It really shocks me how universally these boards condemn Dinorama, a far better designed and themed area, while many posters scramble to defend TSL. The fact that Toy Story is a legitimately great IP makes it worse, not better. Honestly, I think a lot of it is attributable to how reluctant folks are to acknowledge the Studio makeover, so anticipated, so delayed, so needed, was ultimately quite bad.
I agree that TSL is weak from a design standpoint, and that DHS’s “makeover” was... limited... but there are also a few things worth teasing out here:
The three major things I dislike about Rino-Rama are: (1) regular guests usually don’t seem to understand it [because it’s not made clear enough, e.g., even something like a sign at the Dinoland entrance that reads “welcome to our small town where big fossils were discovered and the Dino Institute was founded,“ which might place Dino-Rama in more discernible context], they experience the land “literally,” as a cheap carnival that Disney plopped down, (2) I don’t have a desire to visit a cheap carnival, so there’s nothing aspirational about the premise, and (3) it’s ugly, IMHO.
I’m no fan of TSL, as it’s nowhere near what it could be in terms of detail/creativity/design, but to be fair: (1) as another poster mentioned above, people seem to get the basic premise that they’re shrunk down and among Andy’s toys [rather than thinking Disney built an amusement park land instead of a theme park land], and (2) that’s a more interesting/engaging/fun premise than “you’re at a cheap carnival,” and (3) its more integrated nature and color scheme makes it less ugly, IMHO.
As for DHS’s redevelopment, to give them a little slack: we do have to separate the budget restrictions from the creative decisions (e.g., Tomorrowland 1998 at DL was headed by one of Disney’s greatest Imagineers, but with an 80M budget for the entire land). Considering this, given the budget that teams were working with, the idea was to make SWGE (and in particular RotR) the spectacular, show stopping centerpiece, and then to add capacity elsewhere to balance it out. I certainly would
not have wanted to pull any of the budget from SWGE to improve TSL or other smaller projects. And if the goal was to add a second land to cope with SWGE crowds, given the remaining 250M budget for that, the TSL concept seems like the best way to accomplish this. And I appreciate its attention to sightlines (e.g., the “yard fences”), etc. [This is oversimplified, because budgets were separated by project at the outset, but once decision makers determined that the park’s redevelopment would get the budget it did, I’d agree with the further decision to assign the amounts given to SWGE and TSL respectively rather than pulling from SWGE... and the TSL concept seems like the best way to add that capacity at that budget, per above discussion about Dino-Rama vs TSL.]
That being said, yes, I would have preferred a layout with additional nooks/crannies with details and places to sit, and I would have preferred more shade.
And of course, beyond the two land additions... yes, I would’ve loved to keep GMR and put MMRR into the Animation Courtyard... but I also understand why they thought putting a new major attraction in the Chinese Theater would be good for crowd flow (emphasizing the new attraction so that a percentage stop there rather than going straight to SWGE first), and I realize they were (are?) planning to eventually redevelop the areas that include Animation Courtyard in a more ambitious way.
Considering these factors, I’m a bit less down on TSL and DHS’s redevelopment than many here.
www.wdwmagic.com
