This looks… ummm… like… something… is being scooped. But not what they were going for.
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News Magic Kingdom's Main Street Confectionery closing for refurbishment
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
I missed this when you posted it yesterday. I’m not sure I understand the distinction. Visually speaking, the Hallmark and Timex fonts (especially the latter) very conspicuously disrupt the turn-of-the-century theme. Even the non-branded Chinese laundry sign looks totally wrong for the period.
ToTBellHop
Well-Known Member
I believe it is a nostalgic nod to the real hero of MK, the horse pooper scooper! He or she always gets hearty applause in my experience. I gleefully shouted “YOU are the Magic!” at him last time.
networkpro
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- Yes
Its not called the "M&M shop". The Mars corporation, Mar/Wrigley division makes over 30 different brands of chocolate, chewing gum, mints and fruity confections. For bulk candy, a scoop is a normal measure and its not usually only one type thats available.
Heaven forbid the colorists should ever see anything not thematically appropriate!
Heaven forbid the colorists should ever see anything not thematically appropriate!
I've seen caramel corn that looks a lot like that.
itsy bitsy spider
Well-Known Member
I visited the confectionery recently on a trip to Florida. Yuckity yuck.
What were they thinking??? It should look like the chocolate store on Willy Wonka. The one where that creepy guy is singing about the Candy Man.
What were they thinking??? It should look like the chocolate store on Willy Wonka. The one where that creepy guy is singing about the Candy Man.
Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
This is my take. I'm not necessarily offended that they would choose to highlight the M&M sponsorship. As @LittleBuford has mentioned, they've always had sponsorship on Main Street and it kind of fits the theme. I mean, they're supposed to be shops selling things.
I just feel that once upon a time they would have taken the effort to look at advertising from the period and create something that both promoted the product and enhanced the theme. This doesn't seem to do either very well as it's hard to tell what it's even supposed to represent and looks weirdly tacked on.
Kind of like that new poster in the Jungle Cruise queue promoting the Alberta Falls backstory. I have no problem with them doing it, but can't they at least make it look as though it's from the same time period as the rest of the attraction? Again, what has happened to Disney?
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They turned over leadership of the company to an ex-weatherman from ABC and followed that up by installing a merchandising huckster as CEO.
Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
I don't know if that plays much of a part here. These decisions are being made at a much lower level and are largely creative ones. I'm also not sure it's a cost issue. There does seem to be an issue with the culture of the company, though, which perhaps can be traced up to the CEO. These days they just seem to swing wildly between traditional Disney standards and discarding most of the rules of what once constituted Disney standards from project to project, day to day. WDW in particular seems to have pretty poor middle management when it comes to show standards.
This project in particular is a weird one. See, as we've already discussed, the "photos" of the contest winners which are obviously computer generated cartoon images that don't for a second look like they're from the same time period as Main Street USA. They've even printed on cartoony matting with obviously fake shading rather than actually just mounting the photos as they might have done at the time.
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CntrlFlPete
Well-Known Member
they do seem to have created back story and such -- inside the store they have odd photos (odd to me) such as this one:
Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
Great minds think alike! In the post above I also mentioned the photos right before you posted!
This is my point, though: what are guests even supposed to think these images are? Are they supposed to be photos? Are they sketches of some kind? Either way, they are obviously computer illustrations that look like they could be from contemporary Disney animation that have been printed out and framed. Even the 'matting' is obviously drawn in, shaded on computer and printed on. The only real attempt to make them look from the time period is putting them in sepia tones.
Disney used to be better than that.
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Animaniac93-98
Well-Known Member
The transition from Main Street to something more like Toontown has been going on for a long time now.
Helps to justify the meet 'n greets and character merch and the removal of any activity or items that may actually support the OG theme.
Indeed. Mainstreet has gone from Music Man to a modern Little Golden Book.
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yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
Indeed - even this simple photoshopping shows how much a difference it would make to include a period-looking photo of an actual person instead of a weird cartoon:
I'm sure Disney has dozens of Imagineers who would have gladly lent themselves to being photographed for each of these photos around the Confectionery. They'd achieve the exact same ends while keeping with the theming of Main Street to a stronger degree.
This is exactly what I was thinking and imagining. A balance of this is how the one version of Casey's had the Corey Burton tongue and cheek baseball reels showing goofy toon clips as if from a reel but also the memorabilia and team photos were a sense of romanticized realism.
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Animaniac93-98
Well-Known Member
I think it's just a basic philosophy that "cartoon = Disney"
Yes, a photo of a real person (archival or staged) would look much better, but I'm sure to WDI and guests today that wouldn't look "Disney" enough.
And it is so convoluted and they are inconsistent in the worst ways, because meanwhile you have the Phil Holmes portrait type situation in Fantasyland, where it should look more from an animated tale or storybook.
