Eddie Sotto's take on the current state of the parks

[Eddie Sotto]

Pooh in TDL queue

Here's a Winnie the Queue story. In TDL we have a wireless ride system with no tracks and my concern was not revealing that aspect until the right time and making the most of its magical properties.

I thought that the best way to do this was to manage expectations by making the queue as typical of a fantasyland dark ride as possible, so you would expect this ride to have flat sets and small cars on tracks. We deliberately did switchbacks and flats with illustrations of pages from the books. Simple stuff indeed. We even arranged the cars inna straight line against a long mural so your expectation was relatively low. Only as the cars left the station and slowly broke apart and gaered before a screen dind you begin to realize this ride was way different and that it was leaving the cliche behind. I think that simple queue and cliche of the mural and rows of cars helped enhance the effect.

Just a story.

 

[RSoxNo1]

Here's a Winnie the Queue story. In TDL we have a wireless ride system with no tracks and my concern was not revealing that aspect until the right time and making the most of its magical properties.

I thought that the best way to do this was to manage expectations by making the queue as typical of a fantasyland dark ride as possible, so you would expect this ride to have flat sets and small cars on tracks. We deliberately did switchbacks and flats with illustrations of pages from the books. Simple stuff indeed. We even arranged the cars inna straight line against a long mural so your expectation was relatively low. Only as the cars left the station and slowly broke apart and gaered before a screen dind you begin to realize this ride was way different and that it was leaving the cliche behind. I think that simple queue and cliche of the mural and rows of cars helped enhance the effect.

Just a story.

That's an interesting theory - Unfortunately I've never experienced Hunny Hunt first hand, but the second hand reviews I've heard have been exceptional. One of these reviews came from someone that assumed it was just that, a regular dark ride, and it wasn't until he was in the attraction that he realized how elaborate it was.

 

[Eddie Sotto]

That's an interesting theory - Unfortunately I've never experienced Hunny Hunt first hand, but the second hand reviews I've heard have been exceptional. One of these reviews came from someone that assumed it was just that, a regular dark ride, and it wasn't until he was in the attraction that he realized how elaborate it was.

That was exactly the intent. Its supposed to be one of those "everything you know is wrong" kind of moments.

http://www.tdrfan.com/tdl/fantasyland/poohs_hunny_hunt/index.htm

This link will show you the queue and what we intended to do. It looks pretty ordinary on the surface. I guess the pont is that the queue, even if simplistic, serves a deliberate purpose in setting up the next scenes to a greater effect.

 

[wdwmagic]

Here's a Winnie the Queue story. In TDL we have a wireless ride system with no tracks and my concern was not revealing that aspect until the right time and making the most of its magical properties.

I thought that the best way to do this was to manage expectations by making the queue as typical of a fantasyland dark ride as possible, so you would expect this ride to have flat sets and small cars on tracks. We deliberately did switchbacks and flats with illustrations of pages from the books. Simple stuff indeed. We even arranged the cars inna straight line against a long mural so your expectation was relatively low. Only as the cars left the station and slowly broke apart and gaered before a screen dind you begin to realize this ride was way different and that it was leaving the cliche behind. I think that simple queue and cliche of the mural and rows of cars helped enhance the effect.

Just a story.

Very cool Eddie, thanks for sharing. Hoping to see it myself one day!

 

[Eddie Sotto]

I was watching a documentary on movie moguls tonight and Leonard Maltin summed up Walt this way. "He worked harder than he had to, made things better than he had to, and was ok with making less money than he could have."

I may have misquoted this slightly, but when you think about it, those three ethics run against the typical corporate mantra of "let's exploit what we have, give just enough to get by and make as much as we can."

 

[wishesjake]

I was watching a documentary on movie moguls tonight and Leonard Maltin summed up Walt this way. "He worked harder than he had to, made things better than he had to, and was ok with making less money than he could have."

I may have misquoted this slightly, but when you think about it, those three ethics run against the typical corporate mantra of "let's exploit what we have, give just enough to get by and make as much as we can."

I'm not sure it's apt to compare Walt to the typical corporate mogul. His way of thinking was similar to the way Howard Hawks, John Ford, Orson Welles, and Alfred Hitchcock would approach movies. He was a creative through and through so of course his way of thinking was different then Meyer, Warner(s), and Selznick. They were businessmen who were allowed to make creative decisions (some good, some bad) because of the dynamics of the studio system. Walt was an artist who just happened to have a company named after him (an honor usually bestowed upon true moguls).

Sorry, Eddie, not to be the proverbial turd in the punchbowl but it just rubs me the wrong way to see Walt compared to Mayer and Laemmle when he should be compared to Chaplin and Griffith. I think TCM (and others) draw the comparison because his name was on the building and he wasn't actually credited as "director" on his films when he was definitely the "auteur" behind the whole operation.

 

[AEfx]

I have to agree with the previous poster. With FASTPASS, Disney has essentially said that the build-up to an attraction via elements in the queue is not as important as getting on the attraction as fast as possible. Now whether you agree with that sentiment, that certainly is debatable.

I think you can have your cake and eat it too with this one.

The reason queues were made so elaborate was not really a decision made just to enhance the story. The purpose was to entertain people who had to wait in line. Make them wait in an empty, un-themed hallway, or make them wait in a nice, fun environment. The latter is the reasoning behind them.

Of course, over the years, this has ballooned in unexpected ways. Disney fans expect the queue to be as elaborate as anything in the attraction itself. I feel like sometimes Disney feeds into this expectation too much, and skimps on the attraction itself because of it.

Now, I know, some will argue the queue is just as important as the ride/show. I tend to err on the side of disagreeing with that. It's important, but if you ask most Disney guests why they are waiting in line, it's not to, well, wait in the line, it's to experience what is at the end of the line. Should we make that experience as enjoyable as possible? Yes, but not to the determent of the attraction experience itself (yes, yes, I know the queue is PART of that).

A perfect example is Everest. Now, we all know that the attraction is largely a joke in the Disney community at this point. They cut a lot of corners on that attraction, and it shows. The "dark ride" portion is non-existent, the "big bad" turned out to be a "big disappointment" (the Yeti was a disappointment even when it DID work - you go by so fast it was very difficult to see even if you knew to look, those that didn't know saw a blur if anything), and from the AK parking lot it looks awful (if you only take the Disney buses you don't see it nearly as much as if you are in the parking lot - it just looks awful from there).

Yet, they spared no expense on the queue. Heck, there are TV specials largely about the queue. They went on exotic trips, gathered "authentic" stuff, and spent a huge amount of money and time on it. And...it's kind of underwhelming. It's neat that it's mostly "authentic" stuff, don't get me wrong, but the value of the scenario is questionable. Would 99.9% of people known the difference? Do 99.9% of visitors (who can't even get close to a lot of the stuff because of barriers) investigate every single piece of junk they threw in there?

The answer to me is, probably not. So we have a headliner attraction with a really, really detailed and time-consuming queue, an okay rollercoaster, and ______-poor effects inside including the "centerpiece" of the attraction that has been broken for years. I can't help but think that if they focused on the attraction itself instead of spending so much time detailing and obsessing about the queue, some of the design and implementation issues that have left Everest a 200M embarrassment might not have occurred.

Queues are important, no doubt. But when they start to overshadow the main experience in either effort or budget, it gets to the point where the tail is wagging the dog, or the queue is taking precedence over the attraction itself.

 

[wishesjake]

I think that the everest queue being more important than the ride is debatable, but do you think there are any other examples of the queue taking precedence over the attraction?

 

[AEfx]

I think that the everest queue being more important than the ride is debatable, but do you think there are any other examples of the queue taking precedence over the attraction?

I didn't say more important, but it's clear a lot more time and thought and detail went into it, and the expense incurred is legendary (as I noted above, they had TV specials chronicling it) - when besides the actual mountain structure itself, the joke of a centerpiece (the Yeti) that they bragged about how powerful it was (yes, so powerful your designers couldn't see it was tearing the building down, ROFL), and the scant lighting effects, simply is just another roller coaster (and not a great one, either). It certainly feels as a visitor that a lot more time and energy went into that queue than anything else, and most of that additional effort is lost on 99.9% of the people who visit.

I brought up Everest because it's the most obvious example, and one of the most recent E-tickets at WDW (the most recent? depends on how you score D vs. E). It's a trend that I hope they have put a handle on for future development. Joe Rhode may be a great fellow and designed some great stuff in his time, but Everest is such an embarassment and I think a lot of the issue with it is that he focused so much more on the minor stuff and forgot about the big picture - making a great ride to go with this queue he obsessed over.

I'm hoping they learned this lesson for Mermaid - I want a beautiful queue, but I don't need anything interactive, or gimmicky, or a "hey stop and watch this" presentation - just pour the money into a ride, give me a nice space to walk through to get there, and I'm happy.

 

[HBG2]

Queues are important, no doubt. But when they start to overshadow the main experience in either effort or budget, it gets to the point where the tail is wagging the dog, or the queue is taking precedence over the attraction itself.

I know Eddie sees the Tiki Room as a sort of benchmark for doing an attraction well, and it serves as a good illustration of your point (with which I agree). The pre-show is charming and entertaining, but is deliberately designed to be several notches below the actual show, so that if you miss it, you don't feel like you've missed half of the TR experience.

 

[MiklCraw4d]

I love this. I only wish I could ride it without knowing the "secret" - I'm sure that would be a total freak-out moment if you didn't know.

Heck, I just wish I could ride it! I pulled up some YouTube video to refresh my memory and it looks spectacular...

Here's a Winnie the Queue story. In TDL we have a wireless ride system with no tracks and my concern was not revealing that aspect until the right time and making the most of its magical properties.

I thought that the best way to do this was to manage expectations by making the queue as typical of a fantasyland dark ride as possible, so you would expect this ride to have flat sets and small cars on tracks. We deliberately did switchbacks and flats with illustrations of pages from the books. Simple stuff indeed. We even arranged the cars inna straight line against a long mural so your expectation was relatively low. Only as the cars left the station and slowly broke apart and gaered before a screen dind you begin to realize this ride was way different and that it was leaving the cliche behind. I think that simple queue and cliche of the mural and rows of cars helped enhance the effect.

Just a story.

 

[Eddie Sotto]

I'm not sure it's apt to compare Walt to the typical corporate mogul. His way of thinking was similar to the way Howard Hawks, John Ford, Orson Welles, and Alfred Hitchcock would approach movies. He was a creative through and through so of course his way of thinking was different then Meyer, Warner(s), and Selznick. They were businessmen who were allowed to make creative decisions (some good, some bad) because of the dynamics of the studio system. Walt was an artist who just happened to have a company named after him (an honor usually bestowed upon true moguls).

Sorry, Eddie, not to be the proverbial turd in the punchbowl but it just rubs me the wrong way to see Walt compared to Mayer and Laemmle when he should be compared to Chaplin and Griffith. I think TCM (and others) draw the comparison because his name was on the building and he wasn't actually credited as "director" on his films when he was definitely the "auteur" behind the whole operation.

As much as I'm a HUGE TCM fan, I'm finding the "Moguls" series to be a bit weak as compared to Kevin Brownlow's documentaries like "Hollywood, the Pioneers", etc. I just found Maltin's line to be very good.

I'm glad they mentioned Walt, but I agree that he was more of an "artist" than a junk dealer turned filmmaker. Compared to the other moguls like Fox or Mayer, he never made or kept that much money. RKO distributed his films, so he was more of an independent producer. In fact, because no one else would embrace what he wanted to do, he had to form his own company to realize his dreams. So independents like UA (Chaplin, Griffith, Fairbanks/Pickford) probably did set the tone for what he and Roy did. I would have treated this part of the documentary differently, and made a bit more like the Warner Bros., and mentioned "Walt and Roy Disney" as a team in Walt's ascent. To your point, Walt was an auteur who was a devout admirer of Chaplin. To be fair, Maltin mentions that Walt was more in the league of Edison or other innovators than Mayer or Cohn.

 

[Eddie Sotto]

I love this. I only wish I could ride it without knowing the "secret" - I'm sure that would be a total freak-out moment if you didn't know.

Heck, I just wish I could ride it! I pulled up some YouTube video to refresh my memory and it looks spectacular...

I'm sorry. I should have classified it as a "spoiler".

Maybe the best preshows or queues, no matter how good they are occur when you can't tell where one stops and the other begins. You are so entertained that stepping into a vehicle is just a natural part of the larger show.

The HM also does this well. You can argue that the stretch room and hallway are a pulsing queue, or... that the Attraction itself is a hybrid "walk thru/ride" experience and the queue ends at the door to the house.


My Tiki Room riff..FWIW.

The Tiki Room to me is very much like that. The garden is a soft pre-show that subtly prepares you to eventually accept an unconventional show that is counter intuitive as to it's staging. By having the Tikis "speak", they expose us to the idea that these "inanimate objects" may talk, etc. You are made used to the idea that the "characters" are organic and could be anything. The garden is somewhat passive, and comes "alive" to a degree without warning, training the audience to look to where the sound is, and that your attention may be drawn in different directions, even up, as the Tikis "bloom" from the flower buds in a tree overhead. Expectations are being managed very well here and once trained, can be easily surpassed.

Storywise, they set up what a "Tiki" is, that they get very angry, etc. which pays off later. There is no set "stage" in the garden either, just a "space" to experience. All this preps you for the Tiki Room that "unfolds" in layers of inanimate objects as "characters" that are come from everywhere with no stage. Even the "barker bird" over the entry "edits" the audience in that if you are not into accepting talking birds, you'll head to something else. Of course, the Dole Whip food aspect is really great as now you even consume something unique. Perhaps none of this set up was conscious to the designers, but simply works and was a big lesson to me on show design. It's too bad that the genius of the "unfolding" reveals and musical syncopations of the Tiki Room are sometimes dismissed because the show itself has not held up quite as well as others.

Simply put, the queue is part of a sequence of events that builds and foreshadows the actual show and is a key part of it. It can act as a "Foreword" or "Trailer" or be the first few scenes in the story. Mr. Lincoln had a slideshow setting up the personal side of the man, etc. It usually holds back and sets up things that are paid off later, like a movie. It manages expectations, can show or illustrate to the guest what will happen to them.

 

[ChrisFL]

I think one thing, in overall attraction design is when you set up your expectation to be one thing, and then suddenly it all changes and you're seeing much more.

For example, the Living Seas...when you saw the film about Seabase Alpha, step through a door and suddenly you're IN the place you just saw on the film, ready to travel down to the base itself. It had a dramatic and excellent introduction as well, to build up the story.

I also enjoy MIB at Universal in this regard, as you start out on the ride shooting flat images of aliens , then suddenly you're turned around and you're seeing "real" aliens all over the city streets...so you start out with one relatively low expectation, and then it gets much better.

 

[Eddie Sotto]

I know Eddie sees the Tiki Room as a sort of benchmark for doing an attraction well, and it serves as a good illustration of your point (with which I agree). The pre-show is charming and entertaining, but is deliberately designed to be several notches below the actual show, so that if you miss it, you don't feel like you've missed half of the TR experience.

"I wonder what happened to Rosita?" She's in my Tiki rant on another post!

 

[Eddie Sotto]

A perfect example is Everest. Now, we all know that the attraction is largely a joke in the Disney community at this point. They cut a lot of corners on that attraction, and it shows. The "dark ride" portion is non-existent, the "big bad" turned out to be a "big disappointment" (the Yeti was a disappointment even when it DID work - you go by so fast it was very difficult to see even if you knew to look, those that didn't know saw a blur if anything), and from the AK parking lot it looks awful (if you only take the Disney buses you don't see it nearly as much as if you are in the parking lot - it just looks awful from there).

It might be interesting to compare Everest to the Matterhorn, it's grandfather.

The Matterhorn only has the continual observation of it's loading process or the sounds and glimpses of the Bobsleds as it's setup. No show at all. no story really unless a footprint in a planter counts. Is it rated by a lesser score overall?

 

[HBG2]

You're right about the Tiki Room show not holding up as well as one could wish. There are too many "contemporary" gags that haven't been contemporary for decades, to the point of incomprehensibility. How many guests recognize a Maurice Chevalier impression for what it is? Heck, how many have even heard of Chevalier (be honest)? I'd be curious to know how well understood the Crosby or Satchmo impressions are too. It's a steadily diminishing percentage of the audience, that's for certain. But my favorite is, "Because if we don't make you feel like that, we're gonna wind up on a lady's hat." Sheesh, that joke was dated even in 1963.

It might be interesting to compare Everest to the Matterhorn, it's grandfather.

The Matterhorn only has the continual observation of it's loading process or the sounds and glimpses of the Bobsleds as it's setup. No show at all. no story really unless a footprint in a planter counts. Is it rated by a lesser score overall?

I love the Matterhorn in this context because it seems to me that it illustrates a learning curve. The first fully-themed roller coaster, isn't it? But the theming was directed primarily at the people in line, not the riders. We oldsters remember how the interior of the Matterhorn was an unsightly zero, a hollow shell with only the most half-hearted efforts to cover I-beams with fake stonework.

I suppose the thinking in 1959 was, "Once you're on the ride, who cares about any of that? It's a roller coaster." Once they learned that riders do indeed care, they jazzed up the interior.

 

[HMF]

This article on Jack Lindquist, the park's first marketing genius has a great story about a big idea that was hatched by looking out the window of a plane. Mickey's Cornfield. Is Duffy next?

http://miceage.micechat.com/suekruse/sk120910a.htm

My podcast has done a segment on Jack Lindquist.
http://blog.miceatworkpodcast.com/2010/12/18/episode-19.aspx

 

[ScorpionX]

Exactly. When referring to FW, I guess stale isn't exactly the right word. My point is that, yes, while Epcot has seen new additions and refurbs in recent years (for better or for worse), what do they all amount to? There's nothing that cohesively ties them together; most entertain, some inform, but none really inspire. None of the attractions, if I may quote Mr. Soto, "...really make Future World deliver on it's promise and send guests away with a "call to action" to make the future brighter." FW used to do this(or at least it did better); it used to make one excited about the future and really think about how great we were going to make it. Now, heck, whats even futuristic about FW anymore? As much as I detested the planned name of Discoveryland, it was a far more accurate description to what is there now.

Epcot is "stale" in its message and purpose (if it still has one. And I like to think it still does). Half the park is a jumbled mess of themes and concepts, and the other half, aparyt from a few film refurbs that were long overdue, truly is "stale." Epcot has SO much potential, and as Mr. Sotto said, Epcot is. "...a grand opportunity and a unique theme to develop as parks go." Exploit it! Use it! Profit off of it! Disney has something special here, if they know how to use it.

In the words of Esmond Walker, May EPCOT Center entertain, inform and inspire and above all, may it instill a new sense of belief and pride in man's ability to shape a world that offers hope to people everywhere in the world. Well, attractions like Test Track and Turtle Talk with Crush entertain. Ellen's Energy Adventure, Living with the Land, and The American Adventure inform. But nothing to inspire. Yes, we did have Journey Into Imagination with Dreamfinder and Horizons to inspire us. But we know why they can inspire us no longer. So that means we should build attractions that do all these things: entertain, inform, and inspire.

 

[Eddie Sotto]

I love the Matterhorn in this context because it seems to me that it illustrates a learning curve. The first fully-themed roller coaster, isn't it? But the theming was directed primarily at the people in line, not the riders. We oldsters remember how the interior of the Matterhorn was an unsightly zero, a hollow shell with only the most half-hearted efforts to cover I-beams with fake stonework.
I suppose the thinking in 1959 was, "Once you're on the ride, who cares about any of that? It's a roller coaster." Once they learned that riders do indeed care, they jazzed up the interior.

If you look at the souvenir maps of the day, they called the interior of the Matterhorn "Glacier Grotto" and gave it an attraction "star", so it may have been a money thing or a future upgrade they never got to. I would think that meant that they at least intended to make it more of a "show" than two by four framing.