I didn't jump down your throat. I just mentioned how the ride starts off with a deviation which sets the theme of the ride in motion in the very first scene. The name of the attraction itself also supports it as it isn't "Pinocchio- The Ride" or "Pine to Flesh - A Pinocchio Story." Daring Journey implies the ride is about a journey, and traveling.
The rest of my post was about why Disney is dumbing down the rides. Because crowds are dumb and instead of challenging them with good quality rides, they are simply catering to them. Everything needs to be spelled out and simple and have as many references to the movies as possible. We just saw this with the Beauty and the Beast darkride and its incredibly bland storytelling. Same with Little Mermaid. Even new "original takes" on existing IP is suffering. Frozen Ever After lacks any drive or storytelling and both Guardians attractions uses video segments to hang the attraction upon rather than making the ride amazing on its own.
That's not a reflection of you and your post, its a comment about Disney's MO right now.
Then perhaps that was my mistake. It certainly seemed like the bulk of your post was directed at me, and unnecessarily.
My point was basically that Pinocchio not turning into a real boy is really the biggest deviation in the ride - that Pinocchio sings "An Actor's Life For Me" at the beginning just kinda feels like it makes the same point as if he was singing "I've Got No Strings" - that Pinocchio is performing at Stromboli's. It doesn't feel like some overt invitation to join him on a daring journey, it just feels like a slightly remixed beat from the movie. It's not the dramatic left-turn that some of the other dark rides take to get away from their source material - especially because after the 5 second opening scene at Stromboli's we basically
don't do much different from the movie for the rest of the ride. Until the very end. If they were trying to do something different, it feels like they forgot somewhere along the way.
I'm more than fine with them taking an approach beyond just a book report of the movie, and actually tend to prefer that. Snow White's Scary Adventures is one of the very best examples of that. But it feels like they barely did that in Pinocchio. If they want to signal to the audience that we're taking a different approach then they could stand to clarify that further. Heck, I even suggested yesterday that they ditch the Monstro scene in favor of something totally different because it feels like an underwhelming beat present mainly for the sake of copy/pasting from the movie (and because it's not even the best Monstro moment in DL's Fantasyland).
I feel really strongly about the Fantasyland dark rides having their great, distinct personalities. Which is why I think it says something that I'm suggesting Pinocchio's approach to that doesn't stick the landing. Mr. Toad's is frenzied, Peter Pan is aspirational, Alice in Wonderland is trippy, Snow White (was) scary, and Pinocchio is . . . Snow White-lite? The balance is changed a little with Snow White now getting her Enchanted Wish, but maybe that's a chance for them to lean into that further in Pinocchio. Not that I really expect them to do that, but I'd like to see them try.
But short of a big rework to address things like that, the ride feels more like a rehash of its movie than most of the other FL dark rides. To a degree where it doesn't feel worth it to me to have Pinocchio not just become a real boy at the end, since he's already sitting there with the Blue Fairy waving her wand to . . . bring him back home, I guess? Not sure why he couldn't find his way home if all of *us* could, but okay.
I don't see why him becoming a real boy couldn't be chalked up to being a plot point about how when you leave home to go on a Daring Journey
you return having changed from who you were before you left. It just feels a little pedantic to me to leave out his character-defining transformation for the sake of the ride being "it's own thing" when the ride makes such a flaccid attempt at being that to begin with. Either beef it up and commit to a real, new take on the story, or just give the audience the cookie that's sitting right there.
Also, fun fact, Tokyo's PDJ starts with Pinocchio performing "I've Got No Strings" at Stromboli's, but it's the only version of the ride that does. Sort of strange that they'd differ there, given that Tokyo's opened only a month before Disneyland's version, so the rides surely had to have been developed concurrently. The Tokyo and DL versions are not exact clones to the letter, but are still very largely the same experience.
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