Duplicate Animatronics/Figures in Little Mermaid

[Pixiedustmaker]

Here's a scene in Pooh's Huny Hunt which makes good use of incandescent light,

The mural in the background looks like it is lit with cfls, and the Pooh/tree looks like incandescent light. And you've got shadows, given the "white light" as Eddie Sotto said, you have to stage this differently from a dark scene by using 3-D props and colors and would look about the same under the sun.

Below is more a dark scene (those they obviously use some incandescents), with the use of some UV light, and the portions of the ride which are completely dark aren't decorated or staged. If they turned off the show lights, the dark scene would look a lot more fake than the forest scene.

Dark rides techniques focuses the guest's attention on certain features, and you have trouble telling even how big a room you're in.

My best example would be the Jelly Fish in Nemo, it is hard to tell how big the room is, and you get that "magically eery" look of UV.



Little Mermaid's "Under the Sea" scene is big, but when I rode it I could tell pretty much what the dimension of the room is and could see the articulations in the animatronics and how they were attached as the show floor is very well lit up with incandescents. The "ceiling" is dark, but due to the presence of spotlights and wavy things, and the metal bars holding fish, it doesn't hide as much as dark rides, IMHO, where the shadows really swallow stuff up.

They obviously didn't want to use blue, or green light too much as it would make Ariel look different, BUT if they used special paints under blue and green light, along with a small amount of incandescent, I think it would have done a better job of making guests feel like they are under the ocean. There's just a too "jazzy" feel to the scene, like we're seeing a Little Mermaid parade float go by in the middle of the night.

 

[flynnibus]

I think that the advantages of dark rides are that you don't have a lot of light being thrown around, so you can "get away" with flat-cut outs and certain effects, such as the "train" which runs over Toad in this dark ride. It is nothing but lights.

What you are talking about is just show lighting in general - and is not unique to classifying the ride as a 'dark ride' or anything else. When you force the viewer to focus on a show scene, and intentionally make other things 'uninteresting' - it can be done with position, it can be done with light, it can be done with movement, it can be done with materials, etc.

You are really just making constraints up as some way of trying to justify your position - constraints and correlations that are completely independent of each other.

Chosing colors based on the lighting is important not just in black light rides, but even outside in the sunlight. The colors and perception under the lighting conditions is not unque to black light and is an art in set design for all applications.

The creative direction and choices in TLM were just that... choices. You may not like the use of white light sets instead of black light - ok. But don't make up new stuff to try to qualify it.

Spaceship earth is a good example where 'white light' is used but you still get the focus and intention deemphasization through other effects.

The use of white light does not mandate 'flood lights' - that is simply the choice of show design they went with TLM.

 

[Pixiedustmaker]

What you are talking about is just show lighting in general - and is not unique to classifying the ride as a 'dark ride' or anything else.

As Rolly Crump can testify, there certainly is a style that Disney developed for its dark rides and this style was fairly rigid. People use the term dark ride differently, and I have noticed it being tossed around differently in the WDI vernacular.

 

[flynnibus]

As Rolly Crump can testify, there certainly is a style that Disney developed for its dark rides and this style was fairly rigid. People use the term dark ride differently, and I have noticed it being tossed around differently in the WDI vernacular.

Yes - but again - that doesn't constrain the techniques used to control what the guest is focusing on or can see. Those design principles are independent of if the ride is a dark ride, white light ride, or black light ride. You're bringing things together to justify one vs the other.. when they are completely independent and don't really bind the argument one way or other.

There are techniques to 'hide' things in black light both and white light. It doesn't freakin matter. The technique used in one, doesn't mean the other can't have similar outcomes using different techniques.

So all your complaints about TLM's views - are about design - not if it's a dark ride or white light ride or a black light ride. They were design choices - not rigid constraints because someone said it had to be white light.

 

[Pixiedustmaker]

There are techniques to 'hide' things in black light both and white light. It doesn't freakin matter. The technique used in one, doesn't mean the other can't have similar outcomes using different techniques.

My point, before we strayed on how people define "dark ride" differently, was that a lot of the artistry and history of designing dark rides was somehow lost in translation when Mermaid was built:

1. You can clearly see the black metal structure rotating the fish. Like you said, things can be hidden in both classic dark rides and rides like Small World. I have a big problem that the "spiralling fish" in the Under the Sea scene have obviously visible black metal tubes holding them up. In dark rides there was a lot of effort to hide things, and somehow nobody walked the track of Mermaid and decided to make changes. All of the ride was modeled out, but the effect doesn't work as good as it could have.

2. Dark rides forced the Imagineers to cram details into small spaces. Such as the "Hell" scene in Toad, and most recently Tony Baxter updated a scene in Snow White, in which the evil queen turns into the witch and the room changes in a really magical way, though you only see it for a second or two, this is what made classic Disney dark rides work so well. The end of LM, like many have noted, seems very "unfinished" as no effort was made to provide a richly detailed scene.

3. Classic dark rides needed a stream of consciousness that makes the story relatable, Mermaid doesn't have this as you've got Scuttle at the beginning, Ursula in the middle, and you sort of breeze by Scuttle in the finale scene when, for some odd reason, the main characters decide to break the fourth wall.

4. Scenes which would pass in a classic dark ride, don't work as well with incandescent light, and look plasticky and fake. Such as the fish in the "Kiss the Girl" scene and the water which is NOT, (IMHO) nearly as real/magical as the water seen in Peter Pan. Like dioramas in natural history museums lit by incandescent light, many of Mermaid's props look less alive than stuff in classic dark rides.

5. Mermaid feels it was designed by people who pretty much just remember the musical stuff in Mermaid, and sort of try to add 100% recreations of certain musical scenes, and then do a hack job on the rest of the scenes these decided to include. There isn't as much meticulous attention placed on making the world look like you are actually under water, at the beginning the clam shell goes under a whole lot of "waves" projected on the clam shell in front, and then you're supposed to forget about the under water theme from then on.

When I rode Mermaid for the first time, I immediately thought that they hadn't learned much from prior experience with dark rides.