Primeval Whirl closing for a 3 month refurbishment later in August

[Biff215]

I truly despise this area! I still hold out hope that if "The Good Dinosaur" is a hit that this area will be redone eventually. I know the backstory, but it still seems disjointed. There is the fossil area, dinosaur ride, and then cheap carnival rides. And one thing that's always bothered me: how does the Nemo show fit this area? Before that wasn't it Tarzan? How did that fit their little roadside narrative???? After seeing the rest of AK it just shows how much better Disney can do and how much more its guests deserve than Chester and Hester's.

PS- has anyone ever seen anyone playing the carnival games there? I have never seen them being played- ever.

The games are ridiculously expensive, but yes, they do get played quite a bit. A tradition of ours is to play Whack-A-Mole, which my wife never loses. Usually both sides are full of kids not realizing that my wife is about to steal the junk stuffed animal they want so bad!

 

[Biff215]

It would have a place in Six Flags Over Georgia.

Six Flags actually has a batman-themed wild mouse called Dark Knight that is better than Primeval Whirl in my mind. And that's sad.

I waited hours to ride Dark Knight when it opened at Great Adventure years ago. Aside from a decent preshow, it was a huge disappointment to me. Even the painful Batman and Robin coasters it replaced were better.

With that said, I also won't ride Primeval Whirl due to the pain. I don't have a problem with Dinorama as a whole, but I have no interest in this coaster.

You have to think that this refurb is partly about getting it ready for the RoL crowds, much like the new table service coming. They will need everything running well if the show becomes a big draw.

 

[Disney Analyst]

Wait, which effect are you referring to?

There's a dino in the ride who's body skin was replaced by star lights.

 

[Bairstow]

There's a dino in the ride who's body skin was replaced by star lights.

I'm not familiar with this.
Are you referring to when they used to shine a "laser net" on Aladar?

 

[Disney Analyst]

It's the bronchisauras (sp?) I believe. You see it's long neck and head, and then look and see it's attached to no body...

 

[The Empress Lilly]

You have to admit, though, Rohde has his moments.

Fair play to him. The opening of Rio del Tiempo is amongst the best and most immersive work anywhere. I've always loved it! I like Disney so much when I'm just transported to another world in a slow moving vehicle or boat. ^_^

Rohde knows about set decoration, about stage dressing. He understands this aspect of theater. He hasn't mastered story, narrative. I think he lacks an understanding of how a ride progresses in the rider's experience. Or at least he can not translate his idea about that into a ride. Kali, Everest and Maelstrom all suffer from too much story for too little ride, and the safari from the reverse. And they have the wrong stories to boot. But yes, they are somewhat redeemed by atmosphere, if limited to the queue in Kali's case.

 

[jt04]

This shows why Rohde is the most overrated imagineer of all time.

An average set decorator at best, who somehow managed a career based on people thinking that somebody wearing eargear that exorbitant while keeping a straight face about it is probably a creative genius.

At least Van Gogh had the decency to actually cut his earlobe off to pull the same stunt....

How has this survived The Mom?

Considering the budget cuts I'd say Dinorama was pretty ingenious. But it needs to go now that they have the resources to fix it IMO.

DAK will be right up there with the best of Disney theme parks if not the top park before all is said and done.

And the Empress Lilly will be fixed soon so you can let go of the bitterness over that.

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

There's nothing wrong with Rohde, he's among the best. The issue is that the point in which he started getting major influence on big projects unfortunately coincided with Eisner's infamous string of budget cuts. His earlier projects at EPCOT contained clear elements of Disney greatness, but he wasn't really a powerful senior imagineer at that point in time and can't be blamed for the issues the rides he worked on had. El Rio was during his early career at Imagineering, and it's incredibly doubtful he had much power over the ride at that point (his touches made the ride better than it would have been otherwise however). Maelstrom wasn't lacking in "quality", it was lacking in length. Short though the ride was, it had unquestionable Disney quality to it.

By the time Rohde really became a major power in Imagineering in the mid 90's, Eisner's infamous budget cuts were well underway. I'd actually call it a relatively huge miracle that Animal Kingdom turned out as good as it did given the slashing that occurred. But the flaws with the park definitely can't be blamed on Rohde, his work still does shine through and the original concept art shows no lack of quality anywhere. He had to work with what he was given, and this hurt things. But the concept for Tiger River was very ambitious and exciting. The original concept for Countdown to Extinction was also very impressive, Martin has a nice video documenting the ride's development history (before they were forced to cut corners due to budget mutilation). The ideas were there and brilliant (and the Safari is one of my favorite WDW rides which thankfully seemed to have avoided major budget cuts), the problem was with higher executives responsible for providing the necessary investment.

I'd say the only flawed ride you could perhaps say Rohde may be partially to blame for is Everest. It has been said that he and his team blew a lot of money on trips to Nepal. Though i'm not sure how much they really blew on these visits. And given that Eisner was still in charge of things at the time, I would imagine there were also still some budget cuts on his end of things as well. Besides broken elements however (which are the fault of maintenance and executives not budgeting to fix them), one of the only real glaring problems with the ride is the lack of enclosed cavern theming on the backwards tunnel section. All things functioning properly and with that lapse in theming addressed however, it's an extremely good ride.

 

[MaxW]

MerlinTheGoat- very valid standpoint. i truly hadn't thought about the lack of theming during the reverse portion of the ride.Quite bare indeed.
But please, please redo dinorama. its just a waste

 

[RSoxNo1]

This shows why Rohde is the most overrated imagineer of all time.

An average set decorator at best, who somehow managed a career based on people thinking that somebody wearing eargear that exorbitant while keeping a straight face about it is probably a creative genius.

At least Van Gogh had the decency to actually cut his earlobe off to pull the same stunt....

Considering he's responsible for the most beautiful park in the country I'm not about to call him the most overrated Imagineer of all time. Chris Beatty is making an early run for most overrated of this century.

 

[TalkingHead]

Rohde's a mystery to me. I think his work is less inspired than he gets credit for.

Personally, I think the realism of DAK is a total aesthetic miscalculation. And it makes me wonder about someone who is obviously as intelligent and as well-travelled as Rohde is. I'm sure he's heard the criticisms of DAK's aesthetic -- among other things, how it exoticizes poverty for an affluent audience. I've just never read his defense of it, and it's likely he's never gone on the record addressing the problematic aspects of it.

But assuming he's as smart as he sounds, it does make me wonder if he feels the least bit exploitative.

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

Rohde's a mystery to me. I think his work is less inspired than he gets credit for.

Personally, I think the realism of DAK is a total aesthetic miscalculation. And it makes me wonder about someone who is obviously as intelligent and as well-travelled as Rohde is. I'm sure he's heard the criticisms of DAK's aesthetic -- among other things, how it exoticizes poverty for an affluent audience. I've just never read his defense of it, and it's likely he's never gone on the record addressing the problematic aspects of it.

But assuming he's as smart as he sounds, it does make me wonder if he feels the least bit exploitative.

The realism is brilliant IMO, and I fail to see how it can be construed as a negative thing given that Disney World had a lot of realistic aesthetics particularly in the 70's and 80's. Though there's still clearly some more fantastical elements in the form of the Tree of Life's magnificent sculptures (IMHO an absolute triumph of Disney craftsmanship. It was awesome to see a park that wasn't overtly toonified as late as 1998.

I also seriously doubt he's ever seen himself as exploitative by "exoticizing poverty" as you say. I don't see that myself. Even if you entertain such an argument, he's far from the only imagineer at Disney to romanticize or even poke harmless fun at cultural trends and/or common cliches of older time periods. Pirates of the Caribbean being a good example of an original Walt Disney attraction, which a couple of oddballs who are far too sensitive and upset about regarding the manner in which pirates are portrayed (and particularly their treatment of women). Same goes for Frontierland, and the way it romanticizes that era while ignoring all the injustice of slavery occurring during all those periods of time, or the horrible violence and injustice inflicted upon Indians/NativeAmericans. And if you want to get really overly PC about this, Haunted Mansion could be said to "trivialize" death.

There are a lot of negative historical events glossed over or poked fun at in EPCOT rides as well. Spaceship Earth is all about our amazing accomplishments in history (formerly our advancement in communication tech), and it conveniently skips the more horrible historical events in favor of a more idealistic view of humanity and our future. World of Motion was a somewhat lighthearted ride with goofy interpretations of (otherwise negative) events such as a large vehicle crash and a train robbery. Not to mention that pretty much all the countries at World Showcase have had horrible events in their history that are better left not focused on in a Disney park.

 

[Sped2424]

I don't blame you. It's supposed to swoop towards the ride vehicle on wires but has been frozen in place for years.
There's a lot of stuff broken on Countdown to Extinction.
In fact, some people have said that Disney never finished installing all the decorations and effects to begin with.

They are talking about the jumping lizards which used to be on a chain that made them move.

 

[Matt_Black]

The realism is brilliant IMO, and I fail to see how it can be construed as a negative thing given that Disney World had a lot of realistic aesthetics particularly in the 70's and 80's. Though there's still clearly some more fantastical elements in the form of the Tree of Life's magnificent sculptures (IMHO an absolute triumph of Disney craftsmanship. It was awesome to see a park that wasn't overtly toonified as late as 1998.

I also seriously doubt he's ever seen himself as exploitative by "exoticizing poverty" as you say. I don't see that myself. Even if you entertain such an argument, he's far from the only imagineer at Disney to romanticize or even poke harmless fun at cultural trends and/or common cliches of older time periods. Pirates of the Caribbean being a good example of an original Walt Disney attraction, which a couple of oddballs who are far too sensitive and upset about regarding the manner in which pirates are portrayed (and particularly their treatment of women). Same goes for Frontierland, and the way it romanticizes that era while ignoring all the injustice of slavery occurring during all those periods of time, or the horrible violence and injustice inflicted upon Indians/NativeAmericans. And if you want to get really overly PC about this, Haunted Mansion could be said to "trivialize" death.

There are a lot of negative historical events glossed over or poked fun at in EPCOT rides as well. Spaceship Earth is all about our amazing accomplishments in history (formerly our advancement in communication tech), and it conveniently skips the more horrible historical events in favor of a more idealistic view of humanity and our future. World of Motion was a somewhat lighthearted ride with goofy interpretations of (otherwise negative) events such as a large vehicle crash and a train robbery. Not to mention that pretty much all the countries at World Showcase have had horrible events in their history that are better left not focused on in a Disney park.

I think highlighting the very real poverty of some of those areas is necessary for certain themes and story elements to truly come across. For example, we're meant to see poaching and deforestation as, quite rightly, bad things. However, without understanding the motives behind it, we can't really take action to change things. Once someone understands that the reason why someone might turn to poaching is because people are really, REALLY poor over there and that's a surefire way to make ends meet, then we can address those issues and come up with a solution. These aren't Captain Planet villains (and even that show worked to illustrate that some otherwise good people do environmentally unfriendly things because they either don't understand or have little other choice); these are people that we want to help and in turn get them to help us make things better for the environment.

 

[KikoKea]

Other than the OK Dinosaur ride, Dino Land really needs a huge makeover. Last time we rode PW, DH and I agreed it was our last. I don't know if the cars were having trouble, but it spun very little, even on the tight turns much less in a complete circle, and the ride was just clunky. Honestly, I don't think even making it into a dark ride will help much. I would rather see the whole area redone.

We only go at least yearly in the off season, and we have never seen anyone actually playing a carnival game and the place is nearly empty- we walked on both rides. A quiet place for kids in the play area, but otherwise just dead. In the future, we'll skip the area entirely...if we even give AK a morning's worth of our time.

 

[TalkingHead]

The realism is brilliant IMO, and I fail to see how it can be construed as a negative thing given that Disney World had a lot of realistic aesthetics particularly in the 70's and 80's. Though there's still clearly some more fantastical elements in the form of the Tree of Life's magnificent sculptures (IMHO an absolute triumph of Disney craftsmanship. It was awesome to see a park that wasn't overtly toonified as late as 1998.

I also seriously doubt he's ever seen himself as exploitative by "exoticizing poverty" as you say. I don't see that myself. Even if you entertain such an argument, he's far from the only imagineer at Disney to romanticize or even poke harmless fun at cultural trends and/or common cliches of older time periods. Pirates of the Caribbean being a good example of an original Walt Disney attraction, which a couple of oddballs who are far too sensitive and upset about regarding the manner in which pirates are portrayed (and particularly their treatment of women). Same goes for Frontierland, and the way it romanticizes that era while ignoring all the injustice of slavery occurring during all those periods of time, or the horrible violence and injustice inflicted upon Indians/NativeAmericans. And if you want to get really overly PC about this, Haunted Mansion could be said to "trivialize" death.

There are a lot of negative historical events glossed over or poked fun at in EPCOT rides as well. Spaceship Earth is all about our amazing accomplishments in history (formerly our advancement in communication tech), and it conveniently skips the more horrible historical events in favor of a more idealistic view of humanity and our future. World of Motion was a somewhat lighthearted ride with goofy interpretations of (otherwise negative) events such as a large vehicle crash and a train robbery. Not to mention that pretty much all the countries at World Showcase have had horrible events in their history that are better left not focused on in a Disney park.

The gap between the romantic fantasy of World Showcase and the gritty realism of DAK is no less than the gap between Adam West and Chris Nolan.

I'd enjoy hearing Rohde's thoughts on it. Artists have to make concessions, and as the lead designer of middlebrow DAK, he obviously has to make concessions. I'd just like to know his self-justification. That's all I'm saying.

 

[Bairstow]

Rohde's a mystery to me. I think his work is less inspired than he gets credit for.

Personally, I think the realism of DAK is a total aesthetic miscalculation. And it makes me wonder about someone who is obviously as intelligent and as well-travelled as Rohde is. I'm sure he's heard the criticisms of DAK's aesthetic -- among other things, how it exoticizes poverty for an affluent audience. I've just never read his defense of it, and it's likely he's never gone on the record addressing the problematic aspects of it.

But assuming he's as smart as he sounds, it does make me wonder if he feels the least bit exploitative.

If it's Rohde himself who fetishizes foreign poverty, and this informs his art, does his art require defending?

Also, it sounds like you've read some of Jeremy Thompson's essays at Roller Coaster Philosophy. If you haven't, you should.

 

[BrittanyRose428]

I truly despise this area! I still hold out hope that if "The Good Dinosaur" is a hit that this area will be redone eventually. I know the backstory, but it still seems disjointed. There is the fossil area, dinosaur ride, and then cheap carnival rides. And one thing that's always bothered me: how does the Nemo show fit this area? Before that wasn't it Tarzan? How did that fit their little roadside narrative???? After seeing the rest of AK it just shows how much better Disney can do and how much more its guests deserve than Chester and Hester's.

PS- has anyone ever seen anyone playing the carnival games there? I have never seen them being played- ever.

I used to work at the carnival games, trust me-- lots of people play them. Way more people than you'd ever imagine play them haha

 

[Matt_Black]

If it's Rohde himself who fetishizes foreign poverty, and this informs his art, does his art require defending?

It's not fetishizing if, as noted above, it serves a specific purpose to inform and educate.

 

[Bairstow]

It's not fetishizing if, as noted above, it serves a specific purpose to inform and educate.

I disagree and think that you're reading an intent in the narrative of the attractions that absolutely isn't there.
The overriding aesthetic goal of the Animal Kingdom lands is "authenticity" in the pursuit of hyperrealism.
If the display of poverty was meant to inspire sympathy it wouldn't be so intentionally charming; it would be ugly and tragic.
It's exactly the kind of dilapidation that looks beautiful to an outsider, and WDI's fetishization of that beauty is exactly why these particular details have been reproduced.