It was always meant to be multicontinental. They would’ve just called the area South America otherwise. The IJ attraction seems to be based in the Yucatec Maya regions of Mexico, so even without Coco, there was going to be a Mexican element. That said, Coco itself takes place too far north for me to consider it all that tropical, so hopefully it’s just for art inspiration as the alebrije style casts a wider net than anything narratively to do with Coco.
That’s my biggest area of confusion. While the Yucatán peninsula does enjoy tropical conditions (though not tropical rainforest), the region where Coco is set is does not have a tropical climate. Maybe they just mean “south of the Tropic of Cancer is good enough.”
I feel like if anything the Encanto ride potentially being a boat ride should excite people and placate some of the feelings about the ride not having anything to do with animals. Its likely that if it was a mystic manor type dark ride that it would just be a tour of the house which many here feared wouldn't make sense within the context of the park. The left field ride system kinda feels like the attraction is going in a different direction to accommodate DAK's theme.
Queue part 1 is the open-air portion of the Casita interior surrounding the enclosed courtyard. Playful “expressions” from Casita occur throughout for entertainment, like clacking musical tiles and shingles, fluttering shutters, etc. Queue part 2 with the load station is behind Antonio’s door. A stream can be worked into the environment seamlessly. The ride takes place throughout his room. Maybe not exactly what people would want from Encanto given the perfect fit of Mystic Manor, but it could work pretty easily even within the confines of Casa Madrigal. Maybe it’s a complete “open house”, and the queue snakes through parts of Isabella and Bruno’s rooms as well. Kind of a shoved together walkthrough and ride (in one of the rooms).
A boat ride through Antonio’s room is going to struggle a great deal not to feel generic. There is no reason a ride focused on Antonio’s animals would have to be confined to that space - “Oh no! Antonio’s animals are all over the house! Help us find them!” That said, the first priority is the best ride possible. If the IP interferes with the ability to build the best ride possible and adhere to the theme of the park, the problem is the IP. But again, in this case the IP can fit easily.
Seems like a waste to represent the Casita only in the queue of an Encanto attraction. It really is tailormade for the trackless system, as saturated as the resort is with those types of ride already.
We can’t want a ride that fits into DAK but also want a book report ride about a movie that doesn’t involve animals. They’re trying to make it fit with an original story.
I get what you're saying. But I wonder if Disney realizes that all their trackless systems shutdown several times a day for hats and ears dropping in the path of the vehicles and they want to move back to a more reliable system?
Don't forget the anchor. I'm sure it has some meaning too!
We don’t really know how Casita works, so they can do whatever. It could produce direct doorways to other characters’ rooms partway along the ride path, allowing the boat and the water it’s floating on to spill into their spaces. I would argue that unless they do a plot about Casita’s magic flickering out again (which would naturally be less animal-centric), the main rooms of the house are not that interesting. The character rooms are.
See, this is the problem with prioritizing IP usage over doing what makes the most sense for the park. They have to jump through these hoops to even make it fit. I would so much rather we have an Amazonian flume ride with no-IP connection. But it will never happen.
OH NO! The Casita is flooded! Now the animals are all over the house! Help Antonio round them up before they all drown!
No one here called for a “book report ride” (although I’ve always found complaints about such rides tremendously overblown) and no one wants a “fourth Magic Kingdom” except, perhaps, Iger.
Not even what I said considering I never mentioned rounding up animals or flooding the main house, but whatevs.
I was just proposing a storyline...
If there’s rainforest, I imagine it will be manufactured inside a building. A key requirement for the new rides is that they be able to operate in thunderstorms and (besides the carousel) be climate controlled. DAK ratings suffer in the summer. No surprise there.
I had the same thought. This would work just fine. It would still raise valid questions about WHY the ride type was chosen, but if the ride was strong and unique and played to the strengths of the IP, the question would be academic.
