MK Cars-Themed Attractions at Magic Kingdom

[lazyboy97o]

I know they're both riverboats, but what happens to Liberty Belle and what happens to a riverboat at Disney Paris feels like two separate topics to me.

I expect Liberty Belle will stay on the interconnected bodies of water it's on, and possibly be used on 7 seas for dinner shows or something. Weddings? Something.

Liberty Belle follows a guide rail. It is not capable of freely navigating a waterway. It doesn’t even go to the dry dock on Bay Lake under its own power.

 

[BrianLo]

I thought @marni1971 confirmed this? I don’t track all the various levels of insider-ness but I’m pretty sure he or she is one of the few who typically have solid information.

Apologies to Marni if I’m misremembering.

I wanted to give him an opportunity to respond and don’t mean to speak on behalf of him. He pulled back several years ago from WDW and Florida. He was not an active participant in this round, from any of my recollection.

You can see the various stages of a project cycle from everything announced. Villains circa 2022 is something they drew for the conference. The broader Monsters project and Coco for DCA were things that were still gesticulating. This project had clearly been worked on for a while. Hence it also being ready to start preliminary site prep, Disney isn’t capable of moving that quickly.


As an aside, unfortunately our institutional knowledge is long gone. But I do wonder if this has any relation to the Tokyo ROA/Cars project from a decade ago. It’s possible that was pulled off a shelf.

 

[DisneyHead123]

I wanted to give him an opportunity to respond and don’t mean to speak on behalf of him. He pulled back several years ago from WDW and Florida. He was not an active participant in this round, from any of my recollection.

You can see the various stages of a project cycle from everything announced. Villains circa 2022 is something they drew for the conference. The broader Monsters project and Coco for DCA were things that were still gesticulating. This project had clearly been worked on for a while. Hence it also being ready to start preliminary site prep, Disney isn’t capable of moving that quickly.


As an aside, unfortunately our institutional knowledge is long gone. But I do wonder if this has any relation to the Tokyo ROA/Cars project from a decade ago. It’s possible that was pulled off a shelf.

From what I remember, the rumor was that a small number of teams had been working on / presented plans for the area leading up to D23 (so yes, in that scenario Cars was not something they pulled out of thin air, it would have had a team creating whatever preliminary design they made.) The Coco village was the frontrunner up until the very last second, when it was pulled due to budget concerns involving sight lines and the the transition from Coco to Villains. The validity of rumors is always something of a guess, of course. At a minimum we know Cars was not the frontrunner when Beyond Big Thunder was talked about as a Blue Sky idea. When it shifted exactly is hard to say though.

 

[Tha Realest]

August 1994. That was WDW’s height. Tower of Terror was open and 20000 Leagues, Toad, and the EPCOT attractions still existed. Wilderness Lodge had just opened and, with the exception of AKL, the great WDW hotels were operating and relatively reasonably priced.

Don’t forget this was also peak Pleasure Island.

 

[Tha Realest]

It’s funny how the consensus seems to coalesce that 1994/1995 was the best time to visit WDW and DL.

What happened just after that, I wonder?

 

[BrianLo]

The validity of rumors is always something of a guess, of course. At a minimum we know Cars was not the frontrunner when Beyond Big Thunder was talked about as a Blue Sky idea. When it shifted exactly is hard to say though.

I think that’s the crux of it. I don’t believe a lot of what was said just prior to the conference… because a lot of those posters were not people like Martin and were here for secondary gain and have been established as lying.

We also know the Blue Sky session version of Big Thunder had firmly come off the rails within 12 months after the conference since Encanto was long pulled.

For better or worse Braydon had the info on Cars for a substantial window before D23. Which unfortunately leads me to the conclusion that nothing was really last minute about this specific project. Even Monsters got approved in January 2024.

 

[BrianLo]

It’s funny how the consensus seems to coalesce that 1994/1995 was the best time to visit WDW and DL.

What happened just after that, I wonder?
View attachment 865733

We can and should blame Iger for many, many things. But this was Eisner’s second 10 years of tenure that was the clear problem.

I think the full nadir of WDW was 2010-2015 and that was solely on Iger, he made very limited moves to stem the rot at WDW during his own first ten years.

Euro Disney and the acquisition of Capital cities certainly took the wheels off, but we should not downplay the man driving the bus during that late 90s era.

 

[DisneyHead123]

I think that’s the crux of it. I don’t believe a lot of what was said just prior to the conference… because a lot of those posters were not people like Martin and were here for secondary gain and have been established as lying.

We also know the Blue Sky session version of Big Thunder had firmly come off the rails within 12 months after the conference since Encanto was long pulled.

For better or worse Braydon had the info on Cars for a substantial window before D23. Which unfortunately leads me to the conclusion that nothing was really last minute about this specific project. Even Monsters got approved in January 2024.

One never knows with rumors… I think it’s a fair point that no one should be against this project entirely based on rumors. I don’t think that’s the case though - if Disney had announced a dream change for fans at the last second of course there would be no complaints about that.

 

[ChrisFL]

It’s funny how the consensus seems to coalesce that 1994/1995 was the best time to visit WDW and DL.

What happened just after that, I wonder?
View attachment 865733

That and the passing of Frank Wells

 

[Brer Panther]

What caused more damage to the Disney theme parks, Disneyland Paris or the Wizarding World of Harry Potter?

 

[ChrisFL]

What caused more damage to the Disney theme parks, Disneyland Paris or the Wizarding World of Harry Potter?

Disneyland Paris...a lot of talent was let go from Imagineering and they went to Universal Creative

 

[lazyboy97o]

I wanted to give him an opportunity to respond and don’t mean to speak on behalf of him. He pulled back several years ago from WDW and Florida. He was not an active participant in this round, from any of my recollection.

You can see the various stages of a project cycle from everything announced. Villains circa 2022 is something they drew for the conference. The broader Monsters project and Coco for DCA were things that were still gesticulating. This project had clearly been worked on for a while. Hence it also being ready to start preliminary site prep, Disney isn’t capable of moving that quickly.

Roughly a year for the concept design phase is pretty standard for Disney (and Universal). Since projects at Disney are often announced shortly after their formal approval which follows the concept design phase, the general assumption should be that any non-clone project has been in development for at least a year before it is announced.

That said, site work can be done rather quickly which is why it is often done so early and overlapped with design work. They didn’t need to know anything more specific than general location of the projects for the water management permits.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Disneyland Paris...a lot of talent was let go from Imagineering and they went to Universal Creative

That was going to happen regardless of the park’s success. It happens after every park opens because there just isn’t as much work.

MCA Planning and Development was also a very small group and not at all like Walt Disney Imagineering. They were more a handful of project managers who used a lot of vendors than a big group that did stuff themselves.

 

[Brer Panther]

I remember reading once that John Lasseter came up with the plot for Cars 2, then realized said plot required no one believe Mater because he regularly makes stuff up and Mater doesn't actually make anything up in the entire original movie, so instead of throwing away that stupid idea that led to a crappy movie he decided to make a bunch of shorts to force that character trait onto him.

It's been a pretty long time since I've watched Cars 2, but from what I recall, Mater's habit of telling tall tales is only relevant for one scene: when he tells everyone that he's got a date in Japan, but nobody believes him. I guess you could say the scene after that where he's trying to explain why he messed up the race for Lightning too, but at that point Mater didn't quite understand what was going on either (he didn't know there were spies around, he thought it was some sort of karate demonstration), so really, what was the point?

Also, don't most if not all of the shorts end with some sort of indication that Mater's telling the truth? That just raises further questions...

 

[Animaniac93-98]

As an aside, unfortunately our institutional knowledge is long gone. But I do wonder if this has any relation to the Tokyo ROA/Cars project from a decade ago. It’s possible that was pulled off a shelf.

There's almost certainly some overlap, even if we don't know the specifics of the Tokyo idea. It's too coincidental.

I also remember the rumors from many years ago about DHS getting a modified version of Cars land with less rock work (and more indoor sections?). It sounded lame at the time, but in hindsight it may have prevented this current version.

 

[lazyboy97o]

There's almost certainly some overlap, even if we don't know the specifics of the Tokyo idea. It's too coincidental.

I always assumed it would have been Cars Land largely as it exists because it would have been of an attempt to sucker the Japanese into covering some of the [then] insane costs of the land and its rides. It wasn’t that long after that they tried the same thing with Pandora.

 

[BrianLo]

I always assumed it would have been Cars Land largely as it exists because it would have been of an attempt to sucker the Japanese into covering some of the [then] insane costs of the land and its rides. It wasn’t that long after that they tried the same thing with Pandora.

Me too. I bring it up because it’s a strange coincidence; but it being an R&D pass off of the DCA project is also what I recall.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

Yes I know “everything is totally different in California” but the riverboat is the featured icon of Frontierland out here.

 

[WorldExplorer]

Yes I know “everything is totally different in California” but the riverboat is the featured icon of Frontierland out here.

View attachment 865758

But wouldn't it be so much more appropriate and inspiring if it was a crate of co-op produced beignets?

 

[FettFan]

Incorrect. I believe mater to be a omnipotent being able to rewrite time itself to bring his friends along on his favorite past adventures

Mater is the Cars Universe Kang.