Truthfully, I believe this is a complete lie. If effort/investment was put into marketing it in commercials, etc. and making a point to say it’s something you’ve gotta see as part of your EPCOT experience (just like it used to be), it would. And fan/public goodwill is ‘everything’, it determines how much money will be made and everything. You want that goodwill/good word of mouth, cause ‘that’ is the thing that’s gonna bring more people in, thus more profits.
That actually got me thinking. So, let's just say that some worker at a company wanted to make a Dragon Tales ride (this is assuming this company owns the rights to it). After all, a lot of 20-somethings loved Dragon Tales when they grew up as kids. Surely this'll be a hit, right?
Unfortunately though, they forget to take into account the bigger picture. And that's kids. Very few kids today even know what Dragon Tales is. And you might say, "okay that's true, but they could easily reintroduce these timeless characters to kids through their parents! Maybe we could reboot Dragon Tales and get it popular with the kids again!"
Okay, sure. Sounds good, right? But this company owns Cocomelon too (again, this is just a scenario where both Dragon Tales and Cocomelon were owned by the same company). Well, why waste time trying to take a risk on a Dragon Tales reboot when Cocomelon is already really popular with kids today? What's the point? So, they instead make Cocomelon: The Ride.
This is Disney's POV:
Considering the Dreamfinder and the pre-1998 ride is even older than Dragon Tales at this point, and it's last year open was
26 years ago (Dragon Tales stopped airing 14 1/2 years ago, for comparison), they're even more irrelevant at this point and even more absurd of an idea, at least in Disney's eyes.
Kids born in 2020 sure as hell don't know the Dreamfinder, teenagers born in 2010 don't know the Dreamfinder, and most grown adults born in 2000 won't know the Dreamfinder; if they do, it won't be from experience, as they weren't even alive when the original ride was still operating. Even 30 year olds born in 1994 and 1995 will likely barely even remember the original ride, if at all.
Refurbishing a ride to restore the 1983 version when most people under like 32-35 would have little/no memory of the original ride over just selling merch to kids and opening a Figment meet-and-greet and just keeping the ride as-is really doesn't make sense to Disney's POV.
Figment is still popular as a character. Maybe not as much with the ride, but the kids still seem to love Figment. I've had to wait in surprisingly long lines for Figment over my trips in the last 5 or so years. Why waste money closing the ride, taking like two years to reopen it and add in the Dreamfinder? Maybe it'll make a tiny bit more money, but not enough to justify a whole ride refurbishment.
From my POV, he deserves to reunite with Dreamfinder, but with the current state of Disney theme parks, I just can't see it happening for at least 5-10 years, if ever. We might live in a world where, in the year 2037, Figment has outlived Great Movie Ride, Splash Mountain AND Muppet-Vision 3D. And that just makes me miserable.
TL;DR - making a massive refurbishment to bring back the 1983 ride (this would also include audio and visual enhancements, polishing up the ride) over just keeping the ride as-is really isn't financially viable. It wouldn't make them any money in the grand scheme of things.
All Disney cares about is the money, and if they don't
have to rework Figment, they won't.
disneyfineart.com
