Disney Analyst
Well-Known Member
BC just got our first one, in Burnaby, I still need to go! I can’t wait to walk around with drinks and game. Such a fun vibe.
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NBA Experience at Disney Springs
- Thread starter CTXRover
- Start date
BC just got our first one, in Burnaby, I still need to go! I can’t wait to walk around with drinks and game. Such a fun vibe.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Closing Please Island had nothing to do with any issues with violence or drunk driving or whatever. Those are stories fans made up to justify the closing because they didn’t want to accept that they were convinced they could lease out the space, mostly by Steven Schussler, right before the economy tanked.
1999 NYE when DHS was MGM closing at 3am that night, multiple musical acts all around the park but Cheap Trick performing at the end of NY Street by the Backlot Tour was a great memory of an intimate concert!
UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
It was pretty fun, although it was too heavily skewed towards redemption games IMO. I think I ended up spending a ton of my credits on just football toss/basketball shooting games because there weren't that many arcade games.
I think I still have a ticket balance I could redeem if I ever go back (and if I could find my card or whatever it's stored on), but I'm not sure I'd go back there in the limited time I spend in Toronto.
UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
There's also a place called Round1 Bowling & Amusement that has an arcade, bowling alleys, ping pong, billiards, karaoke, and more I think. There's one really near me here in Atlanta, although I haven't been.
They wouldn't put in anything that would compete with Splitsville, though.
They wouldn't put in anything that would compete with Splitsville, though.
Disney Analyst
Well-Known Member
Roller rink it is.
ChrisFL
Premium Member
I still have the impression that the original intent was to keep the DQ building and make something nicer, but for some reason it was decided to start with a new building which ate up a lot of the budget and we got a seriously low quality attraction (from videos I've seen, never went inside), with a horrible pricing model and lack of guest interest or any positive feedback from those who had experienced it.
Didn't take long for this thread to get around to the airing of unrelated grievances.
MrPromey
Well-Known Member
Disneyquest as a concept was dead shortly after it started.
Their whole business plan was to pop those up around the country and spread the cost of developing new attractions and updating old ones out across all of them when doing refreshes - they knew going in that it was going to need to be kept up to date to be successful.
When their second one in Chicago failed almost immediately with consumers not understanding what it actually was*, the future was pretty much sealed because they never thought the cost for development was worth the return they could get from a single location.
In the beginning, the arcade stuff was kept in a "retro/classic" area which was a relatively small part of the overall layout but over the years as eveything else got more and more outdated, they just stuffed the place more and more with those machines they could buy and sell cheap at industry auctions, just like everyone else who works in the typical arcade space does.
It was obvious once marquee things like the comic book virtual sword fighting attraction closed (which would have been great for a SW light-saber retheme) and the area it was in tuned into additional seating space for the dining with more arcade machines around, that their plan was to run it all into the ground.
I feel like the only reason it lasted as long as it did was because it was included on one of the ticket upgrades that included water parks and mini-golf which drove attendance and that helped subsidize/justify it.
The one thing that did appear to survive (and thrive) out of that experiment was the cookie-cutter attractions in multiple locations concept which they'd been previously reluctant to do in the parks, even when they were building the "same" attraction - HM, Space Mountain, SM, Pirates, etc., for example.
This process, of course helps them go cheap but it also means fewer unique things from location-to-location and it helps enable the runaway spending in Imagineering that often isn't reflected clearly in their end products.
A system that allows them to both over-spend and cheap-out at the same time can't possibly be good for guests, can it?
*because people at the time (outside of what was already a tourist destination) couldn't grasp that it was supposed to be more like an indoor theme park made possible through technology rather than just an arcade which is what everyone (who didn't go) compared it to. The prices were never insane for what it was supposed to be - just for what it ultimately turned into after they'd given up on the concept.
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MrPromey
Well-Known Member
At the risk of being mobbed over saying this, I feel as if this is too cultured for WDW but I would kill (with my bare hands - I'd even be willing to give it a go using just my feet if someone wanted to be particular) for an Area15 experience anchored by a MeowWolf attraction like this there!
*Okay, so too "cultured" might not be the right word for it - I'm sure there would be plenty of overlap in terms of guest interest - but I don't think this kind of culture is all that compatible with Disney's pop/consumer culture (mostly because this exhibit mocks/comments on that). Still, that doesn't mean something like this couldn't happen in central Florida nearby!
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MrPromey
Well-Known Member
You know, a lot of people talk about that as a 5th gate and I have a really hard time imagining an entire park like that working as a unified theme but as a smaller experience, marketed more towards an older crowd, I could see it working.
macefamily
Well-Known Member
Definitely too cultured. Maybe it works in San Francisco or Seattle, but not in the Mouse's World....
macefamily
Well-Known Member
DisneyQuest was just fine. It only needed some upgrades before making such a drastic change. As much as the NBA tries to publicize increasing numbers, most USA viewer numbers are slipping since the Lebron/China situation. The best thing to happen to the NBA was "the bubble" because without that it would have fallen to the third or fourth ranked viewed sport.
Olivia Rodrigo Experience: Coming Soon
The winners from the NBA bubble at WDW were the cast members. A number of NBA players bought a lot of toys and such to occupy their time while they were holed up in the resorts and left them there for the cast when they checked out. NBA player Russell Westbrook even left a $8K tip to the housekeepers cleaning his room at the Grand Floridian when he checked out.
I'd like to think a Disneyfied version of this based on Pixar's Inside Out could work. Hands-on discovery museum based on the Emotions combined with a walk-thru Omega Mart-like Inside Out experience, a massive foam ball pit arena where guests can launch and sort memory core balls, "The Shortcut" Minimalist maze, The Train of Thought simulator, the list goes on.
Heppenheimer
Well-Known Member
Seems like a little too much overlap with the concept for the "Play Pavillion", if that ever ends up getting built.
champdisney
Well-Known Member
I'm hearing something along the lines of the World's largest Applebee's occupying the space.