Recent content by MerlinTheGoat

For so-called "off season", yeah the past year or two have seemed much more crowded than it used to be. It has only just now begun to finally calm down a little after Easter and Spring Break, but it still felt quite hectic. But comparing the same time of year with pre-Covid, it has felt worse...

If metrics show that crowd levels are down this year compared to the last year or two, then it certainly hasn't felt like it. I don't know how that correlates with the metrics being reported, i'm simply reporting what i've genuinely noticed. I'm not pulling any "schtick" either, so kill the...

Apparently not, as I didn't track last year's crowds. In past years, the parks were packed around July 4th. They also still block out half of that week for two of the lower AP tiers. So I wonder if they expect this year to be different. Crowds seem heavier this year so far than last year. I've...

So is it just me, or does July 4th sound like a REALLY stupid grand opening? Unless they've fallen WAY behind. Though ideally, I don't think opening it on any relatively major holiday is a good idea. I was never told a date regardless, but July 4th is legitimately one of the absolute worst days...

I saw very few people who just automatically and flatly assumed they would have projected faces/eyes. Just generally hope that they wouldn't. I also think facial projection was considered early on, but lately Disney has been moving away from that due to maintenance apparently being worse than...

There was a lot of back in forth about whether the upbeat changes to the final lift would actually even make the ride less scary at all since the drop still exists. But with more explicit statements from the heads of the project that they did indeed consider Splash scary and were attempting to...

I heard a rumor that Michael Eisner might be fired and replaced by Bob Iger. Super exciting times because I'm a really big fan of Mr Iger and heard he wants to fix Epcot and bring back 2D animation for good!

Relevant discussion starts around 50-51 minutes in (though it's worth listening to the entire thing as they do come back to the topic at different points). About 55 minutes in is where he explains how they built up the tension throughout the ride, but especially during the final big lift. And...

You don't have to think it's a bad choice, it's fine if you prefer that. But there were people on here who were mocking those who claimed this was even happening at all, and that it was being done intentionally to tone the fear factor down. Even when Tony Baxter already said it was and...

Boy is it...

Sounds neat, though I think with a traditional flume system there would be issues synchronizing that sort of thing to passing boats. Unless they're set to stop or slow at specific moments ala Frozen. Hm... You could do it with something like the Shanghai POTC tech where the boats are all on a...

Are the purple lights only on the mountain, or in the water? I've noticed purple is a common color they light mountains up with. Again referencing the concept render's lighting, which is more of a blue-ish color in the water and around the peak (with warm white for the upward tree lighting)-

The water color has always varied somewhat, generally based on lighting and weather conditions. Granted, Tiana's had been looking more of a reddish/brown than Splash usually did. But I'd reiterate my comment that it was probably just due to the area being a dirty construction zone that was...

Add at least Matterhorn and Indiana Jones to that. Arguably all of the Star Wars rides too. There's a very large gulf of the thrill level between POTC and something like Splash or BTM.

Any of them, none of the drops in pretty much any version of POTC are particularly thrilling. And when I said we need more calm rides, I was referring specifically to Animal Kingdom. Disneyland has plenty of calmer rides with a wide appeal. At the moment, one of the only decent non-thrilling...