The appropriate thing is to fix the stories they made like you said, then add PatF to another area, but we all know how Disney works. So personally I would rather see something like Western River just flat out replace splash. I just have zero faith in their ability to do a quality overlay that comes even remotely close to the iconic status of splash.
The narrative that Disney is making changes to Splash Mountain because they’re afraid of a “Twitter mob” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. You bring these same points up in every tread, and they’re not true.
Splash Mountain is popular. But Disney is changing the ride for precisely the reasons they’ve publicly provided: they don’t think the source material makes for an attraction that is welcoming and inclusive.
People ”demand” that Disney change/not change things all the time. This is not how Disney decides what they’re going to do/not do. They don’t care about armchair imagineering ideas, hashtag activism, or boycott threats (see the Southern Baptist Convention’s boycott back in the late 90s).
I’ve told you this before, but The Princess and the Frog was not ever considered a flop. The film doubled its production budget at the box office and outperformed a number of Disney's other animated films in that decade. But John Lasseter wanted the film to spark something of a Renaissance of hand-drawn animation, but the Princess and the Frog didn’t have that effect on the public.
Yeah- this is QAnon levels of crazy. “Lose Splash, lose Disney, lose America forever?“ That’s ridiculous. Also, the desire to blame CMs or armchair imagineers (Frederick Chambers) or random kids on Twitter is bizarre. I understand people being upset about the change, but the mysterious and elaborate backstories people invent to try to cope with (or influence) decisions that have already been made are just wild.
I said this in another thread in the DL forum, but I’ll repeat it here. Anyone who honestly believes that Twitter and that CM are responsible for Splash’s re-theme hasn’t been paying attention over the last decade or maybe even more. In addition, if fans are to blame anyone, they should blame Disney.
I've said it in this thread, the WDW thread, the DL thread but I highly doubt PatF going into Splash was only just now considered. I wouldn't be shocked if it was considered when the movie hit theaters. After all, SoTS was considered a no-no by then.
Exactly. Disney has refused to officially release SotS for many years now. At this point, it’s a taboo film within the Disney collection, as Disney won’t even speak of the film. They did this.
No. Disney does not believe that.
Moments like this actually serve the other side of the splash arguement much better, because that gives them ammo that can, and will, be used to discredit a person. If you want to win an arguement of any kind, three things are needed; kidness, cordiality, and most importantly, THE WILLINGNESS TO LISTEN.
The issue isn't the Twitter users, the issue is cable news and mainstream websites reporting things like "Calls for Disney to Change Attraction with Racist Origins" even if those calls are only among the small faction of Twitter users.
If there's stuff that deserves to be exposed, it should be exposed. Expose everyone for everything, I don't care what the reason is.
Disney was Facebook’s top ad buyer, spending $210 million for Disney+ ads alone on Facebook in the US in the first half of 2020. It spent $16 million for Hulu ads on Facebook-owned Instagram between April 15 and June 30. This is just for D+, not individual films/shows, parks, services, etc.
And plus, if they really were afraid of a small portion of their audience, Mr. Toad would still be open at WDW.
The point is that these people are trying to grasp at straws, because they can’t grasp the fact that Disney would do something they don’t like, despite being a business. thus, they are looking to doxx and attack any people they see as responible for this retheme. This is not only dangerous, but illegal.
While I agree that Disney is ultimately the one responsible for most of their decisions, it isn’t entirely unreasonable for someone assume social media had some sort of influence here. For one, what happened to Splash Mountain was not an isolated incident. Even though the average Twitter user may not accurately represent the core audience of most companies, this isn’t the first or last time Disney and other corporations have announced and/or made major decisions in seemingly direct response to said average user’s preceding outrage against their products or employees.
While PatF did in fact outperform some of Disney’s other animated films that came out over the course of the decade leading up to it, that’s not saying much given how low of a bar that was to cross. Let’s not rewrite history here. Even though PatF may not have been outright bomb and is generally considered to be the start of the revival era at WDAS, it‘s an objective fact that it was considered by Disney to have underperformed upon its initial release. Beyond failing to kickstart a hand-drawn Renaissance as John Lasseter intended, its box office results were also directly responsible for Disney changing the titles and marketing of their then upcoming slate of princess films to be more gender neutral.
Again, I'm not sure where you're getting this information. There was a solid stretch pre-COVID where the only promoted tweets I saw from any company were ad rolls for Galaxy's Edge in front of Ellen clips. The Ellen clips would change from week to week, but the SWGE ads ran constantly.
Very well said. You seem to have really good understanding of not just the situation at hand, but the state of our culture in general.
