News Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge - Historical Construction/Impressions

nevol

nevol

Well-Known Member
JediMasterMatt said:
Our resident contrarian is quite right, NOS was very much the intended vibe for SWL's conception. When it's all said and done, it should have a very similar feel and when accounting for the show buildings, takes up a similar footprint.

Still... should've been down the street; but, they did the best they could with the mandate that was given.
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Had it gone to DCA, people would be crying foul about Disneyland not getting a new E-ticket in 30 years. We get the best WDI project on the planet and TWO e tickets, and everyone is critical still, because it's TOO large and too generous an expansion. They really can't win. I'll take two e tickets and proper area development over a tron lightcycle clone that would be a band-aid on a broken tomorrowland.
 
nevol

nevol

Well-Known Member
Kira Nerys said:
AK strikes a very delicate balance between uber-themed, questionably-themed and charming. The theming makes it feel like you're in a third world country, but is that really where you want to be. And yet, they squeezed every little detail they could into the place. It's confusingly impressive and depressing. I'll just stick with the dinosaur ride and call it a day.
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It is far less offensive in 2018 than epcot. Epcot uses the institutional/monumental architecture of nations to push the argument that the world is really diverse, but in doing so, is dishonest about how people in those places actually live. It presents nothing but caricatures of each nation. Those countries don't actually look like that, and to ignorant american audiences, it tells people that everyone around the world still lives in some ancient environment solely constructed with institutional/monumental architecture. More "problematic" is adventureland, which just preys on white people's ignorance about the global south by blending moroccan, pacific island, indian, south american, middle eastern set pieces and languages/calligraphy in an effort to evoke the most exotic cinematic impression. I don't want it to change, however, because it is so perfectly self-aware, with Indiana jones taking place in the 20s and the queue setup for jungle cruise showing a bunch of white explorers and their industrial age gas engine powered boats posing with big game they've hunted, etc. If that was Eric Trump holding the head of a lion in 2018, we'd all freak out. But it's at disneyland and it isn't real and it is a period piece so we all just laugh and fail to notice a lot of stuff, the way nobody cares about the bride auction and why I'll never really get over its change. We aren't embodying any representation of a real location somewhere on earth with any cultural sensitivity; we are embodying 18th/19th/20th century european and north american caucasion's imagination about the global south, the exotic, and the noble savages. The aesthetics and fetishes that drove colonialism.

Animal kingdom, sure, I can see where people might think it is problematic, but Joe Rohde really does travel the world and observe these region's vernaculars, and brings real artifacts back to DAK. The dominant theme of Disney's Animal Kingdom is the power of nature, so that principle guided the architecture design approach. They wanted the focus to be on that power of nature so nature had to dominate the built environment. It was decided that the architecture then would not be monumental but would take a back seat. So all of the lands are ground-level villages, predominantly rural. In doing so, the locales more accurately depict how people live than Epcot ever will. The focus isn't on poverty tourism but on nature and animal exhibits, with the rural villages being the point of departure, very much how they would be if you were going on a real safari or departing for a tour of a jungle. They recreate the hacked power lines of informal settlements and actually commissioned people from Africa to create the thatched roofs and people from Nepal to make queue elements for Everest. There are offices in the queue for Everest that are full recreations of people's offices and apartments and Disney actually paid those people for their possessions.
 
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nevol

nevol

Well-Known Member
Hattieboxghost110 said:
So how is shoving the Avatar IP about blue aliens into a theme park about animals "artistic integrity?" Well that's because it's about conservation, right. That's BS. It was chosen because it was the highest grossing film of all time. Disney didn't even own the property at the time.
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IP mandate, sure. Maybe it started out as simple as that, and the notion that the tropical landscape of animal kingdom wasn't too far from the forests of avatar. But the IP is used by imagineering solely as a vessel here to tell the stories that animal kingdom exists to tell. Nobody cares if you know who the blue aliens are. That's irrelevant. It really exists because Americans are so anti-intellectual and averse to anything that is literally political, and because everything is political, the only way to tell a pedagogical story anymore is through metaphors and analogies. Americans lose their freaking minds if you try to get them to care about people who are brown or care about the environment because oil companies have convinced everybody that climate change is fake. If we can't get them to care so directly, then maybe they wont notice if the landscapes being destroyed are off-world and the people's lives at risk are blue instead of brown. The queue is a lesson in conservation and then the landscapes of the flight of passage are over the top beautiful in an effort to make guests appreciate the natural world. They might walk off and understand why rainforests shouldn't be destroyed. And when our banshee gets injured and the entire forest comes to its aid, we might feel a "we are all in this together" moment of empathy for other living things. It might be an "alien landscape" but it's really just a kit of parts of earth with some license taken with bioluminescence and gravity. It isn't any more dishonest than soarin around the world which selects all of about 20 square miles on this planet in order to make the entire thing look overwhelmingly beautiful.

I don't lament the loss of Beastly Kingdom. It wasn't included on day one because it didn't fit the theme of the park anymore. It wasn't about anthropomorphic animals or mythical creatures as much as the real. And ancient ruins surrounded by topiaries isn't the natural landscape dominating humanity that they were going for. We got half of it at IOA with lost continent once half of Imagineering was let go. And while I would be happy to see dinoland go, I did hear Joe Rohde in a podcast say that it works for two reasons. One is marketing; guests needed to be convinced that Animal Kingdom was a theme park and not a zoo, and what easier and cheaper way was there to do that than to include images of roller coasters in the marketing material? Secondly is that you cant take yourself or anything too seriously. The park is pretty dead serious and the lands meticulously and sensitively constructed. Dinoland was their "F it" moment where they got to just say, yea, it's an amusement park.
 
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George Lucas on a Bench

George Lucas on a Bench

Well-Known Member
AK was a park about mother Earth and her creatures. Now it also features an alien world from a movie! It's like pairing an upperclass engaged woman with a homeless artist from steerage. It doesn't make any sense. That's why I trust it.
 
brb1006

brb1006

Well-Known Member
TROR said:
Tokyo Disneyland is such a weird park to me because certain aspects of it like the castle, Rivers of America, Critter Country, Haunted Mansion, Star Tours (the original, that is), all exceed what we have in the states, but then there are parts like Fantasyland, World Bazaar, and Adventureland that are so drab.
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At least Tokyo has the first LPS trackless ride at any Disney Park Pooh's Hunny Hunt which blows the Disneyland version out the window.

Not to mention an electrical parade that get's an update every few years and has been running since 2000.
 
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Hattieboxghost110

Hattieboxghost110

Well-Known Member
brb1006 said:
At least Tokyo has the first LPS trackless ride at any Disney Park Pooh's Hunny Hunt which blows the Disneyland version out the window.

Not to mention an electrical parade that get's an update every few years and has been running since 2000.
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To be fair, Tokyo's Pooh's Hunny Hunt also blows WDW's version out of the water. It is the gold standard.

I still think Magic Kingdom has the better nighttime parade. Oh wait...
 
brb1006

brb1006

Well-Known Member
Hattieboxghost110 said:
To be fair, Tokyo's Pooh's Hunny Hunt also blows WDW's version out of the water. It is the gold standard.

I still think Magic Kingdom has the better nighttime parade. Oh wait...
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Well we used to have Spectromagic....before WDW decided to keep MSEP longer than excepted:banghead:. Since it was originally going to be at WDW for the summer of 2010 but lasted till late August 2016. And Spectro was going to return if they stuck with the original plan before the floats got badly damaged. As a result, we no longer have an electrical parade let alone one that was exclusive to WDW's Magic Kingdom. It was so bad, that a lot of guests were waiting for the parade to begin despite ending over there. I really hope we get a new electrical that might end up as a pleasant surprise for a lot of visitors and locals in Florida. Because I seriously hope they could find a way to top Spectromagic.
smmky3.jpg

... Excuse while I got back to mourning the lose of this beautiful parade.:cry:
 
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Hattieboxghost110

Hattieboxghost110

Well-Known Member
brb1006 said:
Well we used to have Spectromagic....before WDW decided to keep MSEP longer than excepted:banghead:. Since it was originally going to be at WDW for the summer of 2010 but lasted till late August 2016. And Spectro was going to return if they stuck with the original plan before the floats got badly damaged. As a result, we no longer have an electrical parade let alone one that was exclusive to WDW's Magic Kingdom. It was so bad, that a lot of guests were waiting for the parade to begin despite ending over there. I really hope we get a new electrical that might end up as a pleasant surprise for a lot of visitors and locals in Florida. Because I seriously hope they could find a way to top Spectromagic.
smmky3.jpg

... Excuse while I got back to mourning the lose of this beautiful parade.:cry:
Click to expand...

Who knows, maybe they'll do a Spectromagic 2.0 for the 50th?
 
Professortango1

Professortango1

Well-Known Member
Animal Kingdom has great themeing and looks great (when areas are blocked off by walls and nets). The problem is the park has mediocre rides. Kali is the worst rafting ride I've experienced, and it sits a few miles away from one of the best out there (Popeye and Bluto's Bilgerat Barges). Dinosaur is okay, but clearly a downgrade from Indy. Everest has some interesting ideas, but the pacing of the ride is really broken up into these short staccato segments ending with a broken effect. Kilimanjaro Saffari had potential, but budget cuts and broken effects have left it devoid of the Disney touch. It's a cool thing to see the animals up close, but I can do that at a Safari park too. Disney had the idea to do something more than a safari tour, but that's what it devolved into. Festival of the Lion King is incredibly cheap feeling and Nemo was cute enough, but the giant box and theme don't really fit Dinoland.

The park really needed Beastly Kingdom. I mean, the advertising and park logo all depicting the dragon is what drew me in as a kid. Dinosaurs, dragons, wild animals! Sounds pretty cool. All the animals of earth; real, extinct, or even mythological. Unfortunately, all we got was a cave which shoots fire.

I've heard Flight of Passage is amazing, so that gives me hope. But then Navi River Journey has been routinely voted "not worth it," and it seems like we have yet another Animal Kingdom "Cool idea but lazy execution" attraction.
 
JediMasterMatt

JediMasterMatt

Well-Known Member
brb1006 said:
Well we used to have Spectromagic....before WDW decided to keep MSEP longer than excepted:banghead:. Since it was originally going to be at WDW for the summer of 2010 but lasted till late August 2016. And Spectro was going to return if they stuck with the original plan before the floats got badly damaged. As a result, we no longer have an electrical parade let alone one that was exclusive to WDW's Magic Kingdom. It was so bad, that a lot of guests were waiting for the parade to begin despite ending over there. I really hope we get a new electrical that might end up as a pleasant surprise for a lot of visitors and locals in Florida. Because I seriously hope they could find a way to top Spectromagic.
smmky3.jpg

... Excuse while I got back to mourning the lose of this beautiful parade.:cry:
Click to expand...
Hattieboxghost110 said:
Who knows, maybe they'll do a Spectromagic 2.0 for the 50th?
Click to expand...
Professortango1 said:
Animal Kingdom has great themeing and looks great (when areas are blocked off by walls and nets). The problem is the park has mediocre rides. Kali is the worst rafting ride I've experienced, and it sits a few miles away from one of the best out there (Popeye and Bluto's Bilgerat Barges). Dinosaur is okay, but clearly a downgrade from Indy. Everest has some interesting ideas, but the pacing of the ride is really broken up into these short staccato segments ending with a broken effect. Kilimanjaro Saffari had potential, but budget cuts and broken effects have left it devoid of the Disney touch. It's a cool thing to see the animals up close, but I can do that at a Safari park too. Disney had the idea to do something more than a safari tour, but that's what it devolved into. Festival of the Lion King is incredibly cheap feeling and Nemo was cute enough, but the giant box and theme don't really fit Dinoland.

The park really needed Beastly Kingdom. I mean, the advertising and park logo all depicting the dragon is what drew me in as a kid. Dinosaurs, dragons, wild animals! Sounds pretty cool. All the animals of earth; real, extinct, or even mythological. Unfortunately, all we got was a cave which shoots fire.

I've heard Flight of Passage is amazing, so that gives me hope. But then Navi River Journey has been routinely voted "not worth it," and it seems like we have yet another Animal Kingdom "Cool idea but lazy execution" attraction.
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For your pleasure and sung to the tune of your favorite nighttime parade from the East Coast.

[ADULT VOICES]

On this magic night before the upcharge event starts,
A million guests will crowd around beside us,
Cast Members shine their handheld lights,
Waving, yelling, barely controlling,
'Round the World tonight all the guests cram into the Magic Kingdom,
A symphony in IPMagic.
Pure mobile apps light our way!

[Bob Chapek *or the rotating name tag of the year]

"Welcome to the frustration, the expense, the waking up180 days out, where the micromanagement and headache of a Disney Parks nightmare come to electric life.
And now, the Magic Kingdom proudly presents, in a million Magic Band tap points, the expensive worlds of Disney intellectual properties...in IPMagic!"
 
sirstude

sirstude

Member
I don't know, the FB guys just posted another video, and lots of new rock work bases going up. From the diorama, it appears to me they the entire buildings will be covered in some kind of rockwork. That ought to be pretty interesting.
 

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