News Cars-Themed Attractions at Magic Kingdom

[Scuttle]

Tesla is going to be out of business in 10 years.

Lmao I’ll be sure to come back to this post in 10 years.

 

[Kamikaze]

Moving the HM queue is no big deal.

Actually it is. There's no where to move the queue to, unless you have an idea for teleportation.

 

[Kamikaze]

Lmao I’ll be sure to come back to this post in 10 years.

I'll see you then.

 

[zemmyz]

- Harmonious
- Demolishing Communicore SW only to go “oh crap” and rebuild it into what can only be described as an airport cafeteria for character meets.
- Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser falling flat on its face
- Tiana’s Bayou Adventure being a buggy mess
- Giant abandoned waterfront theater at DAK because Rivers of Light never worked.
- KiteTales

not even counting the destruction of all things hotel-related too. Man, I am afraid they are cooked.

 

[AdventureHasAName]

Actually it is. There's no where to move the queue to, unless you have an idea for teleportation.

If you're building on top of all the land to the immediate west and north of the attraction, there is plenty of room to place a revised queue.

 

[Chef idea Mickey`=]

I spoke on that in a later post. My family too enjoys the spaces in Morocco and Japan. Thing is, when we are there they are empty.

I don't know when you go or what you mean by Japan is empty. Morocco can be empty in the evening right when and after the fireworks.

 

[Dizknee_Phreek]

I’m actually miffed by how much people are overreacting to this. Cars is a dumb IP, sure, but I’m not going to sit here and gaslight myself that TSI and ROA are MK staples that should be preserved over an entire new land expansion and rides.

It’s the busiest theme park in the world and has been desperate for more capacity for years- I’ll take a new land none of the other parks have over a glorified playground hardly anyone actually visits any day.

Why are you so bothered about people caring about something? That's weird to me. Especially when this type of reaction is to be expected on a forum like this.

Also, why do you think this will help with capacity issues? It won't. More square footage means Disney will increase park max capacity and squeeze more people in. It will still be crowded.

 

[TimeDuck]

After sorting through the 60+ pages from today and having had time to digest it, I think I agree with @lentesta

This is incredibly bold, and I'm cautiously optimistic that this regime more than any other realizes the importance of needing to deliver if they're going to do something like this. The concept art does look beautiful, the ride looks ambitious, and they're clearly trying to maintain some sort of thematic integrity. It could have been way worse.

I truly do understand how important the scenery and placemaking is. But let's all be perfectly honest, most of the time that walkway along the water is almost completely unusable for breathing in the scenery. The Florida weather just doesn't allow for it, and will only continue to get worse. Every single trip we find ourselves sprinting in and out of air conditioned frontier land buildings in a mad dash across the expanse to get to Splash/BTM. 8-9 months of the year, absolutely nobody is taking a leisurely stroll along the ROA. I'm sorry, but that is objectively a fact. And I won't even mention how the sulfur makes the whole area constantly smell bad.

We still have the original in Walt's original park, where it was perfect and probably shouldn't have been replicated. But it did, and it had an incredible 50+ year run. And as someone who constantly decries the homogenization of the parks around the world, I don't think I can complain when they're attempting to course correct.

Obviously they still have a lot to deliver. But I'm choosing to be cautiously optimistic, mostly because of this regime.

(Now - if they announce Muppet Vision is closing, I will be joining you guys on the front lines come hell or high water)

 

[JD80]

Just ran through the permits, and I'm not in construction but I can read plans.

They are building a series of new canals for water control. You can look at the second page. It consists of excavation equipment, gravel, pipe, cement, earthworks etc. All the laydown areas are mostly for all the equipment and materials to do all of this.

 

[Disney Analyst]

Laydown yard is a construction term for the area where all of the materials that will be used in the construction project are stored until they are used. In a scenario where you are building a coaster, the track and other components will all arrive and need to be stored somewhere to be staged for installation- that's a laydown yard.

So not a nap corner

 

[the_rich]

Why are you so bothered about people caring about something? That's weird to me. Especially when this type of reaction is to be expected on a forum like this.

Also, why do you think this will help with capacity issues? It won't. More square footage means Disney will increase park max capacity and squeeze more people in. It will still be crowded.

By that logic that means they should never expand.

 

[Chef idea Mickey`=]

- Harmonious
- Demolishing Communicore SW only to go “oh crap” and rebuild it into what can only be described as an airport cafeteria for character meets.
- Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser falling flat on its face
- Tiana’s Bayou Adventure being a buggy mess
- Giant abandoned waterfront theater at DAK because Rivers of Light never worked.
- KiteTales

At least the Starcruiser was built from scratch someplace new and empty.
Rivers of Light was super as first version but Disney with entertainment cost and IP concerns version two is what sucked it out.

 

[donsullivan]

So not a nap corner

I think we can be assured, that someone on the construction team will take 'at least' one nap during construction. so technically it could also be a 'nap corner'. You just get fired if you take a nap in that corner

 

[Scuttle]

I'll see you then.

Sounds good I’ll be retired by then.

 

[danlb_2000]

Just ran through the permits, and I'm not in construction but I can read plans.

They are building a series of new canals for water control. You can look at the second page. It consists of excavation equipment, gravel, pipe, cement, earthworks etc. All the laydown areas are mostly for all the equipment and materials to do all of this.

Actually, I found mention that the earth being excavated for the retention pond will be used to build the laydown yards, so they are not for the drainage project but will be for the land construction.

 

[JD80]

My brain is also asking, there are a lot of trees in that gravel laydown yards. Are they all being cleared? If they are being cleared, are they being cleared because future construction is going there anyway?

 

[CentralFLlife]

Why are you so bothered about people caring about something? That's weird to me. Especially when this type of reaction is to be expected on a forum like this.

Also, why do you think this will help with capacity issues? It won't. More square footage means Disney will increase park max capacity and squeeze more people in. It will still be crowded.

thats not how they measure capacity.

 

[basas]

If you're building on top of all the land to the immediate west and north of the attraction, there is

By that logic that means they should never expand.

No-one has said that. But everyone has a favorite attraction, a favorite “land” or a favorite area of the parks. When you *replace* something existing, yes, there are going to be some people upset.

 

[RoysCabin]

Can't say I'm particularly excited, here, but I'm also nearing 40 and am clearly not a target audience member for Disney any longer at this stage. My kid nephew will be thrilled that Cars will be represented, he loves the franchise, so I'll be happy for him the way I was happy that he enjoyed Runaway Railway, but "it's ok, whatever, the kids will love it" is the mentality that's moving the parks further away from being the top-level experiences they were once known for being.

Liberty Square and Frontierland were clearly designed with a pretty thorough aesthetic plan in mind: a slowly revealed timeline that goes from the eastern colonies pre-Revolutionary War, out to the Mississippi around the 1830s, the lodges of the Rockies in the 1870s, and then the red rocks of the far west. It was essential to the "theme" of the, y'know, theme park. Not everything was perfect, e.g. the Haunted Mansion isn't exactly set in colonial America/Splash Mountain was set in the American southeast but situated by the far west-inspired Thunder Mountain, but through a lot of effort, artistry, and a keen eye for detail, such inconsistencies became very easy to gloss over and the whole could become greater than the sum of its parts.

Now, things are changing; this isn't inherently bad. The park is buckling under the demands of crowds, it needs expansion, and, unfortunately, shareholders want things to happen so they can profit more by any means necessary. And changes could be made that might force you to somewhat upend this initial theming...but that doesn't mean it can't be done tactfully, or with an eye towards something fresh and new. Like, people saying "how about an area themed to natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest/Rockies"? That sounds wonderful!

...However, we know what's driving this (no pun intended), and it's not an interest in American landscapes or culture. It's the shareholders saying "you're sitting on (insert IP here), get it in there, build a ride, and sell some merch". This isn't about having fun with a period/setting of American history, it's about shoehorning a property in and, given the company's recent track record, doing so with no real regard for thematic consistency, aesthetics, or place setting. That's fine if all you care about is individual rides, but a huge part of Disney's allure has always been the parks' general ambiance and ability to transport people to times/places, but that's clearly not the goal any longer since you can't overtly monetize that.

At this stage, I'd rather they just tear the band aid off: if all we're ever getting anymore are rides based on movies, then just drop the idea of themed lands altogether, stop insulting our intelligence. EPCOT has little to do with EPCOT anymore; the new Animal Kingdom plans mostly walk away from, y'know, animals; and now the themed lands of Magic Kingdom won't really be meant for their purposes anymore at this rate, either. If we were being realistic then a ton of this stuff would be going to dedicated areas of Hollywood Studios, which always felt like Disney's best option for making its own Islands of Adventure-style park based around IP, but the current business plan is about immediate profits, not about long term quality and care.

As for all the political wrangling going on in this thread; look, I'm a US history teacher, so it's rich to hear from some people saying something like "paving over the river is rewriting American history because something-something woke blah blah blah". To borrow a phrase that's been popular lately, such ramblings make these people seem, well, weird. The easiest answer is the one that's been in front of us all along: it's money, Disney wants more of it, and the only idea they have now for making is "keep copying Potter, we'll get it right, eventually." If the concern was really things being "problematic", they could still be producing all kind of original western-themed attractions and avoid just about anything "problematic" in the process, but they aren't doing that because they've become creatively bankrupt, not because they're driving a political agenda you've talked up in your mind to trigger yourself.

 

[doctornick]

Solutions jump right out at you when you look at an overhead map. The area in purple (below) could easily be used to make a massive Villains Land, while still keeping a functional Rivers of America so as to not disrupt themeing for Liberty Square and Frontierland. And the Villains Land could now semi-incorporate the Haunted Mansion. This area is massive - matching the size of current Fantasyland. Even if you kept the entirety of the Rivers of America, the footprint is still big enough to match the size of the other lands in the park.

The Cars attraction could be placed in the area of the Tommorowland Speedway (in orange on the map) and, if you were willing to spend the money, you have plenty of room to build one hell of an attraction.

Of course, this took 45 seconds for me to create using Google Maps and Adobe Illustrator, so it's understandable that modern day WDI couldn't figure it out.

View attachment 808838

This. This is exactly what I would have expected. This seems to address the main issues without destroying a carefully curated waterfront with no reason.