News Cars-Themed Attractions at Magic Kingdom

[haveyoumetmark]

From your friends over in the Disneyland forum version of this basic conversation, I offer this...

Cocktail Napkin math, just before happy hour (San Diego time) when the napkins and the mind are still crisp...

Hourly Capacity from Google:

Disneyland Rivers of America Hourly Capacity = 2,700 riders per hour
Mark Twain Riverboat = 750 riders per hour (250 per trip, three trips per hour)
Columbia Sailing Ship = 600 riders per hour (200 per trip, three trips per hour)
Canoes = 600 riders per hour (roughly 100 riders per canoe per hour, Disneyland operates 6 canoes on busy days)
Rafts to TSI = 750 riders per hour (roughly 250 riders per raft per hour, and Disneyland can operate 3 rafts on busy days)

Magic Kingdom Rivers of America Hourly Capacity if TDO Was Smart = 2,600 Riders Per Hour
Riverboat I and II = 1500 riders per hour, (250 per trip per boat, six trips per hour operating both boats)
Mike Fink Keelboats = 350 riders per hour (30 riders per trip, twelve trips per hour with three boats operating)
Rafts to TSI = 750 riders per hour (roughly 250 riders per raft per hour, and WDW used to operate up to 3 rafts on busy days)

Cars Land East In 2028 = 2,000 Riders Per Hour
Radiator Springs Racers = 1500 riders per hour
Average C Ticket Spinner = 500 riders per hour?

So instead of rebuilding all the lost ride capacity at WDW's Rivers of America, and plussing up the showmanship along the river that operating attractions would interact with, to get back to 2,500ish riders per hour and then also building a Cars Land East with three new rides beyond Big Thunder Mountain to add in an additional 2,500 riders per hour from Cars Land East....

TDO is bulldozing the Rivers of America, giving up on that existing infrastructure and potential for 2,500 riders per hour, and replacing it with only 2 new rides that will get less riders per hour than the Rivers of America did in the 1970's to 1990's.

And we're supposed to pretend that Josh D'Amaro and the existing WDI and TDO executives aren't idiots? These current park execs are not showmen, and they are bad at hospitality for their paying guests. Plain and simple.

Multiple people have said this, but this logic ignores utilization, which for the riverboat was akin to Ellen’s Energy Adventure LOL

 

[AidenRodriguez731]

I agree I think it stays but stationary and potentially not guest accessible (think a set piece on the rivers around Big Thunder).

I would quite like that, maybe keep a bit of water around BTM/Tiana's and keep the boat over there. Heck if they wanted to, they could turn it into a pretty killer permanent Tiana Meet and Greet.

 

[peter11435]

If you read the entire post - “and plussing up the showmanship along the river that operating attractions would interact with, to get back to 2,500ish riders per hour”

I did read the entire post. Doesn’t change anything.

 

[AidenRodriguez731]

Multiple people have said this, but this logic ignores utilization, which for the riverboat was akin to Ellen’s Energy Adventure LOL

If everyone suddenly absolutely loved the riverboats and the rafts out of nowhere and gave them numbers that literally have never been seen in the last 2 decades every single day than guys.. I think this might beat out Cars :O

All Disney has to do is attract 2,000 more people to something they literally never wanted to do

 

[Chef idea Mickey`=]

This reminds me of the good old days when JT insisted that Cars Land could never be built at the back of DHS because the ground would never support it, ground which now supports ROTR just fine.

What's or Who's JT?

 

[MrPromey]

No. The entire weight of the water has to be supported by the riverbed because of Earth's gravitational pull on all of the water, not just the part at the bottom. If the riverbed was only supporting the water directly above it (whatever that means...) the rest of the water would just fly off into space. Draw a free body diagram of the riverbed. Or for an easier place to start, grab a cup of water and put it on a scale. Fill it a little bit with water. Fill it a little bit more. Fill it a little bit more. And watch the scale continue to rise. Water is not weightless, whether at the top, middle, or bottom of a cup, pool, or river.

And how do you know the river system only has small leaks? What do you know about the quality and condition of the concrete foundation? I'm not saying it's in shambles because I haven't seen it either. I'm only saying that someone with known ties to Disney, who has very possibly had direct conversations engineers explaining the rationale for eliminating ROA, has offered us a very plausible and physics-based explanation for the tough decision to replace ROA. We cannot be so blinded by our own biases to keep ROA that we start to make up our version of physics out of convenience.


The right and center of the artwork shows wide paths with people on them. Would have been water with no swimmer before, correct? That is more spatial efficiency. If the ride path crosses over itself, as it appears to do multiple times in the path, it is using more vertical space than if that ride were to be flat, right? That is more spatial efficiency.


One of the consequences of failure is leakage of water, as I explained. The ground beneath the riverbed is porous and the water would escape into ground and aquifer beneath that. The water would need to be replaced. The Seven Seas Lagoon being connected makes it so that the water level doesn't drop appear to drop precipitously in ROA because the volume of water is distributed. So rather than 1 foot drop in ROA and same water level in SSL, we maybe see a 1cm drop altogether. But make no mistake, the same volume of water has left the proverbial building. And its the same amount of water you need to pump back in to recover 1 cm of SSL + ROA as it would be to refill just ROA by 1 foot (I'm guessing the ratio, I don't actually know)

You need to just stop with this argument while you're behind and pivot to something else.

The river bed does not have to support the weight of the water. It's not a bowl.

They don't have to pump water into it. If they did, they wouldn't need to build a temporary dam and pump the water out for parts of it, they'd simply just drain it. [I've been corrected on some of this further down the thread] The gravitational pull you mentioned in your own statement gets the water where it needs to go.

Leaks don't matter for retaining the water. This isn't a swimming pool someone filled with a hose.

Put it this way - what do you think happens if you dig a hole next to a lake that goes below the waterline of the lake?

Do you know?

I'm pretty sure Disney's engineers know.

Seven Seas lagoon, connected to the ROA by a canal does not have a cement bottom but it's also not a natural body of water, either. The reason that doesn't just run dry is the same reason the cement doesn't have to hold all that water in ROA. At worst, water over time seeping through the cement has the ability to erode it and over a long enough period without mitigation efforts as a part of planned maintenance, it's possible that could jeopardize the integrity of the parts anchoring the track but as has already previously been mentioned, they didn't need to anchor the track to an entire bed of cement to begin with so any potential problem there is not what you're making it out to be and the solution, if they didn't want to preserve the full cement bottom would not need to be much more dramatic than when someone wants to put a dock pretty much anywhere in water that doesn't have a man-made bottom. They wouldn't even technically need to drain ROA to do it though for speed quality and cost, they probably would since they have the ability to control it enough to do that.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

I assure you. It’s done.

Don’t get people’s hopes up.

I’m discussing the attraction and the possibilities of the design. I will continue to do so.

 

[peter11435]

You need to just stop with this argument while you're behind.

The river bed does not have to support the weight of the water. It's not a bowl.

They don't have to pump water into it. If they did, they wouldn't need to build a temporary dam and pump the water out to on parts of it, they'd simply just drain it. The gravitatoinal pull you mentioned in your own statement gets the water where it needs to go.

Leaks don't matter for retaining the water - this isn't a swiming pool someone filled with a hose.

Put it this way - what do you think happens if you dig a hole next to a lake that goes below the waterline height of the lake?

Do you know?

I'm pretty sure Disney's engineers know.

Seven Seas lagoon, connected to the ROA by a canal does not have a cement bottom but it's also not a natural body of water, either. The reason that doesn't just run dry is the same reason the cement doesn't have to hold all that water in ROA. At worst, water over time seeping through the cement has the ability to erode it and over a long enough period without mitigation efforts as a part of planned maintenance, it's possible that could jeopardize the integrity of the parts anchoring the track but as has already previously been mentioned, they didn't need to anchor the track to an entire bed of cement to begin with so any potential problem there is not what you're making it out to be and the solution, if they didn't want to preserve the full cement bottom would not need to be much more dramatic than when someone wants to put a dock pretty much anywhere in water that doesn't have a man-made bottom. They wouldn't even technically need to drain ROA to do it though for speed quality and cost, they probably would.

Except they do pump water into the Rivers of America.

The water in the Rivers of America is higher than the water in the Seven Seas Lagoon. The riverbed is keeping that water higher than it would naturally be.

 

[peter11435]

I’m discussing the attraction and the possibilities of the design. I will continue to do so.

Great! I’m just telling you the Liberty Belle Riverboat is done.

 

[MrPromey]

Except they do pump water into the Rivers of America.

The water in the Rivers of America is higher than the water in the Seven Seas Lagoon. The riverbed is keeping that water higher than it would naturally be.

So there is a dam between ROA and the canal?

If so, how are they able to transport the ferry out for maintenance?

 

[peter11435]

So there is a dam between ROA and the canal?

If so, how are they able to transport the ferry out for maintenance?

There’s a set of locks.

 

[MrPromey]

There’s a set of locks.

Okay, I stand corrected for some of what I said. (though he's still not right about what he's trying to say about the bottom having to support all that water)

Thanks for the video.

 

[TP2000]

The problem with your math is that even with only one riverboat running only twice per hour they can’t even half fill the thing.

Yeah, because TDO let the entire Rivers of America complex devolve into an overgrown drainage canal over the past 25 years.

Plus it up! Improve it! Bring new show scenes and waterfalls and wildlife to the River, just like Disneyland did! Get multiple boats and watercraft out there interacting with each other, reroute the WDW Railroad so it travels along trestles and embankments to plus up the River show even more. Bring life and showmanship back!

Make the Rivers of America great again!

If they can do it at Disneyland while simultaneously building a Star Wars Land to the immediate north and a hidden Fantasmic! marina inside the railroad berm, then TDO can certainly do it with all the extra land and space they have at Magic Kingdom.

Don't let TDO and Burbank off the hook so easily! There's a show supposed to be happening along the Rivers of America!

 

[danlb_2000]

What's or Who's JT?

I do not believe that is a question that anyone can properly answer.

 

[lazyboy97o]

They don't have to pump water into it. If they did, they wouldn't need to build a temporary dam and pump the water out for parts of it, they'd simply just drain it. The gravitational pull you mentioned in your own statement gets the water where it needs to go.

They do not build dams. There are locks that allow the water level to be adjusted and drained.

Seven Seas lagoon, connected to the ROA by a canal does not have a cement bottom

The riverbed is concrete. Cement is an ingredient in concrete.

The water in the Rivers of America is higher than the water in the Seven Seas Lagoon. The riverbed is keeping that water higher than it would naturally be.

The water does not need to be contained in a structure in order to be at a different level.

 

[TrainsOfDisney]

Great! I’m just telling you the Liberty Belle Riverboat is done.

I think you may not understand how you come across - you continue to speak in absolutes as though you have a crystal ball or are personal friends with the genie (not to be confused with genie+ - which has not friends).

“There will be water”
“Riverboat is done”

Neither of these are 100% known facts - they both very well may be in the current plans but plans continue to evolve as is obvious from the New Fantasyland announcement to what actually got built. The idea that a coaster would be added to the middle of an already designed and announced addition is way more crazy of a concept that a plan could come up where the Riverboat is still paddling down the river.

 

[EricsBiscuit]

Yeah, because TDO let the entire Rivers of America complex devolve into an overgrown drainage canal over the past 25 years.

Plus it up! Improve it! Bring new show scenes and waterfalls and wildlife to the River, just like Disneyland did! Get multiple boats and watercraft out there interacting with each other, get the WDW Railroad traveling along trestles and embankments to plus up the River show even more. Bring life and showmanship back!

Make the Rivers of America great again!

If they can do it at Disneyland while simultaneously building a Star Wars Land to the immediate north and a hidden Fantasmic! marina inside the railroad berm, then TDO can certainly do it with all the extra land and space they have at Magic Kingdom.

Don't let TDO and Burbank off the hook so easily! There's a show supposed to be happening along the Rivers of America!

Unfortunately, there are few people left who understand what made Disney great in the past. Few have the vision it took to make WDW a reality. The same people saying RoA are a waste of space would have taken one look at the swamp Walt and Roy bought and called them crazy. TWDC doesn’t have the creativity or leadership skills that they used to.

 

[The Chatbox Ghost]

It's unbelievable to me how they mishandle such a potential cash cow.

It gets me because REGIONAL PARKS manage to have a full scale of merchandise for their rides, even ones without beloved characters or larger fandoms. From pins to shirts and even plushes at time for random themeless roller coasters. They manage to do it better then the supposed leaders who are stuck just throwing the Elsa and Mickey merch you can get at Walmart in all park stores.

They know Haunted Mansion and Figment are successful sellers and they do a good job merchandising them. There's no reason they can't do some things for every ride, every ride in the park should have some collection of merch buyable nearby. Even if they buy wholesale shirts and iron on different attraction posters. Throw in a few original pieces or even a full collection once every few years like they do sometimes to excite fans.

People want this, they know this is successful. Many rides are undermerched. That they refuse to do it just boggles my mind.

Crazy how a multi billion dollar corporation is too stingy to pay for unique merch but Six Flags #329 that’s running at a net loss has something for every random ride

 

[Chef idea Mickey`=]

It's unbelievable to me how they mishandle such a potential cash cow.

It gets me because REGIONAL PARKS manage to have a full scale of merchandise for their rides, even ones without beloved characters or larger fandoms. From pins to shirts and even plushes at time for random themeless roller coasters. They manage to do it better then the supposed leaders who are stuck just throwing the Elsa and Mickey merch you can get at Walmart in all park stores.

They know Haunted Mansion and Figment are successful sellers and they do a good job merchandising them. There's no reason they can't do some things for every ride, every ride in the park should have some collection of merch buyable nearby. Even if they buy wholesale shirts and iron on different attraction posters. Throw in a few original pieces or even a full collection once every few years like they do sometimes to excite fans.

People want this, they know this is successful. Many rides are undermerched. That they refuse to do it just boggles my mind.

Wow it's you again.. 100% You can see by Universal with all the merchandise from their original extinct attraction properties. It's very interesting how Test Track being still sponsored is getting the World Of Motion treatment love whatever it may be!

 

[MrPromey]

They do not build dams. There are locks that allow the water level to be adjusted and drained.

I'm pretty sure there have been pictures in this thread showing them dam up parts of the river to block water for sections unless I hallucinated that or they were pictures of DL?