GoofGoof
Premium Member
Yep. It's free and runs pretty frequently at night. They even change over to Christmas music around the holidays. Its still pretty cool even though it's free.
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New nighttime show 'Rivers of Light' confirmed to be coming to Disney's Animal Kingdom
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
Little Green Men
Well-Known Member
It looks a little like a bigger Fountain of Nations to me.
MerlinTheGoat
Well-Known Member
I disagree entirely. I enjoy the Mine Train, but only because my expectations were in line with what experts told us. It was stated by said experts that Mine Train was a nice little D ticket with one good show scene. That's what Lee and others said and it meets that expectation (though just barely, the last minute decision to opt for real quality animatronics instead of the simple moving figures shown in sketches at D23 was what saved the ride from being meh).
The ride IS considered criminally short by most however, and the high quality of its one really well done show scene is absent from the rest of the ride. And while it lives up to what insiders told us it would be, it falls FAR short of Disney's own hype of the ride and the original concept art which showcased a much longer track, more outdoor scenery (log bridge/dwarfs/extra waterways/scattered gems), and it was intended to have more than one indoor sequence. And the original track layout pre budget cuts has been posted here a number of times showing a ride much more in line with the concept art. As it stands, the ride's budget was clearly heavily slashed. The Mine Train could have been, should have been, and probably was originally supposed to have been a decent quality E ticket. Instead it's a short D ticket of varying quality.
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lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Or burned through by a bloated and fiscally irresponsible organization that has far more funds available than anyone else in the business.
GoofGoof
Premium Member
Kinda, but much bigger.
I don't have exact numbers, but I think it has something like over 1,000 individual fountain nozzles, several thousand lights and the biggest nozzles shoot water 500 ft in the air.
GoofGoof
Premium Member
Agreed, but has there ever been a project that didn't have its budget cut at some point? Isn't it pretty common to start with some big blue sky type ideas and then trim down.
doctornick
Well-Known Member
The thing is that it is easy to be dismissive of the Bellagio fountains (oh, it's just a free show and some fountains dancing to music) but it's darn impressive. If Rivers of Light was "merely" something like the Bellagio fountains combined with projections on mist screens, that could easily be an impressive show depending on the story/music/length/etc. It certainly on the surface doesn't sound like a bad basis for a show, especially if you have the Tree of Life in the background with lights on it to correspond.
Also, isn't that basically what World of Color actually is? Dancing fountains and projections (plus some lasers I think)? I rather like WoC, so I'm not saying that to be dismissive, but is there some sort of complex tech involved there that RoL specifically won't have? I would think any of that type of show would depend more upon the execution (the music, the images used, etc) than it having some advanced tech, but I'm not exactly knowledgeable with that sort of thing.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Making a Blue Sky concept fit realistic goals and funding is not a budget cut. Even then, demands to reduce spending aren't exactly new to Disney. "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me repeatedly for more than a decade, still shame on you" is what so many still say when it comes to Walt Disney Imagineering.
GoofGoof
Premium Member
I'm not sure of the exact numbers again, but I think Bellagio Fountains cost something like $40 to $50M to build initially. Of course the whole resort cost close to $2B and Steve Wynn wanted this to be his new flagship resort. It doesn't have the screens so the "show" is more water dancing to music than characters and pictures. They do use the lighting on the Bellagio tower itself as a backdrop so it's similar in concept to the tree.
If the show is on the same scale as the Bellagio fountain show plus some added water screens it would be quite impressive.
GoofGoof
Premium Member
Agreed. I'm just not sure how we know the larger "plans" that were leaked for Mine Train weren't just this exact process. The end Mine Train result was making a Blue Sky concept fit a realistic goal, space and budget.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Blue Sky is the very earliest stage of development. It's more akin to brainstorming.
GoofGoof
Premium Member
Right. The leaked "original" plans for Mine Train were not exactly a sophisticated model. It was a pretty crude drawing.
MerlinTheGoat
Well-Known Member
It isn't unheard of, but the cuts are far more severe than they once were. Also, the projects now often start out less amazing and ambitious to begin with. So when the debilitating budget cuts hit, there's not much left to work with.
Bellagio has its large size to impress people, something that Rivers of Light will be unable to match in its location. So it won't have the size impact. And World of Color has its well choreographed colored lighting, plus the clips and soundtrack. We can't say what will be affected in RoL's budget cuts, but it will probably impact a lot of aspects. Could be the tree's lighting effects, fewer fountains (that don't move as much), fewer and lower quality projections, less colored lighting for the water jets, and perhaps even things unrelated to the tech such as lesser quality music and visuals in the production process. There's a huge difference in quality between Illuminations' water jet effects and World of Color's, same goes for Fantasmic's mist projections compared to WoC's own mist projections. So even among seemingly similar types of technology there can be major differences in quality and execution.
If whylightbulb is saying the show will be nowhere near as good as World of Color, then i'm inclined to take his word for it given his track record (as well as Disney World's). The concept art looks like World of Color, so i'm guessing the cuts happened after the art was made and perhaps released. And if it's as serious as he made it sound, i'm worried.
Hard to ignore when your concept art is at least ten times more ambitious than the final product. Though it's much more than three posters taking notice and posting about it.
This. The original blue sky plans for the Mine Train were probably even more ambitious than the official concept art (we probably won't see them). Something like the sketch of New Fantasyland that had the boat running through it was a blue sky thing. The plans for the longer track were when a budget was already approved officially apparently. Cuts occurred after that and mandated a scaling back of the land and the ride.
How crude it was doesn't matter, it's more than enough to show us how much longer and more elaborate the original track length would have been. There were three versions of the track, each subsequent version shortened because the budget was cut several times. According to Lee and Martin however, the original track layout they posted was not unattainable at all.
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cjk0318
Well-Known Member
Didn't @marni1971 provide that picture?It isn't unheard of, but the cuts are far more severe than they once were. Also, the projects now often start out less amazing and ambitious to begin with. So when the debilitating budget cuts hit, there's not much left to work with.
Bellagio has its large size to impress people, something that Rivers of Light will be unable to match in its location. So it won't have the size impact. And World of Color has its well choreographed colored lighting, plus the clips and soundtrack. We can't say what will be affected in RoL's budget cuts, but it will probably impact a lot of aspects. Could be the tree's lighting effects, fewer fountains (that don't move as much), fewer and lower quality projections, less colored lighting for the water jets, and perhaps even things unrelated to the tech such as lesser quality music and visuals in the production process. There's a huge difference in quality between Illuminations' water jet effects and World of Color's, same goes for Fantasmic's mist projections compared to WoC's own mist projections. So even among seemingly similar types of technology there can be major differences in quality and execution.
If whylightbulb is saying the show will be nowhere near as good as World of Color, then i'm inclined to take his word for it given his track record (as well as Disney World's). The concept art looks like World of Color, so i'm guessing the cuts happened after the art was made and perhaps released. And if it's as serious as he made it sound, i'm worried.
Hard to ignore when your concept art is at least ten times more ambitious than the final product. Though it's much more than three posters taking notice and posting about it.
This. The original blue sky plans for the Mine Train were probably even more ambitious than the official concept art (we probably won't see them). Something like the sketch of New Fantasyland that had the boat running through it was a blue sky thing. The plans for the longer track were when a budget was already approved officially apparently. Cuts occurred after that and mandated a scaling back of the land and the ride.
How crude it was doesn't matter, it's more than enough to show us how much longer and more elaborate the original track length would have been. There were three versions of the track, each subsequent version shortened because the budget was cut several times. According to Lee and Martin however, the original track layout they posted was not unattainable at all.
MerlinTheGoat
Well-Known Member
Possibly, I can't remember who made the comparison picture. Was probably either Lee or Martin, but Martin has posted it several times. Nor do I recall who exactly it was who posted these layouts to begin with (before they were combined into a comparison).
Sped2424
Well-Known Member
I dont think disney would announce it as a full blown night show and then cut it after the fact. Ill believe it's minimal when I see it. I would agree with you if disney had never released any info about this project. But it just makes WAY too much sense to have a full night time spectacular when you are extending the parks hours. Again I will believe it when I see it.
He did
( @GoofGoof im not going to go and post the actual plans am I ?)And yes, the DAK night show budget has been substantially cut since it was proposed.
I'm sure it'll be a fitting multimedia end to the day. But no Fantasmic meets WOC spectacular.