lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
The same thing that caused a purge at Universal Creative and pretty much every other experience design company, the pandemic.
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News Bruce Vaughn Returns to Disney as Co-Lead of Walt Disney Imagineering
- Thread starter DCBaker
- Start date
Joel
Well-Known Member
I love the Muppets, but thank God I don't live in the alternate reality where that happened.
"Generic stories that you grew to love"? What a dismissive view of some of the greatest theme park attractions ever made. I'm so glad Iger finally rescued us from being Stockholm syndromed into accepting crap (built by masters of their craft whose creativity was unrestrained by lame corporate demands) that didn't even have Lightning McQueen in it!
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
I certainly think the pandemic was a factor in just about everything that happened at that time. Not sure if there were other factors though.
Disgruntled Walt
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
Wow, that's an all-time bad take right there! If I actually were Walt, I'd be offended by this gross mischaracterization.
Walt wanted to place guests within experiences unlike anything they had ever seen or done before. A pirate battle, a ghostly jamboree in a graveyard, a jungle river cruise. These are not generic stories that people grew to love; these are each a masterclass in immersive storytelling, devoid from pop culture tie-ins. Sure, Walt knew people wanted to see Snow White and Peter Pan attractions, but these hardly excited him like these immersive storytelling attractions.
Rohde is one of the Imagineers who gets this, and I have to believe in his heart of hearts he wishes the Avatar acquisition hadn't happened. He did what he could with the mandate, but based on everything else he had worked on prior to that, I am sure the IP mandate frustrated him and prevented him from being as creative as he would have been otherwise.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
C’mon. Nobody liked the non-descript boat ride themed to Mexico or whatever until they fixed it by adding Jack Sparrow. Disney just didn’t know what else to do which is why they kept building such a boring ride so many times.
el_super
Well-Known Member
Westerns, Fairy-Tales, pirates and ghosts stories... these are all things people were very very familiar with and just followed the pop-culture trends of the time. They were building a whole IP around Davy Crockett and the True Life Adventures. Not just Fantasyland. The leveraging of their IP, especially Davy Crockett and the marketing surrounding it, is what set Disneyland apart from comparable experiences at the time (like Knott's Berry Farm).
I don't see how anyone could truthfully believe that the inclusion of IP makes that much of a difference in the actual output of the product. Would anyone here be willing to claim Galaxy's Edge to be a better experience if the all the Star Wars references were removed and it was just "alien planet land." Probably not.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
This is a lie.
Gusey
Well-Known Member
Wrong bird. Donald Duck, not Jack Sparrow
el_super
Well-Known Member
Claiming this is a lie is pretty low. Sure Davy Crockett wasn't a cultural phenomenon in the 1950s. Sure.
But I know that refuting this as a lie is really the only thing you can do. Otherwise you would see that most of these arguments about IP versus non-IP are really based in nothing but personal preference for one type of attraction over another.
That the audience has astoundingly picked IP inclusion over everything else should really just be the end of the discussion. It was for Imagineering.
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
I’m not disagreeing but would probably phrase it a little differently.
Experienced professionals (not necessarily older… depends on how long they’ve actually been working in an industry) - know the reality and constraints of the industry.
It’s not that older people don’t have energy, they’ve learned to use energy better and on things that will actually see results.
flynnibus
Premium Member
Orlando is never going to replace the synergies the SoCal scene has... same way putting film production in FL flopped. And I'm not just talking film - we're talking culture and creative too. Trying to put WDI which tries to span the entire breadth of art, sound, staging, illustration, engineering, manufacturing, lighting, writing, performance, etc out on an island is a tall tall order. The need to tap into so many different hiring disciplines - it's hard to excel when isolated. And Lake Nora is nothing but suburbia island.. you don't get the entropy of all the other creative activities working all around.. you're gonna be floating the majority of stuff yourself.
This was never anything but a 'relocating a HQ for money reasons' -- and that means all the other losses were just acceptable reductions.. and people that work because they WANT to.. don't tend to be happy giving things up just so corp can save money. Portability is a big thing in job security.. so moving to an isolated place is always a big risk that turns many off.
JD80
Well-Known Member
I'm not dismissing anything. The IP of "space station rollercoaster" and "haunted house" and "pirates adventure" are generic. What made them beloved was WDI's creativity and craftsmanship (and nostalgia over decades). There isn't anything special about the "IP" of those. No specific characters or specific settings that drive them. Haunted Mansion is really the only one of the three that has a specific narrative associated with it.
I also don't agree that going to WDI and saying I need an Encanto ride is restraining creativity. There has always been mandates by leadership about building the next ride/attraction.
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
But picking the IP first, always, most likely does.
If everything at DAK had to be an IP - the park wouldn’t be what it is.
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
I also think that watching something play out in real life would be enormously beneficial in a field where the chance for real world feedback is probably limited. In many careers you can get feedback frequently and quickly - you look at the sales on many small projects, see progress or lack of for patients or students or clients, see how many customers are walking in the door each day, etc. For large scale projects that take years to design and build, getting some kind of feel for how things play out in the real world is going to take years.
HMF
Well-Known Member
Well everything WDI does is going to be designed by AI in the near future at this rate so why bother?
HMF
Well-Known Member
I would assume the IP factor was a sticking point for the ones who actually wanted to be creative.
HMF
Well-Known Member
I am not sure if Rohde had his heart in turning DCA's Tower Of Terror into an oil rig either.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
HMF
Well-Known Member
I agree but I don't think people in Burbank care.
JD80
Well-Known Member
How? Tower of Terror's ride system was picked first and then the IP was applied to it. Does dictating a ride system restrict creativity too? There will always be a directive that comes first for any project.