AVATAR land - the specifics

[Bairstow]

That might be a way to write your way around having to have a spaceship ride, but it's not very exciting from a guest perspective.

Kid: So we're going to an alien planet? IN SPACE?!
Park: No, it's just a greenhouse to train lumberjacks and miners. They go to space. Not you.
Kid: Oh.

 

[GrumpyFan]

Well, sure if it's "just a greenhouse", then yeah, that sounds pretty boring. But, I'm envisioning a much more in depth and immersive experience than just a walk-thru greenhouse. I would want at least two attractions, including a coaster that would simulate/recreate the ride on the Mountain Banshee (Ikran), and perhaps a somewhat tame water ride exploring the fauna and flora.

Regardless of whether they use an idea such as this or not, there will always be the sour adult who has little child-like imagination left in them, who will spoil the adventure by telling the kid it's not real. Unfortunately, even a simulated space ship, is still just that, and if the adult chooses to spoil the kid's fun by exposing the facade, then there's really not much that can be done to stop that. It's a shame for the kid though and a little bit for the adult too.

 

[Cosmic Commando]

I actually hope they don't do a ride that you have to do just to get to the land. If you do something like that, you had BETTER nail that ride. I love Spaceship Earth, I love Pirates, I love Tower of Terror, but even with those magnificent rides I don't want to do them every single time I go to their respective parks. Some people will definitely be put off by having to ride a ride that they may or may not like to get to a land that they can't see and thus can't really evaluate whether they even really want to visit.

It's quite a walk from Discovery Island to the current CMM... I've powerwalked it many times trying to make it to FotLK on time. That's your transition! I used the distance measure on Wikimapia; it's hard to see with trees and all, but it looks like about 500ft from the main path on Discovery Island to entering the clearing after the bridge into CMM. That's roughly the same distance from the Emporium to the beginning of the hub and the entire straight part of Sunset Blvd leading up to Tower of Terror. Surely the imagineers can do something with that space?!?

 

[NoChesterHester]

Pandora on Earth "Training." Sounds an awful lot like the lame story behind Mission: Space.

 

[Taylor]

Bottlenecks can be good thing, and even necessary to prevent over-congestion in certain parts of the park.

Depending on the size of the expansion, I'm envisioning the use of some sort of spaceship transport attraction to "take" people to the Pandora area afterwards, not unlike Wild Arctic at Sea World.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Arctic

If there is some kind of ride to take you to pandora it would have to be one of the most high capacity rides ever. It couldn't be thrilling because baby's grandmas and pregnant women are going to ride, but it can't be slow either because people are going to really want to get there. I don't think it could work

 

[RunnerEd]

If there is some kind of ride to take you to pandora it would have to be one of the most high capacity rides ever. It couldn't be thrilling because baby's grandmas and pregnant women are going to ride, but it can't be slow either because people are going to really want to get there. I don't think it could work

Some type of enclosed Peoplemover might fit the bill. Video projections of space flight and soon (after hyper-sleep), we're there.

 

[Cosmic Commando]

Some type of enclosed Peoplemover might fit the bill. Video projections of space flight and soon (after hyper-sleep), we're there.

Even with a Peoplemover, I think you'd need two tracks of vehicles. I really don't think people will want to wait (even 10-15 minutes) to get into Avatarland. Can any ride really handle the capacity for a major land? I don't really know how it works at Sea World, but don't they have an option to bypass the rides? I'd rather they put that ride actually in the land and help with the immersiveness when you're there. Why be so literal with the transition here? Space travel wasn't a big part of the movie, so what gives? He woke up from hypersleep when they were almost at Pandora and then the whole rest of the movie took place on Pandora, didn't it?

 

[Alektronic]

Just walking over the bridge over Discovery River is a good enough transistion, just depends on how they theme the entrance

 

[Bairstow]

If there is some kind of ride to take you to pandora it would have to be one of the most high capacity rides ever. It couldn't be thrilling because baby's grandmas and pregnant women are going to ride, but it can't be slow either because people are going to really want to get there. I don't think it could work

I'm not sure if you've been there, but there is a non-moving alternative entrance to "Wild Arctic" for guests who want to enter the exhibits without riding the simulators. It's no faster than the simulator ride, so guests can't abuse it to bypass the intentional bottleneck and overwhelm the exhibit space, but it's totally grandma-safe.

A similar alternative for Pandoraland could of course also be implemented.

 

[Taylor]

I'm not sure if you've been there, but there is a non-moving alternative entrance to "Wild Arctic" for guests who want to enter the exhibits without riding the simulators. It's no faster than the simulator ride, so guests can't abuse it to bypass the intentional bottleneck and overwhelm the exhibit space, but it's totally grandma-safe.

A similar alternative for Pandoraland could of course also be implemented.

Yeah I haven't been I wasn't singling out that attraction or your post I just quoted yours to make my point. That sounds like a good concept but I just don't like the idea of riding a ride to get to a land

 

[RSoxNo1]

Personally, I hope they create a motion based vehicle ride that will bring us on a serious trip to Pandora, and then a group of ironic townies will come up with a tacky knock off called Chester and Hester's Pandora-rama

 

[The Empress Lilly]

Personally, I hope they create a motion based vehicle ride that will bring us on a serious trip to Pandora, and then a group of ironic townies will come up with a tacky knock off called Chester and Hester's Pandora-rama

Brilliant. Greatest post ever.

Chester and Hester's Pandorama - if they don't build it, I will myself set up a tacky carnival on DAK's parking lot by that name.

 

[GrumpyFan]

Pandora on Earth "Training." Sounds an awful lot like the lame story behind Mission: Space.

Except for the fact that you actually leave earth in Mission:Space.

 

[Cosmic Commando]

Except for the fact that you actually leave earth in Mission:Space.

ISTC. International Space Training Center. It's one of the things that bugs me the most about the ride: even in the fantasy that we are entering, we are only pretending to have an adventure.

 

[Bairstow]

So we're pretending to pretend to have an adventure.
Super.

 

[Pseudonym]

Disney wants to come up with a solution to Potter, but unfortunately I don’t think there’s an immediate solution that would be considered rational. At 20 years old, I think of my childhood and what made my childhood what it was. I think of the Disney classics like Toy Story and Lion King and how I watched them frequently, but I also think of Harry Potter and how much that meant to me. The thing about Harry Potter is that it was a total of 7 books, books which can pack in so much more detail than a movie can. The books also came out over a span of 10 years, which gave the books the ability to captivate both children and adults over a decent portion of their life. Devoted fans read the books for 10 years, while most things in their prime dont last half that long. Anything can go in or out of style so quickly, but it seems like Harry Potter is here to stay. Not only did Harry Potter thrive for the 10 years that the books were being published, it has continued to grow and prosper since then!

For Disney to bring Avatar into their park(s) I think is a good move but they should definitely not expect it to be as much of a crowd grabber (Did I really just say crowd grabber?) as The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is. I remember hearing when Universal was going to build a Harry Potter land/world and as corny as this sounds, I felt like I was a kid again. I was overwhelmed with happiness knowing that I was going to be immersed in the world of Harry Potter. It was something that I have only dreamed of for the majority of my childhood, and I’m certain that millions of other people felt the same way.

Disney is putting all of their eggs in one basket with Avatar Land. If I were one of the Disney execs I would be losing sleep at night wondering if the sequel(s) to Avatar would be both liked by fans and successful. I think success for the sequel is inevitable, coming off of the highest grossing film or whatever it was, is kind of hard to mess up.

Every Harry Potter book I read exceeded both my friends expectations and my own. Can Avatar do that? I don’t think so. I loved the Movie but I did not eat, sleep and breathe Avatar for 10 years of my childhood. I was able to compare myself with the characters in the Harry Potter books unlike the hired killers in Avatar.

I look forward to seeing a completed Avatar Land. The movie has good ideas behind it, along with a lot of cool special effects, plants, dragons, beliefs, etc. Disney will be able to do great things with Avatar Land. But Disney’s exquisite detail is expensive. Avatar Land is the perfect substitute for Beastly Kingdom but I don’t think it is the solution to Potter. I would assume that Disney will help advertise for Avatar sequels(s) in and out of their parks because Disney’s future success is essentially based off of Avatar’s success.

And I don’t know why Disney feels the need to make everything a LAND. That’s not how Walt did it! He only made an attraction for each story, not half a park. Harry potter was an exception only because it consisted of 7 books and 8 movies.

I don’t think there is anything at the same magnitude to Harry Potter right now. In its peak, yes, Star Wars, but Disney should have jumped on that when it was current. But they just made ONE RIDE because back then that’s what they did! Although there isn't anything as big as Harry Potter right now, that doesn't mean I don't think Disney can't do a series of things to increase their park attendance (Avatar Land being one of them).

Half the attractions in Disney Parks are either irrelevant, out of date, or a mixture of the two. Attractions in Universal are sloppy, but they are attractions that incorporate the childhoods of today’s children. Disney can’t continue to invest their success off of their success from the 90’s and earlier. They’re putting a Little Mermaid attraction in the FLE when that movie came out in 1989. Hm..... If you’re going to continue to invest your success into the Little Mermaid than I expect to click by the Disney Channel and see Little Mermaid TV shows to get the kids of today hooked like I once was; because the kids of today may not love the Little Mermaid as much as I do, or my parents do, because they don’t get to experience it like I did watching it at home on VHS with my family. If i asked my 6 year old cousin who Ariel was, or who Woody was, he would have no idea! But in his and my own defense, he knows who Lightning McQueen is.

 

[Scuttle]

What's the number on capacity of a ride transition? It'd have to be around 5,000 an hour wouldnt it?

 

[Cosmic Commando]

I don’t think there is anything at the same magnitude to Harry Potter right now. In its peak, yes, Star Wars, but Disney should have jumped on that when it was current. But they just made ONE RIDE because back then that’s what they did! Although there isn't anything as big as Harry Potter right now, that doesn't mean I don't think Disney can't do a series of things to increase their park attendance (Avatar Land being one of them).

Harry Potter is a once-in-a-generation (maybe more) phenomenon. On top of that, it is/was perfectly situated for transition to the theme park world: it is pretty much set in the modern world of today, but with a twist. Even the wizardy places, for the most part, look like real buildings that you can build relatively easily. J.K. Rowling already named the shops, the restaurants, the products and food that a Potterland would sell. I really think screwing up the negotiations with Rowling was the biggest failure of Disney management in the last ten years or so; look at the buzz Uni has been able to build up around it. I'm not sure we can even assess the damage that WWoHP has done to Disney yet. Let's just say someone releases the "next Harry Potter" series tomorrow. J.K. Rowling went to Disney first for the theme parks rights, but I'm not sure that will be the case with the next big thing that comes along.

 

[wdw71fan]

who cares? I'd rather Disney develop the IP's they already have locked up..

EVERYONE knows that if Starwars is ever TRUELY adapted to the parks (full land, restaurants, rides, shows,full immersion) it would crush Potter like a bug.......

The company holds a major 'trump' card in Starwars.. eventually they will use it.

 

[bhg469]

who cares? I'd rather Disney develop the IP's they already have locked up..

EVERYONE knows that if Starwars is ever TRUELY adapted to the parks (full land, restaurants, rides, shows,full immersion) it would crush Potter like a bug.......

The company holds a major 'trump' card in Starwars.. eventually they will use it.

You said it. There is no other intellectual property that will touch star wars. Multiple fans across so many generations will come out in droves. I hope when they do make this happen, they use more movie tie in and not the recent cartoon stuff. Those just feel like a money grab to me.