A Spirited Valentine ...

[Animaniac93-98]

New Martin Horizons video!
It has arrived!

You've set a new standard for yourself with this one @marni1971 ! I think I speak for myself and others when I say this and Imagination are the updates we were looking froward to the most, and you did not disappoint. I love that Sherman Brothers tune too, in part because it is shamelessly "Disney" in tone.

With SSE and Engery, they still exist (for now) in some form, but Horizons is gone for good and losing an attraction that epic in scope and so vital to Epcot's core theme is something that saddens me, even though I never got to ride it. I saw WoL, Imagination 1.0, pre Nemo Seas, but never this one. Your videos do the best job of giving me a sense of what it must have been like.

 

[RSoxNo1]

I really love how people try to put words in my mouth,

What ive said is Wall Street will not allow Disney to open TWO SWL's at the SAME time, And i still hold to that opinion.

I will not be surprised when in mid 2018 or so Disney announces there are issues with the construction site which will delay completion at least a year already insiders are saying 6 months after DL opens. My estimate for DHS SWL was 2022-23 as i recall

Ill enjoy munching popcorn while the fanbois breathlessly await DHS SWL to open.

Only time will tell as to the actual opening date

I've already got one bet for Star Wars land's opening date in DHS. Do you care to put your money where your mouth is? Set the before/after date as July 1, 2020. I'll take the before and you can have the after. Loser pays $100 to Give Kids the World.

 

[Soarin' Over Pgh]

I've already got one bet for Star Wars land's opening date in DHS. Do you care to put your money where your mouth is? Set the before/after date as July 1, 2020. I'll take the before and you can have the after. Loser pays $100 to Give Kids the World.

Please make this a thing that happens..

 

[Wrangler-Rick]

New Martin Horizons video!
It has arrived!

Great job @marni1971 - another amazing video!!!!!! I was surprised that I only remembered parts of the attraction; I think I only got to ride it once (maybe twice)...

 

[MaximumEd]

Great job @marni1971 - another amazing video!!!!!! I was surprised that I only remembered parts of the attraction; I think I only got to ride it once (maybe twice)...

Same here. Got to ride it only once in 86, but it, SSE, Imagination, and World of Motion stuck in my 13 year old mind as the coolest stuff I had ever seen. Didn't start going to WDW regularly until 2014, and by then I had a wife and a then 6 year old daughter. The change in Epcot was jarring.

 

[GoofGoof]

I've already got one bet for Star Wars land's opening date in DHS. Do you care to put your money where your mouth is? Set the before/after date as July 1, 2020. I'll take the before and you can have the after. Loser pays $100 to Give Kids the World.

I'll give him 2 to 1 odds. If he wins you and I will both give $100 for $200 total and if he loses he only has to cough up $100. Let's do this.

 

[flynnibus]

I know this thread has discussed this before recently, but do people really rank the old Streets of America up there with the Sunset Boulevard/Tower of Terror area?

These are apples and oranges. SoA was a backlot - it was never built to be a land like sunset was. Only after the tour was dissected did SoA become regular walk through areas of the park.

 

[Kman101]

Please make this a thing that happens..

He won't take it because he knows he's wrong in this

 

[ford91exploder]

I've already got one bet for Star Wars land's opening date in DHS. Do you care to put your money where your mouth is? Set the before/after date as July 1, 2020. I'll take the before and you can have the after. Loser pays $100 to Give Kids the World.

Happy to put money on this, Who is the bank? For the record this IS a bet I hope to lose, Because I don't confuse what I WANT to happen with what my personal analysis of a situation says will happen.

 

[Phil12]

You've set a new standard for yourself with this one @marni1971 ! I think I speak for myself and others when I say this and Imagination are the updates we were looking froward to the most, and you did not disappoint. I love that Sherman Brothers tune too, in part because it is shamelessly "Disney" in tone.

With SSE and Engery, they still exist (for now) in some form, but Horizons is gone for good and losing an attraction that epic in scope and so vital to Epcot's core theme is something that saddens me, even though I never got to ride it. I saw WoL, Imagination 1.0, pre Nemo Seas, but never this one. Your videos do the best job of giving me a sense of what it must have been like.

Don't feel sad. I rode Horizons on many occasions and it really wasn't a very good attraction. You see, Epcot at that time was swamped with omnimover attractions all within a short distance of each other. Imagination, World of Motion and Spaceship Earth were all there and with Universe of Energy you had slow moving ride overload.

This phenomenon occurred because of too much sponsor money. Back in those days WDW had more sponsors than they had good ideas and TWDC has always been happy to build any attraction for which a sponsor is willing to pay. WDW became a master at building attractions that were boring corporate advertisements.

Thankfully the days of the big money sponsors is coming to a close and we can look forward to Disney being more circumspect in how they spend money on attractions. Instead of building attractions to promote good public relations for corporate sponsors we're starting to see attractions with Disney IP paying the bills.

 

[Bairstow]

Don't feel sad. I rode Horizons on many occasions and it really wasn't a very good attraction. You see, Epcot at that time was swamped with omnimover attractions all within a short distance of each other. Imagination, World of Motion and Spaceship Earth were all there and with Universe of Energy you had slow moving ride overload.

This phenomenon occurred because of too much sponsor money. Back in those days WDW had more sponsors than they had good ideas and TWDC has always been happy to build any attraction for which a sponsor is willing to pay. WDW became a master at building attractions that were boring corporate advertisements.

Thankfully the days of the big money sponsors is coming to a close and we can look forward to Disney being more circumspect in how they spend money on attractions. Instead of building attractions to promote good public relations for corporate sponsors we're starting to see attractions with Disney IP paying the bills.

If you DID love slow-moving, grand-scale omnimover attractions, though, original Epcot was the best.
It was like the Cedar Point for big omnimovers.

 

[Kman101]

I think they made a massive mistake destroying Horizons and for not keeping the original Figment. Both of those should be classics still running and kept up with. I'd take Horizons over Mission: Space any day.

I like Test Track but I think they could have worked in World of Motion as well.

 

[Animaniac93-98]

I know Spirit doesn't like to talk about box office figures, but "sequel fatigue" is something BOM has mentioned repeatedly, and since a mostly tentpole release schedule is what Disney's entire Studio strategy revolves around, it's worth mentioning.

Day-to-day comparisons show Cars 3 and Transformers 5 trailing their predecssors in the US (the latter by a very wide margin), neither likely to make $200 million domestically, just like Pirates 5. Pirates 5 will also probably make $200 million less at the foreign box office than the last one and Despicable Me 3 just opened in the US with a total lower than 2. This does not get into how GotG2 made less than Disney hoped, or how Furious 8 made less than 6 & 7 in the US, despite doing massive business eleswhere. At a certain point, people get tired of seeing the same thing over and over again, and then there's a scramble to get something else like King Arthur off the ground, or a revival of Independence Day, and we've seen how that goes.

Disney used to have a much better balance of lower budget, sometimes "adult" fare and major releases, and even some series like The Mighty Ducks didn't cost $200 million a piece to make. They should look into doing that more, because outside of Marvel and Star Wars, nothing is a guarantee. Not even Pixar anymore.

 

[Cosmic Commando]

Disney used to have a much better balance of lower budget, sometimes "adult" fare and major releases, and even some series like The Mighty Ducks didn't cost $200 million a piece to make. They should look into doing that more, because outside of Marvel and Star Wars, nothing is a guarantee. Not even Pixar anymore.

Eisner called them "singles and doubles". I'd really like Disney to get some smaller movies back out there. With their merchandising machine, you'd think they could squeeze more profit out of smaller movies than most. If you get a hit, make a big sequel and a ton of toys (maybe even a theme park attraction).

 

[doctornick]

Don't feel sad. I rode Horizons on many occasions and it really wasn't a very good attraction. You see, Epcot at that time was swamped with omnimover attractions all within a short distance of each other. Imagination, World of Motion and Spaceship Earth were all there and with Universe of Energy you had slow moving ride overload.

I actually have to side a bit with @Phil12 here. I've often said that classic EPCOT Center did suffer from having too much of the same type of experience. Yes, the original attraction lineup was extremely well done individually but there was too much sameness with all the rides basically being slower moving rides with a similar conceit of some lecturing and then some hopeful aspirations.

I also think that Horizons tends to be overrated among the classic Epcot rides. I don't bemoan its loss the way I do World of Motion or especially Journey into Imagination. Those two were rides that I think would be viewed as irreplaceable classics if they had survived to today (though at least Test Track is a good replacement). The choose your own ending was novel (though what did you get -- a dreaded screen!) but I think that the ride would have definitely needed to be replaced or significantly modified as to be unrecognizable. I think the bigger issue is that its replacement just isn't that good despite it's lofty intentions and can't even be ridden by many; hopefully the updates will make M:S a better quality attraction -- or maybe someday they'll do a full blown space pavilion that is worthy for the park.

 

[Bairstow]

I know Spirit doesn't like to talk about box office figures, but "sequel fatigue" is something BOM has mentioned repeatedly, and since a mostly tentpole release schedule is what Disney's entire Studio strategy revolves around, it's worth mentioning.

Day-to-day comparisons show Cars 3 and Transformers 5 trailing their predecssors in the US (the latter by a very wide margin), neither likely to make $200 million domestically, just like Pirates 5. Pirates 5 will also probably make $200 million less at the foreign box office than the last one and Despicable Me 3 just opened in the US with a total lower than 2. This does not get into how GotG2 made less than Disney hoped, or how Furious 8 made less than 6 & 7 in the US, despite doing massive business eleswhere. At a certain point, people get tired of seeing the same thing over and over again, and then there's a scramble to get something else like King Arthur off the ground, or a revival of Independence Day, and we've seen how that goes.

Disney used to have a much better balance of lower budget, sometimes "adult" fare and major releases, and even some series like The Mighty Ducks didn't cost $200 million a piece to make. They should look into doing that more, because outside of Marvel and Star Wars, nothing is a guarantee. Not even Pixar anymore.

In fairness, it seems to be a tough year for movies in general, looking at the performance of things like Life, The Great Wall, and Ghost in the Shell, if it counts.

Wonder Woman counts as a sequel, right?

 

[CaptainAmerica]

I know Spirit doesn't like to talk about box office figures, but "sequel fatigue" is something BOM has mentioned repeatedly, and since a mostly tentpole release schedule is what Disney's entire Studio strategy revolves around, it's worth mentioning.

Day-to-day comparisons show Cars 3 and Transformers 5 trailing their predecssors in the US (the latter by a very wide margin), neither likely to make $200 million domestically, just like Pirates 5. Pirates 5 will also probably make $200 million less at the foreign box office than the last one and Despicable Me 3 just opened in the US with a total lower than 2. This does not get into how GotG2 made less than Disney hoped, or how Furious 8 made less than 6 & 7 in the US, despite doing massive business eleswhere. At a certain point, people get tired of seeing the same thing over and over again, and then there's a scramble to get something else like King Arthur off the ground, or a revival of Independence Day, and we've seen how that goes.

Disney used to have a much better balance of lower budget, sometimes "adult" fare and major releases, and even some series like The Mighty Ducks didn't cost $200 million a piece to make. They should look into doing that more, because outside of Marvel and Star Wars, nothing is a guarantee. Not even Pixar anymore.

Neither Cars 3 nor PotC 5 were made for the domestic box office. Pirates was about the international haul and Cars exists to sell toys.

 

[BlindChow]

I know this thread has discussed this before recently, but do people really rank the old Streets of America up there with the Sunset Boulevard/Tower of Terror area?

I find this strange, too. Perhaps I just don't remember how it was when it first opened, but SoA never felt like an immersive environment to me the last few years, much less one to hold up as a benchmark for successful placemaking.

I've always been way more impressed by Universal's "streets" environments.

 

[Animaniac93-98]

Wonder Woman counts as a sequel, right?

Yes, I would count it.

Pirates was about the international haul

It's trailing Pirates 4 outside of the US too.

Pirates 4 foreign BO: $804,642,000 (2011 dollars)
Pirates 5 foreign BO: $543,200,000 (to date, having just opened in Japan)

 

[PorterRedkey]

Don't feel sad. I rode Horizons on many occasions and it really wasn't a very good attraction. You see, Epcot at that time was swamped with omnimover attractions all within a short distance of each other. Imagination, World of Motion and Spaceship Earth were all there and with Universe of Energy you had slow moving ride overload.

This phenomenon occurred because of too much sponsor money. Back in those days WDW had more sponsors than they had good ideas and TWDC has always been happy to build any attraction for which a sponsor is willing to pay. WDW became a master at building attractions that were boring corporate advertisements.

Thankfully the days of the big money sponsors is coming to a close and we can look forward to Disney being more circumspect in how they spend money on attractions. Instead of building attractions to promote good public relations for corporate sponsors we're starting to see attractions with Disney IP paying the bills.

I couldn't disagree more. Some argue Horizons is the greatest dark ride ever built. See the article http://themeparkuniversity.com/disney/top-10-reasons-epcots-horizons-greatest-dark-ride-time/

The "too much sponsor money" argument is silly.

I understand that you don't like the ride, that is fine. However, it was a very good ride if you liked long, immersive dark rides. A ride that included a suspended RV that took you above the sets, 2 OmniMax screens (kind of a mini-Soarin' experience) and a choose your own ending simulator at the end. It really was unique in so many ways.