Worse than Journey Into YOUR Imagination?
Yes, the current version is worse than the short-lived 2.0 version, IMO (though I’m personally not sure I would necessarily say it’s Disney’s worst ever, it’s definitely on that list).
As one of the seemingly few people who actually experienced all three versions of the attraction, I often find myself in defense of JIYI in comparison to the current iteration. Yes, it was done on the cheap. Yes, they significantly reduced the ride length. Yes, they removed the popular characters and creative effects (including the incredibly impressive turntable).
But as a standalone experience separate from the original attraction, it worked. It tied in well with the Imagination Institute concept originated by the still-reasonably-popular Honey, I Shrunk the Audience running next door. It tapped in to the edgy industrial zeitgeist of the era (which in hindsight, I was probably just the right age to appreciate at the time; older audiences were turned off by the tone). Its storyline was clearly presented and nicely bookended by the imagination scanners (which weren’t nearly as insulting as people have suggested). And although the number of effects and surprises were greatly reduced from the original, they were staged in ways that made them engaging and relatively impressive.
Contrast that with the current version, which is a mess all around. To make sense of the story, you need to already understand the long-extinct original version with Figment, the Imagination Institute that’s been thrown to the wayside without HISTA, and remember the scanners from the short-lived JIYI; there are simply too many concepts for most riders to understand and an overly-chatty presentation. The (still too few) effects are staged in ways that undermine their utility: the train illusion is destroyed by campy lighting to not scare small children; the caged butterfly is in a new location that removes any wonder of “how’d they do that;” the upside-down home (and garage, especially) are painted fluorescent colors that remove any sense of reality upon which the original scene relied; and the finale both makes no sense (why did the room explode?) and simply doesn’t look good, with the bright yellow room making it easy to see the walls move, removing the impression of depth from the original, and cheap figures-on-strings just generally looking lackluster. And that doesn’t event mention the effects that were removed entirely during the redo, like the random color light wall toward the beginning and neat constellations toward the end, making an already-sparse attraction feel even more empty.
No, version 2.0 wasn’t perfect. But it had a clear vision for what it was (which, admittedly, wasn’t for everybody), and it executed its modest scope well, with a clear story and scenes staged in a way the clearly directed your attention to what was important. The current version is a mess that has no idea who the audience is, how to convey a story in a ride-through attraction, or where to the focus of a scene should be.
2.0 gets a lot of understandable hate for having removed 1.0 and everything that represented. It was one of the first big attractions that used the modern design philosophy (which continues today) of having only one or two key elements to look at in each scene, rather than the busy cocktail-party approach full of multiple vignettes to grab riders attention (think FEA vs. POTC), and I think that made the comparisons to why’d previous version especially unfavorable.
But JIYI knew was it was, and delivered on its promise. No, it wasn’t as good as the original, nor was that approach everybody’s taste, nor would it likely be on anybody’s list of Disney’s best attractions. But it had a clear vision and raison d'etre, unlike the design-by-committee approach that’s trying to appeal to too many audiences in the current version that just ends up leaving everybody feel left out.
