RoysCabin
Well-Known Member
Very much agreed on "if Disney makes it, it's Disney IP"; Disney had a massive box office hit on their hands for awhile in Pirates of the Caribbean, a success that only happens because it came from a theme park attraction Disney had already created. No, they couldn't get Country Bears or Haunted Mansion to work, but that wasn't the fault of those IPs, necessarily, they were just poor films. There's no reason why, for example, Disney couldn't have done more over the years to leverage and make great use of, say, Imagination as a very strong IP, but the decision has been made in recent years to instead have the theme parks serve to sell the films, rather than allow them to be their own thing, which in turn could create entirely new IP for the company to leverage.
The bigger point, though, is that I think the over-reliance on just movie characters has the potential to, over the long term, do less good for Disney's theme park reputation. A Disney that makes all kinds of different attractions, that isn't afraid to experiment, and that creates experiences you couldn't imagine having anywhere else likely creates more long term fans who'll want to keep coming back. So much of WDW's sterling reputation was built on an era that placed a massive emphasis on guest services, "big vision" and sometimes risky attractions and parks, all while managing to sell things to you without it feeling like they were aggressively shoving it in your face; consider, for example, how the early Magic Kingdom had things like glass and antique shops that operated at a loss, but their stores were maintained because it was good for the overall show, and that attention to detail like that would register subconsciously with people and create return guests.
But a Disney that only seems capable of "slapping on more cartoon movie characters" to everything? Just an opinion of mine, but I think that over time that could possibly backfire, particularly as prices keep rising and guest services keep taking little hits here and there (even if some of the attractions featuring said characters are pretty good on their own). It fundamentally alters what being a "Disney fan" means; it stops being about a whole wide array of things, and instead becomes narrow and makes WDW feel like less of a destination if you're not a fan of meet and greets or of buying merchandise for specific film franchises. And, as you say, when everything's an extension of a recent movie, that feeling of having merchandise hawked right in your face is a lot harder to avoid, and it has an impact on the overall experience.
But I think there's one more big issue: entertainment consumption is only going to continue to fragment, each person picking and choosing from an enormous array of films and shows to suit their own tastes, and at a certain point you can't rely on everybody having seen all of your movies, even if a bunch of them are making a billion in the global box office. We often see people here say things like "(whichever movie) deserves better than a C-level attraction!" or whatever, but think about how many movies Disney is pumping out these days: how do you accommodate them all in the parks, and how do you maintain universal appeal with them when, in a continually fracturing media consumption environment, not everybody is going to particularly care about each of them? Long story short, it limits an attraction's ability to be timeless, it amps up the feeling that they're just constantly trying to sell you something, and it can be a turn off if you're just not all that invested in enough of the movies themselves; the long-term impact becomes, potentially, that you have people's attention when they bring young kids to the parks, but risk losing them as possible long-term loyal customers.
...that ramble went on far longer than I intended and now I'm hungry.
