It's a new breed of 'land' these days... The land itself is as much of an attraction as the rides within them. When you look at new lands like Pandora, Cars, and the Harry Potter lands at Universal, the line between attraction and land/environment really starts to blur. There is so much to see and experience, such amazing detail and scale put into these things.
In some ways, depending on the ride, walking around the land is maybe even superior when you figure that with an attraction you're looking at something fabricated inside of a show building, but on the outside you're seeing something that feels far more real. The difference is, you're not sitting in a ride vehicle and didn't have to wait a few hours to experience it!
That is kind of how I felt at Pandora. Both rides were great, but only when I walked around the land itself did i look up with my jaw wide open.