DAK 'Encanto' and 'Indiana Jones'-themed experiences at Animal Kingdom

[danlb_2000]

If feels like they’ve been trying so hard to find a way to shove Coco and Encanto in the parks somewhere regardless if it “fits” or not

I think that's the case with a lot of IPs today.

 

[MrPromey]

It *seems*, going by recent history, that there's been an attempt by Disney to have California and Florida to have the same number of *rides.*

In the one-upmanship between WDW and DLR fans over whose park has the most rides, it's been neck and neck. When one gets a new ride, so does the other.

Coincidence or intentional?

And if it is intentional, if Disneyland Forward drops 10 new rides in Anaheim, will there be 10 new rides in WDW?

You mean neck-and-neck between Disneyland's TWO parks and Walt Disney World's FOUR?

If DL adds a third park to the mix over there, I have no idea how WDW would ever manage to keep up!

 

[celluloid]

You mean neck-and-neck between Disneyland's TWO parks and Walt Disney World's FOUR?

If DL adds a third park to the mix over there, I have no idea how WDW would ever manage to keep up!

They have a hard enough time keeping up with Universal's resort.

 

[ChrisFL]

You mean neck-and-neck between Disneyland's TWO parks and Walt Disney World's FOUR?

If DL adds a third park to the mix over there, I have no idea how WDW would ever manage to keep up!

2 parks vs 4, yet attractions count is way closer than that makes it seem.

DHS and DAK don't have a lot of big attractions

 

[MrPromey]

I don't know the answer to this. What was the theoretical capacity of Dinoland USA? What was the actual? Did actual capacity match or come close to theoretical? Even if the theoretical capacity was downgraded to "max realistic" capacity was that capacity fully realized on a daily basis?

My point is this - if they added all new rides that matched capacity of what was there before but instead of poor attractions they were attractions that actually drove attendance like Pandora/Rise/Remy/Tron/GotG would the capacity of the park INCREASE just because the actual max capacity was being utilized?

Unless those attractions in Dinoland had an absolute zero wait time with vehicles routinely being dispatched with empty seats not due to guest party configurations but lack of demand, the attraction capacity was being fully utilized.

To my knowledge, that was never the case for any of the three rides when there were three.

Maybe management thinks penning people up in long lines for an hour a piece is "capacity" and that might be their real thinking since that's cheaper than offering a full day of actual entertainment for all four parks but if so, I think they're smart enough to never admit that.

If they replace what's there with attractions that drive attendance but have the same maximum hourly throughput, they're not improving capacity since what is/was there already isn't/wasn't a walk-on. All their doing is replacing existing capacity and then adding more people to the mix to weigh the whole park down, more.

I'm sure that's great for G+ and ILL sales but it certainly wouldn't be a win for the guests of Animal Kingdom.

 

[Big_Shakalaka]

Yes. Pandora expansion.

I remember hearing when they built Pandora that there was room for one more attraction. Where is that pad?
The parking lot behind Na'vi? The area north of the bathrooms?

 

[haveyoumetmark]

While the loss of Dinosaur will impact the park from a capacity-perspective, I think it's best if they just suffer through 1.5-2 years of it being down instead of playing a game of chess. They will need to boost entertainment offerings however.

What I love about DAK is that once they build this project, all of DAK will be mostly well built/designed with no areas that I would consider dated or irrelevant. Even though DAK has very few attractions, they are all high-quality and timeless. Every other area/expansion pad capable of hosting a new project will be well hidden from park pathways and difficult to intrude onto guest areas.

Rafiki’s Planet Watch feels dated to me. Though not irrelevant, it’s not up to par with the rest of the park even if it’s an AZA thing and diversion for families with small children.

You mean neck-and-neck between Disneyland's TWO parks and Walt Disney World's FOUR?

If DL adds a third park to the mix over there, I have no idea how WDW would ever manage to keep up!

This is so true and makes DLR a superior and more affordable experience where most of your time isn’t spent in transportation and entering and exiting parks. WDW has been adding some more interesting and fitting offerings lately, but still nothing near enough to justify 4 parks.

 

[celluloid]

Unless those attractions in Dinoland had an absolute zero wait time with vehicles routinely being dispatched with empty seats not due to guest party configurations but lack of demand, the attraction capacity was being fully utilized.

To my knowledge, that was never the case for any of the three rides when there were three.

Maybe management thinks penning people up in long lines for an hour a piece is "capacity" and that might be their real thinking since that's cheaper than offering a full day of actual entertainment for all four parks but if so, I think they're smart enough to never admit that.

If they replace what's there with attractions that drive attendance but have the same maximum hourly throughput, they're not improving capacity. All their doing is replacing existing capacity and then adding more people to the mix to weigh the whole park down, more.

I'm sure that's great for G+ and ILL sales but it certainly wouldn't be a win for the guests of Animal Kingdom.

It may shock for some to know that even though the demand is great, the ridership at Dinosaur is pretty close to Flight of Passage due to its low height requirement and great capacity.

Flight of Passage's hourly capacity is not all that great and has a 44 inch height requirement.

 

[MrPromey]

2 parks vs 4, yet attractions count is way closer than that makes it seem.

DHS and DAK don't have a lot of big attractions

Yes.

MK is largely thought of as the only fully built out park and I even remember when they were charging more for the non-date-based tickets for it and yet it has about half the number of attractions of Disneyland park.

Still, attraction-wise (not just ride), it would be the only full day park of the four in Florida, even today if wait times were not a factor.

There's something to be said for the animal exhibits in AK, of course, but more and more, it seems they're looking to minimized the actual animal part of Animal Kingdom as they slowly turn it into a theme park sized Adventureland.

 

[SaveDinosaur]

Like I said before, WDW needs expansions, not replacements. Keep Dinosaur and It's Tough to be a Bug, and add more rides. The number of rides that the Disneyland Resort parks have compared to WDW is a joke. There isn't a convincing argument as to why WDW needs to replace rides like The Great Movie Ride for Mickey and Minnie's, while DLR gets to shove a whole new ride building without replacing an attraction like Roger Rabbit (which totally would have been replaced for it if it were located at WDW).

One thing that Disney has been losing in Bob's tenure is variety. We don't have anything like Dinosaur in WDW, while we have multiple generic and same-looking princess rides at Magic Kingdom and now Epcot, just like we have a whole land dedicated to the same adventure ideals as Indiana Jones at MK (where this ride would fit much better anyways). Also, it bothers me a lot that the company has to make these stretches and 4-D chess moves to make rides fit in where they don't belong. Encanto being set in a place where you have a big diversity of forests and animals doesn't make it a story that fits AK; Zootopia having animals, but that don't act like animals, doesn't make it a story that fits AK; Indiana Jones exploring forests that have animals in search of artifacts is in every way a super stretch for AK, even with adjustments.

So, this will be a big disappointment for me, since not only do we lose one of the best, most interesting, and different rides at WDW, but the last park to have a cohesive theme and that hasn't been transformed into one big Fantasyland...

 

[danlb_2000]

Rafiki’s Planet Watch feels dated to me. Though not irrelevant, it’s not up to par with the rest of the park even if it’s an AZA thing and diversion for families with small children.

.. and getting rid of Planet Watch doesn't gain you a lot since it is also the animal hospital which would have to either be kept of relocated.

 

[Andrew25]

Rafiki’s Planet Watch feels dated to me. Though not irrelevant, it’s not up to par with the rest of the park even if it’s an AZA thing and diversion for families with small children.

Your right, I forget Rafiki's exists lol - include that to the list.

But for the most part, the majority of DAK is timeless and well themed.

 

[celluloid]

Universal has had to replace things in their parks due to infrastructure and not owning more land with expansion plots, and has limited shuttered venue spaces. Even then, they have managed to expand a few attractions counts in their limited space without replacing over the decades.

Magic Kingdom and EPCOT have entire shuttered attraction venues/pavilions and are still retheming/replacing rather than expanding.

 

[MrPromey]

It may shock for some to know that even though the demand is great, the ridership at Dinosaur is pretty close to Flight of Passage due to its low height requirement and great capacity.

Flight of Passage's hourly capacity is not all that great and has a 44 inch height requirement.

People seem to think the Indy thing is about fixing an unpopular attraction.

It's about injecting what they consider a valuable IP that they aren't done trying to promote and wring money from that has nothing to do with animals and actual nature into Animal Kingdom.

It's also a relatively cheap and easy conversion since the ride systems are identical and the track layout is nearly identical.

 

[danlb_2000]

Like I said before, WDW needs expansions, not replacements. Keep Dinosaur and It's Tough to be a Bug, and add more rides. The number of rides that the Disneyland Resort parks have compared to WDW is a joke. There isn't a convincing argument as to why WDW needs to replace rides like The Great Movie Ride for Mickey and Minnie's, while DLR gets to shove a whole new ride building without replacing an attraction like Roger Rabbit (which totally would have been replaced for it if it were located at WDW).

One thing that Disney has been losing in Bob's tenure is variety. We don't have anything like Dinosaur in WDW, while we have multiple generic and same-looking princess rides at Magic Kingdom and now Epcot, just like we have a whole land dedicated to the same adventure ideals as Indiana Jones at MK (where this ride would fit much better anyways). Also, it bothers me a lot that the company has to make these stretches and 4-D chess moves to make rides fit in where they don't belong. Encanto being set in a place where you have a big diversity of forests and animals doesn't make it a story that fits AK; Zootopia having animals, but that don't act like animals, doesn't make it a story that fits AK; Indiana Jones exploring forests that have animals in search of artifacts is in every way a super stretch for AK, even with adjustments.

So, this will be a big disappointment for me, since not only do we lose one of the best, most interesting, and different rides at WDW, but the last park to have a cohesive theme and that hasn't been transformed into one big Fantasyland...

They replace to provide new things to keep guests coming back without increases operating costs.

 

[celluloid]

People seem to think the Indy thing is about fixing an unpopular attraction.

It's about injecting what they consider a valuable IP that they aren't done trying to promote and wring money from that has nothing to do with animals and actual nature into Animal Kingdom.

It's also a relatively cheap and easy conversion since the ride systems are identical and the track layout is nearly identical.

And it hurts the park for the two or three years it will take.

The theme itself is so out of touch. Adventure is the only rough connection. Indy had some opposite conservation messages in those stories as they were not anywhere close to the focus.

Dinosaur has one of the highest attendance numbers in the park, so the unpopular thing people want to think is odd.

 

[Andrew25]

Dinosaur has one of the highest attendance numbers in the park, so the unpopular thing people want to think is odd.

To be fair... not that many other options in the park lol

I love Dinosaur, but I love Indy too... which we could get/keep both.

 

[celluloid]

To be fair... not that many other options in the park lol

I love Dinosaur, but I love Indy too... which we could get/keep both.

The issue going back to their ridership numbers being close is the same could be said about Flight of Passage and Navi River Journey.

Kali should be the attraction that gets a revamp.

 

[EricsBiscuit]

A lot of people are saying “because there’s a wait, the attraction’s capacity is being used.” Unfortunately, Dinosaur is often operating at half capacity and still has a short wait, albeit mostly during the late afternoon.

 

[haveyoumetmark]

Yes.

MK is largely thought of as the only fully built out park and I even remember when they were charging more for the non-date-based tickets for it and yet it has about half the number of attractions of Disneyland park.

Still, attraction-wise (not just ride), it would be the only full day park of the four in Florida, even today if wait times were not a factor.

There's something to be said for the animal exhibits in AK, of course, but more and more, it seems they're looking to minimized the actual animal part of Animal Kingdom as they slowly turn it into a theme park sized Adventureland.

Probably in the minority here but all for more theme park and less zoo with Animal Kingdom. To me it feels like the zoo piece is completely sufficient, while the theme park piece needs more work.

I think the rumored new projects are both exciting and fitting. We’ll have a refreshed thrill with Indy and something more relevant and current that the whole family can enjoy (which the park needs more of) with Encanto.

If they intend to extend hours into the evenings again eventually, it makes sense logistically to keep the main animal exhibits in the north/northwest parts of the park, while most of the action and lighting can remain in the south/east/southeast parts of the park. This way, the animals can wind down in the evenings as they have for the last 25 years and the crowds can gradually move to where the nighttime entertainment infrastructure and exits are located.

Yes. Pandora expansion is what I’ve heard.

I thought this was earmarked for an animatronic meet and greet/photo op like the triceratops encounter at IOA, so nothing major unless that’s changed.