NBA Experience at Disney Springs

lazyboy97o

Well-Known Member
I'm not going to argue it works for D&B, but take my local mall in Chattanooga with a D&B as an example... The mall had a shooting this week, not that close to D&B but in the general area. If that had been in Disney Springs, it makes national headlines. Shops don't seem to pull bad crowds as much a places to just 'hang out'.

Disney had similar problems near the end of Pleasure Island and they decided it was easier to demolish the whole thing. I just don't see Disney going out on that limb again, especially first party. Now if they could get a third party to pay that rent, a la Splitsville? Sure.
Closing Please Island had nothing to do with any issues with violence or drunk driving or whatever. Those are stories fans made up to justify the closing because they didn’t want to accept that they were convinced they could lease out the space, mostly by Steven Schussler, right before the economy tanked.
 

UNCgolf

Well-Known Member
BC just got our first one, in Burnaby, I still need to go! I can’t wait to walk around with drinks and game. Such a fun vibe.

It was pretty fun, although it was too heavily skewed towards redemption games IMO. I think I ended up spending a ton of my credits on just football toss/basketball shooting games because there weren't that many arcade games.

I think I still have a ticket balance I could redeem if I ever go back (and if I could find my card or whatever it's stored on), but I'm not sure I'd go back there in the limited time I spend in Toronto.
 

UNCgolf

Well-Known Member
There's also a place called Round1 Bowling & Amusement that has an arcade, bowling alleys, ping pong, billiards, karaoke, and more I think. There's one really near me here in Atlanta, although I haven't been.

They wouldn't put in anything that would compete with Splitsville, though.
 

ChrisFL

Premium Member
I still have the impression that the original intent was to keep the DQ building and make something nicer, but for some reason it was decided to start with a new building which ate up a lot of the budget and we got a seriously low quality attraction (from videos I've seen, never went inside), with a horrible pricing model and lack of guest interest or any positive feedback from those who had experienced it.
 

MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
Let’s work on our list of stupid decisions. No order implied yet. WDW only.
  1. NBA experience.
  2. Closing Adventurers Club.
  3. Closing Horizons.
  4. Sad state of Imagination.
  5. Never completing loop from Frontierland to Fantasyland.
  6. Closing 20000 Leagues.
  7. Closing Great Movie Ride.
  8. Tomorrowland decay.
  9. Eliminating DME:
  10. Building Riviera.
  11. FastPass +
  12. Maelstrom replacement.
  13. IP in Epcot.
  14. The Stargate Taco colossus.
  15. Others welcome- vote once we have final list.
Didn't take long for this thread to get around to the airing of unrelated grievances.
 

MrPromey

Well-Known Member
I dreaded this NBA Exprience coming to Disney Springs when it was first announced. As like everything Disney announces, this was suppose to be great. I laughed at the concept and was simultaneously fuming over Disney quitting on DisneyQuest. All it needed was upgrades to keep up with the constant technological advances in the gaming industry. They had the money to do just that but they decided to let it rot in obscurity. All while charging insane prices till the very end.

I believe it was done strategically on purpose. I sense the thought process behind that plan was to keep the prices up for obsolete gaming experiences so that it:

1. Enrages the hardworking guest who paid big money to enter, only to become highly dissatisfied with the offerings.

2. Enrages the guest to the point that they refuse to buy tickets to enter.

3. Enrage. Enrage. Enrage... because Disney loves pi$$ing off guests whom are vacationing with them.

Regardless, Disney wanted Quest gone. I'm sure they thought having an NBA venue in their entertainment complex would ultimately win. I never saw that happening. I hate to see things fail but I can't say I hate this failing.

And it failed... BIG TIME!

A certified slamdunk of a failure and I hope Disney doesn't continue making these weird side business ventures that end up mucking up. When did this garbage open? 2 years ago? It's been closed for over a year due to the pandemic (which they will forever pin the blame on). Before the pandemic hit us hard, it had just opened a few months prior. Am I correct?

This is just sad. Not in a depressing way. In a "damn, look at this embarrassing shiet!"

In other news, I am sad over The Holy Land closing for good.
Disneyquest as a concept was dead shortly after it started.

Their whole business plan was to pop those up around the country and spread the cost of developing new attractions and updating old ones out across all of them when doing refreshes - they knew going in that it was going to need to be kept up to date to be successful.

When their second one in Chicago failed almost immediately with consumers not understanding what it actually was*, the future was pretty much sealed because they never thought the cost for development was worth the return they could get from a single location.

In the beginning, the arcade stuff was kept in a "retro/classic" area which was a relatively small part of the overall layout but over the years as eveything else got more and more outdated, they just stuffed the place more and more with those machines they could buy and sell cheap at industry auctions, just like everyone else who works in the typical arcade space does.

It was obvious once marquee things like the comic book virtual sword fighting attraction closed (which would have been great for a SW light-saber retheme) and the area it was in tuned into additional seating space for the dining with more arcade machines around, that their plan was to run it all into the ground.

I feel like the only reason it lasted as long as it did was because it was included on one of the ticket upgrades that included water parks and mini-golf which drove attendance and that helped subsidize/justify it.

The one thing that did appear to survive (and thrive) out of that experiment was the cookie-cutter attractions in multiple locations concept which they'd been previously reluctant to do in the parks, even when they were building the "same" attraction - HM, Space Mountain, SM, Pirates, etc., for example.

This process, of course helps them go cheap but it also means fewer unique things from location-to-location and it helps enable the runaway spending in Imagineering that often isn't reflected clearly in their end products.

A system that allows them to both over-spend and cheap-out at the same time can't possibly be good for guests, can it?


*because people at the time (outside of what was already a tourist destination) couldn't grasp that it was supposed to be more like an indoor theme park made possible through technology rather than just an arcade which is what everyone (who didn't go) compared it to. The prices were never insane for what it was supposed to be - just for what it ultimately turned into after they'd given up on the concept.
 
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MrPromey

Well-Known Member
Can we PLEASE get an Omega Mart East in this space? Or really anything designed by MeowWolf?

At the risk of being mobbed over saying this, I feel as if this is too cultured for WDW but I would kill (with my bare hands - I'd even be willing to give it a go using just my feet if someone wanted to be particular) for an Area15 experience anchored by a MeowWolf attraction like this there!

*Okay, so too "cultured" might not be the right word for it - I'm sure there would be plenty of overlap in terms of guest interest - but I don't think this kind of culture is all that compatible with Disney's pop/consumer culture (mostly because this exhibit mocks/comments on that). Still, that doesn't mean something like this couldn't happen in central Florida nearby!
 
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MrPromey

Well-Known Member
Disney could lean heavily on the their Villains brand. I think the market would support it and it's be the perfect counterpoint to the saccrine sweet Happyland that is Magic Kingdom. The experience could be more teen/adult themed.
You know, a lot of people talk about that as a 5th gate and I have a really hard time imagining an entire park like that working as a unified theme but as a smaller experience, marketed more towards an older crowd, I could see it working.
 

macefamily

Well-Known Member
DisneyQuest was just fine. It only needed some upgrades before making such a drastic change. As much as the NBA tries to publicize increasing numbers, most USA viewer numbers are slipping since the Lebron/China situation. The best thing to happen to the NBA was "the bubble" because without that it would have fallen to the third or fourth ranked viewed sport.
 

Lilofan

Well-Known Member
DisneyQuest was just fine. It only needed some upgrades before making such a drastic change. As much as the NBA tries to publicize increasing numbers, most USA viewer numbers are slipping since the Lebron/China situation. The best thing to happen to the NBA was "the bubble" because without that it would have fallen to the third or fourth ranked viewed sport.
The winners from the NBA bubble at WDW were the cast members. A number of NBA players bought a lot of toys and such to occupy their time while they were holed up in the resorts and left them there for the cast when they checked out. NBA player Russell Westbrook even left a $8K tip to the housekeepers cleaning his room at the Grand Floridian when he checked out.
 

Magicart87

No Refunds!
Premium Member
Can we PLEASE get an Omega Mart East in this space? Or really anything designed by MeowWolf?

I'd like to think a Disneyfied version of this based on Pixar's Inside Out could work. Hands-on discovery museum based on the Emotions combined with a walk-thru Omega Mart-like Inside Out experience, a massive foam ball pit arena where guests can launch and sort memory core balls, "The Shortcut" Minimalist maze, The Train of Thought simulator, the list goes on.
 

Heppenheimer

Well-Known Member
At the risk of being mobbed over saying this, I feel as if this is too cultured for WDW but I would kill (with my bare hands - I'd even be willing to give it a go using just my feet if someone wanted to be particular) for an Area15 experience anchored by a MeowWolf attraction like this there!

*Okay, so too "cultured" might not be the right word for it - I'm sure there would be plenty of overlap in terms of guest interest - but I don't think this kind of culture is all that compatible with Disney's pop/consumer culture (mostly because this exhibit mocks/comments on that). Still, that doesn't mean something like this couldn't happen in central Florida nearby!
Seems like a little too much overlap with the concept for the "Play Pavillion", if that ever ends up getting built.
 

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