Like a year and a half ago a bunch of people were going nutd because a character focused log flume was being replacedThank you for telling me that you missed the point. Rides are a lousy format to present a character focused drama.
The comparison to Hamlet is not new.They didn't miss the point. They're challenging a loose-at-best comparison to Hamlet that has been used to suggest (in what I have no choice to believe is a serious argument) that Lion King is not a movie about animals and its basic plot isn't coherent with the themes of Animal Kingdom. Which is mind-boggling. That was the initial debate, but we've now moved to "well even if it is a story about animals, book report rides aren't good formats for character dramas" and I'm now convinced people will just never be happy with anything
Marketing isn’t done by the park designers.Everyone forgets how much Lion King was in early Animal Kingdom marketing. It has always been the Lion King park.
This thread in a nutshell
That anecdote comes from the book Mouse Under Glass - Tony Baxter explained, "Whether it's a good movie or not is beside the point. It's a movie that's characters, there's no atmosphere in it. I call it 'sticks and stones and rocks and leaves'. First you have the stone walls outside the castle, then the stone walls inside the castle, then the leaves in the forest, that's it. There are no exotic environments, you just have all these scenes with Robin meeting Friar Tuck, then Robin meeting Little John, then Robin meeting Maid Marian. That's when I figured it out: rides are about exotic places, not characters. The best attractions are where you suddenly find yourself in a jewel mine or flying over London."I have a hazy memory of an anecdote from the 1970s when the Robin Hood animated feature came out, was successful, and WDI considered creating an attraction based on the film. When they looked into it, they found the setting of the film didn't really translate to a compelling theme park attraction and so it never went anywhere.
Was the setting of Splash Mountain 'an exotic place'?That anecdote comes from the book Mouse Under Glass - Tony Baxter explained, "Whether it's a good movie or not is beside the point. It's a movie that's characters, there's no atmosphere in it. I call it 'sticks and stones and rocks and leaves'. First you have the stone walls outside the castle, then the stone walls inside the castle, then the leaves in the forest, that's it. There are no exotic environments, you just have all these scenes with Robin meeting Friar Tuck, then Robin meeting Little John, then Robin meeting Maid Marian. That's when I figured it out: rides are about exotic places, not characters. The best attractions are where you suddenly find yourself in a jewel mine or flying over London."
Of course, Tiana's Bayou Adventure is more about the "exotic location" of the bayou than characters from The Princess and the Frog and we know how THAT turned out.
When the purpose in totality is perception, and when starting from a customer POV, that point doesn't matter.Marketing isn’t done by the park designers.
Oh for the record, I think Pandora fits just fine.Dinoland, ok, I was under the impression that was due to budgeting concerns and meant to be semi-temporary. What about Pandora doesn’t fit with the rest of the park though?
A police chase ride (where you are an active participant) in the states would go over just fine I’m sureForget this utter nonsense.
Copy the same plans as Zootopia in Shanghai and shut up.
This is a bad time to pitch my Zootopia P.D. series, isn't it?A police chase ride (where you are an active participant) in the states would go over just fine I’m sure
Paw & Order?This is a bad time to pitch my Zootopia P.D. series, isn't it?
To my mind Lion King and Pandora are incredibly different, though. Pandora is a natural environment that can be approached like any of the other environments in the park, it just happens to be fictional. Lion King is a cartoon (I say that not to be derogatory, as “cartoon” has a slightly negative connotation, just to highlight that it’s all the things associated with a cartoon. Cute. Big, bold, brightly colored with lots of contrast. Exaggerated emotion to help children follow along. Archetypal vs. nuanced characters. The bad guy is veeeery bad. The good guy is veeeery good. Cheery singing ensues. Etc.)Oh for the record, I think Pandora fits just fine.
But it sure doesn’t fit the thesis of purity highlighting Harambe as a rejection of Lion King IP (or an implication that LK needs very careful consideration to somehow make it fit a park about animals).
I too think Zootopia land will eventually end up in DAK ...Forget this utter nonsense.
Copy the same plans as Zootopia in Shanghai and shut up.
It’s only strange if one has completely bought into the idea of movies “deserving” to be in the parks. It is an assessment based entirely on the movie and completely detached from the question of the actual experience.
To my mind Lion King and Pandora are incredibly different, though. Pandora is a natural environment that can be approached like any of the other environments in the park, it just happens to be fictional. Lion King is a cartoon (I say that not to be derogatory, as “cartoon” has a slightly negative connotation, just to highlight that it’s all the things associated with a cartoon. Cute. Big, bold, brightly colored with lots of contrast. Exaggerated emotion to help children follow along. Archetypal vs. nuanced characters. The bad guy is veeeery bad. The good guy is veeeery good. Cheery singing ensues. Etc.)
I will admit, I don’t think the AK of yore - the one where Joe Rohde traveled to exotic places in a time when that was somewhat less common and created exotic lands for people to explore within AK - will last much longer. Cute IP is coming, and I don’t see anything changing that. And I’m not even saying that’s a bad thing - Disney has a lot of meaning to people in many ways. That IP is a “happy place” for many people for many reasons. I’m not opposed to incorporating it, if that’s what this moment in time calls for. Change is the nature of things. But I do resist the argument that this is really just an extension of the original AK. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it. It’s a new direction that may speak to the needs of a new zeitgeist, and that may be a good thing, but it’s not a continuation of the original theming.
Hopefully not. If it gets to the point where the criteria is “Any animal IP, and also any IP with some nature scenes,” it could be easily become a hodgepodge land. If they focus more on IP that is specific to the geographical regions outlined in the park I think that would help retain a theme of sorts.Luckily, the bones of DAK are so strong that I don’t see it being stripped of its identity like EPCOT.
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