This was inspired by a similar thread in the Disneyland forum. How would you all rank the dark rides at the Disney World?
Here's my ranking.
Here's my ranking.
- Winnie the Pooh: Gets way too much flack simply because Mr. Toad closed to make room for it. In my opinion, this is how you do a "book report" dark ride RIGHT - retelling the story while also putting you in the middle of the action - and proof that you can make a fun ride regardless of a small budget. It doesn't deserve the amount of hate that it gets.
- Buzz Lightyear: This is another example of how you can make a fun ride even if you don't have much of a budget. Even if it's about ninety-seven percent plywood cutouts, it set the stage for "interactive" dark rides and I don't see why everyone says it doesn't fit in Tomorrowland.
- Peter Pan: Pure Disney magic. Sure, it could use a nice refurbishment, and Captain Hook sounds nothing like Captain Hook, but the ride is charming and the fact that you actually fly through and over the scenery makes it unique from the other dark rides at Disney. My one complaint is that the line is always incredibly long.
- Toy Story Midway Mania: Even if it's pretty much just playing a Wii game while riding around a building in a desk chair, I still find the ride fun. It really sucks that it's spawned so many knockoffs...
- Journey Into Imagination With Figment: Yeah, it's not a GREAT ride, and it's not nearly as good as the original, but it's amusing and has some neat effects and funny gags. It works best if you go in knowing that it's a "parody" of sorts of the second version, with Figment calling out Nigel Channing for his backwards way of thinking.
- The Seas With Nemo and Friends: Not an awful ride, it just lacks something. The screens are integrated pretty well, but the lack of animatronics is pretty obvious (there's the anglerfish, MAYBE Chum... and I think that's it?). And they really couldn't think of anything for a storyline other than "Marlin needs to find Nemo again, and Nemo spends the whole ride hiding from him and giggling"? The song at the end is also kind of strange... it's not a bad song, but it just feels out of place.
- Little Mermaid: This ride is just so BLAH. I like Scuttle's role as the narrator and Flotsam and Jetsam's appearance before the Ursula scene is a nice touch, but the ride doesn't have any of the same charm that Pooh and Peter Pan have. The Ariel animatronics are kind of creepy-looking (the one in the "Under the Sea" room in particular looks pretty awkward, but I think that's more because of her weirdly bobbing up and down like that... what is she even supposed to be doing? Dancing?). I'm still fully convinced that they blew much of the ride's budget on the animatronics and had to make do with what little they had left for the rest of it - the animatronic sea creatures in the "Under the Sea" room are just as primitive as those in Peter Pan, their clones in the wedding at the end feel really out of place, and the "Giant Ursula" scene just screams "We ran out of money!". In fact, the entire ride just feels so, for lack of a better word, plastic-y. Like it feels more like you're riding through a warehouse full of those character statues they had in the Disney Stores during the 1990s. The new lighting in the "Under the Sea" room did help it, but it's still in my opinion the weakest of Disney World's dark rides.
