DAK 'Encanto' and 'Indiana Jones'-themed experiences at Animal Kingdom

[Jedi14]

Joe Rohde also thinks that a giant oil rig towering over DCA was a good idea. As great as he can be, He is not above selling out.

What?

 

[lazyboy97o]

Joe Rohde also thinks that a giant oil rig towering over DCA was a good idea. As great as he can be, He is not above selling out.

Being employed is selling out. That’s exactly how it works.

 

[eddie104]

Yep. Three days of really good stuff. It's just fun to see talented people doing things well.

WDI made a point of saying everything in their presentation was confidential and not to share it. And I have to honor that.

For last year's stuff I explicitly asked before they started talking, and they said both legal & comms had approved. So last year it was okay, but not this year.

I will say, like I did last year, that I'm super, super impressed with the dedication WDI has to honoring the culture and stories of the Maya. They're a great team doing good stuff. Really excited for y'all to see it.

I would have to guess they are much further along in the development process now.

So final designs are probably close to being complete at this point.

 

[Movielover]

Just give me one capybara that I can cuddle with and I will forgive them on anything else they do in this land.

They are my spirit animal!

 

[HMF]

Being employed is selling out. That’s exactly how it works.

He was close to retirement age anyway and if I didn't like what my employer was asking me to do, I would absolutely head for the door and seek new employment.

 

[VicariousCorpse]

He was close to retirement age anyway and if I didn't like what my employer was asking me to do, I would absolutely head for the door and seek new employment.

Let me get this right... Joe should have just gotten another job after 40 years and disown his life's work and benefits at the cusp of retirement? Am I understanding you correctly?

 

[FigmentFan82]

You guys seriously don't get it, do you?

I know Disney claims that the Encanto ride will take place on the day Antonio got his gift. That doesn't mean I believe your claims that the ride will focus on animals.

How long has your record been broken and how much will it take to fix? Maybe we can start a gofundme

 

[lazyboy97o]

He was close to retirement age anyway and if I didn't like what my employer was asking me to do, I would absolutely head for the door and seek new employment.

You could do that maybe twice before you started to get a very negative reputation and will not want to hire or work with you. Quitting also kills your eligibility for unemployment benefits. And when you do get to such a high level you’re typically not a normal at-will employee but working under a contract.

 

[FigmentFan82]

He was close to retirement age anyway and if I didn't like what my employer was asking me to do, I would absolutely head for the door and seek new employment.

I figured it out, you’re Mother Gothel right?! Must be, because mother always knows best!

 

[Timothy_Q]

Love logging in here to see what a 19 year old who has never drawn a stick figure thinks famous imagineer Joe Rohde should and shouldn't have done in his career

WDWMagic never disappoints

 

[flyerjab]

Joe Rohde also thinks that a giant oil rig towering over DCA was a good idea. As great as he can be, He is not above selling out.

Your opinions are…interesting.

 

[MR.Dis]

By the way, how many people know the infra structure of the Tree of Life in Animal Kingdom is an oil rig?

 

[DisneyHead123]

Since people are talking about Joe Rohde here already, will roll in a couple of interesting Instagram posts of his. First, today he posted something about an announcement he has coming up involving a future project. Wonder if this is Disney related or a different direction?

 

[DisneyHead123]

Second, he posted this yesterday I think, mildly critical or at least thoughtful about too much IP in the parks:

Theme parks, are not just commercial mechanisms, nor are they simply stories built into a physical environment…They form a link between the creators of the entertainment and the audience.

A story, a work of art, a narrative place, connects with us partially because of what us called Agency… The idea that somebody made it. We are evolutionarily biased to detect agency, and to care very much whether it is benign, negative, or highly positive.

The more lavish, the more exultant and beautiful a creation is, the better we feel about the person who made it, the “agent” …and that it was made for us. The agency becomes kind of bountiful gesture, a peacock tail. Art is a non-essential commodity. Its’ appeal is neither rational, nor transactional, but biological… Like a peacock’s reaction to another peacock’s tail. But we want a peacock, not a decoy.

So parks and attractions are people to people communications.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom fans like the park partly because it is lavish in detail, (peacock) and because communication seems very real and unrehearsed, (not decoy.) The burden of IP is somewhat less in the park… and intellectual property restrains performers within the strictly defined canon of the intellectual property, instead of people acting towards each other in a more open-ended improvisational and natural way. This natural relationship is more possible when the entertainment venue lacks such rigid rules of engagement.

Theater presents what Aristotle called mimesis, that is: to enjoy the illusion while at the same time enjoying the fact that the illusion was created by someone. Without an “agent” creator, mimesis becomes deception, a very different emotion.

For this reason, I am wary of technological interventions, like AI, robotics, and generative computational design… Because to some degree, they remove the perception of Agency.… That there is actually someone behind the curtain. Theme parks are saturated with emotion. And people want that emotional connection to be genuine. In order to be genuine, those emotions need to be connected, through the art, to some person on the other side… Not to a machine. To a peacock, not a decoy.

I don't entirely agree with him here but I think this is a thought provoking framework. I don't entirely agree because I am a hopeless spiritual type, and I would say that art and pretty much any worthwhile experience is always - yes, always - about some form of transcendence, expansion, and finding something bigger than oneself. (That is kinda boilerplate modern day spiritual-think but I think sometimes oft repeated truths take hold because they are, well, true.)

I would say true connection with anyone is one way to step outside of self-concern for a moment. Connection with someone who is in their own way plugged in to more expansive truths (i.e., an artist and their work) is another way to accomplish this. But I would also say that IP and AI have a place here as well. Artists can be great, terrible, or anything in between. IP, likewise, can represent universal truths (I believe Rohde has talked about universal themes in theme parks elsewhere), trite pop culture junk, and anything in between. (AI, to my mind, doesn't need agency to be a wonderful thing in the same way that you can be an atheist and enjoy the beauty of nature. Nature is physics just being physics, AI is information being information - I think human agency is one path towards expansion but not the only path.)

At any rate, no matter what you think, interesting that he's leaning a little bit away from IP here. Not sure if there's anything to read in the tea leaves here or if he's just having fun musing.

 

[lentesta]

I would have to guess they are much further along in the development process now.

So final designs are probably close to being complete at this point.

My lawyer says I don't know.

 

[britain]

Second, he posted this yesterday I think, mildly critical or at least thoughtful about too much IP in the parks:

Theme parks, are not just commercial mechanisms, nor are they simply stories built into a physical environment…They form a link between the creators of the entertainment and the audience.

A story, a work of art, a narrative place, connects with us partially because of what us called Agency… The idea that somebody made it. We are evolutionarily biased to detect agency, and to care very much whether it is benign, negative, or highly positive.

The more lavish, the more exultant and beautiful a creation is, the better we feel about the person who made it, the “agent” …and that it was made for us. The agency becomes kind of bountiful gesture, a peacock tail. Art is a non-essential commodity. Its’ appeal is neither rational, nor transactional, but biological… Like a peacock’s reaction to another peacock’s tail. But we want a peacock, not a decoy.

So parks and attractions are people to people communications.

Disney’s Animal Kingdom fans like the park partly because it is lavish in detail, (peacock) and because communication seems very real and unrehearsed, (not decoy.) The burden of IP is somewhat less in the park… and intellectual property restrains performers within the strictly defined canon of the intellectual property, instead of people acting towards each other in a more open-ended improvisational and natural way. This natural relationship is more possible when the entertainment venue lacks such rigid rules of engagement.

Theater presents what Aristotle called mimesis, that is: to enjoy the illusion while at the same time enjoying the fact that the illusion was created by someone. Without an “agent” creator, mimesis becomes deception, a very different emotion.

For this reason, I am wary of technological interventions, like AI, robotics, and generative computational design… Because to some degree, they remove the perception of Agency.… That there is actually someone behind the curtain. Theme parks are saturated with emotion. And people want that emotional connection to be genuine. In order to be genuine, those emotions need to be connected, through the art, to some person on the other side… Not to a machine. To a peacock, not a decoy.

I don't entirely agree with him here but I think this is a thought provoking framework. I don't entirely agree because I am a hopeless spiritual type, and I would say that art and pretty much any worthwhile experience is always - yes, always - about some form of transcendence, expansion, and finding something bigger than oneself. (That is kinda boilerplate modern day spiritual-think but I think sometimes oft repeated truths take hold because they are, well, true.)

I would say true connection with anyone is one way to step outside of self-concern for a moment. Connection with someone who is in their own way plugged in to more expansive truths (i.e., an artist and their work) is another way to accomplish this. But I would also say that IP and AI have a place here as well. Artists can be great, terrible, or anything in between. IP, likewise, can represent universal truths (I believe Rohde has talked about universal themes in theme parks elsewhere), trite pop culture junk, and anything in between. (AI, to my mind, doesn't need agency to be a wonderful thing in the same way that you can be an atheist and enjoy the beauty of nature. Nature is physics just being physics, AI is information being information - I think human agency is one path towards expansion but not the only path.)

At any rate, no matter what you think, interesting that he's leaning a little bit away from IP here. Not sure if there's anything to read in the tea leaves here or if he's just having fun musing.

I also think there's a bit of commentary on the movement to eliminate "Star Imagineers".
We don't want you to think of this as a Marc Davis attraction, and this as a Ken Anderson attraction, or this as a Tony Baxter attraction. We only want you to think of these as DISNEY attractions.

 

[BrianLo]

I also think there's a bit of commentary on the movement to eliminate "Star Imagineers".
We don't want you to think of this as a Marc Davis attraction, and this as a Ken Anderson attraction, or this as a Tony Baxter attraction. We only want you to think of these as DISNEY attractions.

I don’t think that’s true. The imagineering branch of the company has become more direct forward facing again. The Honda Centre is making things more “rockstar”. It just takes some time before the faces become more recognizable. All the new project announcements from D23 were authored by leads and not random Disney Parks Blogger 32.

I’ve never seen to some recognizable front facing Imagineers on the D23 show floor as last event. There were like 12 “stage worthy” imagineers floating around their pavilion on Sunday.

But as suggested, probably people don’t want limelight because that just exposes one to deep toxicity.

 

[DisneyHead123]

I also think there's a bit of commentary on the movement to eliminate "Star Imagineers".
We don't want you to think of this as a Marc Davis attraction, and this as a Ken Anderson attraction, or this as a Tony Baxter attraction. We only want you to think of these as DISNEY attractions.

I have no idea if that's true or not, but interesting possibility. Even if that wasn't the original intent it could definitely speak to "decision by committee" vs. a decision made with true passion and vision driving it.

 

[DisneyHead123]

I don’t think that’s true. The imagineering branch of the company has become more direct forward facing again. The Honda Centre is making things more “rockstar”. It just takes some time before the faces become more recognizable. All the new project announcements from D23 were authored by leads and not random Disney Parks Blogger 32.

I’ve never seen to some recognizable front facing Imagineers on the D23 show floor as last event. There were like 12 “stage worthy” imagineers floating around their pavilion on Sunday.

But as suggested, probably people don’t want limelight because that just exposes one to deep toxicity.

Will be interesting to see what D23 this year is like!

 

[Streetway Again]

Yep. Three days of really good stuff. It's just fun to see talented people doing things well.

WDI made a point of saying everything in their presentation was confidential and not to share it. And I have to honor that.

For last year's stuff I explicitly asked before they started talking, and they said both legal & comms had approved. So last year it was okay, but not this year.

I will say, like I did last year, that I'm super, super impressed with the dedication WDI has to honoring the culture and stories of the Maya. They're a great team doing good stuff. Really excited for y'all to see it.

(Kidding, obviously. Lawyers gonna lawyer)