Rather than a second floor, the main corridor spaces were built double height to accommodate a track if needed. There's not much left now to see evidence, aside from the Epcot display / Segway corridor seemingly very tall and narrow.
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Epcot & DHS rumors from Screamscape
- Thread starter GrumpyFan
- Start date
PeterAlt
Well-Known Member
As I said, "When done right..."
In the respect, a ride has to be treated just like a movie. You don't just throw $100 million at a movie and expect it to do well. You need to find a story that people will be willing to spend money to see. You have to find a talented writer, director, producer, editor, set designer, costume designer, sound technician, light technician, special effects supervisor, camera people, cast of actors and actresses, and so on who will create a product that will strike a cord with its target audience telling that story. An attraction requires the same business model: assembly of the right mix of talent and story elements. Walt Disney and Michael Eisner understood this. John Lasseter understands this. I'm pretty sure Kathleen Kennedy would catch on to it if she's elected CEO. I'm not sure if Bob Iger gets it. I think he thinks theme parks are like hotels and resorts - a place to go and get away, a vacation. It is, but I think he is applying that business model (the vacation model) to theme parks when he should be applying the entertainment model more.
danlb_2000
Premium Member
What you are describing is not a business model. A business model is how you translate a product into revenue. The business model for a theme park is much different then the business model for a movie.
PeterAlt
Well-Known Member
I was being sarcastic when I said "a little". Yes, I know, it's the whole redo as a whole, but CL was a big part of it. It was the first time in a long time when Imagineers were allowed to actually do their jobs and create without the bean counters messing with their work. Had there been no CL and dozens of cheaper attractions in its place that were vaque remnants of what the Imagineers first envisioned for them (before downscaling to beyond all recognition by un-creatives in accounting), I seriously doubt DCA 2.0 would be so successful.
Also, HP and CL (besides being given a respective budget to work with) had the right mix of talent working on it. The IP alone is not necessarily the draw. It's the assembly of people who used that IP and did something incredible with it that people are willing to pay the price of admission just to see. The fact that upper management gave these creatives the right budget helped enable it.
PeterAlt
Well-Known Member
Semantics. You know what I mean...
flynnibus
Premium Member
Actually its not semantics - and the difference is exactly why your tangent is bunkus
PeterAlt
Well-Known Member
If you understand what I'm trying to say, help me find the right word.
flynnibus
Premium Member
What you are missing is the idea of rate of return and the differences in how movies are marketed.
Movies can be a bang or bust... studios could afford a few busts, as long as the bangs eventually come. The potential for a big bang is so big.. studios are lured to spend big to get that big payoff. What they've learned tho is there is almost always a payoff for advertising even more. So need a success? Spend even more on advertising and more often than not you can buy a good portion of the success. This is what leads to the inflating studio budgets for films. In Disney's case, they've been going more and more blockbuster budget films and spending on huge franchise flicks.. getting away from the 'doubles and singles' strategy of the early Eisner/Katz era. This all leads to more big budget films... and an atmosphere where they feel they need to spend big to even have a chance. Turnover and payoffs are quick. Movies bring in tens or even hundreds of millions in less than a year. The churn is fast... and you can't make money without spending money to create new products. This leads to a high cost, but high revenue model. The net profit is often smaller.. but its an environment you must keep moving in to make any money. The quick turnover of money is what allows studios to be able to take such large risks.
Contrast this with theme park attractions. Attractions do not make money themselves - they create a draw.. they create a pull to bring customers into your actual revenue generating engines. But they are slow.. a big success doesn't create an immediate 2x or 3x your investment. A big success brings a boost, that pays off by being a pull for your other businesses over a very long time (5-20+ years). All the meanwhile, that investment takes a lot of the dollars it helped generate to maintain and update. This means even the 'big bang' is very slow to generate a solid return. This slow rate of return means you must also be slow to invest.. otherwise you get so far ahead of yourself you put yourself at great risk. The potential for 'buying' more revenue with advertising isn't the same either... since traveling to a theme park is a much higher barrier to breach than simply heading to the theatre on a friday night.
Building theme park attractions is like buying municipal bonds..slow steady payout over a long time... while making movies is like day trading.... huge risk, but ofset by huge potential.. and quick turnover of money into profits.
You don't have to wait 5-10 years for a movie to payoff... a major theme park attraction does. The cost vs immediate returns are just world's apart. That's why trying to compare the budgets like you are is foolish.
Turtle
Well-Known Member
I HATE PLANES AND YOU'VE JUST SUMMED UP MY FEELINGS
The Empress Lilly
Well-Known Member
'Economic sector' perhaps?
Alas, I too think Hollywood and theme parks are very different beasts. Not easily comparable. At best, one could make a good case that Disney's live action movie model of big (quality?) blockbusters is how Disney's Park and Resorts ought to operate. Uh...'if you build it BIG, they will come'?
PeterAlt
Well-Known Member
Yah, I see what you're saying. They are definately not the same. What I should have said was that they have a lot of striking similarities in common and principle. I read once that people who had to answer to Eisner at Imagineering were miffed by some of the ways he did things. For example, he treated every new theme park attraction proposal like as if they were pitches for movies. Before seeing any artwork or models, he would insist on seeing a script first. If he felt the story was week, the attraction proposal was DOA. If he felt it had a great story, the project had a good chance of survival, regardless of how low or high its proposed budget was. A $10 million attraction had as good of a chance of getting green lit as a $200 million attraction - as long as Eisner felt it had a good story. You can see this with big budget projects like Tower of Tower and small budget projects like Honey I Shrunk the Audience. Those attractions started with a good script and tell a story in the same way movies do. All the elements of story telling is there.
When a theme park attraction bombs - and some times they do - Disney would "quickly"' (within a few years) change it to something else. Repeat if the new one bombs as well. So was the cycle in the space which is now Buzz Light Year. So is the cycle in the space known as Imagination.
You have to keep pumping out new attractions big and small to get people to keep coming back. If you don't, it's like a cinema that always plays the same old movies non-stop. (Rocky Horror is the exception to this rule)
Comcast knows this as well. If they didn't, they would sit idle and rest on their current HP laurels, but they're building $1.5 billion worth of new laurels. I've seen so many of my friends decide to go to USO instead of Disney. I would ask them why not WDW? The answer is always the same: "I'm tired of Disney" or "We're all Disneed out", followed by how Disney is same old, same old and how Uni had more new cool stuff.
RSoxNo1
Well-Known Member
What I fear is that they do something like Nemo Submarine Voyage vs. The Seas with Nemo and Friends. Similar enough storylines, but one is a more significant attraction (Disneyland's version). Having said that, I suppose I've also said that I would much rather wait 5 minutes for the Epcot attraction vs. 45 minutes+ for the Disneyland attraction.
RSoxNo1
Well-Known Member
First off, you haven't seen the movie.
Second off, does anything remotely verifiable seem to indicate that they're replacing Soarin' with a Planes attraction? I know Disney has made weird decisions in the past, but this seems way too ridiculous to be true.
jt04
Well-Known Member
I'd take a "planesland" at DHS over a carsland even without seeing the movie.
Turtle
Well-Known Member
No, but it's a ripoff of a beloved movie just to make more $$$$ and the storyline is almost identical to that of the first Cars film. So that is why I strongly dislike it.
The Empress Lilly
Well-Known Member
I think Tuba and Turtle aren't talking about Planes being a ripoff of Soarin', but of Cars. (Which it very much feels like to me too)
But while we're on the subject, I think Planes for Soarin is only fan rumour. But sadly, I wouldn't put it beyond the current Walt's Franchise Company to replace one of the last build non-franchise rides with a synergy IP brand.
RSoxNo1
Well-Known Member
And Wreck it Ralph isn't that far removed of a concept from Toy Story... They're movies for children, not every movie can be the Godfather.
Yeah, I understood that.