Little Green Men
Well-Known Member
But the end result was well worth itUgh that was simply dreadful.
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Rumor Is the End of Innoventions Near?
- Thread starter begood524
- Start date
jt04
Well-Known Member
Almost missed this posting. This will be awesome. Construction walls are better than E tickets in my opinion.
The artist's concept is a Rorschach test... You can see whatever you want in it.Something exists in its spot. Whether it was the Innovention building or a different plan, there's something in the area closest to SSE.
Tayoboy
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- Yes
Yeah, I hope they add something that would make it a little more balanced but it’s going to look jarring especially if they are keeping all of East.
rocketraccoon
Well-Known Member
I could see it working if they change some of the design of East. If they strip the roof off the passage towards M:S they could make Mouse Gear and EU/Innoventions East look pretty distinct from each other.
Timothy_Q
Well-Known Member
They wouldn’t close both sides at the same time.
One side is used to temporarily house everything, while the other gets redone, then inverse
(I’m guessing)
GlacierGlacier
Well-Known Member
Asymmetric park design is so very in right now, darling.
They represent so much more than an actual attraction. It's the possibilities of "what may" instead of the concrete definition of "what is."
Though attractions are much more enjoyable to look at and experience
FerretAfros
Well-Known Member
That's quite the statement! I spent a lot of time at DLR during the run-up to DCA's relaunch, and that park was a real mess for several years. Since many posters on this WDW-centric board may not be familiar with that era, here's a quick primer on the walls that invaded the park for 3+ years:
While 2011 gets bonus points for sealing off the park's main entrance, the biggest impacts actually began in 2009, when they were simultaneously building the Little Mermaid ride and the World of Color viewing area on opposite sides of a long corridor of uninterrupted walls.
Even when seen from the vantage of the ferris wheel, it was tough to grasp the magnitude of the work being done in that area
And of course, that's to say nothing of the construction for World of Color itself, which was plainly visible from all around the lagoon, since it was too impractical to build walls all the way around
That said, the setup from late 2010 until the big reveal in 2012 was pretty striking, literally blocking the park's main entrance with construction. They did the best that could realistically be expected, but it was a less-than-inviting experience. I found the visible equipment in this photo of the park entrance (really!) quite apropos
I always laughed how the walls at the new turnstiles did everything but say "We're begging you, please come in! We're still open!" in big letters. The walking characters did a surprisingly good job helping to direct entrance traffic to the left, while the exit was on the right side
And of course, once the new turnstile structure was completed, everything was shifted around and guests were immediately met with a construction wall upon entering the park, and were directed backstage behind Soarin' and dumped unceremoniously into Condor Flats
Once guests made their way to the former Sunshine Plaza area, they were met with an ever-shifting array of walls to funnel them around the latest construction. It was particularly impressive to see the piecemeal progress of the Red Car Trolley tracks being installed in a non-sequential patchwork over the course of 2+ years, but miraculously everything lined up just right at the end. It was also interesting to see the constantly-evolving nature of park operations; off the top of my head, I can think of at least 3 different locations where the ElecTRONica pre-show stage was built and used for a few weeks, before moving to a new spot. And with the closure of the park's main shopping area, a fleet of temporary kiosks each offering a handful of items popped up all over the park, in an effort to make up for the lost floorspace, giving the park the atmosphere of a high-end flea market
While most of this was surprisingly well organized, one of my personal favorite chaos moments was trying to navigate the narrow chute connecting the Hollywood Pictures Backlot to the rest of the park during the Disneyland Half Marathon. With tight crowds moving quickly and nowhere to move to get out of the way, it really was something so unpleasant you had to experience it in person to believe it. Keep in mind that this was before the connection between Tower of Terror and A Bug's Land opened, so this was the only way to get between some of the park's biggest headliners and the rest of the park during "normal" park operations for the better part of a year
This really was an odd time to be in the park, but the anticipation of something new made it an exciting time too. There was no ignoring that the park was changing, and doing so in a drastic fashion. For those who are used to WDW non-intrusive ways of minimizing refurbishments and new construction, I'm sure this approach will come as quite a shock. Given that Epcot is physically a much larger space than DCA, I'm curious to see if that amplifies the uncomfortable feelings of claustrophobia, or if it allows adequately-sized alternate paths to be made available
GlacierGlacier
Well-Known Member
This is an amazing post and really quite helpful. As someone who didn't get to see DCA during reconstruction, I'm amazed. We may get to see this in Orlando, which could be real interesting.
Tayoboy
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- Yes
Omg all those construction walls, yikes!
KingOfEpicocity
Well-Known Member
It would be wasteful to have such a large space in the middle of the park with nothing but TREES. But i guess that isnt a big concern right nowSomething exists in its spot. Whether it was the Innovention building or a different plan, there's something in the area closest to SSE.
Funny thing is that we have people here who are angry MK's hub isn't full of trees!
KingOfEpicocity
Well-Known Member
Maybe im in the minority, but my favorite stage of any Disney park is right after they open and the foliage hasn't grown in. So pure! However, I feel like with EPCOT Disney wants to make it as non concretey as possible.
HMF
Well-Known Member
It's a pity that they worked so hard and spent all that money just to mess the park up again a few years later.
Sharon&Susan
Well-Known Member
The true failing of DCA 2.0 was that Paradise Pier was only half renovated with whatever was left of DCA 1.0 Paradise Pier (The Carousel, shops, Ariel’s Grotto etc.) seemingly with the hope that DCA 3.0 would fix up the remnants. DCA 3.0 never happened and instead Disney seems to just be on auto-pilot with DCA, green lighting whatever will tie in with big Disney film releases that will be released within the next two years.(Both the Incredicoaster and Mission Breakout opened a short time after a film in their respective franchises was released and I’n sure the same will be true of the Jessie Carousel and Toy Story 4)It's a pity that they worked so hard and spent all that money just to mess the park up again a few years later.
HMF
Well-Known Member
I agree but DCA 2.0 was really starting to make the park better and worth visiting. the one, two, three punch of Soarin' around the World, Mission Cashgrab and Pixar Pier ruined the whole thing.
yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
I remember visiting in late 2011 and experiencing much of this -- having visited both before and after that, I can't help but feel that for all the headaches caused by the massive amount of work they did the park is ultimately not in that much better shape than it was before . . . outside of Cars Land, which is fantastic, a lot of still kind of registers as lipstick on a pig. Buena Vista Street is nicer than what was there before, but not as nice as I had hoped; it feels like it pays lip service to the Main Street concept without ever really touching on what makes Main Street so beloved. Outside of those two lands there's a lot of placemaking that's different but not significantly better than it was before. And, sadly, in time since they've done plenty to undercut the work that was done to the park during this makeover. I could take or leave World of Color, but maybe that's just me, it seems to be plenty popular. I think if Cars Land had not been part of this the Extreme Makeover of DCA would be considerably less lauded. The park's expansion efforts in the makeover were far more effective than the placemaking efforts.
I find myself a little wary of getting into this situation at Epcot. Seeing that much work happen to existing areas and having it inconvenience the guest so much sets up a lot of expectation that's much harder to deliver on than pure expansion. There's a cost of placemaking that expansion usually doesn't contend with, which is the impact on the current guest experience. Expansion often sees walls put up along what was previously considered the boundary of guest space with the promise that the boundary is being extended to your benefit, but placemaking puts them up obtrusively in the middle of guest space and builds an unattractive labyrinth. It feels like there's an onus to be much better than what was there before so that the nuisance was worth it, and expansion doesn't feel the weight of that in the same way -- a new ride is almost certain to be better than the gently landscaped area it replaces. There's also the fact that it's usually harder to do exciting work in an area "landlocked" by guest activity during the day, where true expansion generally has more freedom. So the walls most negatively impactful to guest experience stay up longer and are less likely to result in something amazing when they come down -- which is part of why it's so valuable to get placemaking right in your park from the start. It's murder to try to fix it later and is less likely to feel worth the hassle in the end.
Not that Innoventions West is especially valuable in the moment, but having to navigate walls for a while only for them to come down and reveal . . . trees? It doesn't feel like work that justifies its own existence. You want things to be better than they were when the walls went up. Is open space really better than anything they could do in the existing building? Structurally, placemaking in Future World doesn't feel like it's in the dire state that most of DCA was in before. The attraction menu is really what's wrong here. Getting rid of Innoventions because they just don't know what to do with it isn't a better idea than putting something great in there. It's not like the building has never been useful, it's just been 15-20 years since it really had things worth doing inside.
I'm happy to put up with a maze like DCA had in 2011 if on the other side is a better guest experience, but that's not as automatic as I'd like to believe. Placemaking projects like this don't always fix the actual problem, sometimes they just make the area look different.
Monorail_Red_77
Well-Known Member
Reminds me of Hollywood Studios entrance area around the holidays. Walls everywhere. It's getting better now that some have come down around Skyliner Station, etc.
HauntedMansionFLA
Well-Known Member
Character M&G = WoLNooo.. All those poor characters kicked out of their homes with no place to live and no one to hug...
I'd feel better if they started with Leave a Legacy.
Thanks for the info.
