That's how jobs in the creative field work
I assume Josh understands that Villains is the one area/land that he is going to be judged on the most. It’s basically all going to be built during his time as CEO and there is (at least in the public’s eyes) a similar land in their direct competition’s newest park. (I personally don’t think that they are in anyway similar beyond vaguely gothic imagery) he knows he needs to hit this out of the park and has to splurge on it.
It sucks but it’s part of the job with many creative fields. If it’s the sort of thing someone would quit over then they’re not going to last long in the industry and probably aren’t cut out for the job. This doesn’t just apply to theme entertainment design but also things like movie and television making or even just basic architecture. Even when something is built there is still plenty of work that is tossed aside.
A complete concept design package, which is used for official approval to build, is not just an elevator pitch and some vague art. There are entire sets of drawings and artwork. That they chose to release vague imagery, which can even be created for the purpose of being published, doesn’t mean that’s what is actually done.
Len said he was spitballing with regard to the MMRR/Rise comparison. I don’t think you should infer much at all from the comment.
I was thinking this same thing. I work for a company that gets a lot of public attention and if I went on a forum dedicated to my work and started talking about my job I’d definitely be unemployed within days.
WDW is currently working (or clearing for) 5 lands: Cars; Villains; Monsters; Tropics; Animation.
That actually sort of happened to BOTH my daughters…2 years of community college to get their associates degrees, following the GUIDANCE of their HS guidance counselors only to lose over HALF their credits when they transferred to get their bachelor’s degree…lucky my youngest daughter had an awesome academic advisor who bent over backwards and got 80% of her credits accepted. So, YES it does happen…
Hopefully one lesson they've learned from Epic is how merciless the criticism will be if the new development areas are too hot and lacking shade. Magic Kingdom's Frontierland is significantly influenced by the fact it is a parade corridor and therefore isn't able to have as much tree coverage as it could. With the loss of RoA and replacement with a lot of concrete the heat is only going to go up.
Think of designers of cars that work for years on a project only for the company to change course or a fashion designer…it happens ALL the time.
There aren’t really any grand secrets that require visiting as a guest. They have access to people and vendors involved in the project, especially with the way Universal handled COVID and dint bring people back as promised.
I think scrapped is throwing a lot of people off. I didn't take Len's message as "this whole thing is being reworked top to bottom". I thought of it more as they're going back and seeing where they can improve it more and how. Now for shops/lands/scenic that could be a top to bottom rework. My guess for the rides though is that the systems are in place and now (spitballing here) where something may have been a screen, they may be saying put an animatronic/actual scenic in there. Reckless speculation here, but I think Disney probably saw what Uni did with Monsters Unchained over at Epic and wants to push their Villains dark ride in that direction.
The space requirements for a screen aren’t the same as for practical scenery and animatronics. It’s not really that simple to just swap the two.