So sorry it's taking so long, I've had two very very busy work days, but I am finishing up tonight and tomorrow. Let's jump into the next project
PerGron's Reviews
Team Magic- Clockwork Kingdom
This team settled on an idea the quickest of the three and decided to take the theme of "time travel," which I admittedly was nervous about the execution here. Time travel as a concept works great for a ride or even a land maybe, but a whole park dedicated to it really just didn't seem like something I thought would work. Of course, with the heavy hitters on this team, y'all had to go and prove me wrong with a park packed to the brim with absolute bangers delivering on some of the most creative and interesting and out of the box concepts I've seen in an Imagineering comp. I mean, I should have figured this team wouldn't settle for Medieval England, Ancient Egypt, and the easy stuff because I remember working on the 1986 project with
@Outbound and
@AceAstro on a park not entirely dissimilar and not going with the easy picks for Lost Worlds either. I think you guys were the team who took the biggest swings and I absolutely feel it paid off, it's taken me so long to get these reviews out because literally every team was firing on all cylinders on here, but this team especially packed so much detail into it that it took me hours to read to soak it all in (not at all a bad thing).
Right off the bat I do want to hit you guys with one criticism and though it's not at all one I think will negatively impact anyone all that much, the lack of any kind of reading music was notably absent here. Maybe I'm just so used to reading music being provided, but with a project so full of diverse cultures I think some music loops would've been really nice and while I did fill that gap myself without any real inconvenience, it just felt like a very very minor touch that would've been a beautiful little bow because I do read with the music every time it's posted. I know you guys were trying for some original music composition that didn't end up panning out and that's all fine and good, but some sort of soft instrumental for the different sections just would've been the chef's kiss for me personally.
I really appreciate the opening stuff here, just kind of breaking down your thought process in designing the park and I ADORE the way the park is set up like a clock with the time passing getting to the bigger numbers the later the era gets, that's some serious consideration that I could really expect from real Imagineers in how to design the park and it is just wonderful. I know everybody jokes about a "PerGron Project" when there's animals and backstory, but this really feels like an Outbound Project in the way it's organized and set up. You just have such a detailed approach and design philosophy for everything you do that it feels very unique and very Outbound.
The Epic Universe influence is palpable here, especially in
Timeland and while I 100% understand the desire to really lean into the newest toy in the theme park fan's arsenal (Team Dream did it too), I think the portal stuff here is maybe a bit too directly stealing from EU? I get that portals make sense for a time traveling park to add transitions between the various lands and maybe it's just that EU is so fresh in everyone's mind that it's impacting my judgment here, but I'm almost disappointed that there isn't a different style of entrance to each land. I also found some disappointment in the lack of development for Timeland as the hub. I know that the individual writing this had some personal conflicts come up and so it became a quick catch up towards the end and I'm not going to slap you guys on the wrist for how uncontrollable life is and can be, but compared to everything else in the park that is so packed full of detail, it's notably lacking in a space that I think could otherwise have a really amazing and phenomenal sense of identity. The
Tower of Time is such a notable park weenie and the idea of paddle boats with clocks in them is so fun and I can picture that so well, I just wish a bit more time had been dedicated to fleshing this out if it had been discussed earlier than the last few days. No blame to anyone on that though because it still is a really interesting hub and the hub is admittedly far less important to nail down than the lands within the park, just my two cents on what I had hoped for. My only other criticism is, again, a nitpick, but I think you guys should've gone through the posted attractions and land writeups and changed it to Timeland from [Steampunk clockwork Hub.]
When picking a theme to represent your "ancient" land, I think the obvious picks of Egypt, Greece, and Rome would've all been very cool to see, but I am incredibly glad you guys settled on ancient China. While China certainly is more well represented in the Disney parks than some of your other land selections, you guys did it in a way that is really beautiful and also different to the way we see it depicted at, say, Epcot. Rather than the Ming Dynasty vibes that the pavilion has going for it, you guys have stuck much more to the naturalistic feel of the lesser visited spots than the Forbidden City or Temple of Heaven that lend themselves so frequently to Chinese-adjacent projects. The whole aesthetic around
Lianyun Valley feels serene and calming despite hosting some pretty intense attractions. I can absolutely see this being a place that would be nice to just sit on a bench and people watch amongst the bamboo forest scenery. I appreciate the land map to help me place things and I like that everyone took their own swing at a map for their area because even though I love and adore a unified map, I also love seeing people experiment with art and other things they may not do all the time.
In a park with four lands, the fact you included four coasters is kind of funny, especially since one went in every single land, but with the current trend of every attraction getting built having to be either a coaster or some take on a trackless dark ride, I can't knock the realism here. Of those coasters,
Rise of the Jade Dragon is definitely the one that feels the most standard for what I'd expect from a Disney coaster. It is certainly packed with some phenomenal theming and storytelling, but it also just feels like stuff we've seen before, either in real life and in other comps. Also, am I tripping or was Rise of the Jade Dragon a ride in the cursed Adventure Atoll land? Might be making that up lol. The familiarity here isn't at all to discredit the attraction though as this writeup was incredibly thorough and shows how writing a coaster can be done well (HINT HINT). I appreciate that rather than battling or escaping the dragon ala Cosmic Rewind, Expedition Everest, and others you're actually working alongside the dragon to bring about peace and balance; that makes for a nice twist on what is a pretty familiar formula of "roller coaster with fantasy monster at the helm." Overall, I think this is an incredibly strong coaster with some fantastic writing and as an anchor of the land, it would be a pretty special attraction worth checking out.
When I saw
Journey of the Monkey King pop up while I was going through your project, I figured it would be some type of dark ride, be it a busbar or a trackless or something, so the fact this is actually a 4D show is both a huge surprise but also a welcome one. 4D shows are such a rarity in imagineering projects and seem to just be dying out one by one between MuppetVision and It's Tough to Be a Bug (though that is getting replaced with another 4D) they're falling by the wayside, so the addition of one is great here. Easily the best stuff here, for me, was the opening area with the animatronic peach tree and the statues of the immortals, it feels very Enchanted Tiki Room in that way. As for the show itself, it's certainly very charming and very modern Disney (sans it not being an IP owned by them) with the Marvel-like quips and dialogue. As a cinephile this is painful, but as a theme park fan, the very simple dialogue and silly goofy tone fits very well. I appreciate the detail in the special effects that make the 4D film work the way it’s supposed to as well because these are details I can see falling by the wayside in a lesser project. This is a great family friendly show that I think would be pretty popular and fits the theme really incredibly.
Now for the supplemental stuff in the land; I appreciate the use of a brand new attraction style for the
Lotus Lake Lanterns. This whole round seems to be allowing all three teams to experiment with some stuff Disney doesn't use often and I really appreciate that. For this flat ride though, it adds some really nice kinetic energy and combined with the reuse of the Rivers of Light lotus floats in the lake, I think this would just be a really beautiful place to hang out, especially at night! Shopping and dining are disappointingly small here without a lot of great detail that permeates the rest of the project. I fully understand prioritizing the important stuff like the attractions and I do not fault you for doing that, but I do wish there was more here for the shopping and especially for the dining. The
Temple of Balance seems like it could be a really fun eatery with a really fun and unique gimmick that I wish there was more detail for. Still, what you do have for this land is so phenomenal that I can't blame you for skimping on the supplemental stuff if that's what you needed to do in order to get this out, but with all three teams doing so well, it's one of those things that ultimately may make a difference in the final scores.
Alright, so full transparency, I'm about to glaze a project so hard that it may seem unfair. All three projects had a land that absolutely stood out above anything else for me (Cheddar Crater in Team Dream and we'll get to Team Wonder when I do them) and for Team Magic it was pretty easily
Crossroads City. The idea of setting a theme park land in medieval Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate is so ridiculously inspired that I genuinely cannot think of something I would've been more into for this park. The whole vibe of a medieval Islamic Golden Age land is just so brilliant and everything you've put in here feels perfect for what it is. I have almost zero criticisms for this whole land but at the same time, I do want to go through and put my thoughts together so that you can read them.
The
Den o’ Thieves subland could’ve been a whole land in and of itself with how much you have going on here. A dark ride, a flat ride, Streetmosphere, an interactive game, plus shopping and dining is pretty fleshed out already so the fact there’s another subland and a half is pretty intense but also pretty exciting. For the Den itself, I think you did a phenomenal job capturing the hustle and bustle of a medieval city center filled with merchants and thieves as we’ve seen depicted in stories like Aladdin and 1001 Arabian Nights and this makes for a fun and exciting setting for guests to explore. I know you mentioned Galaxy’s Edge as an inspiration and I feel that in your design, especially with the teased elements that never came to fruition before that land was actually completed. I imagine it’s probably easier to get people to wear normal human clothes made for the heat than full alien prosthetic makeup to do everyday jobs after all.
I’m going to circle back to the main attraction but I want to discuss the major components in this land first. To start off, great idea to move
Magic Carpets of Aladdin over from Adventureland. I’m not as much of a hater on that style of flat ride than a lot of people seem to be and I think that magic carpets fit the theme of that mechanism really well. As you’ve probably gathered from my reviews thus far, I think flat rides are a great way to improve kinetic energy and I think Disney should really do more of them over what they’re currently doing, so salvaging one makes me pretty happy. The ride is currently in a terrible spot and fits your land very well so I’m glad you made that decision. I can imagine the spinning of the carpets and the music adding some great energy to what should be a really energetic land already. The tongue-in-cheek ribbing of Disney fans in your explanation was unnecessary and petty which is exactly what I live for, so good work there too.
A Thousand and One Nights is the perfect kind of pop up show that the world showcase used to do so well. I’ll never forget watching my dad lay a golden egg on the stage in Italy, or see my cousin be knighted in England and being very jealous I wasn’t chosen. Streetmosphere (due to actors unions and whatnot, I know) has been in extreme decline post-pandemic and something like this would be such a refreshing breath of fresh air for what seems to be a dying genre of theme park entertainment. The selection of stories is inspired as well with some well-known and familiar ones like Sinbad and Ali Baba as well as ones I've not even heard of like The Three Apples. I appreciate the commitment to different genres as well, giving some brilliant selections that are bound to attract different people to check them out.
Crossroad Traders (while sounding like a shop) is another nice piece of a dying theme park attraction genre in interactive games. I remember fondly the heyday of things like Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom and the Kim Possible/Perry the Platypus/Ducktales game at World Showcase and though I never did it, the pirate one at Magic Kingdom as well. These are awesome little elements to give people things to do on return visits or longer trips where maybe rides and shows are less of a priority than just exploring. It also adds some great kinetic energy when you have different effects popping up throughout the land that even guests not playing the game can check out. It’s a non-intrusive way to add additional storytelling in your land and the way you’ve established it works really well. It’s nice to see even seemingly less important elements of your land like this still be bountiful in terms of ideas, creativity, and detail. For the actual shop
Crossroads Trader Depot, it’s a serviceable shop when you already have a big bazaar elsewhere in your land. It feels more like a setting for your Streetmosphere and game than it does for any specific merchandise where I think this area could’ve prioritized Aladdin merch, but that’s neither here nor there.
Pumbaa’s Reviews
“Jasmine is my second best friend” (she met Jasmine at Disney World a few months ago and asked if they could be best friends but then remembered she had a best friend at home so she told Jasmine they could be second best friends.)
“I like Abu because he’s funny and I like Genie because he’s funny and I like Rajah because he’s cute. Jeffery (she would not accept his name is Jafar) is the bad guy though so if he came up to me and I was eating I will punch him in the butt.”
So yeah, big win with the
Prince Ali’s Festival Feast from my niece. For me, I think it’s a great way to do your character dining in a park that feels difficult to pull character dining off without feeling out of place. The Aladdin touches throughout the land and the overall popularity of the Aladdin IP and characters though lend it to a great dining option and the fact you can use it in a restaurant with Arabic and Mediterranean food rather than just average American fare makes this more unique than most character dining spots, so I found this to be a really great execution of the bonus project.
As for
A Whole New World, I think this is the attraction I have the most issue with in the land and for a pretty weird reason. While I always commend people for not doing a book report dark ride and while I maintain that perspective here, I almost feel like I’d rather you have done a book report dark ride if that makes sense? You follow so many of the exact plot beats and feature the same songs from the movie that not making it just the story of Aladdin feels off somewhat. Obviously any type of flying carpet ride would have to feature scenes like flying above small models of the area and it makes sense to include the beloved music from the movie, but a lot of your setpieces like flying into Ancient Ziggurat feel very reminiscent of escaping the Cave of Wonders and the battle against Jafar feels a lot like the finale of the film anyway. That’s not to say your take on this attraction is in any way bad, it’s well written and I understand the perspective you’re coming from, but yeah I almost feel like it would’ve been a better move to either totally differentiate it from the movie with very different elements or to just go whole hog on a fun adaptation on the movie’s plot directly. That would’ve also let you use Aladdin, Jasmine, Genie, and Jafar a bit more naturally than coming up with some other way to fit them into the narrative. It’s more creative and better to show off your brainstorming skills to do original takes and I get and support that, but a note for everyone, from my perspective, a well done book report dark ride as a small piece of the pie never hurt anyone!
Jumping into the
Baghdad Bazaar, I love this as a center point of your land separating the New City from the Old City and also separating the swashbuckling thievery lower class from the scholarly upper crust of society. It’s a nice realistic commentary even if it wasn’t meant that way. Everyone needs goods and so having the bazaar in the center of it all connects all castes, even if I’m reading too much into it.
Silk Road Tavern is an interesting choice that I am both in favor of and kind of confused by. I like the connections to, well, the Silk Road and having this at the entrance past the portal makes logistical sense in connecting everything together, I just think (as you pointed out so done purposefully) the European architecture is a strange visual in an otherwise so uniquely Arabic area. I do like the inclusion of various cuisines along both the Silk Road and the historical timeline though, so I can set aside the issues I have with the architecture for the story elements you have.
The bazaar itself is great and a natural and necessary inclusion for this style of land. I can imagine this having a lot of fun merchandise and souvenirs in a hectic and exciting shopping experience that may just make the emporium after fireworks seem tame by comparison. It does seem like possibly a good chunk of writing didn’t render properly as
Baghdad Bites cuts off awkwardly and when I went into the conversation to see if it was shared there it was not, so just something to be aware of. I got the general vibe though and I can pretty easily assume what you had featured in there. Likely kabobs and other street food. Maybe one of those Ice cream vendors that messes with people? If anything in this triumph of a land had to be lost to the ether, I’m glad it was food carts and not anything else. My only real issue was the redundancy this bazaar creates with the thieves one, giving us two bazaars in one land. Not the worst crime ever committed, but I think the thieves could've been turned into a single shop instead.
Fortune Tellers and
Bandit Battle both help fill that niche of streetmosphre I was praising earlier in my review.A swashbuckling sword fighting street performance sounds like something Eisner Disney would implement because there’s no way Bob Iger would associate Disney with scary things like swords and fun, but nonetheless it feels very Golden Age Disney World in the same way the land represents the Islamic Golden Age so I greatly appreciate that. The Fortune Tellers, though, maybe a top three thing in this whole project. I love stupid theme park comedy shows like this and having three “mystics” that are actually charlatans one-upping one another in hilarious guest-interactive performances is brilliant and perfect. The bit at the end where they say someone will ride a magic carpet in the next hour and gives out a fast pass is equal parts funny, realistic, and hopeful as it implies the return of paper fastpasses (or maybe a gigantic fastpass you have to carry around until you use it? I can imagine both). Regardless, both shows are great additions and full out this land beautifully.
Finally we enter
The Learning District which really brought this whole land together for me. While I said the Den o’ Thieves could be its own full land I’m so ridiculously glad it wasn’t because, while incredibly strong on its own, this stuff just brought the whole thing around so incredibly. The Islamic golden age is so underrated as a part of the medieval and renaissance periods despite having some of the largest contributions to knowledge and the arts of any region in the world and the most acknowledgement we ever get for it is maybe a footnote in a text book and/or a line of Judi Dench dialogue in Spaceship Earth. Making an entire subland around the discoveries made by these Arabic and Muslim scholars is so creative and represents a part of history so well without ever being boring.
The
Golden Gardens is a great way to do another beautiful calm garden area like the Chinese gardens in Lianyun Valley but in a wholly different way. The major differences between the two garden styles adds to the beauty within both and this garden makes for another beautiful space to just hang out and people watch out to complete the tour and see everything else it has to offer. It’s like a Maharajah Jungle Trek for culture nerds instead of animal nerds. Luckily (or more realistically, unluckily) for me, I’m both so I greatly appreciate this addition.
House of Wisdom is another brilliant inclusion and the fact it can be viewed from both the queue of the coaster as well as just from its own room is wonderful. Another attraction similar to the opening of Disneyland’s Enchanted Tiki Room, you can feel the inspiration without it feeling like a cheap ripoff because the subject material is so different. This may come as a surprise to many but I love edutainment and this is the perfect way to do that with some incidental entertainment while you wait in line that tricks you into learning. I also love the little gags you put in at the end, very classic Walt Disney Imagineering.
But really the big star here is
Algebra Road and justifiably so. I’m not a coaster head, the most intense coaster I’ve done is Mako or Kraken at SeaWorld and both were almost too much for me. I prefer a story coaster like Guardians or Everest with an element of thrill rather than the huge airtime and g-force machines that so many people love. With that acknowledgement, forgive my ignorance here but when I saw the video of how this works I audibly said “oh f***”, I didn’t know something like that could exist. I don’t know how intense it is or anything but I imagine not too bad assuming you’re adding it to a Disney park and not a Cedar Point or something (HINT HINT) but regardless, I was blown away by this choice. I was also blown away by the decision to make a freaking coaster based around algebra! I was a C-student in math pretty much my whole school career and so a math-themed anything just never appealed to me. Having grown, I still absolutely suck at math but I’ve grown to appreciate its impact while I use a calculator or my fingers to solve any problem that comes up. An Algebra-themed coaster would’ve seemed like the worst idea ever to high school me, but to adult me this is the kind of generationally good idea that I hate you for coming up with it instead of me. I cannot begin to explain any of it nor even truly understand it, but the abstract visuals and the coaster’s direct movements tied to the equations, just generationally good.
With
Branmere the hits just keep coming because this is now the third of three absolute bangers in a row. I’ll get it out early though, I have one pretty major complaint here that derives from this team having very little conversation. Crook’s Corner is pretty much 1:1 the same thing as Den o’ Thieves in Crossroads City. Two seedy crime-filled corners of a land with IP tie-ins and a sword fight streetmosphere show. I don’t know if this was purposeful or not, but it kind of shows me that ideas and finer details weren’t really ironed out between the people writing each land to figure out who got the sword fight show and who got the criminal element, etc. I would’ve liked to have seen more back and forth between players here because you all are so strong in your creativity and writing but all of your communication skills, at least for this round, were really lacking and it shows up here. I know that the scale of this project was bigger than you all were expecting and having to divide it all up makes for less communication time, but a simple “this is gonna be in my land” goes a long way. That’s not at all to say this or Crossroads is bad and both criminal elements make sense certainly, but the similarities between the two are noteworthy nonetheless.
The similarities may be a logistical problem I had and something I had to bring up, but at the same time maybe there’s some magic in those similarities because Branmere rivals Crossroads City as my favorite land in the park. Both of these lands are so expertly and lovingly crafted from two titans of the game at this point. Of course, we all know how good
@Outbound is, but it’s been amazing to watch how much
@Lord Fozzinator has grown as well, especially since Manor of Mysteries where they had some, uh, interesting challenges. The 1600s seaport setting within England is so beautifully iconic that it makes for a great theme park concept and you’ve realized that fully. The shopping here with
Branmere General Store and
Madame Otatia’s Curiosities both fit the seaport vibe you were going for. I know it’s not exactly the same, but here in Maine one of our old seaport towns has a main drag by the water and two of the most prominent features there are a big 1700s general store that’s been fixed up but remains very similar to its old days, and a spooky witch lady’s store where she sells crystals and whatnot and does fortune readings. It’s kind of funny to think that both of these things are just staples throughout history.
I love the inclusion of ships you get to explore as well. As a New Englander, school trips to Boston to walk on the old Revolutionary War era vessels were a lot of fun (for me at least) and so having something like that is certainly worth checking out and having in a Britain seaport land. I like the selection of ships you went with as well because of the variety, though a few things stuck out to me with your selections which aren’t actually a big issue but I figured I need to critique here, not just gush. The first is a much less important issue which is probably just a terminology issue more than anything, but the idea of a whale skeleton hanging from a mast is a funny visual. I assume you mean off the side, probably starboard side, where most whaling ships held the carcasses because a big whale dangling over everyone and blocking the breeze to the sails would be a pretty big issue haha. The other very minor critique is the inclusion of a Spanish Galleon which, while a very cool looking ship, doesn’t really fit the time as a Spanish ship in a British port would be blown out of the water in most of the 1600s. Again, not at all a major issue because this is a theme park not a historical reenactment, I just thought I’d point those things out.
The dining here is all good, with
John’s Oyster Bar being particularly interesting to me because while maybe not historically accurate terminology, oyster bars are very very popular and oysters as a food source always have been. I also love the setting of this by the water, it warms my cold New Englander heart. The
Lord James Inn has some genuinely insane background lore here that I’m not sure is exactly Disney friendly, but yeah an old British seaside villa serving as a table service restaurant fits beautifully. British food is always one of those things that gets people riled up, but I think having a restaurant that serves things like pot roast, roasted meats, shepherds pie, etc. would fit really well. Both of these places I think I’d happily stop at if I were visiting.
Crook’s Square, despite my qualms with it being so similar to Den O’ Thieves, is a really fun spot where I can see pickpockets and pirates all hanging out. You’ve nailed the vibe here of what you were going for and the supplemental stuff that fills out this subland sells the aesthetic incredibly.
Hook’s Fish & Chips is a nice callback to the Jolly Roger in Disneyland which sold tuna(?) but updated to sell food people actually want to eat at a theme park. Fish & chips is iconic, classic, and light that it makes a ton of sense to feature it here, and if it’s similar or the same as in Epcot you’ve got a huge seller on your hands.
Mr. Bloodthorn’s Store is a solid shop and a good way to sell the piratey things without them intruding on the main land. Pirates are beloved and iconic and having a second store outside of Magic Kingdom dedicated to selling t-shirts with cringey things that the worst people you know will buy like “Captain of this Vacation” or whatever is great.
Streetmosphere here is great, the redcoat patrols remind me of the stormtrooper patrols at Galaxy’s Edge, the only issue is being in Florida, I’m sure those poor cast members would go home crying as the patriotic ‘muricans are nothing but nice to them. There’s no insane people in our little fantasy world though, so I like the thematic element it adds. The rest I don’t have a ton to say about, I like the lived-in feel you’ve given to this land with the citizens, the militia, the pirates, and the merchants though, it’s something Disney once did very well and has since shirked on and I wish they’d go back
If I had a nickel for every boat dark ride at Disney World set in a mid-century European fort centered somewhat around the mythology of the seas, I’d have two nickels which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. All jokes aside,
Tales of the Ocean is a fun way to do a major attraction for a land set at the height of the British Empire without at any point celebrating its colonial and imperial terror it wreaked across much of the known world. Instead it does the opposite by featuring a diverse array of stories from across the globe, stories many of these British sailors probably stole from people, but unique stories nonetheless. I think the selection of stories you took are unique and while I gave Team Dream a bunch of sh*t about taking multiple stories and putting them into one dark ride, I do think this was better executed than that attraction. Rather than really obvious transitions that broke up the ride experience and the overbearing narration, this felt more like a classic PotC where the storytelling is done by the visuals alone and the transitions were more natural. I still have some of the same criticisms as I did there where the multiple stories angle is a bit much for one ride, but by and large I think this is a better executed version of what they were going for which is why I have less issue with this attraction. You did mention that the fortress serves as a hotel as well though? I’m gonna need more of that lol, not just gonna let it slide without elaboration.
The Crook’s Twist is a really fun way to do a family coaster that I’d never have even remotely thought of. Having a bunch of drunk pirates engineering together a coaster may be the single most terrifying thing I’ve heard, but at the same time I used to ride the rides at the local carnival and there’s no way that wasn’t the modern equivalent of what you’re describing so carry on. Having a spinning coaster with that thematic history though is really creative and I think it’s a great way to get an outdoor coaster to fit a land while preserving the integrity of the 1600s theming. Of the three coasters we’ve seen so far, this is certainly the simplest, but simple doesn’t mean bad because I actually think it’s insanely fun and unique and would probably be a massive hit. I adore the homemade feel you’ve inserted here with the wooden figures and dragon and everything. It feels like something someone’s hometown park (HINT HINT) would have earnestly so while this is more tongue-in-cheek, it feels so wonderfully nostalgic and creative in a way few other projects I’ve seen do.
The Peter Pan stuff is also great, especially where it’s centered around Captain Hook instead of Peter Pan. While I was going to complain that the Peter Pan characters and stories are more intrinsically linked to the early 1900s, I immediately had egg on my face because the whole point of Neverland is they never age so you can set them in literally any timeframe and it doesn’t matter, so good job getting one over on little old me.
Tick Tock Croc Spin is another wonderfully done flat ride (you all nailed flat rides this round, it’s crazy) that just does what a flat ride needs to do. It’s fun, it’s short, it’s got solid capacity, and it adds kinetic energy to the land.
Hook: The Musical, on the other hand is a phenomenal concept and I really have nothing bad to say about it. I’ve never liked the “Disney villains but give them a tragic backstory to show they’re not actually evil” that movies like Maleficent and Cruella gave us, but if there was one single character I’d be okay with getting a story like that, it’d be Captain Hook. You telling this whole story is great and I think it’d be a blast, but the end interrupted by Peter Pan to tell us why it’s all made up is expertly done as well. I would’ve been okay with this just being his real tale and make us feel for Hook and get his side of the story, but I also think the way you’ve done this to have Hook just gaslight us all is also very very funny and works very well. Overall, Branmere is another really really fantastic land which I just cannot say bad things about. Amazing job!
(part 1 as my review exceeded 40,000 characters apparently… oops)
