EPCOT Anna, Elsa and Kristoff Audio-Animatronics refresh coming to Frozen Ever After in EPCOT

[Stripes]

The fact that many signed off on how they looked as good enough tells you all you need to know about how things work now.

“Now” or 10 years ago?

In any industry if you are actually innovating, there will be some decisions that won’t pay off.

Take Apple, for example. They removed SIM cards from their latest iPhones in the U.S. Naturally, people complained. But, they were able to squeeze a bigger battery inside. Most people, if they are even aware, would view that as a decent trade-off. On the other hand, when they replaced the function row on MacBook Pros with a touchscreen it created a worse customer experience. So, they brought back the function row. Same with the super-thin chassis. The increased portability sacrificed thermal ventilation and performance. So they made the chassis thicker again. And MagSafe charging. And butterfly keys.

Similar examples are common among virtually every company in innovative industries.

Actually if they had done it right, they would have left Maelstrom

Why? Maelstrom was as good a candidate as any to be replaced. It was dated, typical guests were confused by its storyline, the attraction wasn’t reviewed favorably by typical guests, and guest demand was minimal so it had limited absorption power and load-balancing value.

 

[UNCgolf]

maelstrom was cheap and lame

It certainly wasn't great, but I think it was a better attraction than FEA. FEA is a mess.

FEA works incredibly well as an argument for the IP requirement, though. It's popular because it's Frozen.

 

[BrianLo]

If they would have designed it right the first time, there wouldn’t be a need for a change. The fact that many signed off on how they looked as good enough tells you all you need to know about how things work now.

You mean how things worked then. These choices were largely made in 2014. The grievance is pretty old and predates the production of these types of figures that occurred with the beauty and the beast Tokyo project later that decade.

I’m not saying that puts them off the hook, but the lesson has long been learned and they seem more committed to these new generation figures for their humanoid animated characters.

They had either Mermaid plastic faces or Dwarves to work with. The former retrospectively was preferable, but the dwarves are more successful today. I assume these new gen faces will reflect for Miguel and the Encanto cast as well.

 

[larryz]

It's Disney's park. They'll do what they want. Your input is neither solicited nor accepted.

Just -- wait for it -- let it go.

 

[Moth]

Teehee.

You know who'd really benefit from a 4-6 month refurbishment? Frozen Ever After. Just swap out the projected faces for physical faces and that's the most of what they'd need to do.

 

[aladdin2007]

Moth said:
You know who'd really benefit from a 4-6 month refurbishment? Frozen Ever After. Just swap out the projected faces for physical faces and that's the most of what they'd need to do.

Meant to put this here originally to Moths comment, how it all ended up in the Buzz Lightyear thread instead I don't know but sorry about that......while this was spot on correct lol, plussing a couple of those barren empty scenes upstairs couldn't hurt either. They get away with the "its part of the frozen aesthetic" excuse, but that's always bothered me. It shows they just didn't want to spend on more fully fleshed out scenes.

 

[Centauri Space Station]

It certainly wasn't great, but I think it was a better attraction than FEA. FEA is a mess.

FEA works incredibly well as an argument for the IP requirement, though. It's popular because it's Frozen.

How? Having actual AAs and sets? A more coherent story?

 

[UNCgolf]

How? Having actual AAs and sets? A more coherent story?

I definitely wouldn't call FEA's story more coherent than Maelstrom's. FEA barely has a story. There's no real flow to the FEA scenes; it's basically just a disjointed group of vignettes featuring the characters from the film. And Maelstrom did have AAs and sets (obviously FEA's AAs are a lot more impressive). None of this is to suggest that Maelstrom had a good story, though.

In a vacuum, FEA is probably better than Maelstrom, but it's dragged down by how barren it is in places. It almost feels like they just stopped when they were about 80% finished and opened it as-is. But Maelstrom was a good fit for the Norway pavilion and FEA is a terrible fit. Maelstrom also didn't get long waits -- FEA's wait times are absurd for such a mediocre attraction (which is due to power of the Frozen IP, as I mentioned). It's also a waste of the Frozen IP; they should have built a from scratch attraction elsewhere instead of shoehorning one into the small Maelstrom space.