Pixar Pier First Impressions!

What was your first impression of Pixar Pier?

  • It looks great!

    Votes: 10 10.2%
  • It looks ok.

    Votes: 31 31.6%
  • I hate it!

    Votes: 57 58.2%

  • Total voters
    98

999happyhants

New Member
I personally love it! I've been wanting them to finish that side of the pier for a while so its great they got a chance to! The scenery looks great, Toy Story Mania looks better than ever, and we got a story in California Screamin! Plus the Lamplight Lounge looks great!
 

MoonRakerSCM

Well-Known Member
*sigh*

Yes, videowise (I haven't experienced in person), it looks much better at night. But as has been pointed out, how much time will guests have to experience the ride in its prime compared to day when it looks for the most part downright bad (tunnels are not dark enough and the baby skewers on an unthemed rooftop are terrible).

When WOC is running the coaster is down for what, half of the night hours? Shortsidedness on the imagineering end.
 

Flynnwriter

Well-Known Member
Disney finally has reached the level of Six Flags! This pathetic IP slap-on, rushed makeover is opposite of what Disney has become successful at. I saw Pixar Pier on Saturday and It is a disaster! This all-over-the-place ill-conceived makeover is equivalent to a Six Flags park slapping cartoon characters onto a steel ride and calling it a theme park attraction.

Pixar Pier proves WDI can actually make DCA worse that it was. There is no reputable Art Direction - it is a visual mess. And there is NO storytelling, just light theming. The idea of an immersive "land" is out the window. This haphazard mess look just like what Walt Disney feared - a tacky amusement park. The colors are garish, the graphics are amateurish, and the creative choices look like what results after a team has an argument and no one leads. Definitively the worst "land" outside Disney Studios Paris - and that's saying a lot.
 
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freebird72

Active Member
My first impression doesn't really fit the survey options, so I'll tell you about instead.

I went this weekend with my sisters and my daughter (Girls trip). Quick visit, basically a day and a half in the parks. We knew it was going to be packed, so we arranged for a tour to help us navigate the parks on Saturday. We started in DL and then went to DCA. Our guide told us a few hours into the tour that it was good we opted to start in Disneyland because the Incredicoaster was down for the first two hours of park opening.

It was wall to wall people at Pixar Pier when we finally made it over there at about 1PM--but we expected that. The area does look refreshed--new paint job and all. My daughter was happy the Games of Chance were back. However, my general impression was one of "much ado about nothing", which I wish wasn't the case. I really wanted to be wow'd and excited by the updates, but I just wasn't. I'm having a wierd self-reflexive emotional experience about it--I think I feel badly that I wasn't impressed.

About the Incredicoaster--I don't have an objection to the theming. But the elements they brought to manifest the theming didn't work for me. The ride just moves too fast to take in what they have added, and in some cases, the roller coaster cars are so tall that you really can't see some things but for a fleeting second (particularly the Jack Jack's)--I hadn't realized the cars were that tall before. To try and see everything takes you away from the thrill of the ride itself--this has always been a great roller coaster, and I felt like I missed the roller coaster part to try to experience the Incredibles part.

I recall that riding the coaster as California Screaming, you look at the big view of the park when the opportunity presents itself, and then when you are in the thrill elements, you are focused on that. No distractions. But riding the Incredicoaster, I felt like I was at times straining to see the theming elements, or missing them altogether, or I was missing the thrill elements--I couldn't experience theme and thrill at the same time.

Some other random notes--our guide told us or showed us some small things that I really appreciated, like the Dominguez tree, Patrick the Leprechan's house, and who the old man is at the beginning of POTC.

We had a couple of CM experiences where the CM was kind of lacking that "Disney polish". The most notable one was at HM at the merge with the FP and Standby lines. There was a CM there, but she wasn't really running the merge. We hesitated and asked how we should merge in, and she was sort of dismissive and said "you can just merge in any where". She really should have been directing the traffic so that guests didn't have to, because that sets up guests to coordinate with each other, which can lead to conflicts. This left me with a bad impression--not sure if it was a training issue or an attitude issue with that one CM.

Also, EMH on Sunday at DCA was kind of a mess. Incredicoaster was down, but they were still lining people up (they didn't start testing cars until close to rope drop, and I didn't see the cars running with people in them until well after rope drop). TSMM didn't open until about 20 min into EMH. Not much was open as a result. This was a bummer.

Ending on a good note, and then I will stop boring you: Our waiter at Carthay Circle was adorable--very entertaining. The seating for PTN with the Carthay Circle package is right on the curb in front of the restaurant, which was great. Our waiter accidently printed out an extra viewing ticket, and he gave it to us anyway. We then ended up with one member of our party not being able to make it to the parade--which meant we had two extra tickets. We found a random couple sitting down waiting for the parade, and gave them the two extras. I hope they enjoyed it.
 

yensidtlaw1969

Well-Known Member
Its crassness, cluelessness, cynicism, cheapness, lack of respect for guest I.Q. and insultingly awful use of some great IPs has actually reduced my desire to ever visit another Disney Park ever again. It's a toxic makeover.

Did I mention I don't care for it? :D
I don't know if I'd say it's reduced my desire to visit another Disney park ever, but I feel a little let off the hook for not loving DCA and feeling like the park never made the comeback lots of us like to give it credit for. Even with it's Extreme Makeover it was still a vastly inferior Disney park, in my mind never ranking higher than the lowest 2 spots out of all the parks Stateside (and most of the time I still enjoy myself more at DHS than DCA), and this change to Paradise Pier further cements that for me.

I think the way you put it is brilliant: "It's a toxic makeover". To me that sums it all up nicely.
 

SteamboatJoe

Well-Known Member
The whole overlay struck me as being entirely unnecessary and a waste of money. Having a Pixar Fest with some special shows, characters, and food is one thing but to do what they did seems over the top. The only positive I really saw were all of the fresh paint jobs and new light bulbs. That chicken booth in particular is an eyesore. It sticks out like a sore thumb.
 
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