It Could Always Be Worse [CONCLUDED]

CookieMouse

Well-Known Member
Chapter 2: Prompt 1
With Guest Judge @ThemeParkPriest

"Love that Test Track replacement, guys," says Chapek as we huddle around @ThemeParkPriest 's cell phone. "It's my new favorite Epcot pavilion!"

@Outbound rolls his eyes.

"Next we're gonna send you all over to Hollywood Studios. We need a replacement for Sunset Boulevard. We don’t have the budget to demolish Tower of Terror, though. You'll have to retheme it, preferably to something merchandisable!"

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The Sun Sets on the Boulevard

For this assignment, you and your team will need to design a replacement land for Sunset Boulevard at Disney's Hollywood Studios, incorporating at least two separate Disney IPs into your land under a unifying theme!

You won’t be allowed to demolish The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. You’ll be required to retheme it, keeping the existing structure and ride system.

This round is NOT a Lemon Round, so cringe submissions are discouraged.

Deadline:
This project is due by Thursday, July 29th at 11:59 PM EST.

Tips:
  • You'll need to include at least two IPs in your final project, so be sure to choose a theme for your land that allows you to incorporate multiple IPs.
  • You won't be allowed to replace Tower of Terror with Mission: BREAKOUT! You'll need to come up with an original retheme!
  • This round is intentionally challenging! You'll need to use some teamwork in order to succeed!
Am I allowed to provide suggestions that the teams can use, like free ideas
 

CookieMouse

Well-Known Member
Hey guys! Still out of town, but checking in real quick. Looks like brainstorming is going well!

For clarification, during a Guest Judge’s round, he/she won’t participate with his/her team, so that team will just be down a member during that round. The Guest Judges are split as evenly as possible between the two teams, so it shouldn’t give either team a massive disadvantage.
Also, you don’t need to use he/she, using they them to refer to someone of an unknown gender is a lot more efficient and less problematic towards today’s wider identities. I know it’s usually plural but Cmon we’ve all used they them in a singular sense plus ain’t isn’t a word yet we use it so grammar nowadays isn’t as important, clearly we’ve already broke the rules of grammar times over. Just a tip to make it a bit easier.
 

MickeyWaffleCo.

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
In the Parks
No
Also, you don’t need to use he/she, using they them to refer to someone of an unknown gender is a lot more efficient and less problematic towards today’s wider identities. I know it’s usually plural but Cmon we’ve all used they them in a singular sense plus ain’t isn’t a word yet we use it so grammar nowadays isn’t as important, clearly we’ve already broke the rules of grammar times over. Just a tip to make it a bit easier.
I understand your reasoning, but since I already know the genders of each Guest Judge, I prefer doing it this way. 🙂
 

Disney Warrior

Well-Known Member
GUEST REVIEWS:
Testing, testing, hello there, welcome to the first installment of Disney Warrior’s new one-sentence guest reviews! This mic should run smoothly, it’s not like this is a Zoom meeting. Anyways, these people had to retheme Test Track at Epcot, and they had to make it cringy. Let’s see what they’re like, boyz!

@Brer Panther
This is actually really cool (though common on these boards). Where’s the cringe?

@ThemeParkPriest
Now this is what I’m talking about! I can already imagine all of the hate that this ride will get with the unnecessary IPs and non-bumping bumper cars.

@Tegan pilots a chicken
I like this idea, retheming Test Track to the Indy 500. But where‘s Lightning McQueen?

@Outbound
This is the cringiest thing ever! That artwork screams Chapek, and there’s Cars (the IP)!

Good luck with ToT guys, make sure to insert an IP somewhere or you’ll be in deep doodoo!​
 

MickeyWaffleCo.

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
In the Parks
No
Chapter 1: Project 2 EXCEEDINGLY LATE REVIEWS

@Brer Panther
Test Track 3.0: The World of Motion

This is a truly fantastic attraction. However, its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: it's a revamped World of Motion. While it definitely feels different, it doesn't feel very original.

The "futuristic" aspect being part of the end of the attraction and the post-show (similar to Carousel of Progress at Disneyland) means that it can easily updated as needed. This is especially important as things like self-driving cars are arriving even today.

@ThemeParkPriest
Lightning McQueen and Vannelope's Battle Mode!

This... this is what Lemon Rounds were designed for. The absolute chaos and cringiness of it all... truly spectacular. The ride vehicle choice, communication mishaps, and budget constraints are absolutely hilarious. The Planes meet and greet is truly the cherry on top.

@Tegan pilots a chicken
NAPA Presents: The IndyCar Experience Featuring Alexander Rossi

Ooooh yah longer wait times! Always a great way to start! An annoying IndyCar engine scream through the whole attraction is yet another way to get on people's nerves. The post-show museum is cool, and I can see quite a few Indy 500 fans loitering there for hours.

Overall, while a great attraction, this feels like it's trying to be regular project and a Lemon project, and I'm left a bit confused as to your goal with it. You start with the wait times and such which feel more Lemon-y, and then go into an absolutely fantastic attraction. I feel like you definitely could've leaned more into the cringey with this one, but it's an awesome attraction without it.

@Outbound
Cars: Furious and Fast

Oh my goodness Outbound you've killed it with this one. I could barely stop laughing long enough to read it. The storyline was chaos. The overuse of ™ was laughable. The concept art was over-the-top ludicrous.

This storyline is hilarious, and I would totally ride this if it was real. And the Terms and Conditions to top it off... I can't even imagine the wait times LOL​
 

MickeyWaffleCo.

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
In the Parks
No
Chapter 1: Project 2 RESULTS

Some awesome submissions with this one. All of these attractions would be awesome to see at Epcot (some in good ways, and some in absurdly hilarious ways.) Since we only had four submissions, however, I'm only going to select a single winner.

First Place
@Outbound
This was amazing to read. Even with the incredible cringiness, this would still be an amazing attraction experience to enjoy, which is one of the reasons you've earned first place.
 

TheOriginalTiki

Well-Known Member
Team Gurr Presents: Half-Moon Valley, a B-Movie Take on Sunset Blvd

Land Description and Backstory
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On the outskirts of Hollywood in the Valencia desert there's a small town that's tiny on size but HUGE on character. Even before "The Incident", Half-Moon Valley was a popular stop-off on the way to Tinsletown. A desert oasis of sorts that took on all the charms of a Route 66 stopover with its own classic drive-in movie theater acting as a calling card to the B-Movie culture Half-Moon Valley attracted.

Some wonder how Half-Moon Valley got funded, and that's actually pretty simple. It's a government town. On the outskirts of the main drag lies a secret bunker meant for military experimentation and weapons testing. The town itself while home to thousands of hard-working people wouldn't exist without the military funding it all.

This is a badly kept "secret" that entirely got out of the bag on the day of "The Incident". On this infamous day hundreds of experimentations from the government base got loose. Some of the most famous photographs include giant ants, a massive hairy Bigfoot like creature frightening townsfolks, and most famously of all the dreaded Martians who wielded deadly incinerator rays in spite of their rather campy appearance.
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The military acted fast and The Incident was over and done with in under and hour. In that time though, the town's identity changed forever...becoming a 21st century Roswell for a new generation. Tourists now flock to Half Moon Valley to see the town still ravaged by the attack of the Incident but wearing the damage proudly on its sleeve. Half destroyed buildings, a crash-landed Martian space craft, a mold of Bigfoot's footprint, and holes in the ground left by the giant ants are among the many sightlines on display as tourists wander the town.
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The base remains elusively secretive, though word on the street is the government has been bringing in teams of volunteer soldiers to contain whatever secrets still behind the steel walls just off to the side of the town's main street. Half-Moon Valley remains an incredibly popular hotspot for alien conspiracy theorists and a fun stopover for road-tripping families on their way to LA. It's a town with a colorful history and a potentially even more colorful future that's still in the process of being written.

Mars Attacks
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Mars Attacks will act less as a direct adaptation of the Tim Burton film and more as a spiritual successor, using the basic concept and some of the film's iconic imagery as a jumping off point to a new story set in Half-Moon Valley's elusive government testing center. As volunteer soldiers, guests enter the steel Jurassic Park style double-doors and head out into a large scale desert compound.

There's a couple smaller showbuildings, but generally speaking what used to be the Rock N' Roller Coaster is now completely transformed into the desert horizon you see before you, with the world's first Rocky Mountain Construction Company T-Rex coaster sprawled out over the landscape.
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The queue will take place in a very obvious "Fake Rock" that pays homage to the Knott's Berry Farm Calico Mine Ride showbuilding, specifically how you can blatantly see that it is, in fact, a show building after literally rounding a corner from its iconic façade.
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The queue starts with a full on recreation of the Calico Mine Ride queue with a switchback upfront followed by a ramp up the rockwork with a small stream on the side. once you hit what would be Calico's station you enter the government base...labeled very subtly...GOVERNMENT BASE.

The queue will basically be a series of military hallways not unlike that of Transformers: The Ride. It is here where our cast shines as the queue is laden with countless TV monitors filling us in on the story of the attraction. Dwayne Johnson plays himself...and also the president of the United States. He has a very confident take-charge demeanor to him in light of the fact that his vice president played by Josh Gad can be actively seen panicking and making doomsday preparations in the background. A fictionalized First Lady played by Emily Blunt comes in even more take-charge than The Rock.
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Dave Bautista plays the president's Head of Security...tough on the outside but completely looses it the second he comes in contact with anything remotely alien-related. Tig Nataro plays the volunteer coordinator and acts as a lesion to the guests, also providing the safety spiel. Zendaya plays a character simply known as Rookie, basically meant to be a super-generic "Hero" character. Finally to round out the cast Jesse Plemmons and Kristen Schaal provide comedic relief as Mr. and Mrs. Scientist, two bumbling nerds trying to explain The Incident and what the guests have to try to stop through humor very much akin to Bill Nye the Science Guy and the Dinosaur pre-show.

Reaching the station, an over the top military marching music score composed by Danny Elfman can be heard as we board our RMC T-Rex trains. The first section of the ride takes place in the main show-building and essentially works as a story-driven way to get us up a lifthill without having a big lifthill be part of the attraction's sightlines. Taking inspiration from Space Mountain, guests pass through three indoor smaller lifts each around 50 feet tall. In between each of the first two lifts guests can see large clawmarks and lazer-beam damage all over the hallways. On the last lift Lisa Marie's iconic Martin Girl character from the first film smiles ominously at us as we reach the ceiling of the show-building and go careening down a beyond-vertical 140 foot plunge straight into a large scale dive-loop.
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Disorientated, guests take note of the GIANT crashed UFO on the side of a large sand dune. This UFO completely dwarfs the small, tacky looking one found in the middle of town square and features a very impressive lighting package especially for night rides. After some signature RMC air time courtesy of a double down straight into the UFO, guests pass through the inner workings of the alien craft and get a jump scare from Disco Martian, a Disco Yeti parody dressed like John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever and featuring the flashing lights effect for the purpose of guests traveling too fast through this scene to be able to comprehend AA movement.

Launching out of the spacecraft, guests go through a large stall that features enough hang-time to take note of the HUGE alien rib-cage poking out of the sand, with a horrific and goofy looking giant skull poking out for good measure. After two intense ejector airtime hills, the coaster reaches its block breaks and enters another show room where an AA of Martin Girl gets alarming close to the guests.
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This is a very advanced AA that features both the fluid movement of the Navii Shaman as well as the "walking" abilities of characters such as Hondo and Olaf. President Johnson comes over the attraction speakers and announces he's sent in some backup. With that the room lights up revealing a ton of stacked oil-drums. An AA of Dave Bautisa as the Head of Security faces his alien fear head-on as he charges at the alien queen. The oil barrels start to go ablaze as we launch out of the showbuilding mourning Bautista's heroic sacrifice.

They don't have long to mourn though. The single rail T-Rex track pulls two classic RMC "breaking wave" turns filled with floater airtime then travels back to the station through a series of very effective bunny-hills. Going through the exit guests pass a monument to Dave Bautisa's head of security as well the president's makeshift office where we can hear a conversation between President Johnson, First Lady Blunt, and Vice President Gad going on in the next room.
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On a whole, Mars Attacks promises to be a large scale competitor to Universal's Velicoaster and Busch Garden's Iron Gwazi. It's Disney's most intense coaster Imagineering has ever designed, but it's still got all the hallmarks of immersion that a Disney E-Ticket has come to be known for.

CAST
President - Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
Vice President - Josh Gaad
First Lady - Emily Blunt
Head of Security - Dave Bautista
Volunteer Cordinator - Tig Nataro
The Rookie - Zendaya
Mr. Scientist - Jesse Plemmons
Mrs. Scientist - Kristen Schaal

Attack of the Mutant Director from Mars

As you make your way down Half-Moon Valley you encounter the Theater of the Stars, a dusty old rundown theater from the Golden days of Hollywood but left behind and repurposed by the people who have taken over Half-Moon Valley.

Inside, you will catch a brand new stage show hosted by visionary director Edward Treebranch as he sets up his newest masterpiece, a film where he wants the audience to be the stars as he welcomes in the horrifying cast of monsters that he will be featuring in his magnum opus.

The show begins with the smoking ruins of a crashed spaceship. A group of unnamed scientists immediately arrive and begin poking at it with sticks until the latch opens and out steps a horrifying alien with multiple tentacles and heads and sharp teeth and can breathe fire. The monster begins to toss the scientists around, throwing them before stalking off the stage to the background.

Suddenly, the army arrives as Sergeant Armyman steps out and warns the audience that something dangerous has crash landed and they are now in an active war-zone until they can take out the monster. Armyman tells the audience that they won’t be using bullets because bullets can’t kill evil space aliens, but instead, it’ll take a monster to beat a monster.

From here, different scenes focus on multiple classic monsters, such as the Robot Monster from the film of the same name, a giant Gila monster, Giant tarantula, Cat Women of the moon, the octopus from Monster from the Ocean Floor, the Cosmic Man, the zombie aliens from Plan 9, the blob, and even Santa Clause work together to try to beat the alien, but somehow, this alien makes it out alive every single time.

Armyman then finally tells the audience there’s only one thing left to try, and that’s to give the alien what it wants the most: love. Armyman’s daughter, who just shows up in the last act, runs up to the alien and kisses it, stopping it and causing it to shed its horrible exterior, revealing a handsome space man wearing a sparkly spandex outfit underneath. He addresses the crowd and says that no matter the monsters he faced, he wasn’t evil, he just needed love. With that, the audience erupts in applause and are escorted out.

COMING IN PHASE TWO
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Journey into the strange world of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and join Joel, Crow, and Tom Servo as their forced to endure Dr. Clayton Forrester and TV’s Son of Frank’s latest experiment in breaking the mind through terrible movies. Board an elevator and be sent through a diabolical gauntlet where guests are forced to watch three terrible movies at once while fighting gravity and the terrible effects of motion sickness. Will you survive The Gauntlet?
 
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Disney Warrior

Well-Known Member
Review Time!
Team Gurr:
Let me just get the flaws out of the way first. I was expecting more from you, knowing that there are some powerhouses like @PerGron and @ThemeParkPriest on your team. Is what you have posted on WDWMagic your entire project? Also, I don’t think that an RMC T-Rex is the best choice for DHS, but other than that, good job.

Team Blair:
I love the interactive map! And the fact that you used something that I can see! I can really see the effort here. I don’t really have anything bad to say here because my reviews are meant to be brief.
 

MickeyWaffleCo.

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
In the Parks
No
Chapter 2: Project 2
WAFFLE'S REVIEWS

Team Blair
Broadway at Disney's Hollywood Studios

A New York land has been done before. Many, many times. However, the musical aspect of DHS Broadway really sets it apart from the other NYC lands I've seen before. It really makes it feel unique.

As usual, @Outbound's presentation truly shines here. And man, you guys came out with a ton more content than I would've ever expected. Having multiple team members competing in SYWTBAI Lightning Rounds really effected your overall activity level, yet you still managed to retheme almost the entire land.

The shops and restaurants are absolutely amazing, especially for being last-minute additions. I particular like the atmosphere of the Big Apple Jazz Club.

I am by no means familiar with most musicals, but you still managed to make all your offerings accessible to the uninformed guest.

Little Drop of Horrors seems terrifying in a bit of a whimsical way, making it more accessible to younger guests.

Rock Opera Coaster is truly a highlight of this land. The pinball machine theming is really thinking inside the box in the best possible way. However, the backstory told in the queue feels a bit less accessible. You mention that it's communicated subtly, and only attentive guests will notice it. While details for the most keen-eyed guests are always great, it feels like this backstory is so complicated that it may only be picked up on by a few guests. For others, this elaborate attraction simply becomes "That one pinball roller coaster ride."

Greatest Hits Live! is an excellent show. The medley of modern and classical musicals makes the show appeal to both older and younger guests.

PTTBWITFOSHM is absolutely perfect. 'Nuff said.

Team Gurr
Half-Moon Valley
I've seen a B-movie land done before, which slightly dulls the originality of this land, but it would be an excellent addition to DHS nonetheless. The slightly more adult-focused land would be a good contrast to areas like Toy Story Land.

The overall theming and vibe I'm getting from this land is pretty cool. A dusty, sci-fi desert. B-movie territory for sure.

I'm not familiar with the majority of these movies (guess I'm more of an A-movie guy, myself 🤣), but you did an excellent job communicating the main plot points of them to guests who aren't familiar with the source material.

The land backstory is well-crafted, and is a great umbrella for the various experiences in the land.

Mars Attacks seems like a fun attraction, and the casting is excellent. This entire attraction could itself be a B-movie. I feel like this coaster offers a good mix of theming and storytelling, which is essential for a Disney coaster. Finally, I like the mention of this coaster directly competing with the likes of Velocicoaster, an appeal to intense coaster fans.

Attack of the Mutant Director from Mars is a fun show! However, in the beginning you say "he wants the audience to be the stars..." However, there's little to no audience participation throughout. I think an interactive element of some sort would go really far in making this a highlight experience of the land.

The Phase 2 additions all sound fun, and I totally understand why you weren't able to get into detail on them.​
 

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