The Enchanted Tale of Beauty and the Beast just opened in Tokyo and it is absolutely stunning.
Pros:
1. It has the feeling of a stage play, but instead of sitting in an audience, you get to be up on stage and be close to the cast. It's one of the good things a trackless system can do. The lighting highlights the actors like a stage play. I think it's a cool twist to a dark ride.
2. The animatronics are amazing. Very fluid.
3. Can't go wrong with Alan Menken's wonderful soundtrack.
Cons:
1. The ride vehicles are too large. Due to this the space for each scene has to be big and that only allows a handful of set pieces.
2. The set pieces are too sparce. There could have been more figures and background animations to fill things in and make things more busy and increase re-ridability. Feels as if they spent so much on a small number of animatronics they could have toned them down a bit and had more. Especially the Something There scene. Felt like it was just idol for a while before moving on. Weird.
3. As has been stated, it does feel like you are just going from one song to the next with no feeling of plot.
Overall, it's different and that's not a bad thing, but just could have been executed a bit better. Smaller vehicles could have had added hallways and allowed more halls and rooms instead of a few big ones giving at least some parts of the ride a more intimate feel and story, similar to Mystic Manor. I would keep the ending ballroom scene, but add many more characters and background projections to liven it up. Smaller vehicles could have meant more room for the characters to dance around. I like that the vehicles get to dance with them a bit.
B-