AESTHETICS: A+
It is really a lovely place. Immersive. There are several new vistas that will earn well-deserved places in the collective consciousness of the iconic WDW landscape.
It fits into the Animal Kingdom like it was designed to be there from day one. Partially this is due to the adherence to the overall standardized base look of all AK-lands (save Dinorama, of course), but of course that was perfectly fitting for Pandora. Somehow it manages, though, to not feel "generic" in any way. You certainly know when you are in Pandora, which can't be said for all of AK's lands which sometimes blend together a bit too much.
Of course, that's just during the day. The A+ comes from night added in - and it has created an entirely new way to experience AK which sorely needed to cease being the 5PM step-child of theme parks.
QUALITY: A-/B+
While I hesitate to use the word "lavish" - I can, if I preface it with, "based on the quality of what WDW has gotten so far this century," it certainly at least feels lavish. In fact, that's not strong enough of a word. Everything was done with great quality and care, and there is little to complain about in terms of obvious cut corners. That said, I would have left it at the A-, but the B+ is for what they could have done.
Not in a blue-sky sort of "build three more rides" sense, but in terms of a what-they-have-done-30-years-ago-and-still-could-do sort of way. There needed to be a few more AA's in the river ride, and a few less screens. In the threads we have been talking about some feeling a total lack of story being a positive or negative thing, I lean on it being a slight negative. I think it's fine but the ride needs a bit of something to set the scene. It comes across a bit as all expectation and because of that expectation I think people are missing out on enjoying the ride fully for what it is. That poor video of Sigourney Weaver and James Cameron said it all.
The screens and no other real AA's along the way actually make that worse. Because while there are screens on something of recent, comparable level C/D ticket dark ride, like Frozen, they are transitory - something that is obviously a screen (usually they don't even pretend not to be) and that's okay, because the payoff is in a more impressive scene about to come. The Navi AA is like the final scene in Frozen - a nice "goodbye", but in this case, we were waiting for "hello".
To show I feel I am being fair on that account, I see the same thing in Pirates over at Shanghai. Not the story problems, whatsoever, it is amazing, it more than does it's job, and is a flagship attraction of what is being done today - but it had a few too few AA's and a few too many screens, too, to really have knocked my socks off totally and into the water. Particularly the several projections on the ship windows of Jack and Barbossa. And the big flood scene at the end, for that matter - in both cases, they could have easily used AA's, they just didn't want to spend the money and proper upkeep. They compensate for it by making the actions physically impossible for an AA (leaping clear across the scene back and forth) but it would have been more impressive to see AA's do less impressive things, if you know what I mean (sort of like the distracting rippling skin on a CGI creature in a film like Jurassic World - an AA could never do that, which instantly makes you recognize the CG and realize it's not a real object).
But that's a lot of words to justify the really high esteem I hold it and why I give it overall such a high grade.
COMPOSITION: Very Solid B
Two rides, a shop, and a restaurant are pretty much the modern definition of "new land" (or that thing the mainstream media infuriatingly calls a "theme park" on it's own) in the post-Potter world, and Pandora delivers. That's a bit light to the traditionalist in me, though. A real honest-to-goodness land needs at least one more attraction - at least a little show or something. I'd up my judgement 1/2 a grade if they added a regular drone show with the dragons, though.
My thoughts on River are elsewhere...I think Flight being called "Soarin' 2.0" is both warranted and not. It is, technically - but you really have to give it credit for encapsulating it in a completely themed and immersive way. Soarin' and the fact that it doesn't try to mask what it is with any real theme almost make Soarin' feel like a really nice D-ticket to me now, especially had it, say, been built a decade earlier. Again, we were just starved too long...
My ONE BIG THING that I'm not really let affect my score but I am concerned about is Disney going to the Universal trend of reducing accessibility. Of course, they can't design every ride to fit every size person, nor every disability, but Disney not going to the extra mile here in a brand new attraction is disappointing. It seems almost idiotic that shin size is now the deciding factor - given that in many ways, that has very little to do with weight. Fat or muscle, it's space (and fat squeezes better, I imagine). Also you apparently have to nearly be fully able-bodied. I will be interested to hear experiences on that. In any case, there is no excuse like on Forbidden Journey here. There is no unique arm ride system. It's a simulator. They very easily could have an alternate bay with a bench seat and reduced motion. The Subs at Disneyland were understandable. This doesn't get that pass, and I'm personally disappointed in Disney as a company about it.
Anyway, again, that's a tangent (but important one!), and a lot of explanation for a pretty nice score. I like the fact there aren't half-a-dozen shops, they wised up and realized they really wouldn't have the type of merch like Potter (or Star Wars) to really do that without going generic park stuff on merch. It gets a bump in score should they add some more live "stuff" to make it feel a bit more alive.
They also managed to figure out a few unique merch items that I think will be successful - though I don't think the gear that Serena Williams was pimping is going to all together make as much in a year what just Harry's wands sell in a good week. I didn't even recognize any of it - granted, I barely saw the entire film once, though, but I didn't recognize it from pop culture references, either (for comparison, I never saw Watchmen, but I know the costumes of the characters and could tell you what they were from if I saw them randomly).
OVERALL FEELING: (I Plead the Fifth)
I couldn't really give a letter grade for this one if I tried. This is going to be very subjective, even more so than anything else. I think that for me, Pandora really challenges the status quo notion of "it doesn't matter what IP/property it's based on, as long as it's quality". This is usually followed up with examples like HM, PotC, etc. as evidence. I'm really starting to wonder, though, if we've been incorrectly categorizing those as "original" rides since they weren't exactly "original" to most of us who are talking about them - the installations of those rides predate most of us (and even things like Splash, if they don't pre-date our birth, are from when most of us were at least relatively young.. They are part of our original nostalgic WDW/DLR experiences, so they are part of the "Disney Park IP" that we grew up with.
When it comes to newly built attractions, I certainly don't think everything definitely needs an IP, but in something of this scale - I think it really helps. While Pandora is built upon an IP, it almost feels like it doesn't because so many of us just don't have a memorable familiarity with that world, and so much of it is "original" material. I personally just don't get a lot of emotion out of the place - I was excited to see it because it was new, and it's well done, but for me at least - it's never going to be something that I sit at home thinking about "I can't wait to get back to WDW for Pandora!" like I do even something like HM or SSE.
It is a net benefit to WDW and especially AK, of course. AK can finally be a full-day park. But it's not going to draw in a new audience to WDW. I mean, it was crazy for a few hours yesterday - on a the date Disney specifically advertised as the opening in nationwide ads (have they ever done that before with an exact date??) - but it's already kind of doing what I thought it would do. It's going to even out the parks a bit, especially at night, I hope. It fills a gaping hole that was always there in AK. I think the intention was quite a bit loftier than that and if they had realized all this from the beginning I don't think they would have spent as much as they did, which in an odd way makes me rather grateful.
It gives me a lot of hope for Star Wars, too.
