Garner Holt takes over Disney's MAPO Division

flynnibus

flynnibus

Premium Member
Oh I love how people hang so much in the 747 reference.

People forget the same types of references they made for jaws too.

When you need to move something big quick.. That takes a huge impulse force - or POWER, which is time sensitive. Just like you lying down slowly.. Vs the type if force you feel if you covered the same distance by falling :)

It's akin to scaring you with saying The shock you will get by touching this is 20,000 volts.. Nearly 200 times greater than the voltage you know can kill you at home. Yet this 20k voltage just gives you a static shock. The voltage is real, but there the actual energy transferred by the shock is so minute it doesn't even hurt.

Mixing Comparisons with entirely different scales always leads to great PR :)
 
MarkTwain

MarkTwain

Well-Known Member
Part of me wonders if this could be a good thing. By the sounds of things, WDI's bloated structure has gotten so expensive that any new theme park additions cost way more they should otherwise (why the Little Mermaid cost $100 million compared to Harry Potter's $80 million). I can't help thinking that with the outsourcing to Garner Holt bringing down attraction cost, perhaps we can get more expansion for the same level of investment.

Consider me cautiously optimistic.
 
P

Pixiedustmaker

Well-Known Member
I think Holt is cheaper because making animatronics is his full time business, he's made 400 animatronics for Disney since Jack Skellington (per Miceage.) His company has a Kuka robot for building the figures from computer models, and he has designed some innovative stuff.

Having said that, I don't think Holt will necessarily be flexing his creative muscles as WDI will order animatronics which have a certain number of movements, and pretty solid specifications. Holt may have *built* the animatronic bears, but certainly the design and specifications came from WDI, and I presume they will have the folks who do the programing. Garner Holt is very creative (he made some great next-gen Tiki birds), but does anybody seriously think that Disney will pay him for the next gen stuff or just specialty pieces with a couple of movements?

The bears in Hong Kong's Big Grizzly Mountain look great . . . but you've got three scenes, which is kind of stingy when compared to Splash Mountain. Too bad they couldn't put in some raccoons or other animals.

I used to love watching the Country Bears in Disneyland, then they took out on theatre and it increased the wait time and suddenly people didn't feel like waiting 30 minutes or whatever for the next show. If they kept CBJ fresh by adding new stuff, or even building a new show with different animatronics, Disney would have some of that magic like in the golden age of animatronics with America Sings and CBJ in Disneyland.

I find it amazing that with all of the Pixar films and new Disney films the suits never thought to do a new animatronic show with well loved characters! I don't remember much of the characters from Bug's Life, but this show only has a handful of characters. What if they did something on the scale of Country Bears yet utilized the new characters? Like maybe an "aquarium" with characters from Finding Nemo, Mermaid, OR a show in the castle from Beauty and the Beast where Lumiere and the others have invited a variety of other characters to put on a musical or something . . . . lame ideas, but the possibilities are endless.

I don't find this news troubling as Disney's latest move seems to be to ration the use of animatronics (less to keep up) in post-Splash attractions. Expedition Everest has one animatronic which was left broken as they are too cheap to fix it, and the Seven Dwarfs Mine Coaster will only have a couple scenes with limited motion animatronics.

Who cares who does this small amount of work??!
 
Cosmic Commando

Cosmic Commando

Well-Known Member
Bairstow said:
I hate to bring up the 20,000 pound half-gorilla in the room, but WDI's over-ambitious un-fixable yeti is almost certainly at the heart of this decision.
At a certain point, technical ambition and cost far exceed what's possible or even prudent in attraction design.
At the end of the day, mind-blowing animatronics don't lead the day.
Working ones do.
Click to expand...
It's not like the yeti was doomed to fail from the beginning; they just screwed up somewhere along the way. I think the yeti has a lot to do with this, but not because they want to get away from big figures. When your employee screws up, you can fire them, but you're generally stuck with their screw-ups. When an outside company screws up, you can make them fix what they did.

flynnibus said:
Oh I love how people hang so much in the 747 reference.

People forget the same types of references they made for jaws too.

When you need to move something big quick.. That takes a huge impulse force - or POWER, which is time sensitive. Just like you lying down slowly.. Vs the type if force you feel if you covered the same distance by falling :)

It's akin to scaring you with saying The shock you will get by touching this is 20,000 volts.. Nearly 200 times greater than the voltage you know can kill you at home. Yet this 20k voltage just gives you a static shock. The voltage is real, but there the actual energy transferred by the shock is so minute it doesn't even hurt.

Mixing Comparisons with entirely different scales always leads to great PR :)
Click to expand...
Reminds me of this. It uses the same power as a large city... for two trillionths of a second.
 
Cosmic Commando

Cosmic Commando

Well-Known Member
Pixiedustmaker said:
I find it amazing that with all of the Pixar films and new Disney films the suits never thought to do a new animatronic show with well loved characters! I don't remember much of the characters from Bug's Life, but this show only has a handful of characters. What if they did something on the scale of Country Bears yet utilized the new characters? Like maybe an "aquarium" with characters from Finding Nemo, Mermaid, OR a show in the castle from Beauty and the Beast where Lumiere and the others have invited a variety of other characters to put on a musical or something . . . . lame ideas, but the possibilities are endless.
Click to expand...
3b1a4200.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse_Revue
 
P

Pixiedustmaker

Well-Known Member
Cosmic Commando said:
3b1a4200.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse_Revue
Click to expand...


Wow! I had no idea they had something like that in a Disney park, doesn't look too bad even if it was just in Magic Kingdom until 1980 or so per the wiki page.

I'm sure a lot of little girls would like to see the princesses sing songs. I bet with today's technology they could so something even more amazing, perhaps with better detailed sets and figures that have more range of motion.
 
J

Jim Handy

Active Member
WDW1974 said:
it was. ... and while some may like it, I'm not very impressed. GH did the entire Mermaid ride at DCA and the figures are not impressive to me.
Click to expand...
Yeah. They have very primitive movement save for Ursula and all have had mechanical issues.
WDW1974 said:
It already largely is.

Disney acquires content now instead of creating it ... ABC ... ESPN ... Muppets ... Pixar ... Marvel ... Dreamworks distribution ... Avatar for DAK.
Click to expand...
The Walt Disney Holding Company

When does Bob leave? Can't come soon enough.
 
Alektronic

Alektronic

Well-Known Member
Cosmic Commando said:
It's not like the yeti was doomed to fail from the beginning; they just screwed up somewhere along the way. I think the yeti has a lot to do with this, but not because they want to get away from big figures. When your employee screws up, you can fire them, but you're generally stuck with their screw-ups. When an outside company screws up, you can make them fix what they did.
Click to expand...

The Yeti is very sophisticated AA figure, it moved faster than any other AA figure and they put in a lot of extra safety devices. If it moved too fast, it would shut down. It had a lot of problems with its skin, so they tried to slow it down a bit. And some minor adjustments were made over time to lessen other problems(and it wasn't done by WDI or a programmer). And when things are replaced, you would be amazed how a little 1/32 or a half of a turn of a nut on a rod end extending a actuator too far which causes binding in another actuator down the line.So they reduce stresses in one area but then later on shows up in another area.
 
Bairstow

Bairstow

Well-Known Member
Pixiedustmaker said:
Wow! I had no idea they had something like that in a Disney park, doesn't look too bad even if it was just in Magic Kingdom until 1980 or so per the wiki page.

I'm sure a lot of little girls would like to see the princesses sing songs. I bet with today's technology they could so something even more amazing, perhaps with better detailed sets and figures that have more range of motion.
Click to expand...

I know this is totally subjective, but I always thought the Mickey Mouse Revue looked terribly clunky and stiff.
The guests seemed to think so too, which was why the Country Bear Jamboree, with much more advanced animatronics, always moved many more ticket sales than did Mickey's revue.
 
Tom

Tom

Beta Return
flynnibus said:
The deal is a lot like arrow back in the day. Disney would focus in show and leave it to arrow to try to make it work and real. Disney later invested in arrow... Disney held a lot of the IP but arrow still build their own rides and still sold to everyone in the industry while still being responsible for many of the original attractions in Dl.
Click to expand...

I was going to say this last night, but forgot.

I've referenced the book about Arrow many times on the boards, but I can't emphasize enough that Disney was never really in the ride system design business - at least not entirely.

I know a lot of the Audio Animatronic stuff was done in-house in the beginning, since they did indeed develop that system, but after the initial design and patent, they could outsource the work without giving up rights.

Arrow essentially invented all of the original ride systems for DL, with Disney's involvement. I have no evidence as to who owns rights to what, but people tend to give Disney credit for a lot of things they really didn't do. Bob Gurr was/is a marvel in and of himself, and he has some notable designs under his belt, but Disney has "outsourced" stuff like this from the beginning.

When someone else already has the facilities, staff, ingenuity, and R&D in place, it just makes sense to partner with them rather than to attempt to start from scratch in-house.

Now, what I have a problem with is when they train and groom an Imagineer, use them for a project, then dump them on the street, with Uni ready to grab them up and give them a budget to do something that's actually impressive.
 
fredtom

fredtom

Active Member
yeti said:
Per Al Lutz:

For those who don't know, MAPO stands for "Manufacturing And Production Organization"; the design and production department at Imagineering.
Click to expand...

I believe the acronym derived from Mary Poppins.


"An Adventurer's life is best!" :)
 

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