I understand that we all love what we love, but recently I heard it mentioned that Walt never intended the parks to be museums. He placed the stated goal of always trying new things, to always be pushing the envelope and to always be tweaking attractions.
*** Not a personal attack. *** :wave:
I am SICK of hearing certain people in the company use this as an excuse for low quality attractions. I know that's not your intention, yet some execs really do flippantly say that to justify poor decisions.
Walt's statement reflects the desire to do things better, and to keep progressing rather than remaining stagnant. Upgrading the Jungle Cruise, HM, or POTC represents his wish of not being a museum. Replacing mediocre attractions with better ones does, too. But a decision producing a lesser experience or poorer quality cannot be protected by the "not a museum" argument. Example: Do those people really think Walt would have preferred Imagination 2.0 to the original? Change can be good, but change for its own sake is usually destructive.
Furthermore, Walt was wise enough to know when he had a good thing going and simply needed to augment it, versus when something needed to be replaced outright. When Mickey and Minnie didn't provide enough plotlines, he added Goofy and Donald—he didn't simply replace Mickey. When the original JC wasn't working, he had Marc Davis devise a more comical attraction. But when "Pinocchio" didn't match his vision, he scrapped half the film and restarted.
Was the original Tiki Room stale in the early 90s? Yep. Crowds had fallen in both Orlando and Tokyo. However, the Orlando team took a flippant "not a museum" approach and gave us the obnoxious UNM, while Tokyo took care to maintain the original spirit and produced the superior "Get the Fever." And Tokyo was wise enough to know when "Fever" needed to be replaced. In 2010, Orlando was still suffering through tired 90s clichés.
The phrase "not a museum" only works if the parks have a good curator.
