Well, there is no substitute for experience and perspective. So, those American (or European) fanbois who blather and bash on HKDL without ever setting foot in it have worthless opinions to me.
I don't think it's unfair to admit that when it first opened, HKDL had a very rocky beginning attraction wise and was received rather poorly from a lot of Disney fans. Even many open minded fans who don't hate China for whatever reason (like irrational racism or a hatred of communism and the government) and did visit it have conceded it had major flaws.
There's plenty of merit in the experience comment, but to be fair there really wasn't much legitimately amazing content to attract even the more open minded American or European people in the first place (unlike most other Disney parks on earth). That's a problem regardless of whether you've been or not and whether you yourself enjoyed it for what it was. I myself haven't been (I still have Disneyland on my priorities and would jump at a chance to try out Tokyo Disneyland), but I can tell you that there was no lack of people who DID visit in years past with major complaints about a severe lack of Disney caliber rides. It's not just non-visitors that bashed it. And from just looking at the roster of attractions, I don't blame them, it's a perfectly understandable argument to have held against HKDL.
HKDL pre-2012, I wouldn't have been interested in visiting. And i've always loved traveling to other countries and have no problem with a China Disney park. With the opening of Grizzly Gulch and Mystic Point, there is an actual wish to see the park someday. That may never happen of course, but there now exists the desire to whereas there wasn't one before recently. The legitimitate reasons for not wanting to visit are diminishing, and hopefully will continue to diminish in the future. One hopes Shanghai doesn't open with the same problems HKDL opened with and doesn't take almost a decade to correct.
And while this will be little more than ST:TNG, I don't feel there's anything wrong with that. I am no SW fanboi ... yet, I'd say that the best thing added in the last 5-6 years at WDW is ST 2.0 ... by far.
This will take that experience to another level, so I fail to see how that is bad.
There's nothing wrong with a Star Tours 2.0 like ride. And as they're just coming off of building two new original and awesome E Tickets, it's fine to add something less major, provided they still do bigger things in the future. But I wouldn't put a simulator ride on the same level as the two previous attractions just finished there. It's a welcome addition, but if it's going to be "little more" than a plussed Star Tours 2.0 with Iron Man, i'm not going to hype it as any more than that. I'm sure different people have different standards, but I don't consider simulators like these to be "E Tickets".
I think it'll be ok as long as they don't hype it up to be more than what it is, and don't take a ridiculous amount of time to build it (kind of too late to roll eyes about the bloated $100 million price). And ST 2.0 being the best thing added to WDW in the last 5-6 years really isn't saying much (to be honest it's not saying anything really).
