AVATAR land construction progress

[GoofGoof]

Partnership between Disney and Cameron was announced on Sept 20, 2011. So about 5.5 years from that announcement. The mistake was announcing the land before any planning of what the land would involve was completed. Groundbreaking was January 10, 2014. Thus a little over 3 year build time, which is a little on the long side.

With that in mind, isn't 5 years a typical time frame from blue sky to finishing construction for large projects like this?

For Disney, yes. The 3 years of costruction is about on par for their recent projects of this scale.

Yes. 5 years is about right from conception to completion. But I believe Disney was too quick to announce the project. It was an obvious attempt to pull back guest interest after IOA opened Harry Potter just a year before. More guests were leaving Disney property for a day to check out HP. I don't blame them for wanting to try and pull interest back but the Avatar idea seemed like a random choice to some people. And now the movie has pretty much been forgotten by most. Perhaps they should've stuck with the original Beastly Kingdom idea where there wasn't a movie tie in. But, you know...this is Disney. Gotta make that $$$.

There is a good chance they had to disclose the arrangement in their SEC filings anyway because DIS is a publicly traded company and they were entering into a significant contract with a 3rd party. I'm not sure if this contract would be considered material enough to require disclosure but it most likely would. TWDC fiscal year ended 9/30/11 and the 10K for 2011 has a disclosure that the rights to Avatar were purchased and Avatarland was planned for AK. I believe the disclosure of the contract itself was required but they probably didn't need to specify it was for AK. Sometimes the pesky accounting rules get in the way of a good conspiracy theory

Edit: This is similar to the situation with Universal and Nintendo. They publicly disclosed the relationship when the agreement was signed in 2015 because they had to, but the first Nintendo land (in Japan) isn't expected to open until 2020.

 

[No Name]

Should we read anything into the comment at 3:54 about " ... taking your first walk through the jungles of South America"?

Good catch.

It's funny how when he says "taking your first walk in Africa," the video shows the entrance to Africa. But when he says the same for South America, since they didn't have an entrance or land to show, we are left staring up at a tree. My point is, it seems as though the people who put the video together must've noticed... and yet it remains.

I'm probably overthinking it.

 

[JenniferS]

Good catch.

It's funny how when he says "taking your first walk in Africa," the video shows the entrance to Africa. But when he says the same for South America, since they didn't have an entrance or land to show, we are left staring up at a tree. My point is, it seems as though the people who put the video together must've noticed... and yet it remains.

I'm probably overthinking it.

I overthink everything. I blame @marni1971.

 

[Alektronic]

Have we seen this piece before? Flight of Passage queue, maybe?

View attachment 192865

Yes. That is the queue line just before the merge point.

 

[Alektronic]

Definitely, reminds me on the Transformers queue. I admit that is a little disappointing. However, it is just one room, I am sure there will be many.

From what I have seen of the queue line, it definitely won't be disappointing

 

[Master Yoda]

Yes. 5 years is about right from conception to completion. But I believe Disney was too quick to announce the project. It was an obvious attempt to pull back guest interest after IOA opened Harry Potter just a year before. More guests were leaving Disney property for a day to check out HP. I don't blame them for wanting to try and pull interest back but the Avatar idea seemed like a random choice to some people. And now the movie has pretty much been forgotten by most. Perhaps they should've stuck with the original Beastly Kingdom idea where there wasn't a movie tie in. But, you know...this is Disney. Gotta make that $$$.

If I remember correctly, the early announcement was due to the information leaking. About the only reason the news was not broken here was @marni1971 and @Lee did not believe it.

 

[G00fyDad]

If I remember correctly, the early announcement was due to the information leaking. About the only reason the news was not broken here was @marni1971 and @Lee did not believe it.

HAHAHAHA I can just imagine their faces when they first heard the idea.

I think Pandora (Avatar) will be amazing but I would rather have seen them do 2 other things instead. First, remove Dinoland and add Beastly Kingdom in its footprint. That would give them their own dragon and rides to compete with HP. Second, develop and open the third expansion pad to the north to Australia.

 

[motox7]

Just watched the GMA segment and all I can say is wow!

 

[Incomudro]

I stand corrected, six years. I believe it was 2011 when it was announced. That's still an extremely long time for guests to wait for an existing section of a park to be built. From what I understand the reason behind this is to spread out costs over several years. But by these videos and "leaked footage" (which was probably planned) I think they discovered that guests have lost interest in this project years ago. I understand trying to hype guests about a new project but they shoot themselves in the foot by announcing it too early then taking too long to build it. Look at Ninjago at Legoland. Or Volcano Bay and Jimmy Fallon at Universal. Very speedy projects and kept guests interested the entire construction time. I think Disney uses their early announcements to help explain their constant price hikes, even though a lot of their projects anymore take half a decade to come to fruition.

You're making the assumption that potential guests have been waiting and counting since the announcement.
I'd imagine that only a very small percentage of park goers do such a thing.

 

[RSoxNo1]

If I remember correctly, the early announcement was due to the information leaking. About the only reason the news was not broken here was @marni1971 and @Lee did not believe it.

By no means was the early announcement anything other than a surprise to the masses. As you said, a few people said they received early info, but it wasn't put out for public consumption.

 

[Master Yoda]

By no means was the early announcement anything other than a surprise to the masses. As you said, a few people said they received early info, but it wasn't put out for public consumption.

Put out for public consumption early to get ahead of the leak. I doubt the ink on the concept art was even dry when they showed it.

 

[RSoxNo1]

Put out for public consumption early to get ahead of the leak. I doubt the ink on the concept art was even dry when they showed it.

Your timing is off.

This was announced September 20, 2011 with no concept art. It wasn't until October 24, 2012 when there was a leak online initially started by yours truly, and then hours later the construction blueprints surfaced. The first pieces of concept art weren't put out publicly until October 12, 2013 at Japan's D23 Expo.

 

[raven]

You're making the assumption that potential guests have been waiting and counting since the announcement.
I'd imagine that only a very small percentage of park goers do such a thing.

So the crowds on opening day for Seven Dwarfs, Frozen and even Everest were just a "small percentage of park goers?" Announcements are made to hype crowds and it works. Look at Star Wars and Toy Story land. That's probably a good 1/3 of DHS and you want to tell me that people aren't waiting and counting days until that opens as well?

 

[DisneyJayL]

Looks really, really good. I'm trying to temper my excitement with this. It's a losing battle.

 

[LieutLaww]

 

[GoofGoof]

So the crowds on opening day for Seven Dwarfs, Frozen and even Everest were just a "small percentage of park goers?" Announcements are made to hype crowds and it works. Look at Star Wars and Toy Story land. That's probably a good 1/3 of DHS and you want to tell me that people aren't waiting and counting days until that opens as well?

Crowds will show up when something new opens. There is little or no impact to attendance when you announce something if it isn't going to open for years. I don't think they announced Avatar early to help attendance.

 

[Incomudro]

So the crowds on opening day for Seven Dwarfs, Frozen and even Everest were just a "small percentage of park goers?" Announcements are made to hype crowds and it works. Look at Star Wars and Toy Story land. That's probably a good 1/3 of DHS and you want to tell me that people aren't waiting and counting days until that opens as well?

You're saying that guests have been waiting all this time since the original announcement date.
I'm saying that only a small percentage of park goers have been hanging since the announce date, or could even remember or care when it was.

 

[DDLand]

For those of you who don't want to give baby Corless views, head over to the specifics thread for the MAGICal version.

 

[raven]

You're saying that guests have been waiting all this time since the original announcement date.
I'm saying that only a small percentage of park goers have been hanging since the announce date, or could even remember or care when it was.

Maybe that's why they are trying to drum up so much publicity. Especially today.

 

[Incomudro]

Maybe that's why they are trying to drum up so much publicity. Especially today.

Well, it's opening in three months so...