Odd little SSE blurb...

[mousermerf]

Disney puts out little press-friendly releases summing up a specific time period. Like Fall, Spring, Jan-Feb, etc..

Well, the Jan-Feb one they just released has this odd, sort of clumsily worded, little tidbit on SSE:

February Relaunch of Spaceship Earth Follows Nine-Month Project of Changes and Refinements​

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- The nine-month countdown continues to the February 2008 relaunch of Spaceship Earth at Epcot.

Presented by Siemens, Spaceship Earth relaunches with much more than the facelift that has restored the exterior look of the Epcot icon to what greeted the park's first guests a quarter century ago. Spaceship Earth has been undergoing changes since May 2007 that, when complete, will treat Walt Disney World guests to an attraction with four new scenes, new costumes and set decorations, new lighting and special effects, a new musical score and narration, and a totally re-themed interactive post-show.

The schedule for the attraction's changes has permitted operation of various show and post-show elements during much of the nine-month project. Holiday guests got a sneak preview of most of the changes in the enhanced ride-through portion of the attraction.

Some star power has been helping to drive the project:

The new narration is delivered by English actress Dame Judi Dench, who earned an Oscar as best supporting actress in 1999 for her role in the motion picture "Shakespeare in Love."

The new musical score was composed by Bruce Broughton, who has won a record 10 Emmy Awards and has been nominated for an Oscar and a Grammy during a career writing in every medium -- from theatrical releases and TV feature films to the concert stage and computer games.

 

[scasta86]

It's interesting that even thought the construction walls have come down, and that they started using the pictures of people on the descent they are still saying it will be a February opening. What more can they possibly do before then? Tweat the facial recognition?
It is unfortunate that WDI has chosen to keep the lame ending to this great ride. (And yes I still consider the little video lame, even if my picture is on it)

 

[Thelazer]

Pretty much I think this really confirms it 100%.

There is really not much left to do before the "big opening" what we see is what we get. Sadly, my hopes of someone opening it early to get the feedback so they could get more time to fix the ending have faded. Oh well.

Now, lets play the guessing game. How long before the re-ridership of SSE drops since the touchscreens are already old hat? I'll bet as soon as the next version of the Iphone comes out and has a built in camara with the same ability to plaster your face ontop of pics that you can share with your friends.

 

[rdour@techminds]

Yeah, it does already exist in iChat, PhotoBooth, even Keynote. Want to plaster your face on something in a presentation, step out of frame, snap the picture, jump back in, snap another, done. You remove the background based on the first photo, and you've got yourself SSE technology on your iMac! Seems they are a bit late to the party. Anyone who owns a Mac is going to be saying "wow, its like iChat."

I love it when Disney presents a technology that is simple, but is beyond the means of most of us to obtain it. A good example is the stretching rooms. Basically they are using the natural effects of phase change with audio, a similar effect is used by DJs to make those noises where the pitch seems to raise to a peak. Anyone could actually try and reproduce this in their home with a set of speakers across the room and you stand in the exact middle. You then have two sound sources that are exactly the same, but out of phase with each other, slowly cross paths. You'll get the chills just like the Mansion. In order for it to work correctly for a room full of people though, hundreds of speakers are really necessary. Also, unless you've got a way to play 4 channels of audio through 4 speakers in front, left, right, and back of you, you'll never get 3d movement.

That's what I mean, simple tech that is used to the extreme to entertain and astonish us. This is why everyone liked the lighting effects of the old descent. Simple, but done to the extreme. Kinda like when you can smell Goofy's float in the holiday party, they didn't have to do that, but wow, that's cool!

Bring us back to the days when they did something to build us up just like a movie, climax, and leave us with a message we can take away and remember as a really good memory we'll share with friends for years down the road.

Ryan