The Good:
+ Wandless. SSE is now wandless, this is an obvious plus. Weather it would have happened with or without the refurb I do not know.
+ Signage. The new signage outside SSE is nice. It provides a good focal point for the entrance along with the new greenery.
+ Trees of Light. The new trees with lighting effects work well along with the lighting on the bottom of SSE. I hope this leads too an even more extensive lighting program for the outside SSE.
+ Tv’s. The replacement of the old TV’s with the new flat screen TV’s can only be seen as a plus. Obviously I would like too see the TV’s removed all together, but I guess that rests more with the Disney Lawyers than WDI, so any attempt to make the TV’s more presentable and too fit in more with the style of the attraction is a plus in my book.
+ The new small tunnel WDI have added on the ascent works well with the attraction. Very Horizons-ish.
+ The scenes before the 180 top all seem to be in very good shape. New lighting, costumes, and a general sprucing up of the attraction. I wish they would have kept the theatre scene how-ever as I believe theatre has had a big part to play in the development of humanity.
+ New AAs. The new AA’s are all great. I hear they are hybrid AA’s IE they didn’t replace the whole AA but only certain parts such as the arms etc… where movement is most needed. This has had a good effect and the AA’s are all mostly up to standard. I love the animation on the guy tugging the rope on the boat, you can really feel the weight.
+ The new scenes. While not being great they are nice little additions to the attraction.
The Bad:
= The new score. While not being bad it’s not great either. It’s a nice score but the old score and tomorrow’s child for that matter do so much more for SSE. The old score worked with the attraction, it heightened SSE’s finest moments both intellectually and emotionally, it drove the attraction foreword. This new score just seems to “flit” in and out, it seems to have no power, no meaning, it’s a nice little score, but it just does not work as well for SSE as past scores have.
= The new narration. I believe Judie Dench is a very good actress, and she has a very unique and soothing voice. I could see her narrating something along the lines of a fairytale and doing a great job. Is she right for SSE though…… I am not sold completely. Irons In my own opinion did a much better job (He also had a better script to work with but I’ll get to that in a bit). Dench just does not have the grandness required for an attraction that basically deals with something as epic as “Our Spaceship Earth”, she is just too quaint. Dench seems to have the same problems as the score, she just “flits” in and out, she does not make an impact.
= The new script. It’s just not challenging. The old script had class, it had power, it had meaning, it had soul, this new script just dumb’s things down. “Rome was the first World Wide Web” apart from simplifying things and being just…well wrong it has nothing of the class of the old line “East, west, north, and south - all roads led to Rome” this line says more about Rome and what Rome gave to the advancement of the human race than the new line ever could. What happened to such gems as “Spaceship Earth glows with billions of interactions carrying news and information at the very speed of light. But will these seemingly infinite communications become a flood of electronic babble? Or will we use this power to usher in a new age of understanding and co-operation on this, our Spaceship Earth” a great line to lead into the 180 top, it’s both exceedingly relevant to today and challenging to the rider. As for the old script on the descent “Physical distance is no longer a barrier to communication. Today, the entire world is our next door neighbour. Our news is their news, their news ours. We share our hopes and concerns with the whole planet. We truly live in a Global Neighbourhood.
Wondrous new tools will help us learn more about ourselves, each other, and the planet we share. Spaceship Earth will become our virtual classroom. As we greet the 21st century, yet another revolution in communication is upon us - as profound as all the progress that has come before. By using our new communication tools to build better bridges between us, we will discover we all share the common bonds of hope and sorrow, dreams and joys. Since the dawn of recorded time, communication has revolutionized our lives and changed our world. We now have the ability and the responsibility to build new bridges of acceptance and co-operation between us; to create a better world for ourselves and our children as we continue our amazing journey aboard Spaceship Earth." Let’s just say there is no comparison between the above and us riding on our rocket bike into a cheesily animated video screen future.
= The Ride System. I don’t know what to say here. WDC did not give WDI either enough money or enough time to do a complete refurb, or WDI blew the budget on other things. I guess they would have had to replace all of the old track with new track to make SSE smoothe again. This would have been a considerable undertaking which is why I list this only in “The Bad” rather than “The Ugly”. I would much rather WDI have spent the money on updating the actual show scenes rather than making the ride system smoother, on what is essentially anyway a very slow moving attraction, it does not seem as much a concern to me as it would be on something such as say Space Mountain (Pleaseee take note here WDC and WDI). How-ever it is still an annoyance and if the WDC still lay claim to the fact that they only deliver the best when it comes to attractions, then WDI should have been given the time and the money to replace the track as well.
And The Ugly
-The Descent. What can I say… A glorified survey…I really, really do hope WDI have not finished with the Descent yet because if this is it in its final form underwhelming is not even the word. Not only does the cheesy 2D animation (I love 2D animation but please, the end off SSE is just not the time or the place unless it is going to the done with the production qualities of golden age Disney animation) clash with the serious nature of the ride it’s just well…down right boring. Where is the immersion? Where is the soul? Where is the heart? Where is the challenge to us as people to make a better future? Something as grand and epic as the topic of our planet and its people deserves more than this. Why have an omnimover, the very nature of which was designed to immerse the rider in an experience, a time, a place, and then you have the rider sitting there staring at a screen for the last 4 minutes of the ride, with nothing going on around them. Where is the sense in that? At best it's a post show, it is not the conclusion of a grand and epic journey through time and space. In fact I'll go as far as saying the Descent is now selfish, it does not even fit the themes of EPCOT. Where as the old Descent challenged us to build bridges, to co-operate, to make the world a better place for everybody, for humanity to come together...it is our RESPONSIBILITY to do this. The new Descent does what, it gives us a vision of the future for us, its our future, it's a selfish future, want, want, want. It does not have anything to do with the theme of the ride at all, it does nothing for the global communitity of "Our Spaceship Earth" it's all about the needs of the indivdual, it is the anethesis of the old Descent.
As far as I can see one of three things went wrong here, or maybe all three at once, lol.
Either WDI screwed up and used the budget they were given badly
or
The WDC gave WDI a weak budget with which they could not do much with
or
Siemens insisted their money was spent the way they wanted it spent
I have too say I think it may have been a little bit of all the above. A refurb should keep the things that were great about an attraction and plus the things that were bad, Jesus WDI have an example just across the way at The MK of how to do a great refurb in The Haunted Mansion. So lets see how WDI used there budget.
They removed the old score, script, narration and some of the show scenes (Mostly the Descent stuff)
They added a new score, narration, script, and a touch screen, while touching up a few old scenes and adding in a couple of new scenes.
Am I the only one that see’s removing the old score, narration and script as a waste of budget? Those are things about SSE that worked, hell they worked great why change them? The money should have been spent on plussing areas that needed work? The Descent was much better in its old form, but it could have visually been much more impressive, why not spend the budget there, in making the visual aspects of the Descent much better and filling up all of the black space. The narrations, script, and score carried the old Descent in my own opinion, visually it was good but not great, they could have done so much more visually. Now not only have the removed the greatest thing about the old descent (Narration, Script, Score) they have done away with the visual aspect of it as well, while I was assuming they would be filling up all the black space on the Descent they have instead made more while at the same time removing the aspects that gave it it’s soul.
Everybody has spent so much time bemoaning the touch screens nobody has stopped to ask… why the hell are they even needed on the ride in the first place? Again this seems like more waste of budget, money that could have been spent making SSE an even more immersive and gratifying experience was instead used to make it less immersive. To me the whole touch screen interactive idea just stinks of some pencil pusher sitting up high in the WDC, Siemens, maybe even WDI saying “INTERACTIVE, INTERACTIVE, INTERACTIVE….. That’s what the kids want, all these video games, INTERACTIVE is the way” Well here’s a thought, interactive is not the be all and end all, in fact I’ll go as far as saying it is not even the way of the future in the way people seem to be thinking it is. Have we all stopped reading good old fashioned straight up books because those books came out where you can choose your own endings, what page to go to next etc…no we have not and we will not stop watching films, or TV shows, or yes going on theme park rides because they are not interactive. Sometimes we want to just sit back and be told a good story, to learn something, to be inspired, and you know what sometimes we have trouble finding inspiration within our-self’s which is why we turn to “ART and ENTERTAINMENT” to inspire us, to be told a great story and lift our spirits and this has NOTHING to do with being interactive and this is not going to change.
If Siemens forced this on WDI and WDC then the WDC really should not be letting this happen. The WDC make enough money to easily refurb SSE without money from sponsors so why let a sponsor push you around?
