News Announced: Mary Poppins Attraction in UK Pavilion

[Clowd Nyne]

If you’re referring to Tony Baxter’s concept, and if i’m remembering properly, that was more his pitch to get into Imagineering than an attraction planned for actual implementation in the parks.

According to the podcast connecting with Walt. It was one of Walt’s original attractions for the magic kingdom’s fantasyland. After he died. The company decided to use the same three dark rides for fantasy land that were already in Disneyland to save on funds

 

[MaximumEd]

I’d like to see a Poppins dark ride in a similar vein as the C ticket Alice ride in DL. I think it’s the best C ticket dark ride in DL. Just my opinion.

 

[HauntedMansionFLA]

I’d like to see a Poppins dark ride in a similar vein as the C ticket Alice ride in DL. I think it’s the best C ticket dark ride in DL. Just my opinion.

Would a version of Carousel of Progress fit in that space? What’s the capacity of CoP over at the MK?

 

[MisterPenguin]

Would a version of Carousel of Progress fit in that space? What’s the capacity of CoP over at the MK?

Just barely fits. About 4k/hr.

 

[HauntedMansionFLA]

Just barely fits. About 4k/hr.

Okay. Thanks.

 

[mickEblu]

C Tickets should be zippy. There’s usually some nice, interesting stuff to look at in a C ticket, but there’s not enough room in the budget for everything to be nice and interesting, so the ride needs to move you through them quickly so you don’t realize just how many blank walls there are after that cool bouncing with Tigger scene.

Alice, Snow White, Pan, Winnie the Pooh, and even Frozen (for the most part, at least) are zippy. Mermaid and River Journey are not zippy. Of course, they have their own problems, but when you don’t have a lot of nice (Mermaid) or interesting (NRJ) things in your ride, making your guests look at them for longer doesn’t help.

Another problem with Mermaid (aside from it being a book report ride) is the ride path. You go AROUND all of the scenes and never THRU any. There is never a moment where you feel as if you are in the middle of the action. It’s almost like you re watching a movie on a slow moving ride vehicle.

 

[marni1971]

I'm hoping this is more in the vein of NRJ..

It’s not. Thankfully.

 

[britain]

I’m thinking more that this is the spiritual successor to Mr Toad.

What if it’s all done in a very stylized way, à la...

 

[ToTBellHop]

Was it really illuminations based?

Yes.

 

[GeneralKnowledge]

Not sure why some forget this forum has "rumors" in the title ... I feel like it should go without saying not everything comes to fruition. Things die. It happens. Things ultimately go nowhere. It happens. I'd argue our insiders are pretty darn careful about what gets put on here. It's when ridiculous rumors get brought over from elsewhere that things get out of control lol

The “easy” way to filter all of the junk news out of this forum is to simply put all 101,000 users on ignore except for @marni1971

 

[phi2134]

Not a huge surprise but I did hear today that a Mary Poppins dark ride has been approved and work begins within 6 months. We will see if they stay the course here.

Have you heard of where the ride will be within the pavilion? I'm just hoping it doesn't take away from the gardens or aesthetics of the side street. I'm guessing that entrance would be by the bathroom area or maybe down the side street past the tea shop. And hopefully the show building is separate behind the pavilion.

 

[marni1971]

The “easy” way to filter all of the junk news out of this forum is to simply put all 101,000 users on ignore except for @marni1971

 

[wannabeBelle]

Have you heard of where the ride will be within the pavilion? I'm just hoping it doesn't take away from the gardens or aesthetics of the side street. I'm guessing that entrance would be by the bathroom area or maybe down the side street past the tea shop. And hopefully the show building is separate behind the pavilion.

Some ideas are here: https://forums.wdwmagic.com/threads/proposed-mary-poppins-attraction-in-uk-pavilion.925031/page-179 and I believe there was one at the end of the page before. Marie

 

[nickys]

The “easy” way to filter all of the junk news out of this forum is to simply put all 101,000 users on ignore except for @marni1971

Say whaaat?
There are more trusted insiders on here than just Martin. And some of them have posted on this thread recently.

Oh the delicious irony ..... !

 

[Kman101]

Pretty sure that was slight sarcasm?

 

[rle4lunch]

I hope not, just went on it finally last week. Pretty yes, but also pretty pointless. I felt really bad for the people in the 100 minute standby line. It wasn't even worth the short fast pass wait and I knew ahead of time to not expect anything but this went way below that even.. Glad we got to finally see it for ourselves but there is no desire to try to ride it again. Would hate to see a true Poppins attraction wasted this way.

Exactly.

 

[GeneralKnowledge]

Pretty sure that was slight sarcasm?

No I was serious. I’ve got everyone blocked. It took me 5 years to manually block each one but I did it.

 

[Kman101]

No I was serious. I’ve got everyone blocked. It took me 5 years to manually block each one but I did it.

 

[njDizFan]

Another problem with Mermaid (aside from it being a book report ride) is the ride path. You go AROUND all of the scenes and never THRU any. There is never a moment where you feel as if you are in the middle of the action. It’s almost like you re watching a movie on a slow moving ride vehicle.

That's it exactly. Even with the large showbuilding and elaborate queue, I think it rates below or equal to the other Fantasyland dark rides. Going around the perimeter of a box and looking at painted adornments does not really give me the fuzzies. At least in PP you get the feeling of flying over and through the story.

 

[yensidtlaw1969]

That's it exactly. Even with the large showbuilding and elaborate queue, I think it rates below or equal to the other Fantasyland dark rides. Going around the perimeter of a box and looking at painted adornments does not really give me the fuzzies. At least in PP you get the feeling of flying over and through the story.

I am constantly amazed by how they managed to do so little with so much when it comes to Mermaid. You could fit Disneyland’s Pan, Toad, and Alice inside the Mermaid building at the same time, and yet it doesn’t have half the charm of any of them. Hardly any dead space in those tiny matchbox sized buildings in Fantasyland, but several extended moments of it in Mermaid.

I think it’s one of those attractions that proves you can’t buy your way out of a bad design. The Little Mermaid could have made a fantastic Dark Ride if only they put an ounce of cleverness towards it. Instead it became too literal in basically every sense and isn’t very exciting for it, despite how much money and resource went into the ride.

On the whole the Fantasyland Dark Rides are ingenious as heck, and actually benefit from much of their physical flatness by the way they use blacklight painting to translate their animated worlds into dimension without needing tons of space. They capture the beauty of their films hand-crafted nature in almost no space at all, and in the case of Pan, Toad, and Alice add on top of that the novelty of ride systems that are elementarily creative to their stories - Alice with it’s outdoor upper level, Toad with its unsteerable roadsters, and of course Pan most famously with it’s flying. Snow and Pinocchio, beautifully realized though they are, don’t quite achieve this other trick — Pan, Toad, and Alice would still be kinda fun to ride even if there wasn’t much to see, where Snow White and Pinocchio are pretty reliant on their visuals to grab your interest. I think this is part of why Pinocchio is generally ranked low in the Fantasyland family, because at least Snow has the added quirk of being Scary to shake things up for it. Pinocchio seems more placid in comparison to all the others, though I personally have a soft spot for it because of how much I love the film.

All of this is to say, I can’t express how refreshing it would be to see a Mary Poppins Dark Ride that manages to achieve something like the ingenuity of the Disneyland Fantasyland Dark Rides. A simple but nimble ride system that creatively puts you in a space and place that’s fun and populated with characters and songs you love - you’d be hard pressed to find a better source for such a thing than Disney’s Poppins. But then, the same could have been said for Mermaid.