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News Disneyland to give Snow White’s Scary Adventures dark ride a major facelift in 2020
- Thread starter Communicora
- Start date
Brer Oswald
Well-Known Member
Buzz is an Omnimover
Nobody is trying to look cool. I'm not cool. The first couple posts I made were from a non show ready walkthrough perspective.. The ride was getting a lot of backlash and hate and my intension of posting an update was to let people know that what was posted earlier wasn't all the attraction had to offer so people would have something to look forward to. I apologize if you took my attraction update as anything other than what was intended. Wishing you great health and happiness.
Anjin
Well-Known Member
A "Classic Dark Ride" is a 20th century technology of a little car, carrying between 2 and 6 people, going along an electrified busbar track in a dark room past simple flats and darkened scenes, often illuminated by blacklight.
That compares to the bigger rides in the dark, like Pirates of the Caribbean or Haunted Mansion or Indiana Jones Adventure, not to mention rides at big corporate pavilions at World's Fairs like the General Motors Futurama or Ford's Magic Skyway. Those took the classic dark ride concept and expanded wildly it into something else entirely. Like comparing a 1930's small corner grocery store to a 1990's Big Box store in the suburbs.
But in the discussion of Disney theme parks, a classic dark ride is Alice In Wonderland or Mr. Toad's Wild Ride or Monsters's Inc. or Pinocchio's Daring Journey or Snow White's Scary Adventures. Or, if you are WDW, it's only Peter Pan and Pooh.
I was reading back through the beginning of this thread and found a very similar post from 11 months ago. Remarkably consistent, @TP2000.
No, we're not counting DCA's Little Mermaid.
Nor are we counting the cloned version they built in Card Walker's Magic Kingdom Park out in the swamp.
We're only counting Walt Disney era dark rides; two-to-six passenger vehicles travelling along a little bus-bar ride system in the dark. Usually in Fantasyland, and always dealing with animated motion pictures.
Little Mermaid is an Omnimover, like The Haunted Mansion, or various versions of Buzz Lightyear, or Adventure Thru Inner Space, Presented by Monsanto or that lame Eastern Airlines version they had in WDW.
Since this is the Disneyland side of this forum, we are using the traditional Disneyland definition of a "Dark Ride". Disneyland has seven (7!) of them, with an extra in DCA. WDW only has two left, and they have four of them in Tokyo, and only one or two each in Paris, Hong Kong and Shanghai. It's an art form that Walt Disney and his team elevated and refined in the 1950's, and Disneyland is the powerhouse when it comes to them. Dark rides!
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Eh, I don't think so. Buzz is an Omnimover.
The invention of the Omnimover in 1967 with the Monsanto ride changed the game, and changed the way rides operated. (Although to be fair, pardon the pun, the modern Omnimover concept appeared at the 1964 World's Fair with the GM Futurama II ride. Disney just perfected it for Monsanto in '67)
A classic dark ride has animation and effects and audio tracks that are triggered as the small car passes by on the busbar track. But with the Omnimover the Imagineers had to re-invent the way they tell attraction stories so that the animation and effects were constantly repeating and were produced in such a way that it would make sense to riders as they passed by at any part in the storytelling.
The Omnimover also improved the way audio was presented in rides, where you could still have audio coming from the sets themselves, but the ride vehicles had the ability to broadcast audio to individual cars at individual parts along the track. The audio presentation was what made the Omnimover so revolutionary, although it's one of the least acknowledged advancements with that ride system.
A classic dark ride can be very similar whether it was built in 1925 (boardwalk spook house) or 1955 (Mr. Toad's Wild Ride) or 2005 (Monsters Inc.). But the invention of the Omnimover really was revolutionary, and changed the entire way the story is told and the way the riders are introduced to it and narrated through it from their car.
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mickEblu
Well-Known Member
I think now is the time for Disney to think about WED 2. Sadly, lot of imagineers have recently lost their jobs. Logically, Disney is going to be thinking of ways to save money everywhere they can due to the massive blow they have taken this year. Why not start using the artists they have as imagineers again like they did in the old days? I really think that is a key reason why a lot of the newer attractions aren’t quite as good as the older ones. Those guys (and some of their proteges) knew how to visually tell a story and set a mood.
britain
Well-Known Member
all well and good, but you are grouping large scale omnimovers like haunted mansion and world of motion in the same bucket as if you had wings, and I don’t think that’s quite appropriate. And it skews the perception of what offerings the Magic Kingdom has. (Small yes, but 3 is more than 2.)
Luigis festival of the dance doesn’t belong in the same category as Rise of the Resistance. It’s not a spinner, but it has more in common with spinners than those those large scale E ticket trackless rides.
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SplashGhost
Well-Known Member
I agree, I don't think the modern imagineers understand how to tell a "story" as good as those that had a background working in film like the original imagineers did.
That said, this would result in less total jobs being available if we ever recover from the current situation. However, even if more imagineering positions opened up in the future, they should still have a lot of people with a background in film and animation working there.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
They are effectively doing that already on some projects. Projects based on Pixar (to a lesser extent), Marvel and Star Wars are somewhat treated as licensing deals with those respective brands being involved in the process and getting a strong say in the design.
mickEblu
Well-Known Member
mickEblu
Well-Known Member
Yup. And just to be clear by telling a story I mean visually telling a “story” and setting a mood with primitive effects and techniques that by modern standards would be considered ancient but yet much more effective IMO. Not modern Imagineerings definition of story.
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George Lucas on a Bench
Well-Known Member
Regardless of what modern Disney employees may say about "Telling a story", it's really not about that. Most people don't go to Immerse themselves in The Story and everyone in their right mind is never convinced it isn't just a fake ride with a lot of chintzy effects and missing ceiling panels.
SuddenStorm
Well-Known Member
It's sad that will all of history to experience, if I had a time machine I'd be most interested in experiencing key moments in Disneyland history.
George Lucas on a Bench
Well-Known Member
The modern Imagineers talk more about their Stories than an old lady watching daytime soaps.
SplashGhost
Well-Known Member
Modern WDI's idea of story is to overexplain crap that no one cares about like why Soarin' is just a simulator. It ruins the illusion of Soarin' when the story dismisses it as a simulator. Mission: Breakout overexplains everything, they even built a major plot device around raising your hands while on the ride.
SplashGhost
Well-Known Member
The announcement should have said "Chapek demanded overlays, and this was the cheapest one they could come up with since we could keep the riverboat in the ride."
I can't comment on Rise yet, but outside that, none of the attractions added in the states in the last 10 years have been great at storytelling. The most successful in terms of story was probably Radiator Springs Racers because at least that kept it simple instead of being about the search for Mater's lost hubcap or something.
Brer Panther
Well-Known Member
The announcement should have said "Iger wants to remove any trace of Song of the South existing, and people were petitioning for a retheme of the ride to this specific movie online, so we caved in."
Brer Panther
Well-Known Member
I wouldn't be surprised.
Brer Oswald
Well-Known Member
There’s a few loose ends. The petition started from a Twitter thread by a Disneyland Cast Member that worked in Galaxy’s Edge. The other is Sarah Sterling, a Disney “influencer” Who was working at WDI. She first pitched the idea in a Cinema Sins video years ago. However, there’s no actual proof she had anything to do with the retheme.