HKDL gets new castle, frozen land and marvel land.

[LameBoi]

Why Paris doesn’t just return it to DLTALL I will never know, it’s always been the best theming of any space mountain and it actually fits the Jules Verne themed land

As for HK’s Tomorrowland space isn’t really the problem it’s more without the TOT e ticket holding start expo together stark expo doesn’t really feel like its own land so people lump it in with Tomorrowland. When they add TOT and “split” the lands properly then Tomorrowland basically goes back to how it was in launch. Launch Tomorrowland is neither antagonistic nor particularly inviting of themed space mountains

Launch Tomorrowland was very weird as it felt very space toyish and unserious. You can definitely feel where the budget was cut when you compare launch HKDL Tomorrowland that Tim Delaney designed to his previous work, Discoveryland at Disneyland Paris.

Looking at the funds more closely, it was reported in 2023 that HKDL only spent 44% of the 10.9 billion HKD allocated for expansion. This money was used for Moana Adventureland show, Castle of Magical Dreams (along with the castle show), Antman and the Wasp, and World of Frozen. That means some $780 million USD is left for expansion. What are they going to do with that amount of money as ToT and a full reimagining will only cost a fraction of that?

 

[Supersnow84]

Launch Tomorrowland was very weird as it felt very space toyish and unserious. You can definitely feel where the budget was cut when you compare launch HKDL Tomorrowland that Tim Delaney designed to his previous work, Discoveryland at Disneyland Paris.

Looking at the funds more closely, it was reported in 2023 that HKDL only spent 44% of the 10.9 billion HKD allocated for expansion. This money was used for Moana Adventureland show, Castle of Magical Dreams (along with the castle show), Antman and the Wasp, and World of Frozen. That means some $780 million USD is left for expansion. What are they going to do with that amount of money as ToT and a full reimagining will only cost a fraction of that?

It was “toyish” but i wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a bad theme. It’s certainly more “timeless” than Disneyland’s Tomorrowland of yesterday idea even if it comes off as a bit cheap. Regardless I’d say the bigger concern is to split off stark expo fully. Adding a TOT, a shop and a quick service alongside ant man and iron man will make the land full enough it can be formally split from Tomorrowland

Once we know what the reimagining is going to might have a budget to work with for the rest of it. I’m assuming if they have extra it’ll probably go to the space between arendelle and Toy Story. If the parks attendee keeps going up they need the outer ring to be continuous

As for Paris SEA really doesn’t fit the land that well considering they literally have DLTALL sitting right there. SEA in Paris space will likely end up feeling more like Tokyo’s soarin’. A “why did you put this much effort and use this good of a theme just for it to be a queue line to a 20 year attraction”. Tokyo’s soarin is hilariously imbalanced between queue quality and the actual ride being unchanged from Epcot’s soarin around the world from 15 years ago

 

[LameBoi]

It was “toyish” but i wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a bad theme. It’s certainly more “timeless” than Disneyland’s Tomorrowland of yesterday idea even if it comes off as a bit cheap. Regardless I’d say the bigger concern is to split off stark expo fully. Adding a TOT, a shop and a quick service alongside ant man and iron man will make the land full enough it can be formally split from Tomorrowland

Once we know what the reimagining is going to might have a budget to work with for the rest of it. I’m assuming if they have extra it’ll probably go to the space between arendelle and Toy Story. If the parks attendee keeps going up they need the outer ring to be continuous

As for Paris SEA really doesn’t fit the land that well considering they literally have DLTALL sitting right there. SEA in Paris space will likely end up feeling more like Tokyo’s soarin’. A “why did you put this much effort and use this good of a theme just for it to be a queue line to a 20 year attraction”. Tokyo’s soarin is hilariously imbalanced between queue quality and the actual ride being unchanged from Epcot’s soarin around the world from 15 years ago

Can’t disagree with that. Disneyland Tomorrowland is not in great shape.

I wonder what they can put in that plot between Frozen and Toy Story. That land is very small, even smaller than Frozen. Plus anything they build there would have to hide the massive show building for Frozen Ever After and Elsa’s Ice Palace.

Disney has teased that they want all of the parks to incorporate some aspects of S.E.A. Soaring Fantastic Flight at DisneySea did succeed by turning a walk-on ride to a 3 hour wait just with an enhanced show building, queue, and preshow.

 

[Supersnow84]

Can’t disagree with that. Disneyland Tomorrowland is not in great shape.

I wonder what they can put in that plot between Frozen and Toy Story. That land is very small, even smaller than Frozen. Plus anything they build there would have to hide the massive show building for Frozen Ever After and Elsa’s Ice Palace.

Disney has teased that they want all of the parks to incorporate some aspects of S.E.A. Soaring Fantastic Flight at DisneySea did succeed by turning a walk-on ride to a 3 hour wait just with an enhanced show building, queue, and preshow.

Someone did a mockup of that plot of land, it would be pretty easy to have the show building back onto FEA’s show building and have the front of the ride face TSL to hide frozen which also positions the land in the right way to have the path from TSL to arendelle remain open and the area in front of the ride to have a kind of open space

I wonder how much the queue and pre show contribute to soaring flight fantastic: I went oh it and was so wowed by the line I was building up this new experience of the history of flight or something or like the screen being a moving picture like the pre show……….and then it was just soarin

 

[LameBoi]

Someone did a mockup of that plot of land, it would be pretty easy to have the show building back onto FEA’s show building and have the front of the ride face TSL to hide frozen which also positions the land in the right way to have the path from TSL to arendelle remain open and the area in front of the ride to have a kind of open space

I wonder how much the queue and pre show contribute to soaring flight fantastic: I went oh it and was so wowed by the line I was building up this new experience of the history of flight or something or like the screen being a moving picture like the pre show……….and then it was just soarin

Would definitely love to see a mockup like that. Completing the outer path would definitely make it easier to get to Frozen from the left side.

Fantastic Flight would be so much better if it were something like history of flight from an SEA member. Even something like “Soarin over Japan” would have made it infinitely better than the generic “around the world”.

Something interesting that I noticed in recent HKDL videos is the Main St. USA projectors have not returned. When they removed the rooftop boxes earlier in the year, I thought they would integrate the projectors into the windows like they are in Disneyland, but it seems I got my hopes up on that. The tree lighting drone show this year just uses gobo lights instead of last year where Main St was projection mapped.

 

[Supersnow84]

Would definitely love to see a mockup like that. Completing the outer path would definitely make it easier to get to Frozen from the left side.

Fantastic Flight would be so much better if it were something like history of flight from an SEA member. Even something like “Soarin over Japan” would have made it infinitely better than the generic “around the world”.

Something interesting that I noticed in recent HKDL videos is the Main St. USA projectors have not returned. When they removed the rooftop boxes earlier in the year, I thought they would integrate the projectors into the windows like they are in Disneyland, but it seems I got my hopes up on that. The tree lighting drone show this year just uses gobo lights instead of last year where Main St was projection mapped.

Yeah I have no idea why the actual soarin doesn’t look like the pre show

A moving picture type “history of flight” would be so much more interesting than actual soarin

 

[LameBoi]

It has been reported by an HKDL fan news channel (@the_hkdg) that during Philharmagic’s closure, it will transition from the original physical film reel to digital.

 

[Robbiem]

My two cents on this were that Hong Kongers were expecting HKDL to be something similar to Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea (which opened 4 years earlier in 2001). Hong Kongers travel to Tokyo a lot, many going for day trips so many have experienced Tokyo Disney Resort. So when HKDL opened with only 4 lands, and a handful of attractions, locals expecting Tokyo quality were greatly turned off and many basically never returned.

I read an article about HK Disneyland being initially pitched to the public with 6 full lands: Main St. USA, Adventureland, Frontierland, Toontown, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland. Attractions would’ve included Jungle Cruise, jungle roller coaster (probably themed to Tarzan), Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder, river raft rapids, Space Mountain, and the usual Fantasyland dark rides, and more (I’m pretty sure either Pirates or Indie was part of the plan also). So being promised a park full of E-tickets and unique attractions to the getting a park with 1 (Space Mountain) is pretty underwhelming.

I remember seeing this as well. The park was going to have splash mountain. indy as well and was going to be DLP in size and scope. There was also going to be a shopping district

 

[Supersnow84]

I remember seeing this as well. The park was going to have splash mountain. indy as well and was going to be DLP in size and scope. There was also going to be a shopping district

It’s amazing there still isn’t a shopping district

I mean unless you are coming from way out near shenzen or up by the tram lines the MTR makes it so easy to get to HKDL

Pop a world of Disney, a Starbucks, and a few speciality stores (make it look sorta like ngong ping village at the stop of the cable car) and then have like one Duffy and friend available to meet for a small upcharge fee that’s also meeting in the park today to avoid cannibalising park guests

It would also incentivise people to staycation at the resorts just from simply having more to do

 

[22031029]

It has been reported by an HKDL fan news channel (@the_hkdg) that during Philharmagic’s closure, it will transition from the original physical film reel to digital.

does that really constitute a 4-month closure? if i remember correctly tokyo upgraded their system in around 2 months. hopefully theyre also updating the actual content itself

 

[PiratesMansion]

does that really constitute a 4-month closure? if i remember correctly tokyo upgraded their system in around 2 months. hopefully theyre also updating the actual content itself

It's almost certainly not just that, though as with any refurb, there's a fair chance that guests won't see 100% of what they'll be doing over the four months.

Presumably they're not closing the attraction for several months during one of their busiest periods of the year (Chinese New Year) just because they feel like it.

 

[LameBoi]

I remember seeing this as well. The park was going to have splash mountain. indy as well and was going to be DLP in size and scope. There was also going to be a shopping district

It was pitched as the Disneyland Paris of Asia. Tony Baxter, Tom K. Morris, Eddie Sotto, Tim Delaney, and team created the most beautiful castle park in Paris and it was pitched that HK’s would be just as architectural beautiful and stunning. Ironically it was Disneyland Paris itself that put the company into a financial hole, causing the company to abandon the theme park business, leading to HKDL to be a copy of only the essentials of OG Disneyland.

In the land zoning of HKDL, the long promenade was designed to be a retail, dining, and entertainment Downtown Disney district instead of the walls of greenery like it is now. In the latest legislatively meeting, HKDL basically gave a non-answer to building it.

 

[LameBoi]

It's almost certainly not just that, though as with any refurb, there's a fair chance that guests won't see 100% of what they'll be doing over the four months.

Presumably they're not closing the attraction for several months during one of their busiest periods of the year (Chinese New Year) just because they feel like it.

4 months for inspections and refurb for a theater is definitely suspicious when you consider that a roller coaster, big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine cars, was only down 1 month for full inspection so there is probably a lot more to it. Maybe they’re going to access the roof to install more equipment or firework launch sites for Momentous? 20th is coming up next year.

 

[Supersnow84]

It was pitched as the Disneyland Paris of Asia. Tony Baxter, Tom K. Morris, Eddie Sotto, Tim Delaney, and team created the most beautiful castle park in Paris and it was pitched that HK’s would be just as architectural beautiful and stunning. Ironically it was Disneyland Paris itself that put the company into a financial hole, causing the company to abandon the theme park business, leading to HKDL to be a copy of only the essentials of OG Disneyland.

In the land zoning of HKDL, the long promenade was designed to be a retail, dining, and entertainment Downtown Disney district instead of the walls of greenery like it is now. In the latest legislatively meeting, HKDL basically gave a non-answer to building it.

LegCo was very “directionless” I guess is the best word in the last meeting

I guess it was maybe Disney hyping up the loss being a rounding error but LegCo just didn’t look like they cared at all despite Disney rocketing upwards and ocean park collapsing after Covid

You’d think they would have pressed Disney a little harder about what their next moves were considering that we didn’t know that TOT was in the works when the last LegCo meeting was called

 

[LameBoi]

LegCo was very “directionless” I guess is the best word in the last meeting

I guess it was maybe Disney hyping up the loss being a rounding error but LegCo just didn’t look like they cared at all despite Disney rocketing upwards and ocean park collapsing after Covid

You’d think they would have pressed Disney a little harder about what their next moves were considering that we didn’t know that TOT was in the works when the last LegCo meeting was called

I think with the current situation in HK right now, LegCo is more reliant on Disney more than ever as it is a current economic driver for the city bringing in PAYING tourists. Interestingly in that LegCo meeting, Michael Moriarty also teased a returning attraction along with the full reimagining and “Marvel” one (ToT). Could the returning attraction be the Paint the Night Parade coming back to its birthplace?

I haven't been to Ocean Park in over 10 years so I can’t comment on their state but from what I remembered, it was an amusement park with a couple sea animals in it. As a tourist myself, I personally would rather go to an immersive theme park like Disney on vacation than a regular amusement park with off the shelf stock rides, which I can find at home, like Ocean Park.