MK Cars-Themed Attractions at Magic Kingdom

donaldtoo

donaldtoo

Well-Known Member
BrianLo said:
Not to be obnoxious, but WDW in nearly any of your preferred formats is not really what Walt envisioned. At best Magic Kingdom is a concession and Epcot a wild pivot.

I’m not diminishing Walt, but he wasn’t designing the WDW you pine for. It’s Card Walker’s vision you are seeking, giving him more credit.
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Too late…JK, LOL and all that jazz…!!! ;)

I get both of your points, especially when it comes to Card Walker and Epcot.
And I know Walt really didn’t give a rip about “Disneyland in Florida” as much as he did “Project X” (EPCOT). Although there was always going to be a theme park involved, Walt had, yet again, moved on to “greater” things.
But, Roy and the Imagineers that worked directly with Walt weren’t doing MK without thinking about Walt and Disneyland, which was, essentially, all him.
It’s always just seemed to me that, after Walt died, as far as MK goes, they all just defaulted to a larger version of Disneyland, so they could get something on the ground and paying beeehinds trough the gates, as quickly as possible.
Walt was so preoccupied with EPCOT that he really, AFAIK, didn’t leave much direction on the theme park portion of the project.
All that to say, I believe MK is, indeed, mostly Walt.
I know they closed and re-routed ROA in DLR to make way for SW:GE, but they didn’t eliminate it.
I wonder what the discussion would be if/when they ever decided to do that…?!
And, at MK, for of all things, a “Cars” off-road ride/attraction…?!?!?! 🤪
I will just always be in the firm “NO” column on this.

As far as Epcot goes, we’ll never know if Walt would have been proud, OK, or PO’d with the direction they, ultimately, took. 🤷‍♂️
 
P

Poirot4

New Member
It’s interesting that some of the concept art shows the vehicles to be enclosed and some show them to be open air. Does anyone know which one they are going with? If they are enclosed, then they could play the racing sounds internally and that would mitigate the sound concerns that many have about this attraction being in the middle of Frontierland.
 
Charlie The Chatbox Ghost

Charlie The Chatbox Ghost

Well-Known Member
BrianLo said:
I’m not saying anything is bad or the incorrect decision. But the wildest pivot the company ever took was Epcot.

Revisionist history from the company itself has really mislead the branding of Florida. It’s a hollow platitude to Walt, but it’s decidedly not what he was excited for. Jumping forward even further decades and decades and asking what Walt envisioned is sort of beyond meaning.

Who knows, the guy absolutely loved transit, maybe he’d love the Cars franchise.
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I will say the company loves pretending Epcot is exactly how he wanted it. The “Walt the Pooper” statue is the ultimate rewriting of history in the company’s history. If Walt were alive today he’d be very disappointed in Epcot if not outright hating it. He never liked it when things didn’t go exactly/close enough to how he wanted it.
 
Agent H

Agent H

Well-Known Member
Charlie The Chatbox Ghost said:
I will say the company loves pretending Epcot is exactly how he wanted it. The “Walt the Pooper” statue is the ultimate rewriting of history in the company’s history. If Walt were alive today he’d be very disappointed in Epcot if not outright hating it. He never liked it when things didn’t go exactly/close enough to how he wanted it.
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Walt would have probably hated Epcot on opening day.
 
Charlie The Chatbox Ghost

Charlie The Chatbox Ghost

Well-Known Member
Animaniac93-98 said:
I would say it's more about having a limited understanding of what makes something "Disney", the company's history and how individual components of the park come together to create a wholistic experience.

The people who created WDW didn't study Disney, they invented it through their own creativity, research into art, history and urban planning, while understanding that "Disney" was more about a philosophy and tone than specific iconography.

The self-referential circle we're stuck in now is the result of years of Disney fans only engaging with official company materials, not thinking beyond them and then having that generation be hired in a creative capacity to produce a limited output based on pre-determined synergy.
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100%. The original Imagineers and the generation they taught knew it was about a vibe over an image. Sure, people want to see Mickey Mouse, but they didn’t come to Disneyland because they could see all their favorite movies. They came to Disneyland because it was the newest creation of Walt Disney, who famously never did sequels (can’t top pigs with pigs). The original Disneyland kept IP/Disney contained to Fantasyland (the 20k Leagues walkthrough an exception, but in the future 20k went in Fantasylands), everything else was new and original but still felt like Disney.

Nowadays, the parks are just “the place you can meet and see the Disney characters” to most people so that’s what new expansions are. Everyone involved, both the company and the consumers, are generations removed from Walt. They’re more familiar with the iconography than the feelings. Just today I was talking with my mother about WDW, she said she thought the Grand Floridian was beautiful and wanted to stay there, and I replied “if you think it’s pretty now, you should’ve seen it before they added characters to it.” I explained the modern trend of adding Disney everywhere when it wasn’t necessary, but she just said “why wouldn’t you want to see Disney at Disney?”

And to a point, she’s right. That’s what people expect- more of the same, more of what they’re familiar with. Modern guests aren’t drawn to the Tiki Room, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, or the Country Bears as much as they’re drawn to Mickey Mouse, Frozen, Moana, Toy Story, etc. People engage with familiarity because it’s safe, and the more they engage with it, the more it becomes profitable and the more it gets pushed until you have park-original characters asking where Jack Sparrow™ from the movie series is or singing A Whole New World™ in a country style.

Disney is an ouroboros in the shape of Mickey Mouse nowadays.
 
scott_walker

scott_walker

Member
How about a compromise?
ROA COMP 2.jpg
 

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