MK Cars-Themed Attractions at Magic Kingdom

[Cliff]

Disney needs to return to a focus on family dark rides AND up there game. EU has clear problems, but as a whole it leaves Disney’s recent efforts in the dust. The lands are so much more detailed, full, alive, and better laid out then recent Disney lands like TSL, SWL, and even Avatar. Ministry, which features a mood and story very similar to Resistsance, really makes the Disney ride look empty and unexciting.

If Disney wants to compete directly, it needs to COMPETE. The new AK land and Villains (in however many years) seem to be Disney’s only chance to make a statement to counter Uni in the near future, and Uni hopefully won’t be sleeping on their laurels in the meantime.

Been to Epic Universe 3 times now in the past month and have been utterly blown away. Universal is HUNGRY as hell. One thing has become 100% crystal clear to me now:

Disney simply "EXPECTS" our love....Universal is working extremely hard to "EARN" our love.

One is lazy and coasting on the success of it's former Imagineer greats. The other has stolen Disney's best people and it's proven formula and is now implementing it and putting enormous effort into impressing us the exact way that Disney "used" to. (back in the days when Burbank used to care)

 

[BrianLo]

Universal, which has been viewed as not having enough to do for young families, is building an entire theme park geared towards younger families.

By many accounts, the land + attractions in Monsters and HP-EU have outdone any single land at a Disney park in terms of immersiveness, attraction experience, shopping and dining.

Height ride requirements.

It’s a slam dunk park if your family is exclusively the 6+ crowd. But it’s confusing how much they lop off the toddler and great grandma. Particularly at Nintendo and Berk.

Edit - I missed you were referring to Universal Kids. Which also exclusively does not market itself to the over 6 crowd. They still don’t seem to understand that it’s ok to build something for everyone.

 

[𝐌𝖆𝖓 𝖎𝖓 𝐖𝖊𝖇]

Height ride requirements.

It’s a slam dunk park if your family is exclusively the 6+ crowd. But it’s confusing how much they lop off the toddler and great grandma. Particularly at Nintendo and Berk.

Nah, great grandma and baby can watch the shows and pet the robot dragons. Berk is a solid land. Nintendo maybe but it has plenty of the sensory and interactive stuffs along with the bright colors.

 

[CoastalElite64]

Here's another good video discussing the Cars attraction.

 

[BrianLo]

Nah, great grandma and baby can watch the shows and pet the robot dragons. Berk is a solid land. Nintendo maybe but it has plenty of the sensory and interactive stuffs along with the bright colors.

We’re scraping the barrel to come up with 8 things to do. By the way I think the interactive stuff is excellent. I think the park is excellent.

But it’s a stretch to imply Epic was designed for the stroller crowd, it really wasn’t. Even Hollywood Studios, decidedly the least family friendly park, does a more broad job.

 

[Disgruntled Walt]

They are taking out things that the majority of guests avoid experiencing directly

attractions that are underutilized.. why would you expand and increase your overhead to sit and watch portions you already have go unused or under utilized due to lack of demand?

If you have stuff that isn't working, it's a better solution to fix it or replace it instead of ignore it and spend money to expand and keep spending money on the stuff that isn't working for you.

Is there evidence of this other than the app-listed wait times? Are there pictures/videos of Tom Sawyer Island as a ghost town? An empty steamboat circling TSI? Who says it isn't working?

Expanding your footprint makes everyday ops more expensive without really being able to directly recoup costs. It's part of why Disney added additional parks instead of just adding more lands to the same parks... new gate = new draw and new admissions you can monetize. Adding an expansion to a park doesn't usually lead to a 30% boost in ticket price... but adding a separate park? Easy to monetize.

Right...unless you're adding LL profits, which they would be. They're not adding a new park; they're adding an attraction. And again, if it's going to be so dang successful that it will recoup the investment and increase attendance, the riverboat and the Island would see increased attendance due to proximity to the thrill ride! Not everyone is going to want to go on this. Maybe the little kids and papa go over to the island while the bigger kids and the parents go conquer Piston Peak.

Both of you are acting like this is Theme Park Design 101, but it doesn't have to be that complicated. They don't HAVE to be sacrificing these two attractions to add what they're adding. At the end of the day, the number of attractions on the park map stays the same until Villains opens, and that's only a net gain of two. Could have been four.

 

[celluloid]

Height ride requirements.

It’s a slam dunk park if your family is exclusively the 6+ crowd. But it’s confusing how much they lop off the toddler and great grandma. Particularly at Nintendo and Berk.

Edit - I missed you were referring to Universal Kids. Which also exclusively does not market itself to the over 6 crowd. They still don’t seem to understand that it’s ok to build something for everyone.

Not quite that bad. My.daughter is 4 years old and 42 inches. She is not particularly tall for her age and is tall enough for everything but three rides.

It only gets a bit rough if you are under 40 inches, which besides MK is most parks.

It's no MK but it is not all that bad. A bit coaster heavy but that is the modern flavor for Disney too.

Universal Studios had much less and often no height requirements with its opening attractions. The 2000s os when studios got worse for hight requirements.

 

[WondersOfLife]

That being said, during the Splash Mountain conversion to TBA, I attended a party where I conversed with an Imagineer working on TBA. He was very open and almost gleeful about tearing out “an ugly part of Disney’s history” and how the rest working on the project were in agreement.

Knowing what I know now about how the Splash Mountain destruction was treated even beyond that isolated anecdotal conversation, I am VERY weary of anything coming out of Disney leadership OR Imagineering.

This is what is most important. There might be a small handful of imagineers "being told what to do." But obviously most of them are part of the new generation of generic Disney-safe mode pushers... Or they would be working for Universal. Lol.

 

[Casper Gutman]

We’re scraping the barrel to come up with 8 things to do. By the way I think the interactive stuff is excellent. I think the park is excellent.

But it’s a stretch to imply Epic was designed for the stroller crowd, it really wasn’t. Even Hollywood Studios, decidedly the least family friendly park, does a more broad job.

I love Uni, but their obsession with restrictive rides and aversion to family dark rides is moronic. It feels like a remnant of an earlier age, when they had to beg for Disneys teenage table scraps. Everyone but Universal seems to know that they’re competing directly with The Mouse now. If both Disney and Universal would admit they were competing for every age group, Orlando would be better off.

 

[eddie104]

This is what is most important. There might be a small handful of imagineers "being told what to do." But obviously most of them are part of the new generation of generic Disney-safe mode pushers... Or they would be working for Universal. Lol.

Wow people are really looking for scapegoats.

Do you know the majority of Imagineers to be making statements like this ?

 

[Professortango1]

I love Uni, but their obsession with restrictive rides and aversion to family dark rides is moronic. It feels like a remnant of an earlier age, when they had to beg for Disneys teenage table scraps. Everyone but Universal seems to know that they’re competing directly with The Mouse now. If both Disney and Universal would admit they were competing for every age group, Orlando would be better off.

Disney's ability/commitment to making ride vehicles as accommodating as possible is a huge reason for their success, I believe. I know I visit Universal less often due to my fears of what rides I might not be able to experience.

I really wish Universal would wake up. I think they are starting to, as EU is better, but not great yet.

 

[EagleScout610]

While I share your skepticism (because it seems like a ridiculous decision), it would not be the first time they spent money to update something only to remove it a couple years later.

That's a fair point. Replacing the carpet in Universe of Energy like 2 weeks before closing comes to mind

 

[Disgruntled Walt]

You are absolutely right, I shouldn’t be painting with a broad brush the way that I did. Living within the Orlando/Disney bubble, I know several terrific Cast Members, some of which are in Imagineering.

That being said, during the Splash Mountain conversion to TBA, I attended a party where I conversed with an Imagineer working on TBA. He was very open and almost gleeful about tearing out “an ugly part of Disney’s history” and how the rest working on the project were in agreement.

Knowing what I know now about how the Splash Mountain destruction was treated even beyond that isolated anecdotal conversation, I am VERY weary of anything coming out of Disney leadership OR Imagineering.

Welcome to the forum, by the way! As a former CM, you bring some great perspective!

 

[Sir_Cliff]

Its challenging when you start creeping towards broad generalizations that want to read like ALL teens believe this, etc.. because it's not an all or nothing. It's simply about a product that is more targeted or maybe more appealing to a specific demo broadly - but not all members play out the same.

You may want to read what I'm saying as ALL teens feeling one way or the other, but that's not what I said at all. I'm just questioning (not refuting) the 'common sense' assumption that teens prefer Universal over Disney parks because Universal's strategy is to lean more into thrills and market itself that way. If anything, that is the generalisation.

My point is just that this could be the reality, but it could also be the reality that teens overall still prefer Disney parks to Universal parks but just by a smaller margin than other age groups. I am honestly a little sceptical kids become teenagers and suddenly start finding Universal cool and Disney lame as Universal marketing campaigns have tended to imply.

 

[Gusey]

My condolences for missing out on the entire point of all of it. And no, I'm not going to explain it.

How insightful. Surely the entire point of Walt Disney World is to actually have fun? Why waste my time doing things that I personally find uninteresting? As I said in my post, I have actually experienced all the opening day Frontierland attractions, but they were one and dones, and not interesting enough for me to do on repeat visits

 

[Gusey]

the good thing is removing the IP will be as easy as scraping the googly eyes off the cars! lol
sadly the Auto Parts Mountains will be harder to change..... I was terrified to read they were talking about Mount Prometheus at Tokyo Disney Seas and how it dominates the skyline and comparing it to Piston Mountain....Imagine a giant snow covered Piston rising above the entire Magic Kingdom..... ugh...

Did you actually read what they said? They didn't compare it to Mount Prometheus to say it's going to be big, they compared it to say they were using it as inspiration for how they adjust the park's sightlines so it will be beautiful from all angles. From that statement, I took it as they were making sure the Cars part of the mountain range will only be visible from the Cars attraction, like the Volcano at TokyoSea is only seen as a volcano from certain angles of the park

Imagineers also said they are carefully managing sightlines as they plan the new area. While working on the Piston Peak mountain, they were inspired by how Mount Prometheus at Tokyo DisneySea is beautiful from all areas of that park.

 

[Rosso11]

Now that the Cars (TM) attraction is greenlit is there really a need for two car attractions in MK?

Nope which is why the Speedway is looking to be redeveloped in the not too distant future.

 

[Rosso11]

Why do people tend to always talk down about today’s imagineers when they are just following directives set by management ?

This 100%! I wish everyone would understand these decisions are NOT made by Imagineering. They are given orders by park executives. They are the ones who decided they wanted a cars attraction in Frontierland. They are the ones who decided they wanted the river gone. These are not Imagineering decisions.

 

[𝐌𝖆𝖓 𝖎𝖓 𝐖𝖊𝖇]

This 100%! I wish everyone would understand these decisions are NOT made by Imagineering. They are given orders by park executives. They are the ones who decided they wanted a cars attraction in Frontierland. They are the ones who decided they wanted the river gone. These are not Imagineering decisions.

I fault Imagineering on execution. And it's usually warranted.

 

[ToTBellHop]

Nope which is why the Speedway is looking to be redeveloped in the not too distant future.

It’s been on its way out for awhile now. It was that or update and they obviously didn’t update it.