With photos of the new Avatar land ride vehicles out, something has occurred to me- every single ride at that park does a really amazing job of contextualizing why each ride is there, who you are as a guest, and why you're getting into a ride vehicle that looks the way it does.
No other Disney park does this quite as well.
Most of these are fairly obvious and play on the idea that in the Animal Kingdom lands and rides, you, the real-life tourist, are still essentially a tourist in the fiction of the land.
In Harambe, you're at a game reserve and they have safari vehicles to give you a closer view of the animals. At Kali River Rapids, you're at a rafting outpost and the rafts are going to show you around the Kingdom of Anandapur. Same with the Everest trains- they're there to take you from the outfitting station up to the base camp for your expedition. The time rovers on Dinosaur are explained to you in detail.
In every case, seeing and getting into the ride vehicle requires very little additional suspension of disbelief beyond concept already being used in the land. Even the rides at Dino-Rama are the exception that proves the rule because you're not supposed to see them as anything more than amusement rides that Chester and Hester set up at their little roadside tourist trap. There's a unity of theme here that really deserves more recognition.
On the other side of things, the ride vehicles at the Magic Kingdom or Epcot often make very little sense at all when you consider them I'm context. Some work just fine, like the boats on Pirates or Big Thunder, but if you stop and think about it why are are weird, semi-spherical "carriages" moving around inside a Haunted Mansion in a long chain? Is there any explanation at Splash Mountain why we're sitting inside hollowed-out logs? Why are the pirate ships on Peter Pan so small, and are we boarding them inside the Darlings' bedroom?
What are these things even supposed to be? Theater seats? In the street? Or are we on a movie set?
Does anyone care?
Not that there's anything wrong with a looser approach to the thematic justification for a ride vehicle setup, and even first-time park visitors will often accept the presence of a particular ride vehicle without question. I'm just pointing out how there's a consistency and thoroughness of approach in place at every single ride in Animal Kingdom that I don't think has been matched by any other theme park in the world.
No other Disney park does this quite as well.
Most of these are fairly obvious and play on the idea that in the Animal Kingdom lands and rides, you, the real-life tourist, are still essentially a tourist in the fiction of the land.
In Harambe, you're at a game reserve and they have safari vehicles to give you a closer view of the animals. At Kali River Rapids, you're at a rafting outpost and the rafts are going to show you around the Kingdom of Anandapur. Same with the Everest trains- they're there to take you from the outfitting station up to the base camp for your expedition. The time rovers on Dinosaur are explained to you in detail.
In every case, seeing and getting into the ride vehicle requires very little additional suspension of disbelief beyond concept already being used in the land. Even the rides at Dino-Rama are the exception that proves the rule because you're not supposed to see them as anything more than amusement rides that Chester and Hester set up at their little roadside tourist trap. There's a unity of theme here that really deserves more recognition.
On the other side of things, the ride vehicles at the Magic Kingdom or Epcot often make very little sense at all when you consider them I'm context. Some work just fine, like the boats on Pirates or Big Thunder, but if you stop and think about it why are are weird, semi-spherical "carriages" moving around inside a Haunted Mansion in a long chain? Is there any explanation at Splash Mountain why we're sitting inside hollowed-out logs? Why are the pirate ships on Peter Pan so small, and are we boarding them inside the Darlings' bedroom?
What are these things even supposed to be? Theater seats? In the street? Or are we on a movie set?
Does anyone care?
Not that there's anything wrong with a looser approach to the thematic justification for a ride vehicle setup, and even first-time park visitors will often accept the presence of a particular ride vehicle without question. I'm just pointing out how there's a consistency and thoroughness of approach in place at every single ride in Animal Kingdom that I don't think has been matched by any other theme park in the world.
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