News Cars-Themed Attractions at Magic Kingdom

[MrPromey]

Sorry for the crude graphic.

Here's a chart showing the average ratings and 95% confidence interval, by age group, for the attractions we're discussing, from the Unofficial Guide/TouringPlans.com reader surveys.

View attachment 808942

These are the age groups we survey:

• Pre-school children (up to age 5)
• Grade school children (ages 6-12)
• Teens (ages 13-19)
• Young Adults (ages 20-30)
• Over 30's (ages 30-64)
• Seniors (ages 65+)

The horizontal line is the average rating for that attraction for that age group.
The vertical line is the 95% confidence interval for that age group.

A decent rule of thumb is that if the confidence intervals don't overlap, the result you're seeing is probably due to some underlying truth, and not (for example) random chance/noise in the sample/etc.

It's a 5-point scale, with 1 bad and 5 excellent. (Take that, DEFCON.)

Radiator Springs Racers is on the left in mint green.
Tom Sawyer Island is next in salmon pink.
The Liberty Square Riverboat is in baby blue.
Hall of Presidents is in lemonade yellow on the right.

Every age group except pre-schoolers rates Radiator Springs Racers substantially higher than any of the other attractions.

It's not close.

Teens prefer Radiator Springs by almost 1.4 points over the next-closest attraction in a 5-point scale.
Young Adults prefer Radiator Springs by almost 1.2 points.
Over 30's prefer Radiator Springs by almost a full point.
Seniors prefer Radiator Springs by almost half a point.

If you want the parks to make people happy, Cars is likely to do that way more than anything that's there now.

Okay, so in a world where only one can exist in a Florida park and all the rest need to be completely scrapped to make that happen, what you're showing makes a lot of sense.

By making this an either/or discussion, are you saying that is the world that we're in?

(for the record, I'm mostly in the camp that would like to preserve some semblance of the riverfront across the sight-lines of what's there now - I'm not all that married to the idea of keeping Tom Sawyers' Island fully intact and while I think it's a wonky fit to try to make this a part of frontierland, it doesn't feel as wonky as GOTG in Epcot so... baby steps?)

 

[SpaceMountain77]

I find it unfortunate that we are regularly reminded about the blessing of size at the Walt Disney World Resort, but new attractions always come at the expense of existing attractions.

Also, objectively, navigating the EPCOT hub construction for years was awful. If the Cars addition was built Beyond Big Thunder Mountain, as originally promised, it would have been out of sight, out of crowd flows. The reimagining of the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer's Island is going to be a visible mess for years.

 

[Architectural Guinea Pig]

Build the Cars thing in Epcot next to Test Track replacing the Odyssey

Yeah, and now “fans” start moaning and complaining about Epcot losing its theme with an even deeper infestation of IP… seems people can find problems about anything Disney says

 

[MoonRakerSCM]

THIS!! With all the drama of paving over ROA, I don't think people have realized yet just how small the ride is actually going to be. There is no way it can deliver an experience that is even just on par with RSR in the footprint they show it occupying in the concept art.

RSR is ~5.4 acres (showbuilding and all outside track area)...

This entire area (as a big circle from ROA shore all the way around is ~4.0 acres. That is the absolute MAXIMUM space the ride can occupy... if we make assuptions on walk ways and entrance path space (as shown in the ride overview image) it's more like ~3.2 acres. 40% less footprint than RSR.

 

[Mr. Sullivan]

The more I think on it, the more I feel like they’re really wanting to differentiate Magic Kingdom and Disneyland. The whole purpose of DL Forward is to make that resort one people want to travel and go see and spend a lot of time at, just like they do WDW. But why would they if Disneyland and Magic Kingdom are so closely related with just a few notable distinctions?

Magic Kingdom has always struggled when held up next to Disneyland. Even at opening, when they were trying to differentiate, you had guests demanding Pirates. They were demanding Disneyland but in Florida. And they got it..kind of sort of. They got a version of it that lacked what made Disneyland special.

For nearly 50 years, this park held strong to being Disneyland’s sister. Then they slowly started to do things that differentiated each park. Galaxy’s Edge to DL, Tron to MK, ToonTown refresh to DL. It was only a matter of time before they started making bigger, bolder moves to make the parks truly stand apart from each other.

And honestly…for me, that can only be good for Magic Kingdom. It can’t be Worse Disneyland forever. It has to get its own completely unique identity because for most of its life, it just hasn’t.

I don’t completely agree with the decision to put Cars into Frontierland (I like their story for it, but it will come down to execution). I do think Rivers of America at MK is nice to look at. But longterm, this will do more good for the park than it will bad, no matter what the feelings of those who cling to a certain version of Magic Kingdom that was never going to last(myself included to some extent, there is definitely an era of this park I miss).

I also think this is going to go a long way in truly justifying this being the most visited theme park in the world. Because at the moment, it seems really strange that it holds that title despite not even managing to come out as the best park of the four at the resort. All this coming—Cars, Villains, Coco if it has survived, Moana if they stick to it—may just actually, finally change that.

 

[TP2000]

I need @TP2000 analysis on this change, can’t even imagine what’d he say.

I've been hosting extended family at the beach this week, so I'm behind the curve. But I just posted some initial thoughts this evening over in the Disneyland version of this thread, where we are thanking God that Rivers of America complex was saved by Star Wars.

But suffice it to say, while I love Cars Land at DCA...

The people who made this creative and operational decision for the Magic Kingdom are idiots. Complete idiots.

 

[McMickeyWorld]

I don't really understand the concern about Disney being less "patriotic." I mean, I'm Mexican, and the Hall of Presidents scares me, but Disney still keeps it and even updates it. Didn't they just add an exhibit honoring soldiers at Epcot a couple of months ago? And Cars is still pretty "American" too. The good thing about this is that they could redo that part of the parade route and the facades.

 

[WDW1995]

I find it unfortunate that we are regularly reminded about the blessing of size at the Walt Disney World Resort, but new attractions always come at the expense of existing attractions.

Also, objectively, navigating the EPCOT hub construction for years was awful. If the Cars addition was built Beyond Big Thunder Mountain, as originally promised, it would have been out of sight, out of crowd flows. The reimagining of the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer's Island is going to be a visible mess for years.

Another thing about this that I think a lot of the cheerleaders are missing. For a significant percentage of our limited natural lifespan on this Earth, MK will be a huge ugly pit. They didn't have to choose this.

 

[MrPromey]

Here's some crazy ideas...

Permanently dock the Liberty Belle and turn it into a lounge with live music and a spot for watching parades and fireworks

Keep Tom Sawyer Island but put a Pocahontas area/stage show in the center of it

Build the Cars thing in Epcot next to Test Track replacing the Odyssey

I'd settle for them docking Liberty Belle, keeping the front of Tom Sawyer's island to preserve the feel of the surrounding areas that were designed to compliment it and calling it whatever they want while turning it into a peninsula with the back (actually most of the space) filled in, putting bridges across whatever they want and still putting the Cars ride on the other side of that island facade.

Cars in Frotnierland feels weird and wrong to me but that would feel more like a beyond Big Thunder Mountain project even if it's not really beyond it and is just a difference of a hundred and fifty feet or so with what is left also acting as part of the berm meant to hide the attraction from sight-lines that the concept art makes it look like they're planning for part of that space, anyway.

What I don't want is to see autonomous SUVs with faces visible from ground level at Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder Mountain, or the current Frontierland or what the guest accessible back sides of 7DMT and the Moana walkthrough ended up being like for current Frontierland and Liberty Square.

 

[WDWhopper]

Here's some crazy ideas...

Permanently dock the Liberty Belle and turn it into a lounge with live music and a spot for watching parades and fireworks

Keep Tom Sawyer Island but put a Pocahontas area/stage show in the center of it

Build the Cars thing in Epcot next to Test Track replacing the Odyssey

Or how about putting all of these new areas and attractions into a new park and spare the existing parks. The existing parks are so big and so filled with E ticket rides, you can really only do about a third of them in one day.

 

[WDWhopper]

Another thing about this that I think a lot of the cheerleaders are missing. For a significant percentage of our limited natural lifespan on this Earth, MK will be a huge ugly pit. They didn't have to choose this.

Agreed. I don’t think the current Disney planners grasp how huge Universal’s Epic Universe park is going to be. The addition of Super Nintendo World in Japan in 2021 has catapulted Universal past Disney, as far as the buzz it’s generated among the people. I was in Japan in 2015 and 2018 and Disney was the clear winner, but when I went in 2023 Universal is all anyone was talking about. Universal will, for all intents and purposes, have 4 parks (since Volcano Bay is good enough to count as a theme
park) Disney will also have 4 and two minor water parks (1 if you count that one or the other of them is usually closed) It strikes me that Universal is the one adding theme parks, when they really don’t have any land to do it, but they’re somehow making it work. Disney has 44 square miles, but seems dead set against opening another park. They’ve reached critical mass at MK and Hollywood Studios. It’s going to be too crowded and it will be impossible to hit even half of everything in one day.

 

[Captain Neo]

I remember in the early 2000s standing in line for big thunder at night and looking way off in the distance to see a burning cabin across the river. Little details like that were so cool and really made the Disney experience so immersive.

future generations are only going to know it as a concrete jungle where you walk from show building to the next to see a ride based on a movie

 

[Bleed0range]

I find it unfortunate that we are regularly reminded about the blessing of size at the Walt Disney World Resort, but new attractions always come at the expense of existing attractions.

Also, objectively, navigating the EPCOT hub construction for years was awful. If the Cars addition was built Beyond Big Thunder Mountain, as originally promised, it would have been out of sight, out of crowd flows. The reimagining of the Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer's Island is going to be a visible mess for years.

““Here in Florida, we have something special we never enjoyed at Disneyland... the blessing of size. There's enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine."

I think the expansion and the ride are cool, but I think Disney is making a mistake being lazy and or cheap about where to place it. Universal is creating an entire new park with a ton of water features and putting the “park” back in “theme park.” They have a ton of land dedicated to the beautification. Disney are taking it away to shoe horn a ride in.

Say what you will about WD saying the parks always change but he also cared about how they look. He didn’t want a dilapidated mansion and I doubt he would want the riverboat gone. He would spend the money to expand the land or build a 5th gate.

As cool as this is, I do think they’ve gone too far. They should just stick it where Villains is and just build a damn 5th gate for Villains.

They have almost infinite resources and a ton of land and Universal is running circles around them making them merely reactionary rather than innovative or creative.

I am becoming a Disneyland fan rather than a WDW fan at this point. They care more there.

They could do this without taking away something.

 

[phillip9698]

Yes it needed more rides, but it's needs filler rides too. Not everything needs to be an E ticket. That's the issue I have with this. You need to Rivers of America and Dumbos of the world as well as the E tickets. Not everything has to have a 3 hour wait in the park.

You are only half correct. Yes you need the Dumbos of the world, but you also need people that want to get on Dumbo. That is where TSI fails. It’s a massive plot of land that people DO NOT want to go experience.

Laugh Theater, Dumbo, Tea Cups, etc……yes those non E ticket attractions are needed………..and they perform their job because they are able to ATTRACT PEOPLE. TSI does not attract people!

 

[Sir_Cliff]

Sorry for the crude graphic.

Here's a chart showing the average ratings and 95% confidence interval, by age group, for the attractions we're discussing, from the Unofficial Guide/TouringPlans.com reader surveys.

View attachment 808942

These are the age groups we survey:

• Pre-school children (up to age 5)
• Grade school children (ages 6-12)
• Teens (ages 13-19)
• Young Adults (ages 20-30)
• Over 30's (ages 30-64)
• Seniors (ages 65+)

The horizontal line is the average rating for that attraction for that age group.
The vertical line is the 95% confidence interval for that age group.

A decent rule of thumb is that if the confidence intervals don't overlap, the result you're seeing is probably due to some underlying truth, and not (for example) random chance/noise in the sample/etc.

It's a 5-point scale, with 1 bad and 5 excellent. (Take that, DEFCON.)

Radiator Springs Racers is on the left in mint green.
Tom Sawyer Island is next in salmon pink.
The Liberty Square Riverboat is in baby blue.
Hall of Presidents is in lemonade yellow on the right.

Every age group except pre-schoolers rates Radiator Springs Racers substantially higher than any of the other attractions.

It's not close.

Teens prefer Radiator Springs by almost 1.4 points over the next-closest attraction in a 5-point scale.
Young Adults prefer Radiator Springs by almost 1.2 points.
Over 30's prefer Radiator Springs by almost a full point.
Seniors prefer Radiator Springs by almost half a point.

If you want the parks to make people happy, Cars is likely to do that way more than anything that's there now.

I feel this way of thinking about the parks antithetical to what made Disney parks different from their competitors. Based on reading the numbers this way, you could justify all sorts of weird things like sticking a roller coaster in the middle of World Showcase lagoon because the Friendships don't rate as highly on guest surveys as Cosmic Rewind.

For years, they've been producing glossy books and documentaries explaining how much thought went into colours, sightlines, transitions, research, etc. to suggest that it was this kind of attention to detail that actually made people happier in Disney parks than those of their competitors.

I find it so strange to just say to hell with all that, surveys show people prefer rides. I even don't understand being that enthused about the possibilities it opens up for the future. With this kind of management and Imagineering, we'll have the Incredibles building a training camp at the foot of Big Thunder.

 

[STITCHGEFAN]

Why can't they build it here?

View attachment 808974

• Frontierland? Check.
• By the train station? Check.
• Mostly movable backstage infrastructure? Check.
• Good sightlines? Check.
• Increase guest front of house square footage (i.e. capacity increase)? Check.
• Can be built off of in the future? Check.
• Access to backstage service road? Check.
• Can construct with minimal interruption to current park operations? Check.
• More available space than the rivers around Tom Sawyer Island? Check.

Was there no discussion about this space?

It's reasonable to think there are plans for that area that we aren't aware of yet. Just because we don't know about it doesn't mean plans don't exist. Building on ROI and developing Villains Land will make accessibility easier, too.

 

[DLR92]

I just don’t understand why not use much of the undeveloped lands beyond the berm? So what if it swamp…drain it!
There's is no excuses to bulldoze something is already developed.

TDS carved out little bit of Rivers of America for Disneyland. And the grew in acreage with Starwars land. Why not the Magic Kingdom?

 

[Bleed0range]

I just don’t understand why not use much of the undeveloped lands beyond the berm? So what if it swamp…drain it!
There's is no excuses to bulldoze something is already developed.

TDS carved out little bit of Rivers of America for Disneyland. And the grew in acreage with Starwars land. Why not the Magic Kingdom?

I can’t understand this either. It seems like they could do this if they “wanted” to. But it seems like they don’t want to preserve ROA enough to bother.

I’m not one to be easily bothered by changes at Disney, but I think the Riverboat fundamentally adds to the theming of the entire area, especially near Liberty Square. I’m very worried about how this affects the look of Haunted Mansion and how it fits into the LS theming.

Maybe it will be great, I don’t know, but it seems unnecessary.

If Disneyland can keep their river why can’t we?

 

[Teddybearre]

Dang, I’m honestly kinda surprised with how (mostly) non-toxic y’all are being, considering this forum has a reputation for having some very poorly thought-out takes

As for how I personally feel, I’m kinda torn, but I’m trying to stay optimistic. I’m definitely upset that the ROA and Tom Sawyer Island are going, as I have a lot of nostalgia with both. The ROA in fact is one of the first things that comes to mind when I think about the Magic Kingdom, it sucks. I completely understand why they’re both getting replaced though, and some of y’all definitely brought up some good points already. I can definitely see Disney wanting every Frontierland around the world to have its own vibe, and maybe Disneyland’s version will just become “the classic version,” with WDW’s version being the one being based off of national parks around the US. It’s still going to be a massive adjustment though, and my main concern is how it’s going to affect the whole flow and feel the current Frontierland attractions.

I know Cars isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it is definitely me and my family’s thing, so we are definitely excited to see the new attractions. I’m hoping that the new theming blends in well with the older buildings and attractions too, maybe it’ll give off similar vibes to Grizzly Peak. I’m hoping this all means that Villains land will be big too, and that hopefully the railroad won’t have to close again.

But yeah, the wait until they start construction and the first few months of them actually building the attractions is definitely going to be hard for me and probably most of y’all as well. But after things start coming together, I’m excited to see what the future holds

 

[DLR92]

I can’t understand this either. It seems like they could do this if they “wanted” to. But it seems like they don’t want to preserve ROA enough to bother.

I’m not one to be easily bothered by changes at Disney, but I think the Riverboat fundamentally adds to the theming of the entire area, especially near Liberty Square. I’m very worried about how this affects the look of Haunted Mansion and how it fits into the LS theming.

Maybe it will be great, I don’t know, but it seems unnecessary.

If Disneyland can keep their river why can’t we?

It just boils down to management. There is clearly lack of history of pride regarding with WDW.
Disneyland has gotten slight reduction in size. But it at least doable and done tastefully.