Do you think we'll ever get another original, non-IP attraction at WDW?

[Hayley In Wonderland]

Nobody has ever forgotten Disney is a business...not once.

At least no one worth talking to...

I guess the consensus is at the end of the day, if Disney know IP is selling (based on how many people are visiting WDW now) they are gonna keep selling it. It's all about making money, and IP makes it. As I said, so long as it's done right, I have no issue with it. MK is the most popular theme park in the world, and for a theme park that's been open since 1971, that's darn good (DL holds second place which is equally as impressive). There's nothing that says IP is not working and that it's not bringing in the crowds. People might be opposed to it, but without it, WDW may not even exist anymore.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I guess the consensus is at the end of the day, if Disney know IP is selling (based on how many people are visiting WDW now) they are gonna keep selling it. It's all about making money, and IP makes it. As I said, so long as it's done right, I have no issue with it. MK is the most popular theme park in the world, and for a theme park that's been open since 1971, that's darn good (DL holds second place which is equally as impressive). There's nothing that says IP is not working and that it's not bringing in the crowds. People might be opposed to it, but without it, WDW may not even exist anymore.

Except the first 35 years or so that built the reputation that had a comparatively small amount of IP based attractions?

Or at least not repetitive to the point they’re going now...

Indeed it’s in transition...but for the better? I think that’s the discussion point.

 

[MickeyMan36]

What would sell better?

"Star Wars Land" or "Generic Outer Space World"
"Toy Story Land" or "World of Big Toys"
"Pandora" or "Anything Else" (My vote is for Anything Else)
"Frozen Ever After" or "Generic Norwegian Boat Ride" (I loved Maelstrom, but just look at the line difference.)

I agree that there should be some new original stuff, but Disney has more ideas now to choose from then they did early on.

 

[Hayley In Wonderland]

Except the first 35 years or so that built the reputation that had a comparatively small amount of IP based attractions?

Or at least not repetitive to the point they’re going now...

Indeed it’s in transition...but for the better? I think that’s the discussion point.

For the generations & families that visit now, yes. The franchise is bigger than ever, and people know Disney for their movies, the theme parks are an added bonus. If they have the material, why not use it? I guess you could even say original rides like HM and POTC are now IP, due to the movies being released using inspo from them. Young kids don't want a globe in the middle of the lake or old, outdated movie sets on a ride. They want (begrudgingly) Elsa and Anna, they want Mickey Mouse and they want characters. If Disney own it, I see no reason to not use it to their advantage, especially if it's updates to attractions that have had their time.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

What would sell better?

"Star Wars Land" or "Generic Outer Space World"
"Toy Story Land" or "World of Big Toys"
"Pandora" or "Anything Else" (My vote is for Anything Else)
"Frozen Ever After" or "Generic Norwegian Boat Ride" (I loved Maelstrom, but just look at the line difference.)

I agree that there should be some new original stuff, but Disney has more ideas now to choose from then they did early on.

So Mickey’s runaway railway...and tron...and toy story...and Star Wars havent been around?

Two streams are crossing here. It wasn’t that they couldn’t do this prior...it was that they were careful not too. None of us will ever know why?

Star wars land could have and should have been built in 1985...or better yet 95...

It would be timeless now. What would have been better - empire strikes back land on JJ’s land of ambiguity?
It’s a good question to ask yourself with no clear answer.

Sure they would have had to pay/put up with Lucas...but was that worse than Cameron?

I think the real answer - beyond the money - is a change in philosophy as to what the parks do.

As a kid you went on haunted mansion - completely original - and then on splash -little known - and then bought Mickey in the giftshop. You knew you were at Disney and you remembered more than the character ties when you went home.

Now you go to epcot...pass a guardians gift cart...past the banners for the guardians limited time dance party...hang a left...go on the guardians coaster and Buy a star Lord Casio watch in the guardians swapmeat giftshop.

Do you remember what park you were in next week?


...eh...definitely “different methods”

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

For the generations & families that visit now, yes. The franchise is bigger than ever, and people know Disney for their movies, the theme parks are an added bonus. If they have the material, why not use it? I guess you could even say original rides like HM and POTC are now IP, due to the movies being released using inspo from them. Young kids don't want a globe in the middle of the lake or old, outdated movie sets on a ride. They want (begrudgingly) Elsa and Anna, they want Mickey Mouse and they want characters. If Disney own it, I see no reason to not use it to their advantage, especially if it's updates to attractions that have had their time.

Yep...you went a completely different way there.

The point was disney parks are known mostly from there background of not being 100% IP...that was intentional.

I think of Batman and bugs bunny when I hear six flags. Not sure that’s the direction you want to go.

I think remembering the pirates and soarins of the world is less fleeting...might be just me.

 

[MickeyMan36]

So Mickey’s runaway railway...and tron...and toy story...and Star Wars havent been around?

Two streams are crossing here. It wasn’t that they couldn’t do this prior...it was that they were careful not too. None of us will ever know why?

Star wars land could have and should have been built in 1985...or better yet 95...

It would be timeless now. What would have been better - empire strikes back land on JJ’s land of ambiguity?
It’s a good question to ask yourself with no clear answer.

Sure they would have had to pay/put up with Lucas...but was that worse than Cameron?

I think the real answer - beyond the money - is a change in philosophy as to what the parks do.

As a kid you went on haunted mansion - completely original - and then on splash -little known - and then bought Mickey in the giftshop. You knew you were at Disney and you remembered more than the character ties when you went home.

Now you go to epcot...pass a guardians gift cart...past the banners for the guardians limited time dance party...hang a left...go on the guardians coaster and Buy a star Lord Casio watch in the guardians swapmeat giftshop.

Do you remember what park you were in next week?


...eh...definitely “different methods”

Empire Strikes Back land would be awesome!!! Can we have that?

 

[JIMINYCR]

What would sell better?

"Star Wars Land" or "Generic Outer Space World"
"Toy Story Land" or "World of Big Toys"
"Pandora" or "Anything Else" (My vote is for Anything Else)
"Frozen Ever After" or "Generic Norwegian Boat Ride" (I loved Maelstrom, but just look at the line difference.)

I agree that there should be some new original stuff, but Disney has more ideas now to choose from then they did early on.

Exactly. They know guests are drawn more to attractions they have an existing relationship to. Watching a movie and developing a connection to the characters and story builds the desire to experience it themselves in a ride through. We want to put ourselves in the middle of the action and experience things we saw in the film. Thats what builds our desire to go back for the new IP based attraction. Long ago Walt knew the value of tying things to what guests had a connection to and that hasnt changed. .

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Exactly. They know guests are drawn more to attractions they have an existing relationship to. Watching a movie and developing a connection to the characters and story builds the desire to experience it themselves in a ride through. We want to put ourselves in the middle of the action and experience things we saw in the film. Thats what builds our desire to go back for the new IP based attraction. Long ago Walt knew the value of tying things to what guests had a connection to and that hasnt changed. .

And yet...they were restrained from doing that in there miraculously successful parks for decades...

Are we now believing that they “didn’t want more money”...or were stupid?

Or perhaps...it was to dilineate a firewall between their assets? Perhaps realizing that Ip Does come and go and they don’t want most of their expensive, hard wired construction tied to it completely?

Doesn’t mean you can’t cross sell/promote...they’ve done that since day one.

The guardians of the galaxy thing is a fascinating case study...

Comic book movies have been very cyclical. And that isn’t likely to be a big mainstream juggernaut even within that genre. In ten years that might not be much of a draw. That isn’t a real shocking possibility.

So like “who wants to be a millionaire”...you could have an expensive asset that can no longer do what you design it to do.

Ratatouille is a French themed movie in a country mock up that is based on cooking in a park that runs cooking festivals near year round...

So “people want IP...lets do it!” isnt such an open and shut case if you look at it from the parks side of the ledger...it shouldn’t be boiled down so simply.

 

[HansGruber]

Disney is a media company. It only makes sense to create IP attractions.

Why create an attraction where you have to "educate" your customer base? Customers are already educated on IP.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Disney is a media company. It only makes sense to create IP attractions.

Why create an attraction where you have to "educate" your customer base? Customers are already educated on IP.

My nominee for oversimplification of the month

 

[HansGruber]

My nominee for oversimplification of the month

What's oversimplified?

Disney IS a mass media company. Welcome to 2018.

 

[ABQ]

If we're speaking solely of WDW, I can't see why they would bother trying to be original any longer when their nearest competition doesn't either. This isn't a knock on Universal, but with the business models the way they are, both trying to appease Wall Street primarily, they really need to only try to outdo what each other does. But neither is going to risk it all to do so, they'll just try to spin some new attraction as have some sort of magic to it, or some sort of adventure to it or wizardry or galactic conquest. But in the end, they are both driving each other to be a little less imaginative and instead play it safe. Until no one comes to either place, they look at what they have as a success as long as they can show year of year gains. If there's a drop in the financials due to the apparent softness, I can bet you'll hear Iger claim it's Florence's fault, not his lack of park investment at fault.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Exactly. They know guests are drawn more to attractions they have an existing relationship to. Watching a movie and developing a connection to the characters and story builds the desire to experience it themselves in a ride through. We want to put ourselves in the middle of the action and experience things we saw in the film. Thats what builds our desire to go back for the new IP based attraction. Long ago Walt knew the value of tying things to what guests had a connection to and that hasnt changed. .

Walt Disney was adamantly committed to building themepark attractions from scratch...because to him they were “original stories”

He only did the castle mockups and original rides in disneyland because he needed the bank funding and tv contract with abc and had to give them IP to use/bank upon.

To say disney would support all IP Attractions...let alone not conforming to a theme in his parks...might be the least appropriate characterizarion of walt disney ever.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

What's oversimplified?

Disney IS a mass media company. Welcome to 2018.

Disney is media...therefore change all parks to IP?

...you’ve left a lot of corn on the cob there.

 

[ppete1975]

Yes.
Depends on if they have an IP that fits what they want to build. Look at early Disney. Some of the rides were from the worlds fair which they couldn't really use IP in. Then there were rides that were built on what Disney envisioned as his dream park.
I want a haunted house
I want pirates
I want an expedition with real animals
later we need a space mountain, and we need a big mountain in animal kingdom.
At the time no ip worked for those. Sure there was the mickey cartoon where he is a ghostbuster but that wasn't the feel they wanted. Peter pan and hook aren't the pirates needed, real animals with the technology they had didn't work and they didn't have an IP that fit the real jungle journey that walt wanted (outside of king louie being there for a short time), space mountain maybe could have been black hole (I'm too lazy to look at years but I think sm was a few years earlier), and what IP would fit EE and for that matter the matterhorn at Disneyland.
If there is a ride they feel they want or need and no ip fits then yes.
But lately they have built rides based on IPs. Not rides based on a need/want.
There will be a time when there is a need for a certain type of a ride again and it will be built with no IP, just right now that's not a need.

Bigger question is will universal.. and I say no.

 

[HansGruber]

Disney is media...therefore change all parks to IP?

...you’ve left a lot of corn on the cob there.

Don't put words in my mouth. The topic isn't about CHANGING all parks to IP.
The question is about new/ future attractions.

Being a media company, Disney already owns the IP so there's no cost in leveraging it.

 

[SSE_King]

Exactly. They know guests are drawn more to attractions they have an existing relationship to. Watching a movie and developing a connection to the characters and story builds the desire to experience it themselves in a ride through. We want to put ourselves in the middle of the action and experience things we saw in the film. Thats what builds our desire to go back for the new IP based attraction. Long ago Walt knew the value of tying things to what guests had a connection to and that hasnt changed. .

I know that's how Disney thinks now, that people only want to experience attractions based on something they have an existing relationship with. But, at least for me personally, I get way more out of an experience that I can have exclusively at WDW. As I said in my original post, I can watch Frozen at home - seeing Olaf and Elsa singing on a boat ride doesn't strike up anything special to me. Granted, I'm speaking as an adult male, and I know there are plenty of young kids who are in awe at the Frozen ride. But, going back to my childhood, I know that the attractions that stood out to me the most and had the greatest impression on me were ones like Pirates, HM, SSE. Those rides created worlds and stories and characters that I couldn't experience anywhere outside of WDW. Yeah, I liked going on IP-based attractions as well, but I loved having a healthy balance between the IP and the non-IP attractions.

Now, maybe I'm just in the minority. Obviously things like Frozen and Star Wars are always going to bring in money, and I have no issue with having attractions and entire lands based on some of Disney's biggest IPs. It just makes logical sense. But my argument is that once you start building exclusively IP-based attractions, and getting rid of non-IP attractions in favor of the hottest new IP, that's where I feel that healthy balance starts to become too one-sided.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Don't put words in my mouth. The topic isn't about CHANGING all parks to IP.
The question is about new/ future attractions.

Being a media company, Disney already owns the IP so there's no cost in leveraging it.

And don’t plays dumb and not consider the question of whether IP rides are are the best Course of action?

It’s not that simple.

 

[HansGruber]

And don’t plays dumb and not consider the question of whether IP rides are are the best Course of action?

It’s not that simple.

What are you talking about?! They are the best course of action from a business stand-point.
People are already attracted to and are educated on the IP. It's only natural to create IP attractions.

Have you heard of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal? (It's based on IP!)