News Monster Inc Land Coming to Disney's Hollywood Studios

[Streetway]

My ongoing dream is a Great Muppet Ride, where you start on something like a Muppet Treasure Island version of Pirates, and Crazy Harry fires a cannon and blows up the wrong part, sending your boat through Muppet versions of other Disney rides. The Fozzy Bear Jamboree, The Enchanted Chicken Coop, American Sings with Sam Eagle, etc.etc. All ending with a great it’s a small world finale room with the Muppets singing Rainbow Connection. You cannot tell me that would not be an endlessly popular ride, with tremendous repeatability for people to catch all the jokes.

My personal thought for a good muppet ride for years to come is this: A Muppet themed version of ride and go seek. An interactive “tour” through muppet studios filled with the famous Henson wit, Marc Davis esque gags, and hundreds of smaller gags activated with the flashlights. With the studios theme, you can have different interactive rooms with all the favorite muppet characters. All with a queue reminiscent of MMRR At Disneyland. Adaptable to the modern audience, but still plenty of room for gags. Feel free to share thoughts.

 

[Surferboy567]

By the way, either way they go with this I really hope it’s an expansive land. This film really deserves a well fleshed out land it’s one of Pixar’s best. The model I saw at D23 looked a little cramped but it’s kinda hard to tell. I hope the queue is an expansive tour of the factory thing like Hogwarts at forbidden journey but with the monsters Inc factory.

 

[Streetway]

My personal thought for a good muppet ride for years to come is this: A Muppet themed version of ride and go seek. An interactive “tour” through muppet studios filled with the famous Henson wit, Marc Davis esque gags, and hundreds of smaller gags activated with the flashlights. With the studios theme, you can have different interactive rooms with all the favorite muppet characters. All with a queue reminiscent of MMRR At Disneyland. Adaptable to the modern audience, but still plenty of room for gags. Feel free to share thoughts.

Also maybe a mystic manor esque ride through muppet labs.

 

[Streetway]

To me, I think it would very much depend on the effort put into it and how they sell it. If they are able to make a high quality dark ride that feels like a passing of the torch to a new era of Muppets, it could be a very bittersweet but understandable passing of time. If the ride is a cheap copy lacking in the charm that has endeared me and millions to the franchise, it would be a cold comfort.

Country bear musical jamboree is the very definition of “bittersweet passing of the torch”. If a muppet dark ride is approached with as much love as CBMJ, I think we’d be alright. God I could list off muppet dark ride concepts for days…

 

[The Leader of the Club]

Figment isn't annoying....

I love Figment.

Figment in the current attraction is annoying.

 

[yeti]

I think it's worth noting that MuppetVision is a parody of gimmicky, now-dated 3D shows. So it still really holds up compared to its contemporaries.

 

[Erdago]

Personally, if any 3D movie feels outdated and aged, it would be PhillarMagic. The 2003 CGI is very dated, and while the Coco addition adds nice variety, the decades in CGI progression only makes the age of the film feel more blatant (compare the nighttime city scenes of Coco and Aladdin or that a crowd shot in Coco probably has more character models than the rest of the show combined).

Note: I rather like PhillarMagic, like that it’s there, and wouldn’t advocate for it’s closing (which won’t happen anytime soon); it just feels aged to me in a way Muppet Vision doesn’t.

 

[Streetway]

Here’s my pitch: take muppetvision 3D in the courtyard, give us the great muppet movie ride in echo lake in indy’s plot. Omnimover and all.

 

[UNCgolf]

I can appreciate and be nostalgic for MGM while still believing that the current version of DHS is the best version of DHS.

Sure, but this feels like you're implying it's impossible for someone to have legitimately enjoyed the older version more. Neither version was a full day park, but MGM actually offered more that interested me than the current version; I could spend more time there than I do at DHS.

I absolutely believe I am in in the minority there, but it's still true.

While I thought some of the older shows etc. were more interesting than what's there now, I think the biggest issues for the current park for me personally are the shopping and Toy Story Land. While it's really a WDW wide problem, the shops at DHS used to be heavily themed, including in terms of what they sold. Sid Cahuenga's was the definite highlight, but it was worth wandering in and out of all of the stores and you could easily spend an hour or more just doing that. Now they're almost completely skippable (with the exception of the ones in Galaxy's Edge). Toy Story Land just offers nothing for me; that whole area of the park may as well not exist. I would ride SDD if it had a very short wait (but it never does), but I wouldn't even walk on the other two attractions and there's nothing interesting about the area or anything to explore there.

 

[BrianLo]

I would counter that it’s not one that has to run 50 years unaltered necessarily, but unaltered doesn’t need to mean replaced. Theater attractions should be the easiest to add alternate or seasonal program. Why has there never been a Muppet Christmas Carol 3D show added to the theater for the holiday season? With that being in some generations the highest rated Christmas movie, that theater would be swamped at that time. It doesn’t have to be the movie, but can reference it and use songs from it to present a condensed version. Then programming can return to MuppetVision 3D. It extends the life of this attraction, keeping valuable capacity for a fraction of the cost, while something like Monstropolis can go where it truly adds capacity and value to a park that desperately needs it.

For the record, just so it’s not misconstrued, I agree with this. I don’t think MV3D needs a IP replacement per se, but its shelf life is leading to needing the film updated and I see how that non-priority need lead us to where we are. There’s a sense of executive logic I can follow that was seemingly lacking when there was chatter about replacing star tours or completely redoing RnRc into a totally different coaster.

My ideal vision would have simply been some updating for the show and a new family friendly muppets dark ride entirely in lieu of a coaster. The coaster doesn’t really help DHS’ menu in the way it was supposed to. It’s just another lightening lane thrill ride in a park relatively stuffed with them.

 

[Disney Analyst]

Personally, if any 3D movie feels outdated and aged, it would be PhillarMagic. The 2003 CGI is very dated, and while the Coco addition adds nice variety, the decades in CGI progression only makes the age of the film feel more blatant (compare the nighttime city scenes of Coco and Aladdin or that a crowd shot in Coco probably has more character models than the rest of the show combined).

Note: I rather like PhillarMagic, like that it’s there, and wouldn’t advocate for it’s closing (which won’t happen anytime soon); it just feels aged to me in a way Muppet Vision doesn’t.

I wish they’d close PhillarMagic and somehow fit a classic fantasyland style dark ride in that space. Make up for them closing Snow White for a meet and greet.

 

[BrianLo]

I wish they’d close PhillarMagic and somehow fit a classic fantasyland style dark ride in that space. Make up for them closing Snow White for a meet and greet.

Probably super unpopular opinion. I like philharmagic more than MV3D. Though the former also increasingly needs a remaster or entirely redone animation.

*in WDW or HKDL, not the half version at DCA*

 

[Magenta Panther]

Personally, if any 3D movie feels outdated and aged, it would be PhillarMagic. The 2003 CGI is very dated, and while the Coco addition adds nice variety, the decades in CGI progression only makes the age of the film feel more blatant (compare the nighttime city scenes of Coco and Aladdin or that a crowd shot in Coco probably has more character models than the rest of the show combined).

Note: I rather like PhillarMagic, like that it’s there, and wouldn’t advocate for it’s closing (which won’t happen anytime soon); it just feels aged to me in a way Muppet Vision doesn’t.

Philharmagic is one of the most "Disney" attractions in the park. It's a delight, a remembrance of real Disney magic, and far more enjoyable than the show about dated felt and foam rubber.

The puppets aren't real Disney. They're just an underperforming, unnecessary acquisition. The puppet theater is way overdue for replacement. Personally, I'd love a 4D Roger Rabbit film to go in its place, or a 4D Zootopia film, but if it's Monsters, fine. Pixar and Disney have a shared history (Disney distributed Pixar and gave it its start), so Monsters is fine with me. And the vast majority of park guests would take Monsters over Muppets anytime. That's just the way it is.

 

[Sectorkeeper71]

Personally, if any 3D movie feels outdated and aged, it would be PhillarMagic. The 2003 CGI is very dated, and while the Coco addition adds nice variety, the decades in CGI progression only makes the age of the film feel more blatant (compare the nighttime city scenes of Coco and Aladdin or that a crowd shot in Coco probably has more character models than the rest of the show combined).

Note: I rather like PhillarMagic, like that it’s there, and wouldn’t advocate for it’s closing (which won’t happen anytime soon); it just feels aged to me in a way Muppet Vision doesn’t.

I would love to see the philarmagic film updated because I agree that CGI is very dated. The concept for the ride is great, it just needs plussing

 

[UNCgolf]

I wondered if someone would argue this, but I firmly believe a screen based attraction, in a moving ride vehicle, or even a simulator, are still so fundamentally different than anything most people can experience on the regular, it goes without saying. I think they will have greater longevity.

But of course, ANY attraction can be timeless, regardless of the IP or the mechanism at play. I just think the nature of the Muppet attraction, the medium, does not help keep it around forever.

But I also believe most of these screen based attractions will need to be seriously upgraded or fully replaced after 30-50 years. There is a reason we really only count a few attractions as timeless.

I don't know, didn't Universal's pivot with Epic Universe kind of disprove this? They intentionally went away from heavily relying on screens, and I assume that means they had data showing that guests were getting sick of them and/or didn't like them as much as other options.

I also wonder if that was part of killing the Coco flight simulator in favor of a boat ride.

 

[Erdago]

Philharmagic is one of the most "Disney" attractions in the park. It's a delight, a remembrance of real Disney magic, and far more enjoyable than the show about dated felt and foam rubber.

The puppets aren't real Disney. They're just an underperforming, unnecessary acquisition. The puppet theater is way overdue for replacement. Personally, I'd love a 4D Roger Rabbit film to go in its place, or a 4D Zootopia film, but if it's Monsters, fine. Pixar and Disney have a shared history (Disney distributed Pixar and gave it its start), so Monsters is fine with me. And the vast majority of park guests would take Monster over Muppets anytime. That's just the way it is.

To be clear, my post wasn’t remotely meant to hate on PhillarMagic (I really like it), or to pit one against each other. I just feel the use of 2003 CGI made the show’s animation feel really dated. That isn’t a bad thing, or something that makes me not like it, but it does make the show feel old in a way other shows don’t.

I also don’t really understand the idea of something being “real Disney”. Does The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror or Rock n’ Roller Coaster count as real Disney? I can understand you feeling the Muppets are outdated (even if I disagree vehemently), but I don’t really get the “real” avenue of attack.

 

[Clyde Birdbrain]

Other resorts are getting an Avengers campus and Hollywood Studios would be the best place for this at WDW. Could part of the $16b that is supposed to be spent at WDW in the next 10 years be to get the Marvel rights back from Universal?

$16b is such a large amount. Even all the things that were announced this week are only a quarter to third of that amount (someone else on here had done a rough estimate of it being around $4b if I remember correctly).

I have no idea how much getting the rights back would cost, but animation courtyard and the back of the park would be a nice large area for an Avengers Campus.

 

[Earlie the Pearlie]

Philharmagic is one of the most "Disney" attractions in the park. It's a delight, a remembrance of real Disney magic, and far more enjoyable than the show about dated felt and foam rubber.

The puppets aren't real Disney. They're just an underperforming, unnecessary acquisition. The puppet theater is way overdue for replacement. Personally, I'd love a 4D Roger Rabbit film to go in its place, or a 4D Zootopia film, but if it's Monsters, fine. Pixar and Disney have a shared history (Disney distributed Pixar and gave it its start), so Monsters is fine with me. And the vast majority of park guests would take Monsters over Muppets anytime. That's just the way it is.

Dude. I love him just as much as anyone, but the notion that Roger Rabbit is less dated and more Disney than the Muppets is ridiculous. If anything I would argue he is more dated, because he hasn’t been in anything new in years. You can hate the Muppets, and I’ll leave you alone, but I feel like your rationale for not liking the Muppets (they are dated and don’t make Disney money) should also apply to Roger Rabbit, who was, by the way, not originally a Disney character, but a character in a crime novel.

 

[UNCgolf]

Dude. I love him just as much as anyone, but the notion that Roger Rabbit is less dated and more Disney than the Muppets is ridiculous. If anything I would argue he is more dated, because he hasn’t been in anything new in years. You can hate the Muppets, and I’ll leave you alone, but I feel like your rationale for not liking the Muppets (they are dated and don’t make Disney money) should also apply to Roger Rabbit, who was, by the way, not originally a Disney character, but a character in a crime novel.

Yeah, I would guess the vast majority of people under the age of 30, or maybe even 40, have absolutely no idea who Roger Rabbit is.

 

[Sectorkeeper71]

Other resorts are getting an Avengers campus and Hollywood Studios would be the best place for this at WDW. Could part of the $16b that is supposed to be spent at WDW in the next 10 years be to get the Marvel rights back from Universal?

$16b is such a large amount. Even all the things that were announced this week are only a quarter to third of that amount (someone else on here had done a rough estimate of it being around $4b if I remember correctly).

I have no idea how much getting the rights back would cost, but animation courtyard and the back of the park would be a nice large area for an Avengers Campus.

They can’t do much more with marvel due to the universal theme park rights in Orlando. Certainly nothing like avengers campus