So, You Want to be an Imagineer Season 19 - Madcap Circus [CONCLUDED]

Evilgidgit

Well-Known Member
Lisa Simpson Episode 22 GIF by The Simpsons
 

Mickeynerd17

Well-Known Member
Team Ringling Presents:

The Winner's Circle!



Star Wars Order:

1. Grogu/Mandolorian
2. Bobba Fett
3. Asoka​
 

JokersWild

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Jokers' Reviews - Project 4: The Reviewening

Team Bailey - Grandma Pearl's Swampside Diner

This restaurant is just a ton of fun. I love the premise (though I'm honestly not sure if your restaurant REALLY needed a backstory,) the decor is great, and all of the extras you've tacked on are absolutely delightful. The only thing you guys were really missing were the interiors. The exteriors are really great, but I wish that there was a bit more description for the insides, especially for the ship dining room. What was there was fun, but I don't think it quite matched the derelict aesthetic of the exteriors.

I also really like that you've added viewing areas, and I think that's a very smart choice for a restaurant in a park like Gatorland, but I would have liked to have seen them integrated a bit more into the rest of the architecture, if that makes sense. I think that the flooded bathroom is a good start to doing something like this, but it doesn't really seem to have been done for the other viewing areas. Where are people viewing the manatees from inside the ship dining room? A ship graveyard sounds great, but I'm just not understanding the sightline. Also, question for @PerGron. How would an underwater viewing area for an alligator enclosure work? Wouldn't it be too murky, or have I just seen bad alligator enclosures?

Where your project really shines, however, is in the entertainment. The Porch Rockers and the Rabble-Rousers sound like a ton of fun and really drive home the backwoods feel your going for. And great job on the joke video. That was a really nice touch. Your menu is really great as well - a really great mix of Florida and backwoods cuisine. Though the idea of gator nachos makes me uncomfortable.

Really fantastic job guys. This seems like a ton of fun. Just a bit more explanation about some aspects of your restaurant would have pushed this just a bit further for me.
Creativity: 8/10
Detail: 7/10
Realism: 9/10
Presentation: 9/10
Teamwork: 9/10
Center Ring Bonus: +5
Total: 47/50

Team Barnum - Cupcave: The Dragon's Lair
I'd like to first mention your choice of park. For a park named "Castles 'N Coasters," it has a distinct lack of castles. And coasters for that matter, but at least you were able to address the castles. While not exactly castley or medievally once I actually read the project, I still appreciate the kind of slant-theming I guess you could say to adapt something that would fit the castle moniker to something that would fit the park's actual location.

While I was initially a bit iffy about you presenting your project in video form, I think it made sense and mostly worked out as a way to show off your backstory. Speaking of your backstory, much like with Team Bailey, I don't really think it was necessary. It was great and super creative (and really fantastic voice acting, whoever did it. It sounded like @Outbound, but I'm very likely wrong,) but I'm not sure if a cupcake stand needed two and a half minutes of Country/Western David Attenborough breaking down the physiology of Southwestern dragons and their clan wars of attrition (more like war of Nutrition amirite.) Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed it, and I'd love to see this backstory come back in a larger project, but I honestly wonder if such a grand backstory was wasted on a cupcake stand. That's a sentence I never thought I'd write.

On to the actual eatery, I really love it. I love the exterior, the interior looks like a ton of fun, and the menu is equally as good, bridging that rather large gap between the backstory and the physical restaurant pretty well. I love the meet 'n greets, and @Brer Panther's character design shines as usual. Then we have six slides of character backstories. Look, I really appreciate the lengths that you guys went to to really make this something unique with lore and a world surrounding it, but I don't think a cupcake stand is the place to do it. Usually I'm a big proponent of backstories and in-world explanations and I absolutely do not mean to stifle creativity, but there's more backstory here than there is restaurant. This project was difficult because there was a much or as little to do as your guys wanted to make. You guys absolutely went above and beyond for this project, but I think that you also went a bit in the wrong direction by not making the eatery the focal point.

Don't get me wrong, I really love this project. It's incredibly unique, and the actual story and restaurant are super out of the box, I just don't think that this needed so much backstory when you guys could have focused on expanding the restaurant itself around the premise that you created. There's enough here that this could have been a full restaurant. Same story, each clan has a dining room, each clan represents a course or a flavor profile, etc. This was a problem for your guys last project as well, albeit to a slightly lesser extent. Try to prioritize the what the prompt is asking for. At the very least, make sure it's the most detailed part of your project. Again, I really loved this project - it was just a bit unfocused. I'm really sorry if this review is too negative. I'm really conflicted on how to go about grading this.
Creativity: 9/10
Detail: 7.5/10
Realism: 7.5/10
Presentation: 9/10
Teamwork: 9/10
Center Ring Bonus: +5
Total: 47/50

Team Ringling - The Winner's Circle
Of all of the parks between all three teams, Fun Spot was probably the most difficult. There's literally nothing there thematically, so there's no real jumping point. However, it does also give you the luxury of being able to do almost anything, and I think that you guys used that to your advantage, taking a theme and working to adapt it to the park. And I think that a racing theme is a pretty natural fit for Fun Spot. While definitely the most vanilla of the three, I think that the inherent simplicity of your concept works to your advantage in some respects as you guys were able to get right down to business, describing the restaurant.

Of the three, I'd definitely say that you guys went into the most detail describing the actual restaurant. All of your dining rooms are distinct, if not a bit boring. I really like the addition of RC racing. It looks like a great little diversion for diners and people trying to escape the heat alike. I really like your menu as well. In hindsight, I'm kind of surprised that there isn't anything like a Blaze Pizza inside of a park. I know that CityWalk has a place like it, but that's as close as we've gotten, as far as I'm aware.

All in all, I'd call this the perfect middle of the road project. There's nothing that really stands out, everything is perfectly fine, and I can't find anything that I actively dislike about the project, but it doesn't quite reach the heights of the other projects' best qualities. Great job, really. I was just left wanting a bit more.
Creativity: 7.5/10
Realism: 9/10
Detail: 8/10
Presentation: 8/10
Teamwork: 8/10
Center Ring Bonus: +5
Total: 45.5/50
 

PerGron

Well-Known Member
Also, question for @PerGron. How would an underwater viewing area for an alligator enclosure work? Wouldn't it be too murky, or have I just seen bad alligator enclosures?
If you pick a more shallow area with wouldn’t be too bad, especially if you place freshwater mussels and clams in the area that’ll help filter sediment and stuff to help clear it up a bit. Probably wouldn’t be the most clear viewing experience ever, but it could be done reasonably effectively
 

JokersWild

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
If you pick a more shallow area with wouldn’t be too bad, especially if you place freshwater mussels and clams in the area that’ll help filter sediment and stuff to help clear it up a bit. Probably wouldn’t be the most clear viewing experience ever, but it could be done reasonably effectively
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(this is what came up when I searched "acceptable")
 

TheOriginalTiki

Well-Known Member
Team Bailey

I'll admit Gatorland was definitely the easiest to work with out of the three choices. With that said you took the theme of the park and did just about all you possibly could with it, resulting in a really memorable and professional looking dining project. I really appreciate the fact that the menu includes both park go-tos like the gator nuggets as well as stuff I'd genuinely love to try at the park like the tails, with a great mix of variety in between for those who don't want to eat the same type of animal they came into the park to see.

We'll definitely get into the pros and cons of elaborate backstories, but I think this is a perfect example of a backstory that works really well to add flavor and character to your establishment without weighing down the context of the project. Great job in that regard. Everything flowed really well and visually this is by far the most impressive of the three projects presented. The theme is a super natural fit for the park. Only minor critique is the animal exhibits. It definitely is in line with what would be at the park, I just had a hard time visualizing gators just swimming around in a flooded home set or how that flooded home would fit in with the rest of the footprint.

The manatees were a good addition to the park and I liked the shipwreck habitat a bit more than the flooded house set up, but it still feels just a bit padded. Did I mention how fantastic the presentation elements of the project are though? I love how many members of the team contributed stuff in this regard. DEFINITELY keep up stuff like the video banter. I can't tell you how much more compelling dialogue like that is and how much more it pops when I can actually hear it delivered and not just read it in a script. Overall a very strong showcase of a project that did a wonderful job using every team members strengths to your advantage.

Creativity: 8/10
Realism: 8/10
Detail: 9/10
Presentation: 10/10
Group Work: 10/10
+5 Bonus points
Total: 50/50

Team Barnum

I gotta say, following this project was a roller coaster in its own right. I went into this thinking Castles and Coasters was the "Whammy" of the selections, and I appreciated just how quickly this team leaned into the obvious castles/dragon theme of the park and didn't let the scale or lack of relevance weigh you down. I was pretty much instantly in love with the concept of the cupcave itself from the moment I saw that concept art.

With that said, the concept is really about this project's biggest strength. Given the blue sky nature you weren't really required to go into detail about the dining rooms, but that was definitely something I was missing compared to the other two. The backstory is really unique and reminds me of the whole "cowboy dinosaurs" art that we've been discussing in the hype thread recently. It might be just a BIT derivative of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but what isn't haha. I give a ton of props for the video and presentation. It's probably the most professional looking video we've gotten so far this season.

That being said, the video and backstory as much as being your greatest strength is arguably also your Achilles Heel. So much time was spent on the backstory and fleshing out the characters that I really felt the food itself was lost by the wayside. This was blue sky, but the actual dining still needed to be in the center of it. Super unique presentation style and I always applaud when teams do something other than text as their main format, but it still resulted in me not getting as good of a picture as I could have about the actual place you're trying to pitch.

Creativity: 9/10
Realism: 7/10 (I just don't see a park like this investing in the character development)
Presentation: 9/10
Detail: 7/10
Group Work: 8/10
+5 Bonus Points
Total: 45/50

Team Ringling

The struggle with how challenging this park was definitely felt palatable as I read through the brainstorming. As Jokers said, Fun Spot is about the most generic "amusement park" theme you could find. My distinct vibe I got from the visit I had to the park was "this feels JUST like vanilla Roller Coaster Tycoon". The race theme you landed on makes a ton of sense. I can promise you the go-karts as the backbone of the Fun Spot business model and definitely the most prominent attraction in the park as far as pure footprint. In some ways I feel like what you did here really helped solidify a more cohesive theme for the park, and in some ways that's even more impressive than just building off a pre-existing castles or animal theme.

BIG props to the mini attraction. It's exactly the type of thing I could see at Fun Spot and I'm genuinely surprised they don't have something like that already. This is a perfect example of something to include inside a dining project that doesn't weigh down the concept you're trying to convey but instead really helps to cement it. As Jokers said, this project was also probably the most detailed as far as the actual dining rooms go. This is definitely a vanilla project to be sure, but as we've seen in the past couple seasons with the "sheer effing hubris" running joke, sometimes simple is better and I really think on this occasion going that route paid off.

Creativity: 8/10
Realism: 9/10
Detail: 9/10
Group Work: 7/10 (There were definitely some people pulling their weight more than others here)
Presentation: 8/10
+5 Bonus Points
Total: 46/50

The Results

1st Place: Team Bailey (97 Points)
2nd Place: Team Ringling (92.5 Points)
3rd Place: Team Barnum (92 Points)

Yes...the winner was determined by literally HALF a point. You guys are insane and it seriously makes me consider going with Jokers suggestion of no grading scale in the future haha. With that in mind, sadly this is the first project of the season where no matter who gets eliminated it's going to sting as that person has been active since the beginning and hasn't dropped out or been a non entity. Project Leader @goofyyukyuk has nominated @Brer Panther and @Shannoninthemagic for elimination.

@Brer Panther, you've definitely been a soft spoken presence in this game as per your nature, but you really stepped up to the plate last round with the Seussian Safari. Will that be enough to save you?

@Shannoninthemagic, you've definitely struggled with the team work side of the game, but you've got a great attitude and perseverance about it.

Unfortunately, we've decided to eliminate @Shannoninthemagic. While Brer Panther definitely had a signature moment last round, Shannon simply hasn't stood out like that. I want to emphasize though Shannon, this is a CRAZY game for someone so new to the concept of working in teams like yourself. It was a struggle for you for sure, but I still admired how you persevered through it. I'm definitely sad to see you go. Easily the first nomination of the season to have some real weight behind the decision.​
 

TheOriginalTiki

Well-Known Member
Season 19, Act Six: Grogu the Great
baby-yoda-grogu.png


Ya'll pretty much already know what to do here, so I'm going to keep it simple. This project is an exercise in how immersive and well themed you can make something as simple as a meet n' great. For this round teams must create a unique meet n' greet experience inside Galaxy's Edge based around the character of your choice. Based on the choices, here are the final selections for the teams. As a reminder, Boba Fett and Ashoka are allowed ONE additional character in their meet n' greet but said character must be either a puppet or AA, not another live actor.

Team Bailey: Ashoka Tano
Team Ringling: Grogu/Mando
Team Barnum: Boba Fett

One last thing. This project as well as the next project will be DOUBLE ELIMINATION. Only the team who comes in first will be spared loosing a member this time around and next time. This will take us to ten people left in the cast at which point we'll reach the coveted POST-MERGE portion of the game. Hang in there. We've officially reached the point where the Game element of the season is kicking into high gear and you're really going to have to start actively trying to stand out if you hope to survive. This project will be another lightning round, but project seven will go back to a more reasonable time table. Good luck teams, this project is due Thursday, July 1st at 11:59PM Eastern/8:59PM Pacific.​
 

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