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EPCOT Remy's Ratatouille Adventure coming to Epcot
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
castlecake2.0
Well-Known Member
I’m looking forward to hearing how guests are going to say ratatouille after years of working at Lay Cellular steakhouse
Are you thinking it will also get a bad reception?
rreading
Well-Known Member
I feel like I apologize commonly for Disney, but have you been on the monorail at DL? The views there are still terrible. Something bad somewhere else doesn't excuse bad elsewhere; but I feel like if they were wanting the backstage side of the building to be less obvious then they would have gone with a beige to blend with the building facades.
My impression is that this backstage view is contrived and part of the show. I envision that were I on the Skyliner with my kids that we would discuss the way that the showbuilding is large and yet invisible from within the park and how they have the faded facades set back to look like they're at a distance. While it's clearly a backstage look at the set, it's not an unpleasant view to me.
Just my $.02. fwiw
edit to add: If we're worried about seeing behind the scenes, then the egregious one at Epcot is GotG
castlecake2.0
Well-Known Member
I see what you’re saying, I’m still hoping for some trees behind France and also to hide the mess behind morroco or at least screen it a bit.
Yes I have, and yes they are. Wave to the cast having a snack with their feet up on the plastic patio furniture next to the parked vehicles.
But this one is brand new. Meticulously planned and built in the last few years.
The REAL Canada!
rreading
Well-Known Member
But I truly don’t know how they could’ve done it differently. Honestly, what would you have preferred? The 2-d facades above over the ground floor buildings should look great from within the park, but couldn’t be wrapped around the backstage. Lowering the skyliner with an arcade of trees blocking the view for that stretch would probably be the only option.
Once the skyliner gets the behind-the-scenes view, it is what it is. I don’t try to focus on Everest or SW:GE or Pandora from the back but those views exist as well from within WDW.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
They could have built an expansion that worked with the existing spatial organization of the pavilion instead of around back along a walk with nothing to see.
The show building could have been angled differently.
Facades could have extended south past the show building. It would even be possible to keep the service road available.
Facades could have wrapped the building. This wouldn’t require full set dressing but at least a continuation of the tectonics of stone construction instead of an abrupt switch to metal panels. The party wall/backside of a stone building would be much less abrupt of a transition.
This is a multi hundred million dollar project by what is supposed to be the world’s premier themed design studio. Lousy planning and McMansion aesthetics don’t cut it.
yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
Notice that all these examples are from the last 15 years.
Disney has gotten worse at concealing backstage despite having more resources than ever accessible to them to do so. What really has changed, which money can't buy you out of, is what they prioritize.
A bit more old school planning? A better view from a 240 million dollar plus cable car? A better route for the cable car? A dog leg to the the knoll next to ESPN and a cable route between Resorts Blvd and the canal? A better transport solution? The originally planned canal system?
I mean I’m not an engineer but:
It has to be the worst arrival introduction to a Disney park to date. But cupcakes.
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castlecake2.0
Well-Known Member
Tell us more about this canal system...
Link Hourglass lake and Barefoot bay, and build a canal under East Buena Vista from Barefoot Bay to a new Gateway next to the Epcot show marina. This was the genesis of the Skyliner.
But we’re wildly off topic.
Creathir
Well-Known Member
He’s mentioned it before. Essentially a canal on the East side of WS.
International Gateway East.
I still think they could have skipped the dogleg and gone straight into Italy with the Skyliner.
SplashJacket
Well-Known Member
All this comes back to Michael Eisner making random hotels in random spots of the property. Why carve out an insanely huge piece of land if you're going to segregate everything?
People are complaining about the Imagineers of today building random towers that pollute the delicately crafted skyline and sightlines, but the Imagineers of yesterday decided they needed a fourth park, two water parks, and several resort complexes that are completely separate as if they were social distancing.
Expensive and intrusive additions such as the Skyliner wouldn't be necessary if an elementary level of thought was put into the property decades ago.
Epic Universe will be a mile and a half closer to the other Universal parks than Magic Kingdom is to Animal Kingdom. We can sit here and endlessly discuss the flawed nature of current Imagineers, or realize they may not be as bad as we think when we take off the nostalgia glasses. They're obviously not perfect, but the atmosphere on this forum would lead you to believe that every recent project is done with the standards and scope of Dino Land U.S.A.
People are complaining about the Imagineers of today building random towers that pollute the delicately crafted skyline and sightlines, but the Imagineers of yesterday decided they needed a fourth park, two water parks, and several resort complexes that are completely separate as if they were social distancing.
Expensive and intrusive additions such as the Skyliner wouldn't be necessary if an elementary level of thought was put into the property decades ago.
Epic Universe will be a mile and a half closer to the other Universal parks than Magic Kingdom is to Animal Kingdom. We can sit here and endlessly discuss the flawed nature of current Imagineers, or realize they may not be as bad as we think when we take off the nostalgia glasses. They're obviously not perfect, but the atmosphere on this forum would lead you to believe that every recent project is done with the standards and scope of Dino Land U.S.A.
UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
Why would you want everything on top of each other? The fact that the resorts are spread out and separate from one another is part of what makes them unique; it's peaceful and quiet when you're somewhere like Port Orleans Riverside. And the Skyliner wasn't necessary; there was absolutely no need for it whatsoever. You can't blame it on any past decisions. While I couldn't care less about the water parks, building Animal Kingdom as a fourth gate was a great idea. I don't know why you'd act like that was a mistake either -- it also had to be built farther away because you can't shoot off fireworks near it.
Not everything that's been done recently is bad, and not everything done in the past was great, but the overall quality across the board at WDW was much higher 25 years ago than it is now.
Also, while it's very nice when visiting Universal that the two parks and CityWalk are all connected, and that some of the hotels are right there too, but the scale is wildly different. There's far less to do at Universal (everything is doable in two days if you don't care about the water park) and the hotels aren't really similar to Disney hotels. As one example -- I really liked the Royal Pacific; it's a nice hotel. But it's not comparable to the Polynesian in terms of overall theming, although Disney seems to be moving towards changing their hotels to be more like the Royal Pacific. Which would be a good thing if they were trying to give them that level of service and quality, but instead they appear to be copying the aesthetics and little else.
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castlecake2.0
Well-Known Member
Looking at Google earth it looks like it would be easy to do the canal, but expensive getting it across LBV drive. Is that what killed it?
Disney Analyst
Well-Known Member
I don’t know if they are suggesting on top of one another... but planning could have been better.
Better placements may have resulted in building a better and more connective Monorail system, which is never going to happen now due to distance and cost.
UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
I don't think there was any chance they were ever going to expand the monorail regardless of where hotels were placed. There are hotels that could have been connected pretty easily (relatively speaking -- adding to the monorail would never be easy) and yet as far as I know they never showed any interest in doing so.
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lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
From late 1984 to 1996, planning and development was not handled by Walt Disney Imagineering but by the Disney Development Company. Earlier in 1984 as part of the efforts to hold off Saul Steinberg, Disney acquired Arvida Corporation (a tract home developer) which increased the holdings of the Bass Brothers who would very shorterly thereafter throw their weight behind Roy Disney‘s takeover attempt. The Bass Brothers believed Walt Disney World was severely underdeveloped and Eisner gained their support by agreeing to aggressively pursue development. While Arvida would be sold off in a few years, that tract home mindset took root and the Disney Development Company, outside of their work on Celebration, did very much approach Walt Disney World like suburban sprawl. They viewed Walt Disney World like developers trying to work as cheaply as possible and just as shortsightedly, not concerned for how things would work in the future. It’s a problem Walt Disney World is stuck with but you don’t make something better by just saying “Oh well, they didn’t do a good job so I don’t have to either.”
Choosing where to put a hotel amongst tens of square miles is also a very different exercise and even job than actually laying out the specific form of that hotel and designing its specific look. It is also different from laying out a land and an attraction. You’re saying because someone else years ago did a poor job slack should be given to others doing a different job poorly. They don’t follow. The height of The Riveria and Destino Tower are problems far more so because of their poor execution than just because they are tall. They could have been tall and well designed. Context is never pristine but part of a strong design is working with the given context, even if it is less than ideal.
Gondolas are becoming a popular choice for transit projects because they are relatively cheap. The Skyliner was expensive because Disney has a serious problem controlling costs that has exploded over the past 15 years. That problem is across the board with new developments. The money was there to do a lot more not just with Ratatouille but almost every Disney project for the past 15 years.
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