2nd.
John Lasseter was hired as head of Disney Feature Animation and not Walt Disney Imagineering
I know. Why do people have that misconception? :shrug:
My kids coment every time we go to WDW that it's just becoming a big advertisment for the movies (of course they love Stitch and don't complain about HIM though...lol). I've been to WDW about 25 times since '71 and the change has not been a good one. I'd like to see stuff come back that is NOT based on Disney movie. Even the older attractions that are based on movies (Snow White, Peter Pan, 20K leagues) were not all "up in your face" like some of the newer stuff.
However, I don't know what's worse, the movie theming everywhere or getting off of a ride and seeing "GE", "RCA" etc plastered EVERYWHERE..lol.
I'd like to see parts of WDW go back to the "World's Fair theme" roots that Walt invisioned.
If they do want to attract more people into the parks though, there is one thing they are going to have to do something about...the price. WDW is pricing itself out of the reah of the average person more and more.
It might be true that Disney pushes their movies with the merchandise they sell now, i.e. Pirates of the Caribbean.
But Disney theme parks have always designed many of their attractions to promote other aspects of the company, i.e. The Jungle Cruise was suppose to promote the Disney television show, I forget the name, but it was something like Wild Life. (I'm sure someone knows what I'm talking about.)
And there were original rides like Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan that promoted the movies. That was one of the main aspects of the original Disneyland.
Today, there have been several additions to Disney that are based on movies, but not a retelling of the story, like some of the older rides. The rides have new stories, like Stitch's Great Escape, The Seas with Nemo and Friends, the Laugh Floor, and there have been completley original rides, like Expedition Everest.
As for seeing the sponsor's names like GE or RCA, it is just a fact of life.
Disney does need sponsors, otherwise, they would need to finance everything themselves, and then the price as you were talking about, would have to go up substantially. So Disney has to show who wants to pay for it.
I know some people on these threads complain about the whole "a generous grant from the McDonald's corporation" announcement in DINOSAUR, but most of the advertisements are not overbearing, especially like Kodak sposoring Mickey's Philharmagic.
But the prices as you said are getting expensive. But I think it's Disney secret plan to have people spend more days in the parks where they can get discounted prices on the tickets for the more days they buy, so they would spend less, but make people spend more money on food and merchandise. So it all come back to Disney in the end.
