Pixar Pier is the perfect reflection of Disney’s ongoing philosophical shift away from themed entertainment and towards the branded amusement of Six Flags. Paradise Pier was poorly executed and then poorly reimagined, but there was some level of effort to deal with a long standing demand from Eisner. This is a complete abandonment of storytelling for character faces on rides. There is no unifying thread beyond a production subsidiary and it doesn’t even have the related aesthetic of Pixar Place.
While I'm just as confused about Pixar Pier as everyone else, I don't quite think it's
that bad. And I actually think it's a better idea than Pixar Place, which appears to be going away in DHS anyway.
For those who haven't been to DHS, Pixar Place is a small recreation of the Pixar Studios up in Emeryville, and it contains the Midway Mania ride, simply called Toy Story Mania there because it's not on a midway.
The real Pixar Studios in Emeryville is a pleasant looking but rather non-descript upscale business park. Bricks and leafy trees type of hipster place, behind locked gates and surface parking lots with plenty of plug ins for the executive's fleet of Teslas. And a Starbucks in the lobby. Pleasant looking, but nothing special or unique.
The street in DHS that leads you to Midway Mania evokes those bricks and entryway.
Again, it's pleasant looking. But the architecture is rather mundane, unless you are a huge fan of bricks. How many of those tourists even get the visual references to the Emeryville campus 3,000 miles away?
Which brings us to Pixar Pier, which is really
Phase Three of the re-Imagineering and plussing up of the rather tragic 2001 version of Paradise Pier.
Phase One of the remake was the addition of Midway Mania in 2008, which brought dramatically upgraded architecture and themeing to Paul Pressler's cheap stucco wonderland.
Phase Two of the remake was the 2010-2011 upgraded resurfacing of existing facilities; Games of the Boardwalk, Paradise Gardens, Goofy's Sky School, and the opening of Little Mermaid in '11. The one area that was barely touched was the Sideshow Shirts and Fun Wheel portion of the boardwalk.
Although back when they announced the DCA Remake in 2007 there were plans to upgrade that stretch of the boardwalk as well, and make it look like this...
The one piece of artwork they released today for Pixar Pier, is of that exact area that got cut from the original 2007 budget before it was built. Not quite as grand as the '07 proposal, but still a thematic improvement over what is there today hanging off the original 2001 stucco bones.
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@Curious Constance, I'm going to wait for more info and artwork to be released on this one. I'm still confused what it is and what it does. And why. But I think thematically and for the vast majority of the paying audience, a visual environment like Pixar Pier above is a much more engaging theme park environment than a recreation of a brick office park.
