One thing that strikes me about this change is the somewhat (somewhat) analogous situation in Animal Kingdom. Again, not perfectly parallel, but to my mind a decent comparison point. I think it’s noteworthy how much better received the latter has been. To my mind a big part of that was them bringing back Rohde (who people know headed up the iconic lands in AK), releasing information about all the work going into the design process, and emphasizing authenticity (a loaded concept, but used well in this case, I think.) I think the cutesy / IP driven Encanto (that’s not a dig, I like cute and I like IP) even got a pass because it was just one element of the land. There have been some complaints, yeah, but at nowhere near the same scale.
With Cars, on the other hand, I think people are just worried that all of the wrong things are happening here. There were rumors that it was a last minute decision vs. a carefully considered one (and that better fitting IP was tossed due to cost.) It’s not clear who’s heading up the design team or what their former work looks like. Even an amateur armchair designer can quickly see that cartoon Cars don’t seem like a particularly authentic fit for the area without some serious mental gymnastics.
