News 'Encanto' and 'Indiana Jones'-themed experiences at Animal Kingdom

[GoofGoof]

I was being a bit simplistic. But get a lightning lane for flight of passage. Go to early entry and you get all the fill of rides you want by 10:00am and do breakfast as well. You dont even make it to lunch time.

I don’t disagree, but Dinoland doesn’t add much to that timeline today. So if you already have lightning lane it’s easy to add Dinosaur which won’t have a wait longer than 10 mins anyway and then if you want you could ride the spinner. Probably adds 30 mins to your day. The longest time spent could be walking to and from Dinoland. This is a bigger loss for people with young kids who use the playground. Then it could be a loss of an hour or 2 from your day or even more depending on how much you like digging in the sand.

 

[Marc Davis Fan]

Does anyone have thoughts and/or information about the rockwork being planned for Tropical Americas?

The concept model obviously shows "forested hills" atop the Encanto show building - which could look nice, but don't seem extraordinary. The concept art originally looked like that rockwork was a bit more involved, but I can't tell if they blurred/reduced that when it was re-displayed next to the concept model.

I think rockwork remains one of Disney's fortes, and to me it goes far in making their environments feel more transportive. I've been glad to see them leaning more into amazing rockwork in recent years (Pandora, Galaxy's Edge, Shanghai's Adventure Isle [which, by the way, takes place in, well, the topical Americas], World of Frozen, Fantasy Springs...).

My fingers are crossed for some tropical cliffs and waterfalls...

 

[GoofGoof]

Does anyone have thoughts and/or information about the rockwork being planned for Tropical Americas?

The concept model obviously shows "forested hills" atop the Encanto show building - which could look nice, but don't seem extraordinary. The concept art originally looked like that rockwork was a bit more involved, but I can't tell if they blurred/reduced that when it was re-displayed next to the concept model.

I think rockwork remains one of Disney's fortes, and to me it goes far in making their environments feel more transportive. I've been glad to see them leaning more into amazing rockwork in recent years (Pandora, Galaxy's Edge, Shanghai's Adventure Isle [which, by the way, takes place in, well, the topical Americas], World of Frozen, Fantasy Springs...).

My fingers are crossed for some tropical cliffs and waterfalls...

Agreed it would be nice to work in some rock work and definitely waterfalls of some sort. It’s hard to tell from the concept art but it doesn’t seem like rock work will be as prominent as pandora or galaxy’s edge. the cars project seems to be more likely to center on rock work and probably also villains land. This looks like a distant third. Should have more rocks than Monsters at DHS

 

[celluloid]

I don’t disagree, but Dinoland doesn’t add much to that timeline today. So if you already have lightning lane it’s easy to add Dinosaur which won’t have a wait longer than 10 mins anyway and then if you want you could ride the spinner. Probably adds 30 mins to your day. The longest time spent could be walking to and from Dinoland. This is a bigger loss for people with young kids who use the playground. Then it could be a loss of an hour or 2 from your day or even more depending on how much you like digging in the sand.

Not just the playground but kids/riders at 40 inches.

Tough to be a bug is closing too.

So train to rafiki's, killimanjaro, Kali and Navi river journey will be all any rider under 44 inches will have.

Not a good count for many parks, awful for a Disney one.

 

[GoofGoof]

Not just the playground but kids/riders at 40 inches.

Tough to be a bug is closing too.

So train to rafiki's, killimanjaro, Kali and Navi river journey will be all any rider under 44 inches will have.

Not a good count for many parks, awful for a Disney one.

The other shows plus the walking trails also have no height requirement, but I agree with your overall point. I assume most people with kids under 40 inches spent more time in Dinoland than the average guest.

Dinosaur was 40 inches which I assume will be the same when it re-opens as Indy, the carousel should have no restriction and I hope they figure out how to make Encanto without a height limit. So in theory in 2027 they will add 2 rides and a show back for the under 40 crowd (plus Indy) but it doesn’t increase capacity for that crowd and you still lose the playground.

 

[co10064]

Animal Kingdom attendance is declining even as we speak.

Over the past month as I have glanced at wait times in advance of my trip, wait times for DAK have been consistently lower than the other three parks. It’s become rare for anything there to be above an hour wait, with the average posted wait probably being 20 minutes park-wide (which of course is great as a guest, but highly unusual for WDW).

FOP, which has historically always been in the top three wait times across property at any given moment, is now being consistently beat out by the likes of Slinky, RnRC, Rise, 7DMT, Peter Pan, Space, Remy, and of course, TRON.

 

[Brer Oswald]

Honestly on this one I think the reasoning is as simple as they have watched the two versions of this attraction have a large disparity in popularity for years. I would actually go even further to say that they could have placed almost anything else in this attraction as a retheme and it would boost the ride's popularity. Indiana Jones is just a proven solid marriage to this ride system.

All that to say, I don't think that this has anything to do with the animatronic upkeep. I think it's got everything to do with the ride just hasn't been much of a people pleaser for a long time now, and it's semi-twin across the country has been for years. That does sort of suggest that DINOSAUR's theme and content brought with it some obstacles that Indiana Jones does not. People clearly are not turned off by the thrill level and ride style, or else Indiana Jones Adventure wouldn't be as popular as it is.

I really, really like DINOSAUR, but of all the decisions for stuff they announced at D23, this decision seems to be the most straightforward and easy to explain.

It’s a ride in a park with only 5 rides. It’s fairly busy most of the time. I don’t think this is a case of trying to make the ride “more popular”. It’s not like it’s Carousel of Progress in the Magic Kingdom or something.

 

[celluloid]

The other shows plus the walking trails also have no height requirement, but I agree with your overall point. I assume most people with kids under 40 inches spent more time in Dinoland than the average guest.

Dinosaur was 40 inches which I assume will be the same when it re-opens as Indy, the carousel should have no restriction and I hope they figure out how to make Encanto without a height limit. So in theory in 2027 they will add 2 rides and a show back for the under 40 crowd (plus Indy) but it doesn’t increase capacity for that crowd and you still lose the playground.

This is true. And I am traditonally in defense of AK having more than just rides to spend the day.

But in reality, it is a weak situation all around right now. The trails have also changed. And to some degree, the walking trails are often no stroller allowed. Which when you have a two or three year old and the day is that demanding of walking, is a crappy day to fill your day with all of them.

And the time without these attractions is still a bad situation for the next year or two and a half.

 

[jannerUK]

I have read the brief but really don't fully understand it. Surely the best bit would be to phase the closure so Dinosaur was one of the last to close. I am right in saying that there is no phasing as such...

 

[osian]

I have read the brief but really don't fully understand it. Surely the best bit would be to phase the closure so Dinosaur was one of the last to close. I am right in saying that there is no phasing as such...

No. There is a phased closure and Dinosaur is closing last.

https://www.wdwmagic.com/attraction...to-make-way-for-encanto-and-indiana-jones.htm

"The phased-closure process will continue into 2025, with Dinosaur, the park's original thrill ride, closing to make way for a new Indiana Jones adventure."

 

[jannerUK]

Yeah knew it was me being slow in reading. We are there for August 2025. I hope there is something for us to at least go on, like Dinosaur.

 

[osian]

Yeah knew it was me being slow in reading. We are there for August 2025. I hope there is something for us to at least go on, like Dinosaur.

Unfortunately, I think we are expecting Dinosaur to close by the spring. I'm from UK and visiting this November so will catch it, however I'm missing out on Test Track whose closure was announced after I'd booked!

 

[meggo819]

And to some degree, the walking trails are often no stroller allowed.

Really? We haven’t experienced that at Animal Kingdom. We did have to park our stroller at Epcot for the Moana attraction, but it had only been officially open for a few weeks at that time. So I assumed that might only be temporary.

 

[celluloid]

Really? We haven’t experienced that at Animal Kingdom. We did have to park our stroller at Epcot for the Moana attraction, but it had only been officially open for a few weeks at that time. So I assumed that might only be temporary.

Could be a seasonal thing with crowds but yes, they used to have greeters asking you at certain locations.

Rafiki's Planet Watch is kind of a hassle in itself. It is understandable for sure, but it made it difficult.

I have also not been back in years now.

 

[Mr. Sullivan]

It’s a ride in a park with only 5 rides. It’s fairly busy most of the time. I don’t think this is a case of trying to make the ride “more popular”. It’s not like it’s Carousel of Progress in the Magic Kingdom or something.

It has consistently been one of if not the least popular ride in the park (aside from Triceratop Spin I suppose) for years. Even now when it’s gonna be closing, it hasn’t jumped much in attention compared to everything else. Now to be clear I’m not saying it SHOULD go, I love it and think it serves a purpose. But that’s why it, and the rest of Dinoland with it, is going.

 

[GoofGoof]

Really? We haven’t experienced that at Animal Kingdom. We did have to park our stroller at Epcot for the Moana attraction, but it had only been officially open for a few weeks at that time. So I assumed that might only be temporary.

Could be a seasonal thing with crowds but yes, they used to have greeters asking you at certain locations.

Rafiki's Planet Watch is kind of a hassle in itself. It is understandable for sure, but it made it difficult.

I have also not been back in years now.

My kids are 17 and 14 now so it’s been a while since we went with strollers but if I remember correctly we did not bring the stroller on the trails or to Rafiki. We parked in the big lots nearby in the 2 lands. We usually rocked one of those double strollers so probably had no desire to push through those areas anyway. We usually had the kids walk within lands but used the stroller for the long walks between lands or out of the parks. I do understand that if a kid is asleep in the stroller it may be nice to be able to keep the stroller and walk through.

I can honestly say that we spent more time at AK then any other park not called MK when my kids were stroller age. This was before Pandora so 2 less rides (1 that kids could ride). My kids loved animals and zoos so they were happy to spend lots of time looking at the animals even when they couldn’t do EE and Dinosaur was pretty scary. Losing the playground is a pretty big loss for that age group. It was a cool play area that my kids really loved.

 

[GoofGoof]

It’s a ride in a park with only 5 rides. It’s fairly busy most of the time. I don’t think this is a case of trying to make the ride “more popular”. It’s not like it’s Carousel of Progress in the Magic Kingdom or something.

Dinosaur is the same ride system as Indy at DLR. On average crowd days Dinosaur rarely has a wait over 20 mins and is often a walk on even when they list a wait time. Indy at DLR averages somewhere closer to a 40 min wait. AK has 7 rides. DL has more than 5X that. In a park with so few rides you would assume it would have an artificially high wait compared to popularity of the ride itself. That does not appear to be the case.

I think there are probably 2 reasons. First is the Indy ride itself is better. Indy is a popular IP and and the ride is fun. Dinosaur has large stretches of darkness which work into the story but makes it less interesting to ride. Indy has more stuff to look at. Dinosaur is less repeatable too for the same reasons. The second reason is Dinosaur is in a land that a lot of people skip completely today. It’s the only attraction in the land that attracts less people outside of the stroller crowd. Indy is right in the middle of Adventureland so a lot more foot traffic.

Once this project is complete Indy will be in a land that will likely be much more visited with another ride that will almost certainly be popular and the ride itself (assuming it’s similar to the DL version) will be more interesting and repeatable. I think that will make the wait times more similar to the DL version than Dinosaur. Not sure that’s a good thing but at least the queue will almost certainly be well done.

 

[KDM31091]

I kind of lose people when they equate high wait times to popularity. Some things are very slow loading and therefore tend to have very high waits (Frozen Ever After, Peter Pan). Conversely, fast loading attractions can seem less popular since you tend to fly through the queue (say, Pirates). I would not say Pirates is any less popular than Peter Pan in a total popularity standpoint, yet judging by wait times, Peter Pan would be considered far, far more popular in most cases. That's why I find that logic flawed.

On the topic of Dinosaur, if you want to do the wait time argument, it typically is 30 minutes or so midday and stretches to 60+ on busy days. Is it the most popular in the park, no. But is it ridiculously unpoular and begging to be replaced? also no.

I hope I'm wrong and I hope the Indy version is great but recent track record has me worried for a cheap overlay.

 

[Marc Davis Fan]

I think a big part of Dinosaur’s lack of popularity is people simply not knowing it exists. Even with Genie and MDE and all that, many people instead still just wander the parks without any prior research or even a map. Ever since Dino-Rama opened, the crowd flow directs people there and then out the other end of Dinoland. And I suspect that when asked on GSR surveys, many people who didn’t know it existed think they’re being asked about something in Dino-Rama.

So the biggest pull to Indy might just be the new crowd flow patterns, and, hopefully, the top of the Mayan temple being visible from the land’s central plaza.

I wonder if Dinosaur’s ridership or ratings will increase upon the closure of Dino-Rama and the blocking off of that area.

 

[Mr. Sullivan]

I think a big part of Dinosaur’s lack of popularity is people simply not knowing it exists. Even with Genie and MDE and all that, many people instead still just wander the parks without any prior research or even a map. Ever since Dino-Rama opened, the crowd flow directs people there and then out the other end of Dinoland. And I suspect that when asked on GSR surveys, many people who didn’t know it existed think they’re being asked about something in Dino-Rama.

So the biggest pull to Indy might just be the new crowd flow patterns, and, hopefully, the top of the Mayan temple being visible from the land’s central plaza.

I wonder if Dinosaur’s ridership or ratings will increase upon the closure of Dino-Rama and the blocking off of that area.

Yeah the layout of the area is really a detriment to the ride. How to get to it is not at all intuitive with the way the paths are designed. It feels very tucked away, hidden. Like you’re going somewhere you aren’t supposed to until you’re right on it.