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DAK “Zootopia” is being created for the Tree of Life theater

HauntedPirate

Park nostalgist
Premium Member
After all, it is just a series of cheep 3D ticks
Explode Disney World GIF by Muppet Wiki
 

DrStarlander

Well-Known Member
[EDIT: What is below is not my full post. It seems to have been edited and I'm unaware why. The context of what is remaining is missing.]

I have plenty of complaints about the show itself but others have covered it. I'm going to toss a different log onto the fire:


Returning to big picture, I just have to wonder, could a better storyline that reconciles the premise of Animal Kingdom and the Tree of Life and Zootopia have been created using AI? We talk about Disney competing with Universal, but I wonder if the Imagineers will mostly be competing with AI in coming years, in terms of storylines, graphic design, and more. I'm not excited about that at all.

But I think Imagineering is exposing itself, by choice. I think the low standards they're setting, the quality of talent they're seemingly recruiting and requiring, the alleged firing of seasoned yet higher-paid talent, is what opens up that vulnerability. I think there needs to be a major wake-up at WDI, and especially in HR, that they need to find and hire and retain "the best" out there, and raise the bar on the work from where it's currently at.
 

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lazyboy97o

Well-Known Member
Precisely; mythical creatures are part of the original park concept which basically means the park opened with a thesis not limited to just "real" creatures. It's more so about the fantastical, literal, and imagined interactions between humans and animals. More importantly, the park is designed to raise awareness on the different animals that nature has to offer a story on how we can conserve the stories and creatures that come from it.
Mythological and fictional or fantastical are not all the same thing. The story told in the queue of Expedition Everest is all about how even if the yeti is not an actual animal, it is a very real cultural creation that represents the power of nature. That’s the role played by the inclusion of mythological creations. It wasn’t just any random fictional creatures. It was fictional animals that had a cultural history about how we know and understand the world.
 

Chester&Hester Enthusiast

Well-Known Member
1. Carrot vision

2. Two-way "watch what happens" event. The audience is watching how Zoogether Day is being celebrated all over the biomes. Live feeds can go both ways, like TV news anchors conversing with field reporters.

3. Gazelle will sing for the upcoming movie. Sounds like she joins in with the music at the end. Otherwise, the attraction would just be a 5 minute MTV video of Shakira singing.

4. It's a big ball of dirt from all the biomes representing unity. All the animals paw prints are on it as if signing a pact. Think of it as the Fountains Dirtball of Nations.

[From what I've gathered from vloggers showing the signs, plaques, and thematic nicknacks.]

1. Oh, no, I get that. I guess I'm more asking what Carrot Vision is. Is any effort made to explain other than "it's this random thing Judy's family invented"?

2. Yes, I'm familiar with two-way feeds. This is not remotely close to how they work. They are looking at and speaking directly to him. There are no monitors in sight, and the filming is supposedly being done by drones (a conceit that seems to be quickly abandoned), which are not themselves shown to have monitors.

3. Again, why include her in this specific project if she doesn't sing? It's not like she's some compelling character. The song is her whole thing.

4. Eef.
 
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EricsBiscuit

Well-Known Member
Can you explain what’s wrong with that message?
It’s overused and, for a park about nature, counter factual. All you have to do is ride the safari to realize that Zootopia does not belong in a park about nature and conservation. Predators eat prey. That is nature. This show takes the movie’s IP and tries to cram a message that the movie doesn’t try to make.
 

AndyS2992

Well-Known Member
I have plenty of complaints about the show itself but others have covered it. I'm going to toss a different log onto the fire:

One of the thing that most disappoints me in the Disney Parks is the quality of the graphic design in the parks. By that I mean signage, posters, menus, etc. They are regularly bad. And I'm stumped because there are incredibly talented graphic designers out there that could be recruited to WDI, and there are amazing freelancers that can be leaned on. With visibility of online portfolios (global talent) these days, there's no excuse for WDI not to find and hire the best.

So project after project I see things like this:
View attachment 890709
The flyer for "The Cub" theater is bad. It's layperson with Microsoft Word and 20 minutes bad. It's not even graphic design or art direction to be honest. That curtain frame/border is clip art-ish, the starburst and theater masks too. And the fonts, colors, and presentation of type lacks any creativity or elegance.

So of course I first have to ask, is this ironic? Is this intentionally terrible, to represent the bad lay-people-designed flyers we see in real life on bulletin boards at the coffee house or laundromat? Wow, if so, that's risky, that's meta. People might not get that.

But I've seen so much bad graphic design at Disney Parks, I just think it's bad. And it raises questions for me about who they're hiring, how are they being mentored and managed, and what bar they're expected to hit.

So now I want to apologize because I'm going to bring up a touchy subject. I wrote a request to have a poster made using AI (which I will not post because I believe there's a policy against AI art) with the content seen on this poster. And it's better. More appealing, interesting, thematic, specific (art directed). And it took under 5 minutes.

Returning to big picture, I just have to wonder, could a better storyline that reconciles the premise of Animal Kingdom and the Tree of Life and Zootopia have been created using AI? We talk about Disney competing with Universal, but I wonder if the Imagineers will mostly be competing with AI in coming years, in terms of storylines, graphic design, and more. I'm not excited about that at all.

But I think Imagineering is exposing itself, by choice. I think the low standards they're setting, the quality of talent they're seemingly recruiting and requiring, the alleged firing of seasoned yet higher-paid talent, is what opens up that vulnerability. I think there needs to be a major wake-up at WDI, and especially in HR, that they need to find and hire and retain "the best" out there, and raise the bar on the work from where it's currently at.
The poster is supposed to look bad on purpose, it looks exactly like the type of poster a community theatre would put out on a local notice board, often hastily thrown together by an older middle aged woman with limited computer abilities and no design qualifications to speak of, using an outdated version of Microsoft Office on an old decaying Windows XP computer in the back room. So yes, it's purposely ironic. What exactly would you rather it look like?
 

EricsBiscuit

Well-Known Member
The poster is supposed to look bad on purpose, it looks exactly like the type of poster a community theatre would put out on a local notice board, often hastily thrown together by an older middle aged woman with limited computer abilities and no design qualifications to speak of, using an outdated version of Microsoft Office on an old decaying Windows XP computer in the back room. So yes, it's purposely ironic. What exactly would you rather it look like?
In that case to hell with a community theater. For the admission price I want Royal Albert’s Hall!
 

networkpro

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
Yes
It’s overused and, for a park about nature, counter factual. All you have to do is ride the safari to realize that Zootopia does not belong in a park about nature and conservation. Predators eat prey. That is nature. This show takes the movie’s IP and tries to cram a message that the movie doesn’t try to make.

And my (not Erics so cast any dispersions my way) addition is it is also an example of how people want to expand or modify everything presented to reflect their own personal worldviews or its offensive.
 

DrStarlander

Well-Known Member
The poster is supposed to look bad on purpose, it looks exactly like the type of poster a community theatre would put out on a local notice board, often hastily thrown together by an older middle aged woman with limited computer abilities and no design qualifications to speak of, using an outdated version of Microsoft Office on an old decaying Windows XP computer in the back room. So yes, it's purposely ironic. What exactly would you rather it look like?
Well, I guess they nailed it then. Not sure "bad on purpose" is a great strategy when so much other work is "bad not on purpose."

As for what I'd do, given that community theater posters range in quality and not all of them are this bad (literally, a non-designer on MS Word), to avoid the risk of this "immersion" going over people's heads and it just looking cheap, I would have gone a step up to something more on the level of these posters:
BayouCountry.jpg
 

AidenRodriguez731

Well-Known Member

Architectural Guinea Pig

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
I think the point comes across pretty easily, but this sounds like a great excuse to post about Dinoland.

Compare and contrast posters from the bulletin boards down the street, which are supposed to have the same "random people pin things up" feel:

So many of the “handwritten” notes aren’t handwritten and just typed out with a corny font which is arguably worse lol
 

Disney Analyst

Well-Known Member
It’s overused and, for a park about nature, counter factual. All you have to do is ride the safari to realize that Zootopia does not belong in a park about nature and conservation. Predators eat prey. That is nature. This show takes the movie’s IP and tries to cram a message that the movie doesn’t try to make.

So again, what exactly is wrong with the message “everyone is welcome”?

I didn’t ask about Zootopia, or animal kingdom. I asked that poster what was wrong with the message they highlighted.

Seems pretty innocuous to me, the message specifically.
 

Sirwalterraleigh

Premium Member
I’m not old enough to have went to most of those attractions. Misses for me include: Mission Space, BatB sing along, dumbo/flying carpets rides, Journey of Little Mermaid in its current state, Nemo, Speedway, and I’m not a super big fan of Jungle Cruise anymore as I feel like it would work much better with improv instead of the same jokes over and over
I got it…

So I won’t see any lectures on nostalgia, branding, or how things are “better now than they used to be”?

Perfect
 

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