveling around the world and normally don't visit theme parks but I have to make it a plan to visit some of these.
I really like the the track system for the ride in the video it would have made awesome if used for a Peter Pan themed ride or even alluding themed ride
Ismael Flores
Well-Known Member
The first time I went to WDW i lives it so much that I went three more times. Then I woke up and noticed that I could sometime spend less and enjoy this beautiful world.
I agree with you the real world has so much more to offer and it's amazing. I have visited very country in South America including a trek to Antarctica hiking the inca trails to machu pichu and spent a month living in the middle of the Amazon.
Been to every country in Central America and got to climb live volcanoes and canoe in the Panama Canal. Climb and trek thru Aztec ruins in Mexico and visited almost every national park in the USA.
Traveled thru all of Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea and parts of china.
Celebrated Holi festival in India crossed the border I to Pakistan just so I could say I visited stepped foot at the top of the Burj in Dubai and ate a great Dinner in Qatar. Visited gorgeous rivers and magnificent lands in New Zealand and even got me a ring made from same place as the ines made for Lord of the rings.
This world has so much to offer and surprisingly many of those cost less than a couple weeks at WDW.
Now less than two months and I am off to Singapore and back to India for a month.
Nubs70
Well-Known Member
I am an engineer and MBA, so that makes.me an insufferable prick.
The_Jobu
Well-Known Member
Yeah, I think you win.
doctornick
Well-Known Member
Well, I guess Iger would be happy since Rogue One has passed $500 million in the box office... domestically.
It's actually on the cusp of passing over the $1 billion total world wide which it should hit over the course of the next week.
the.dreamfinder
Well-Known Member
Don't pat yourself on the back too hard. R:1 has failed to interest Chinese audiences and that's a longer term problem for Disney/Lucasfilm. MCU films have done as well as they have because of China.
http://www.atimes.com/war-stories-not-star-wars-catching-fire-china/
doctornick
Well-Known Member
I'm not sure what that has to do with our earlier discussion about box office predictions regarding Rogue One. I just thought I'd give you a bit of a hard time considering your prediction which I felt was just way underestimating the power of Star Wars' draw. With the film about the cross $1 Billion worldwide in the near future and already in the top 10 domestically all time (currently #7), I think we can safely say that you prediction was a little off. But, as I said at the time, I did appreciate that you had some logic behind your prediction and offered evidence to support it.
Regarding Star Wars and China, yep, it doesn't look like it will catch on there -- some of which might just be intrinsic to the films but I personally think a large part is because both The Force Awakens and Rogue One draw heavily on nostalgia with the original trilogy in order to bolster their emotional appeal. For the people of China who are unfamiliar or barely familiar with Ep IV-VI, they just aren't going to care about stealing plans to the Death Star or this guy wearing all black and using a red laser sword or about the search for some Luke guy that has no context. I do wonder if they had a proper stand alone film with actual backstory (something a SW virgin could watch and actually get everything rather than having it assumed you already know about the Force, etc.) whether it would do well in China -- we'll likely never know, since it doesn't seem like any movie like that is being produced.
But... why cares? It's certainly not a "long term problem" for Disney. Making money in China is obviously great for a company and preferred over not making money, but it's not make or break, especially when a film can make over $500M in the US alone. And plenty of films have made good money overall at the box office without being released in China or having little success there. Sure, it's a huge market, but still greatly lags behind the US and the percentage of revenue from receipts there is much lower than in the US or in other foreign markets. Star Wars could never have a film released in China ever again and still make craploads of money for Disney.
Furthermore, Star Wars revenue is far less about the box office anyway (not that it's hurting in that department) and much more about merchandise. While China is a growing market, I'm not sure how much it contributes to the consumer products division (again, selling more there would be gravy, but isn't critical to Star Wars' financial success).
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
I'll just re-quote myself for the context of this conversation and stand by what I said earlier. Rogue One appears to be a success. Not a "huge success" though, based on inflated franchise expectations (ie. it's not legging out to 1.2 billion). Overseas has been soft and especially China. I think they are strongly disappointed with China.
But no one is crying at Disney overall, Finding Dory wound up being a very good comparable.
FigmentJedi
Well-Known Member
China does like Star Wars, just not the Original Trilogy. Their main introduction to the franchise and general point of reference for it are the Prequels.
And since Disney's plans mostly revolve around membering the Original Trilogy that they think is boring and dated after some theatrical re-release of the films prior to TFA...