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AVATAR land coming to Disney's Animal Kingdom
- Thread starter DocMcHulk
- Start date
Two words....zip lines
devoy1701
Well-Known Member
Two words....zip lines
or Pack Llamas. :lookaroun
wait...do people ride those? Come to think of it I've only ever seen people walking next to them on trails. Oh well...the guests can work and interact with animals while trekking to the park!
Kamikaze
Well-Known Member
Two words....zip lines
1 word - catapult
While it would probably be more efficient, sticking the landing could be a bit rough.
Kamikaze
Well-Known Member
Giant nets.
devoy1701
Well-Known Member
To tie it in with the movie they could just manufacture giant leaves for guests to try to latch on to in an attempt to break their fall.
S.E.A.
Member
of course not, cause the connecting "theme" between the park and the movie is conservation! geeze! Who cares about the animals?
The imagineers are probably thinking of having everyone that goes to the land sit through all of "Avatar" the movie (In IMAX 3d!!!!!!) before entering with a pre-show press conference complete with a James Cameron AA explaining the whole conservation angle. That way everyone understands why it's in Disney's Animal Kingdom.
Tom
Beta Return
And it would justify Cameron's comment about this land being a "half day or more".
I honestly hope there's NO video in the new land. Video is the cheap way out. I mean, if they want to make a simulator type ride, that's fine, as long as it's one of several attractions. But no 3-D movies!
A coaster of sorts would be nice. Maybe one walk-through exhibit, but I'm very against those. AK already has enough walking, and the park isn't going to get any cooler during the day. This land needs RIDES and air conditioning.
jt04
Well-Known Member
The potential of 3D has yet to be realized although the new Universal Kong attraction made an attempt. It will take a step forward I think if they finish the Spiderman upgrade. I am not sure if you have experienced that attraction but it hints at the potential to mix 3D video/projections with dark ride technology. The better they get at merging 3D with fully realized sets the more guests will be immersed in a 'engineered' experience. It needs to compliment rather than overshadow the hardware though to be fully effective. If someone ever gets it just right there will be no going back. Think Star Tours Imagineered 'outside the box'.
pax_65
Well-Known Member
Without reading every post in 137 pages, I'm having trouble understanding some of the negativity here.
From what I'm reading, this appears to be the largest addition to Walt Disney World since 1998 when Animal Kingdom itself opened. Everyone, including me, complained that Beastly Kingdom was never built. In Avatar, we have a very cool setting for "mythical" (fictional) animals that has the potential to be more exciting and certainly more popular than Beastly Kingdom every could. This will be better than unicorns and dragons, people.
While watching Avatar in a theater, you feel almost like you have been transported to Pandora - you feel immersed in it. Perhaps that is why the movie was so popular... people wanted to see the film again to have that experience again.
To think that I can actually "go" to Pandora... I think it has the potential to be very, very cool.
My only fear at this point is that the bean counters at Disney will start cutting the budget until Pandora is one D-Ticket and a meet & greet, but I've seen no evidence of that so far.
I've been complaining for YEARS that Disney needs to put more money into the parks. Now we've got the Fantasyland expansion and Pandora. I wouldn't say I'm satisfied (fix the Yeti, finish Spaceship Earth, reopen Wonders of Life, etc) but I'm much happier than I've been in quite a few years!
From what I'm reading, this appears to be the largest addition to Walt Disney World since 1998 when Animal Kingdom itself opened. Everyone, including me, complained that Beastly Kingdom was never built. In Avatar, we have a very cool setting for "mythical" (fictional) animals that has the potential to be more exciting and certainly more popular than Beastly Kingdom every could. This will be better than unicorns and dragons, people.
While watching Avatar in a theater, you feel almost like you have been transported to Pandora - you feel immersed in it. Perhaps that is why the movie was so popular... people wanted to see the film again to have that experience again.
To think that I can actually "go" to Pandora... I think it has the potential to be very, very cool.
My only fear at this point is that the bean counters at Disney will start cutting the budget until Pandora is one D-Ticket and a meet & greet, but I've seen no evidence of that so far.
I've been complaining for YEARS that Disney needs to put more money into the parks. Now we've got the Fantasyland expansion and Pandora. I wouldn't say I'm satisfied (fix the Yeti, finish Spaceship Earth, reopen Wonders of Life, etc) but I'm much happier than I've been in quite a few years!
jt04
Well-Known Member
This is a grand slam. One of the things I remember was all the people expressing the desire to go to Pandora after seeing the movie. Now they will have the next best thing to that. And it makes the Beasly Kingdom look trivial by comparisson.
The spin by some had been that Disney had lost their touch and Potter was proof that Disney was falling further and further behind because it was too worried about appeasing investors. Those people really believed this and the Avatar announcement left many of them temporarily "speechless". :lol: Once they recovered the only thing they could do was make ridiculous claims about the movie being poor, the theme not fitting DAK
and that is was not as good a concept as BK :ROFLOL:Finally, you just do not see the cuts after something is announced that you saw under previous CEO's. So, I think we have nothing to fear here. And the investors are about to realize why that is the way to go if they have not figured it out after TWWoHP. Carsland will drive the point home.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
I agree!
I liken the Beastly Kingdom fascination to the same mindset as Disneyland fans who pine for Tony Baxter's never-completed Discovery Bay concept from the late 1970's.
Both Beastly Kingdom and Discovery Bay dealt with themes that were vaguely recognizeable by mass audiences, but that promised these elaborate Disneyfied backstories that 98.5% of theme park customers would ever understand or appreciate. But there would be that 1.5% of superfans that would pour over the Internet forums and study every WDI sketch, and replay every D23 Expo panel discussion on YouTube, and read paragraphs of mind-numbing backstory to try and understand the myth of the fabricated place. And because they invested all that time and homework into the new land, they appreciate it more than the masses of tourists who would have walked in to Beastly Kingdom and said casually "Oh, it's a unicorn ride. You wanna do this unicorn roller coaster thing?"
Avatar appears to be popular with mass audiences, and the backstory and plot has already been written by Cameron for the audience. Tourists will get off the plane in Orlando already knowing what the backstory and purpose is of an Avatarland.
But since the masses of global tourists already "get it" thanks to their Netflix subscription, it becomes uncool and unhip to a lot of superfans who have the time and energy to bother with researching over-thought WDI backstory to obscure cultural references.
Go check any Disneyland message board of the last 15 years and you will see the exact same opinion expressed about Discovery Bay as is expressed about Beastly Kingdom. The difference is that they are actually building something else on the Beastly Kingdom site, where the Discovery Bay site still sits empty and unused.
Magenta Panther
Well-Known Member
Unicorns and dragons are universally known thanks to myths, movies, plays and literature. There have been so many variations of them that most people can find at least one version to enjoy. Blue cat-eyed critters are known only via one film, and who knows if it will even stand the test of time?
In NO WAY is this gonna be better than unicorns and dragons. But that's just my take.
djkidkaz
Well-Known Member
There in lies the problem. Its AVATARland, meaning the whole chunk of land has to be dedicated to that one movie franchise! Why not create Beastly Kingdom and have an Avatar section. Once you build this, you can never have any other mythical creatures in this area other than what is in the movies. I don't understand why they are boxing themselves in a corner??
DonaldDoleWhip
Well-Known Member
Because the world of Pandora isn't supposed to be a "limiting" factor. The idea is that Pandora is so immersive that it needs its own land for Disney to really be able to do justice.
Why is Cars getting its own 12-acre land? To sell toys to young males between the ages of 3 and 6? Oh, well Carsland has an impressive E-ticket and immersive theming, so we're okay with it. Pandora is no different. If anything, a single Avatar attraction would've been even more out of place in Beastly Kingdom (which was mostly derived from European myths). If done properly (and isolated from other lands by being built on the CMM plot), this could be absolutely amazing, and far better than a Beastly Kingdom hodgepodge of navi, unicorns, and Journey to the Center of the Earth. :ROFLOL:
CastleBound
Well-Known Member
I know they will be present, but if you remove the blue Navi people from the equation, you have a Beastly Kingdom. Maybe since it is in Animal Kingdom and wants to deal mostly with nature, they may lessen the presents of the Navi. It's probably far fetched since they are the main part of the story, but that could be their way to integrate it better.
NoChesterHester
Well-Known Member
The whole "land" could take place a hundred years after the first movie. The Navi and the humans have found harmony and the conservation theme rings true throughout and without the battle overlays. I for one hope we actually get to see the living character initiative in fully force, not just a fleeting teaser.
AEfx
Well-Known Member
That sounds awfully boring, even if you like Avatar. The "conservation message" (at once totally hard handed yet also completely pithy as dealt with in the film) is so limited and overplayed anyway I don't think you can get a land out of it without conflict.
I'm sure it will be pretty, oh so pretty, just like the rest of AK. But it's going to have to go further than "pretty" to impress people. Yes, I know, some people are able to walk around AK all day looking at the trees and think that makes it a full-day park, but that only goes so far with most people, especially repeat visitors.
They need some rock'em, sock'em action if this land is going to be successful beyond whomever happens to still be an Avatar fan in five years.
djkidkaz
Well-Known Member
Do they even sell Pandora toys?? I have never seen a kid walking around with an Avatar shirt on or carrying a Navi toy. Carsland makes complete sense since it is Disney AND sells tons of merchandise!
And I have to disagree with you, but Beastly Kingdom with an Avatar section, JTTCotE and Unicorns sounds frickin' awesome!