News New Haunted Mansion Grounds Expansion, Retail Shop Coming to Disneyland Resort in 2024

lazyboy97o

lazyboy97o

Well-Known Member
JSouth25 said:
I saw a Reddit comment on this thread that said YouTuber “Hey Brickey” theorized in his video critique of the gift shop that this project was designed and built by a retail team and not WDI. This would make sense, because the extended queue looks fantastic and this looks terrible.
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Despite the image Disney tries to project, Walt Disney Imagineering isn’t this small group where everyone does everything. Outside of the more senior levels people have specialties in different disciplines. The queue is outside so it’s going to fall under area development / landscape architecture versus a building. Different design vendors would even be hired for those different jobs and even if one firm was hired for both they’d internally have different people leading and working on those efforts.

The retail team is involved in the design process, but more as a customer and their focus is going to be the interior. The retail team is going to provide a program of how much square footage should be provided for sales area, storage, break, etc and how much merchandise space they want. They also have standards for all of the different fixtures in the store that are the base that is then themed. They might have thoughts on things like exterior circulation that could be useful but they wouldn’t really have much concern with the overall aesthetics except for how they impact the interior.
 
DrAlice

DrAlice

Well-Known Member
MoonRakerSCM said:
Why are the faux hinges randomly glued to the middle of the door?

View attachment 829050

When people stick them on their roll up garage door to make their suburban home look 'fancier', they go in places that make sense-

View attachment 829049

"Here's a box of fake metal work to put on the building."
"Where do they go boss?"
"I don't care, the client said to just put them anywhere to make it look fancy."
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OMG. This is freaking hysterical!!!! I can't.....

🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣
 
mickEblu

mickEblu

Well-Known Member
MoonRakerSCM said:
Why are the faux hinges randomly glued to the middle of the door?

View attachment 829050

When people stick them on their roll up garage door to make their suburban home look 'fancier', they go in places that make sense-

View attachment 829049

"Here's a box of fake metal work to put on the building."
"Where do they go boss?"
"I don't care, the client said to just put them anywhere to make it look fancy."
Click to expand...

Lol wow, what the heck is going on over there? Is it weird that the first thought that crossed my mind when I saw the shop sign unveiled was “do I want to renew?” Don’t get me wrong I’m most likely going to be renewing as I still find a lot of value in having access to the park and it wouldn’t be overshadowed by something like this. I just find it interesting that’s it’s such bad show that my mind went there. Over a shop. I guess it just speaks volumes in the decline of show in the parks. They re obviously still capable as evidenced by the HM queue but they re just not consistent anymore.
 
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D.Silentu

D.Silentu

Well-Known Member
I don’t think so. The bothersome part is that this cost saving move is so obvious as there is little regard for decorating the structure in a way that masks its origins and makes it feel at home at Disneyland. It’s apparantly just saving money for the sake of it. Surely some of what they saved on designing it in house could have been allocated to adding visual interest to the exterior.
 
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mickEblu

mickEblu

Well-Known Member
MoonRakerSCM said:
Yeah, I think thats the thing... it sticks out like a sore thumb. Out of scale, out of theme, little to no character, and looks cheap.

It's blatantly cheap sitting next to the Haunted Mansion and Harbour Galley.
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In other words, they failed on every level… except coming in under budget. Actually, knowing Disney, they probably failed there too haha.
 
truecoat

truecoat

Well-Known Member
Someone needs to stick one of those acrylic paper holders on the side with sales flyers to get your own Armstrong 4236.

Flyer holder.jpg
 
TP2000

TP2000

Well-Known Member
DrAlice said:
Where do wheelchair guests enter the mansion? I think I missed that somewhere...
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It seems the image I created in 2023 is still accurate, reposted below.

The queue is now wheelchair accessible and folks in wheelchairs just go along with everyone else. At the end of the ride though, they stay in their doombuggy like they've always done and go back to the loading area. But instead of fighting upstream to hitch a ride (get it?) on an empty stretching room going back upstairs, they now have their own elevator that dumps them out to the south of the Mansion grounds near the New Orleans train station.

Problem of wheelchair mostly solved! (Although the real solve is to have offline Ominmover loading/unloading to prevent all the ride stops and slowdowns from wheelchair folks).

ada-exit-jpg.739884
 
TP2000

TP2000

Well-Known Member
lazyboy97o said:
Despite the image Disney tries to project, Walt Disney Imagineering isn’t this small group where everyone does everything. Outside of the more senior levels people have specialties in different disciplines. The queue is outside so it’s going to fall under area development / landscape architecture versus a building. Different design vendors would even be hired for those different jobs and even if one firm was hired for both they’d internally have different people leading and working on those efforts.

The retail team is involved in the design process, but more as a customer and their focus is going to be the interior. The retail team is going to provide a program of how much square footage should be provided for sales area, storage, break, etc and how much merchandise space they want. They also have standards for all of the different fixtures in the store that are the base that is then themed. They might have thoughts on things like exterior circulation that could be useful but they wouldn’t really have much concern with the overall aesthetics except for how they impact the interior.
Click to expand...

While I appreciate the reasons why WDI has a bureaucracy that would divvy up work like that, it's not flattering to them.

And if the end result of this awful and horribly out of scale Haunted Mansion gift shop is a direct result of WDI's current business operation that could, and did, create a product that bad, then WDI's bureaucracy needs to be rethought.

It seems like WDI needs a DOGE revolution. 🧐

haunted-mansion-grounds-expansion-shop-heather-adams-980x735.jpg
 
NobodyElse

NobodyElse

Well-Known Member
MoonRakerSCM said:
Why are the faux hinges randomly glued to the middle of the door?

View attachment 829050

When people stick them on their roll up garage door to make their suburban home look 'fancier', they go in places that make sense-

View attachment 829049

"Here's a box of fake metal work to put on the building."
"Where do they go boss?"
"I don't care, the client said to just put them anywhere to make it look fancy."
Click to expand...

Somebody will surely tell them.

And they'll quietly disappear, in the middle of the night.

Right?......
 
S

SaltyP

New Member
Is there any hope at all that the exterior of the store is fixed or cleaned up in the future? I get to visit Disneyland so rarely but this area of the park was my favourite and I'm pretty devastated by this...it's ing atrocious looking..
 

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