MK Cars-Themed Attractions at Magic Kingdom

[BrianLo]

From all the information we have, the current plan was an extremely last minute decision made by management shortly before D23. The alternative plan that was abandoned at the last minute would have involved the construction of several new attractions “Beyond Thunder Mountain” and elsewhere without replacing key park elements. We know this plan existed - Disney showed it off at the previous D23!

I just wanted to pull this quote out, this was not the case.

The problem is we had a number of fake insiders peddling Disney’s own old plans. It’s classically what occurs before every conference. The most last minute project was pulling the Monsters Coaster off the shelf six months prior to the conference. Just the attraction, the rest of the land still wasn’t fully formulated. Cars was a good 12-18 months developed by the time of D23; it wasn’t last minute.

The prior “plans” for beyond big thunder were thrown together last minute as an audience test balloon.

Now, they thought about this for a while and picked this option probably irks you more.

 

[FutureCEO]

I would hope Tomorrowland Speedway closes after this opens.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Adventureland implies general adventure, no matter the time or place.
Fantasyland implies general fantasy, no matter the time or place.
Tomorrowland implies general tomorrow, no matter the time or place, as long as it’s tomorrow.
Again, Frontierland, to me anyway, implies old west frontier (around 1870) and that’s the way it was originally all set up, sans the already discussed CBJ.
Everything from Pecos Bill to BTMR to ROA and the Liberty Belle to TSI, etc. were all themed for that era.
Heck, if it’s all suddenly such an “open-ended frontier” now, Iger should buy the rights to Star Trek, ‘cause you know…”Space: the final frontier”, and shoehorn an attraction based on that in there.
Where does the “open-ended” end…?!?!?!
Might as well just rename it “Whateverland”.

Guess we shall see - to me it is now the equivalent of North America Adventureland while regular Adventureland covers rest of the world

Yes it is definitely different than the original plan for it - which either can be accepted or not & but I think big difference b/w broadening to include "National Parks" and "Outer space" but maybe those are equivalent to you

 

[Chester&Hester Enthusiast]

This is not a “both sides” issue. The Rivers are an integral part of the park. They are central to the narrative and aesthetics of a huge, central part of the resort and three headliner attractions. This is not about folks who like to ride Mark Twain. From a storytelling and design standpoint, the choices Disney is making are creatively indefensible.

The issue is that most of the people you're interacting with here do not look at theme parks as an artistic medium, so they will never understand this.

 

[Brer Panther]

Y'know what the car version of J. Audubon Woodlore reminds me of? There was an entire episode of Amphibia that was just "Hey, these characters are frog versions of Grunkle Stan and Soos from Gravity Falls! Y'all remember Gravity Falls?!".

 

[Chester&Hester Enthusiast]

That's nice and all, but your perspective is not shared by the large majority of people.

How dismissive. It was certainly a perspective shared by the people who created the damn place.

Imagine saying this to Walt Disney, who most definitely understood that they were creating art of cultural significance. Or John Hench, who wrote an entire book about it.

 

[LSLS]

Not to wade all the way in on this, but I don't think RoA going away is inherently bad. I think what people have more of an issue with is if the replacement will have the same level of immersion for the surrounding lands that they feel with it currently. The thing I think Disney has really lost is the idea that details matter. People may not notice little details (or at least may not notice them consciously), but they are what set the parks apart. I was always amazed when I went on the Keys tour 20ish years ago at all the extra little details throughout the park I never noticed that really add to the theme. I think the issue at least for me is I have 0 faith that they will have the same attention to detail for how the new lands are viewed from other areas, or how the lands and rides incorporate together.

 

[The Mom]

Please stay on topic. Thank you.

 

[CoasterCowboy67]

Quote from Walt Disney himself at the Disneyland dedication ceremony:

"Before you enter this realm, I'd like to read this dedication -- which will be inscribed on a plaque:​

'Frontierland: It is here that we experience the story of our country's past -- the color, romance, and drama of frontier America as it developed from wilderness trails to roads, riverboats and civilization; a tribute to the faith, courage, and ingenuity of our hearty pioneers who blazed the trails and made this progress possible.'"​

Like every other land at Magic Kingdom, Frontierland is not and never has been about a specific decade or zip code. Frontierland is and always has been about ideas -- "faith, courage, and ingenuity" -- taught to us by a broader time and place in history -- America beyond its original European settlements (which are already represented by Liberty Square). When you walk into Frontierland, you're quite literally heading west from polished colonial settlements into rougher untamed wilderness.

Did original attractions refer to specific years (1870s) and specific places West of the Mississippi? Absolutely. But that is just part of immersing us in specific stories. Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean take us to wildly different time periods, and they do so purposefully to give us genuine-feeling experiences, but they exist together in a land that covers an even broader set of places and times that still feel extremely cohesive around core ideas.

Frontierland can have individual experiences take us to specific times/places to support the broader ideas Walt Disney described above without restricting them. Riding off-road vehicles through "wilderness trails and roads" is absolutely consistent Frontierland and the pioneer feeling of venturing into uncharted/wild terrain, and gives us a different lens into its core ideas beyond the 1870s (which Splash Mountain / TBA expanded and re-expanded decades ago)

I think that Disney's push for IP lands has gotten people trained to think lands need to be about one ultra specific time, place, story, and set of characters. Disney's original lands were much deeper in concept, and I for one appreciate we're not getting "Cars Land" at Magic Kingdom, but rather, an expansion of Frontierland which are very different things.

 

[Bocabear]

yeah but no....Frontierland was definitely set in a broad time frame and place.. The Monument Valley area of the West being directly next to mountains designed to look like automobile parts and cars with googly eyes has nothing to do with the American Frontier... It is all a mish-mash that could have been avoided by building this whole thing at DHS... Or changing the IP completely and it's styling to be a real Western landscape with cars from an earlier era....At least something that would make it feel correct for the park.... this just feels like a sore thumb...

 

[Incomudro]

I personally don't understand how anyone could love the Disney of today. They are a creatively bankrupt organization that buys up other companies (Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm) to create the illusion that they can still create, mis-manage those companies to the point where Pixar films are now mediocre at best and The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy which threw most of what made Star Wars great in the toilet. It is a soulless money-grubbing machine that only maintains it's popularity and respect because of what it was in the past. They are no better or worse than any other soulless corporation all they exist for now is to make money which is sad because to many of us they used to be much more.

I wish I could say this isn't true.

 

[Chi84]

Well, since you asked, I went back through my posts, and, well, yeah, I'm kinda negative. That's because there's just a lot a bad truths out there!

Anyway, here are some "positive" posts. (They were hard to find.)



That was serious, not ironic.

Proof! I hope it makes you feel better that someone so "negative" can actually like something.

Shoot. This is off-topic, Mom, sorry. I was just answering a direct question.

I actually deleted the question since it was off topic.

 

[CoasterCowboy67]

yeah but no....Frontierland was definitely set in a broad time frame and place.. The Monument Valley area of the West being directly next to mountains designed to look like automobile parts and cars with googly eyes has nothing to do with the American Frontier... It is all a mish-mash that could have been avoided by building this whole thing at DHS... Or changing the IP completely and it's styling to be a real Western landscape with cars from an earlier era....At least something that would make it feel correct for the park.... this just feels like a sore thumb...

Splash Mountain (talking animated animals in the South) right next to Big Thunder Mountain (ghost town mine train in Utah/Arizona) was already a "clash" nobody cared about or potentially even realized because the concepts were executed flawlessly and the styles were realized in a complementary way. With the Cars expansion of Frontierland, it seems as though the new mountain and river/creek will serve as a natural buffer from a lot of existing attractions. If you look at the latest art, the Cars ride appears to go through a canyon / geyser-filled area around where Big Thunder is so that the visuals and transitions are complementary

But to say talking cars cannot exist next to a ghost town mine train is to question why singing birds are next to a boat ride jumping around major world rivers next to a boat ride with talking pirate skeletons

 

[𝐌𝖆𝖓 𝖎𝖓 𝐖𝖊𝖇]

test

I would hope Tomorrowland Speedway closes after this opens.

Why would it? They're two tonally different attractions.

 

[DisneyHead123]

I just wanted to pull this quote out, this was not the case.

The problem is we had a number of fake insiders peddling Disney’s own old plans. It’s classically what occurs before every conference. The most last minute project was pulling the Monsters Coaster off the shelf six months prior to the conference. Just the attraction, the rest of the land still wasn’t fully formulated. Cars was a good 12-18 months developed by the time of D23; it wasn’t last minute.

The prior “plans” for beyond big thunder were thrown together last minute as an audience test balloon.

Now, they thought about this for a while and picked this option probably irks you more.

I thought @marni1971 confirmed this? I don’t track all the various levels of insider-ness but I’m pretty sure he or she is one of the few who typically have solid information.

Apologies to Marni if I’m misremembering.

 

[DisneyHead123]

I tried saying this last part to my wife last night and she said I was crazy and got annoyed. Perhaps I am not as articulate…

To keep it on topic, this is about Rivers specifically.

I can see how this would come across as silly if you’re not super familiar with parks history and initially it sounded like “Disney World is just as important as the Washington Monument!” (Not saying this is what you said, just that this could be an initial impression.) It’s an argument that definitely needs some backstory. But I do think there’s a case to be made that Disneyland and World are huge pieces of American history and culture.

For example, I imagine there would be outcry if the Coney Island Amusement Park was torn down to put in a lux gym and sports facility, with the argument that “really, more people would enjoy playing pickleball on the first class new courts or swimming in the Olympic sized pool.” If Graceland was torn down for Swiftieland, because lots of kids aren’t into Elvis these days. If the rides at Navy Pier were replaced with a giant VR arcade because kids these days like virtual reality, not swings. (And those examples of entertainment based sites are probably much less notable in national history than the Disney parks.)

Rivers is a piece of American history. Thankfully it still exists at Disneyland, but I do think it’s fair to say it’s, again, historically significant.

 

[donaldtoo]

Guess we shall see - to me it is now the equivalent of North America Adventureland while regular Adventureland covers rest of the world

Yes it is definitely different than the original plan for it - which either can be accepted or not & but I think big difference b/w broadening to include "National Parks" and "Outer space" but maybe those are equivalent to you

Yes, we will see.
Another thing that concerns me is how long the ROA/TSI area will be under development / construction.
Another member had mentioned in a post, several pages back, that it all won’t be finished until, at least, 2029. Since it’s Disney, and we all know how projected timelines tend to go with them, it could easily be a coupla’ years beyond that, maybe more.
Even if it is 2029, that’s still a pretty darn long time to have the whole ROA/TSI area down and useless, not to mention (with the “elevations” another poster mentioned - you can only build construction walls so high) the eyesore it’ll be for that whole time.

Also, there is not one single US National Park that allows off-road racing within their boundaries, so I’m not sure why national Parks keep being mentioned…?

As far as Star Trek and “Space: the final frontier” goes, I was just being facetious to try and make a point.

 

[Chester&Hester Enthusiast]

Quote from Walt Disney himself at the Disneyland dedication ceremony:


Like every other land at Magic Kingdom, Frontierland is not and never has been about a specific decade or zip code. Frontierland is and always has been about ideas -- "faith, courage, and ingenuity" -- taught to us by a broader time and place in history -- America beyond its original European settlements (which are already represented by Liberty Square). When you walk into Frontierland, you're quite literally heading west from polished colonial settlements into rougher untamed wilderness.

Did original attractions refer to specific years (1870s) and specific places West of the Mississippi? Absolutely. But that is just part of immersing us in specific stories. Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean take us to wildly different time periods, and they do so purposefully to give us genuine-feeling experiences, but they exist together in a land that covers an even broader set of places and times that still feel extremely cohesive around core ideas.

Frontierland can have individual experiences take us to specific times/places to support the broader ideas Walt Disney described above without restricting them. Riding off-road vehicles through "wilderness trails and roads" is absolutely consistent Frontierland and the pioneer feeling of venturing into uncharted/wild terrain, and gives us a different lens into its core ideas beyond the 1870s (which Splash Mountain / TBA expanded and re-expanded decades ago)

I think that Disney's push for IP lands has gotten people trained to think lands need to be about one ultra specific time, place, story, and set of characters. Disney's original lands were much deeper in concept, and I for one appreciate we're not getting "Cars Land" at Magic Kingdom, but rather, an expansion of Frontierland which are very different things.

I particularly enjoyed how you completely ignored the parts of the dedication that place it in a specific time period to say that it was never about a specific time period.

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Another thing that concerns me is how long the ROA/TSI area will be under development / construction.

Definitely agree with that part and am really interested in how they handle it.

Even if they are aggressive with construction that is still going to be a couple of years potentially with walls up all along that pathway .... Hopefully they have a plan so it doesn't feel like how the center of Epcot felt

 

[CoasterCowboy67]

I particularly enjoyed how you completely ignored the parts of the dedication that place it in a specific time period.

Except I didn't. There is "specific" and there is "uber-specific" and I don't know what you think that dedication speech says or not

Does it place the land in every place in the world and every time period ever? Obviously not.

Does it place the land specifically in Utah or Arizona in the 1870s? Obviously not.

Does it place the land in "America as it developed", "our country's past", and "from wilderness trails to roads"? Yes, which is consistent with, and the point of, my entire message. These are specific, yes, but also much broader than many here think Frontierland rigidly needs to be