Bob Iger treated Disneyland with kid gloves — but took a sledgehammer to the ill-conceived DCA - OCR/SCNG

[PiratesMansion]

A fantastic dark ride could be made using the NBC IP.... by the right people at the right company at the right time. It would definitely need to be AA heavy with fully fleshed out sets. What’s the last example we have of a ride like this? Hunny Hunt from 20 years ago?

While it's not based on a Disney IP, there is, arguably, this slightly later attraction (2001, modified 2007):


Edit: if Pooh fits, this *probably* fits as well. 2009:

 

[mickEblu]

While it's not based on a Disney IP, there is, arguably, this slightly later attraction (2001, modified 2007):


Edit: if Pooh fits, this *probably* fits as well. 2009:

So 12 years then and that was OLC. I guess the last time Disney built an AA heavy ride was Splash Mountain at MK almost 30 years ago. But let’s lower the bar from the AA extravaganza with many recycled from America Sings. Frozen Ever After has a decent amount of AAs. Little Mermaid has a few even if most of them are unimpressive.

I think The next time we get a dark ride stateside based on new or unused IP like Coco or NBC (for the sake of this conversation) I would expect it to be more like MMRR and less like Hunny Hunt. They ve abandoned the C ticket Fantasyland style dark ride model so that leaves the new D or E ticket trackless rides. I’d like to see them back away from trackless rides for a while unless the IP really calls for it and they can design them to be more intimate.

 

[Miru]

So 12 years then and that was OLC. I guess the last time Disney built an AA heavy ride was Splash Mountain at MK almost 30 years ago. But let’s lower the bar from the AA extravaganza with many recycled from America Sings. Frozen Ever After has a decent amount of AAs. Little Mermaid has a few even if most of them are unimpressive.

I think The next time we get a dark ride stateside based on new or unused IP like Coco or NBC (for the sake of this conversation) I would expect it to be more like MMRR and less like Hunny Hunt. They ve abandoned the C ticket Fantasyland style dark ride model so that leaves the new D or E ticket trackless rides. I’d like to see them back away from trackless rides for a while unless the IP really calls for it and they can design them to be more intimate.

To be fair, SDMT also has plenty of (projected face) AAs. Rise of the Resistance also has a lot of them. When was the last time a ride used cutouts?

 

[mickEblu]

To be fair, SDMT also has plenty of (projected face) AAs. Rise of the Resistance also has a lot of them. When was the last time a ride used cutouts?

Haven’t been on it. Is it just like one each of the dwarves? Then I know the witch is outside of the final scene. Which isn’t too bad. Rise of the Resistance has like 6 AAs and a lot of Storm Trooper mannequins. I actually think the hangar would be much better off without all the static storm troopers. All it needs are a couple good ones. All of the static ones just sitting there really hurt the scene. Makes it feel like a movie set instead of a “real” place.

 

[George Lucas on a Bench]

The dwarf ride was lame.

 

[Little Green Men]

Haven’t been on it. Is it just like one each of the dwarves? Then I know the witch is outside of the final scene. Which isn’t too bad. Rise of the Resistance has like 6 AAs and a lot of Storm Trooper mannequins. I actually think the hangar would be much better off without all the static storm troopers. All it needs are a couple good ones. All of the static ones just sitting there really hurt the scene. Makes it feel like a movie set instead of a “real” place.

7 AA’s in the main scene plus 3 animals. The witch at the end and static figures of Snow White and the 7 dwarves again

 

[Miru]

The dwarf ride was lame.

That wasn’t my point.

 

[PiratesMansion]

I would not personally feel inclined to call Seven Dwarfs Mine Train or Frozen as particularly AA-heavy attractions (and receive additional points off large numbers of the unfortunate projected face AAs). They certainly don't *feel* like they exist in great numbers.

Frozen especially has always struck me as rather sparse.

 

[Miru]

I would not personally feel inclined to call Seven Dwarfs Mine Train or Frozen as particularly AA-heavy attractions (and receive additional points off large numbers of the unfortunate projected face AAs). They certainly don't *feel* like they exist in great numbers.

Frozen especially has always struck me as rather sparse.

Yes... they are placed sparsely compared to other rides... there’s a lot of misc. scenery between them.

 

[mickEblu]

I would not personally feel inclined to call Seven Dwarfs Mine Train or Frozen as particularly AA-heavy attractions (and receive additional points off large numbers of the unfortunate projected face AAs). They certainly don't *feel* like they exist in great numbers.

Frozen especially has always struck me as rather sparse.

Just watched a ride through of 7DMT. What’s wrong with the projected faces? They seem to work pretty well on the dwarves... on the video at least. I feel that in general it works well on cartoony faces and the Dwarves heads seem to have good molds with the projections accentuating the features and animating the faces. Unlike pillow face Constance in HM where it looks like a projection on a flat surface.

Do they not look good in person?

 

[Little Green Men]

Just watched a ride through of 7DMT. What’s wrong with the projected faces? They seem to work pretty well on the dwarves... on the video at least. I feel that in general it works well on cartoony faces and the Dwarves heads seem to have good molds with the projections accentuating the features and animating the faces. Unlike pillow face Constance in HM where it looks like a projection on a flat surface.

Do they not look good in person?

I think they look better in person myself

 

[bestcoastracer]

That wasn’t my point.

Ignore the troll.

 

[EPCOTCenterLover]

Just watched a ride through of 7DMT. What’s wrong with the projected faces? They seem to work pretty well on the dwarves... on the video at least. I feel that in general it works well on cartoony faces and the Dwarves heads seem to have good molds with the projections accentuating the features and animating the faces. Unlike pillow face Constance in HM where it looks like a projection on a flat surface.

Do they not look good in person?

Most of them look ok if you don't look at their faces for too long. Certainly not as effective as the normal AA figures, though.

 

[mickEblu]

Most of them look ok if you don't look at their faces for too long. Certainly not as effective as the normal AA figures, though.

I could see how maybe they could look too bright which could make the look artificial

 

[PiratesMansion]

Most of them look ok if you don't look at their faces for too long. Certainly not as effective as the normal AA figures, though.

Exactly. It's cost cutting. Sure, it looks better on some rides than others, but it's a little uncanny valley for me when it's not implemented well.

@GrandCanyonConcourse I count 15 animatronics on Frozen and 11 on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. plus the figures in the little end scene (and it's a roller coaster. I'm not even saying it NEEDS animatronics, just pointing that out). Is that not sparse to you compared to attractions like Pirates (119), Splash (103 at DL, 68 at WDW), or Sindbad (allegedly around 150)?

I also don't understand your need to troll with laughing emojis on posts that don't 100% match your own opinions, which detract from the legitimate contributions you do make on this board. Not saying I've never done that, but you do that quite a lot. It's baffling.

 

[Miru]

Exactly. It's cost cutting. Sure, it looks better on some rides than others, but it's a little uncanny valley for me when it's not implemented well.

@GrandCanyonConcourse I count 15 animatronics on Frozen and 11 on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. plus the figures in the little end scene (and it's a roller coaster. I'm not even saying it NEEDS animatronics, just pointing that out). Is that not sparse to you compared to attractions like Pirates (119), Splash (103 at DL, 68 at WDW), or Sindbad (allegedly around 150)?

I also don't understand your need to troll with laughing emojis on posts that don't 100% match your own opinions, which detract from the legitimate contributions you do make on this board. Not saying I've never done that, but you do that quite a lot. It's baffling.

Indeed they are in short supply, but compare those to FOP, MB, and SR with one each, in the queue as opposed to the ride. (Were any of the caged creatures AAs? There were also some non-functioning ones hidden on display), as well as recent Pixar rides with none whatsoever; either screens or simple figures. NRJ has at least one, and I think ROTR has about 5-8 animatronics.

 

[choco choco]

So 12 years then and that was OLC. I guess the last time Disney built an AA heavy ride was Splash Mountain at MK almost 30 years ago.

Sinbad at Tokyo DisneySea was twenty (20) years ago. It opened with the park in 2001. The tone of the ride was changed around 2007 or so, but that was mostly just changing the soundtrack to the ride. All the AA's remained (in fact, more were added since they added the tiger character to sell plush).

I've posted before and continue to think it: it's the best ride Disney has created this millenium.

 

[PiratesMansion]

Indeed they are in short supply, but compare those to FOP, MB, and SR with one each, in the queue as opposed to the ride. (Were any of the caged creatures AAs? There were also some non-functioning ones hidden on display), as well as recent Pixar rides with none whatsoever; either screens or simple figures. NRJ has at least one, and I think ROTR has about 5-8 animatronics.

It's true that those rides have more than the examples you named, and more than many other attractions that you didn't, but people were naming them as examples of rides with "lots" of animatronics, which may be true compared to newer attractions but isn't true in the grand scheme of things.

Which is not to say that rides need AAs to be good, because that's not accurate. But they are something that did and does distinguish Disney from the competition, and Disney has largely abandoned the days when animatronics were one of their primary storytelling mechanisms, which is short-sighted.

Much in the spirit of my Mansion post, the quality of animation, projections, etc. has advanced rapidly and will continue to do so, and many of those tools that are cheaper, that Disney now relies on will thus become (or have become) dated in short order, even compared to what people's own television and computer screens at home can achieve. By contrast, few parks use AAs, the parks that do tend to have inferior AAs compared to Disney's, and we are much further away from a time when sophisticated AAs are commonplace. Thus, AAs are true differentiators, which gives them a value that the newer tech and tools do not. And while they've shown interest at pushing the boundaries of what individual AAs can do and accomplished some great things doing so, they've shown no interest at returning to the old school AA-filled attractions. They'd do well to realize that everything old is new again.

 

[el_super]

Thus, AAs are true differentiators, which gives them a value that the newer tech and tools do not. And while they've shown interest at pushing the boundaries of what individual AAs can do and accomplished some great things doing so, they've shown no interest at returning to the old school AA-filled attractions. They'd do well to realize that everything old is new again.

They've stayed remarkably proud of their AA technology. Even at a time when AAs are now a far more common technology and more readily available to other brands. I disagree a bit, because I think they DID want to pivot back to the old style AA attraction with the Little Mermaid, being championed by the same guy who, at the same time, wanted to pivot back to hand-drawn animation. I just don't think that either endeavor worked out the way they wanted. They built the Sinbad ride in Tokyo, they built the Mermaid ride in the US and while they're both great on paper, the guest reaction hasn't been ... great.

And yet they've persisted with AAs, adding them to almost all of their most recent additions. Star Wars, Avatar, Shanghai Pirates. I think what you're seeing as a turn away from AAs is really just a turn toward faster, more thrilling rides. In that medium, AA's don't really make sense, except maybe in a slow moving queue. That's exactly what we've seen... even with Mission Breakout.

 

[PiratesMansion]

They've stayed remarkably proud of their AA technology. Even at a time when AAs are now a far more common technology and more readily available to other brands. I disagree a bit, because I think they DID want to pivot back to the old style AA attraction with the Little Mermaid, being championed by the same guy who, at the same time, wanted to pivot back to hand-drawn animation. I just don't think that either endeavor worked out the way they wanted. They built the Sinbad ride in Tokyo, they built the Mermaid ride in the US and while they're both great on paper, the guest reaction hasn't been ... great.

And yet they've persisted with AAs, adding them to almost all of their most recent additions. Star Wars, Avatar, Shanghai Pirates. I think what you're seeing as a turn away from AAs is really just a turn toward faster, more thrilling rides. In that medium, AA's don't really make sense, except maybe in a slow moving queue. That's exactly what we've seen... even with Mission Breakout.

The thrill ride push is undoubtedly true.

I don't think it's fair to say that Sindbad is received poorly, at least not the current incarnation of the ride. It has short lines for the same reason Pirates often has short lines...massive capacity in a way nothing else at the park does.

The problem with Mermaid is that the only place where the animatronics were ambitious were when they were depicting characters important to the story (most Ariel figures, Scuttle, Ursula) but even that was inconsistent (the Eric and Ariel kissing at the end, Flounder, etc.). Even good animatronics were not without fault ("Ice Cream Ariel"). Most of the other figures were incredibly of the incredibly simplistic "one back and forth movement repeated" variety (comparable to the Pooh figures in the various non-Tokyo rides who just swing their arms in the same motion over and over again). That they were utilizing tech that wouldn't have been out of place in Fantasyland dark rides but was only highlighted by the mismatch between the figures and the scope the ride wanted to achieve, even more so in Florida when you add in a queue that's better than the ride. Older AA attractions also had some figures that were more sophisticated than others, but the less sophisticated figures weren't nearly as obvious or simplistic (much in the way that the track layout of the original Snow White attractions worked to hide how primative the witch figures were, by adding urgency to the experience and contributing to the perception of being pursued in a way the static figures themselves could not).

You can't serve a top of the line steak if you're McDonald's, and you can't serve a big mac if you're trying to be a five star restaurant. There's nothing wrong with big macs or steaks, but they each have their time and place. Mermaid didn't understand that, which is precisely why Mermaid didn't work.