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MAGICal DLP News, Rumours & Thoughts
- Thread starter Animaniac93-98
- Start date
The Empress Lilly
Well-Known Member
Very much this.
It's astonishing with how much careless abandon WDW is ran. The Disney flagship resort has no respect for its beauty and greatness. EPCOT/FW all but gone. Random hotel high rises and add-ons everywhere that all but destroy carefully crafted environments. The mad assault on the MK right now. Entertainment, maintenance and water and theme park opening times are the bare minumum.
Meanwhile HKDL and DLP remain little love letters, each in their own way. DL despite everything loves and respects its heritage. Shanghai is much better operated than it gets credit for, Tokyo is plain next level.
WDW by contrast is a mean and sorry experience, that, to add insult to injury, has destroyed more than other resorts have ever built.
Gusey
Well-Known Member
I just want to add that whilst DLP does plus what is already there, I wish the castle park would get a new attraction somewhere. THe fact that next year marks 20 years since the last new ride, and it's been 6 years now since the last new attraction (Rhythms of the Pride Lands) feels like a different kind of neglect
Paris has different issues to the others. Ten years ago as we know it was bad. 20 years ago it was falling apart literally. The plan now seems to be to get the second gate on a firm footing (finally) and then return attention to the legacy park. Both parks still need more I won’t argue but I dare say the studios is the priority
Gusey
Well-Known Member
100% and WDS/DAW is nearly there to be a "fixed", and plussed once the Up Swings and Lion King opens.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
It’s not neglect but a unique kind of preservation. Disneyland Paris has been spared dumb decisions that would have harmed the great design of the park.
The Empress Lilly
Well-Known Member
It's been very much a blessing in disguise. I dread the day a new round of investments finds its way to DLP...
The choice for a Sleeping Beauty Castle was prescient. For indeed from its low point a little over a decade ago DLP awoke from its slumber a sleeping beauty, stuck in 1992, having been mostly spared the ravages of twenty years of post-1994 Disney park management.
abaker1975
Active Member
Hopefully after Lion King opens at the 2nd park, DLP can start adding new attractions to both parks every other year. It does need it.
Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
I may be way off with this impression, but there seems to be a real problem with the corporate culture at WDW that leads to a wild inconsistency in the quality and appropriateness of changes and additions.
One little example would be the "crazy tiki" style of BouTiki and some other decorations at the Polynesian resort. I feel that, at Disneyland, someone would catch those things and recognise that they represent a bastardisation of the mid-century tiki cultural craze and steer things back on track. At WDW, it often seems like people signing off on this stuff don't know what they're looking at. With the resorts in particular, you never really know what you're going to get when they put up those refurb walls.
Other examples would be the Main Street USA DJ, where someone in management who approved that seemed to need the fans to tell them it wasn't appropriate for the land or the park.
I never really get the sense that there would be much interest in looking at archival images and restoring old apples or incorporating a bandana from an old Marc Davis sketch, as they have done with this Pirates refurb in Paris. It's a minor miracle if attractions emerge from refurbishments with everything working.
DLP has certainly not be free of questionable decisions since Disney took over, starting with the immediate removal of the included breakfast for hotel guests, the sharp rise in prices and the start of some disappointing creative choices.
But it's peanuts compared to what's happened to WDW. And it's hard to argue the Studios park is worse now than before
(RIP CineMagique)
But it's peanuts compared to what's happened to WDW. And it's hard to argue the Studios park is worse now than before
(RIP CineMagique)
Centauri Space Station
Well-Known Member
I’d say DLR is far from innocent of removing classics in its first 40 years or so and DCA has been changing a lot but most of those were never great to begin with. Splash, cbj, rainbow caverns, mule wagons, adventure thru inner space, peoplemover, carousel of progress, america sings, rocket rods, innoventions, skyway, big thunder ranch, golden horseshoe shows. Then placement making areas in DCA like Tower of terror, soarin over cali, pacific wharf, etc.
Maybe they can reopen it once this is done?
Mr. Sullivan
Well-Known Member
A lot of this is a matter of opinion, not fact.
I went with both a first timer and a legacy visitor back in January and both were infinitely charmed by the entire resort. The legacy goer was more excited for the future of MK than she ever has been (she's been going since she was a child and she is in her 50s now), and the new goer found EPCOT to be, in his words, one of the most charming places he has ever visited.
Do not mistake your personal dissatisfaction with how things are going as some undeniable fact of the state of things. What you see as destruction others see as new beauty. What you see as an assault others see as welcome evolution.
And the same can be said for Paris. It's easy to look at the grass on the other side and think that it's greener, but that isn't always the case. Paris has plenty of it's own issues that need to be sorted, just like every single park with Disney's name on it does. Not a one of them is perfect, not a one of them isn't in need of something, and not a one of them is in a perfect state of being.
It's fine to celebrate the work that goes into keeping DLP in good shape, but it also ignores the elephant in the room that it's a park overall lacking in needed evolution and development. It's a place trapped in another time and another place, and while for some that's a dream, for others it is a detriment. And I would go so far as to say for the locals, the people who make more use of DLP than anyone, it is a detriment. They want the park to evolve, but Disney has not let it.
It was a wonderful piece of art when it opened and it still is in many ways. But it's also been allowed to stagnate. It is the ignored older child whose parents are pouring all of their resources into it's younger sibling next door, and Paris has suffered for it. What is there is wonderful, but it's easy for the park to feel like it's lacking something as a result of it being a gigantic time capsule of the period of time it opened in.
The Empress Lilly
Well-Known Member
In a perfect world, DLP would have been built out in its near 35 years with twelve or so great attractions. But that’s not what would have happened, in reality Adventure Isle would have been transformed into a lame ‘Up Yours - Journey into YOUR Up Adventure’, the MS arcades would have been converted into extra shopping space, and the castle dragon replaced with an upcharge m&g dessert party with Elsa.
At WDW there is now not a single park where I don’t permanently wish I were visiting it at a different time. An unpleasant feeling that I barely ever experience at any other worldwide park.