I've been saying this for a bit, their PR game has noticeably slipped over the past 2 years. From unprofessional statements ("guest wastelines") to that guy just dropping the GotG date casually. It really seems like once Zenia left everything went downhill hard. The company now has a hard time with spinning negative PR into positive, something they used to do really well.
They can't keep their mouths shut, they can't keep their attractions working, they can't keep their parks clean, the only thing they can do well is charge people more.
I think it has definitely got harder to manage in recent years. There are so many opportunities for people to say things they shouldn't - looking at social media in particular. But in this case, it was on a major TV show, which you would have thought would have been prepped.
That in addition to the fact it was on a TV show when prompted by a host who is on their payroll as it is on a network wholly owned by their company. They could have preempted this entire media “story” and not jumped the shark had they wanted to.
Because they know it's an astounding swing in the other direction.
THAT PART
Is this juggernaut attraction going to compete against Epic Universe opening?
Yes, I increasingly get the feeling I put more thought into the wording of my work emails than Disney does into their official PR statements.
a refurb/replacement of an existing ride, with presumptively then same capacity/throughput, is not an “expansion”
If I recall, with Tron open we will have the capacity of the late 90s back!
Tron will be 2 years old by 2025. Splash *may* be done by the.n
Since the mid 90s, animatronics have been on the endangered species list. We've lost armies of them with the closures of World of Motion, Horizons, Universe of Energy, Great Movie Ride etc. Splash has 50-60 AA's (DL a few moreso than WDW). I have no doubt that most if not all are going bye bye and it won't reopen with anywhere close to as many. It'll be predominantly video-based per usual.
I would just look at a recent example of a ride with plenty of "physical" effects. In this case I'll talk about ROTR (WDW version) in its current state today since it opened about 3 years ago.
www.wdwmagic.com
Sorry to shorten your post, but I do want to report that several things on your list were broken a week ago when I rode it. The physical saber on the Kylo Ren drop down projection was broken and hanging very incorrectly. The final Kylo Ren AA was also broken. I didn't notice any movement on the ATAT's either, and some of the projections for blaster fire seemed to be missing. It's possible they've been fixed by now, but the maintenance across WDW entirely has been very poor lately due to corporate greed tightening the budget noose.
