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The Miscellaneous Thought Thread
- Thread starter mickEblu
- Start date
Disney Analyst
Well-Known Member
TP2000
Well-Known Member
I just looked. At a rain gauge not far from where Disney is building their new Storytelling gated community in Rancho Mirage, they've just had over 2 inches of rain this afternoon.
Average rainfall there for the entire month of September is one third of an inch.
Then I saw the rain went all the way west to Pasadena, and so checked the Mattercam. Yup, it's raining at Disneyland too.
On September 1st. Very rare.
Average rainfall there for the entire month of September is one third of an inch.
Then I saw the rain went all the way west to Pasadena, and so checked the Mattercam. Yup, it's raining at Disneyland too.
On September 1st. Very rare.
Californian Elitist
Well-Known Member
This is creepy.
NotCalledBob
Well-Known Member
Does anyone know what is wrong with Haunted Mansion holiday today?
It's been up and down all day long. Probably closed more than open.
It's just been shut for 2 weeks? Should be running perfectly today.
Doubly annoying as I would have preferred to see the original version.
It's been up and down all day long. Probably closed more than open.
It's just been shut for 2 weeks? Should be running perfectly today.
Doubly annoying as I would have preferred to see the original version.
NotCalledBob
Well-Known Member
I just looked. At a rain gauge not far from where Disney is building their new Storytelling gated community in Rancho Mirage, they've just had over 2 inches of rain this afternoon.
Average rainfall there for the entire month of September is one third of an inch.
Then I saw the rain went all the way west to Pasadena, and so checked the Mattercam. Yup, it's raining at Disneyland too.
On September 1st. Very rare.
View attachment 740473
It absolutely poured. But, only for about 10 seconds. Took everyone by surprise.
Californian Elitist
Well-Known Member
It’s been shut down for two weeks to install HMH, not for maintenance. Expecting any ride to run perfectly is setting yourself up for disappointment. Things happen. Today is the first day of the Halloween season and the ride is super popular.
Hope you can get on at some point before the day ends.
NotCalledBob
Well-Known Member
Oh I absolutely know that. I worked in ride operations for Merlin for 5 years whilst at University. Many, many moons ago. I know how temperamental ride systems can be.
I don't understand why they wouldn't use the closure for maintenance to give it a once over as well. Whilst the decor crew are doing their thing. It seems very key to the park Halloween event.
Californian Elitist
Well-Known Member
They have to change pretty much everything about the ride. It’s a completely different experience than Mansion. There likely isn’t enough time to do full maintenance and install everything in just two weeks. We would have to ask someone from the team, because I’m guessing and I’m curious.
Alanzo
Well-Known Member
After a week at DLR, seeing people out and about and comparing my own experience with what was foretold I would experience....
This forum seems to leans Boomers/Gen X with a strong tone of disappointment towards what could have been, kinda like San Fransokyo.
r/disneyland seems to lean Millennial/Gen Z with a lot more emphasis on vibes than sight lines and less awareness towards the theme park industry.
DLR in person felt like 75% locals, leaned hard Gen Z, and felt like a ton of people just hanging out trying to collect stuff with breaks to do stuff like... Rides. I'm a millennial and I definitely got the message that our number was called to move on and be old. The Zs are running things now.
This forum seems to leans Boomers/Gen X with a strong tone of disappointment towards what could have been, kinda like San Fransokyo.
r/disneyland seems to lean Millennial/Gen Z with a lot more emphasis on vibes than sight lines and less awareness towards the theme park industry.
DLR in person felt like 75% locals, leaned hard Gen Z, and felt like a ton of people just hanging out trying to collect stuff with breaks to do stuff like... Rides. I'm a millennial and I definitely got the message that our number was called to move on and be old. The Zs are running things now.
waltography
Well-Known Member
You hit it right on the head, although I'd argue r/disneyland also sees its fair share of budding Karen's and Kevin's on there too. It's a generational thing (we knew better, things were better back in the day, yada, yada, yada).
Not to prove your point...
...has anyone been keeping up with the new Disney trading card game Lorcana? Managed to pick up some cards amidst the crazy rollout the other day and I'm having a lot of fun learning it as my first TCG/collectible card game.
PiratesMansion
Well-Known Member
The way I see it, there are a lot of problems and things that could (or in some cases, used to) be better. But the parks still basically work and DL Park at least is still one of the best theme parks out there, and the only US Disney park that might actually be worth its highest ticket price.
The entire amusement industry is still in/recovering from (depending on your viewpoint) 2020 funk, and even this summer Disneyland was functioning a lot more effectively and a lot closer to normal than several other amusement parks I've visited over the past three years or so. DLR and USH feel closer to how they used to be than just about anywhere else at the moment. But that's the thing too-most of the people that post here don't regularly visit other theme parks, they just visit Disneyland, and maybe Universal. There isn't really a concept, or context, to where Disneyland is relative to other players in the industry, even relative to Disney's other properties; instead, they're judging Disneyland based on their conception of what Disneyland is/should be/has been in the past. And while there are aspects of that that make sense, a lot of those things are inherently subjective or based off of rose-colored memories-not that most will acknowledge that fact, of course. That can make it easy to take for granted how Disneyland still works a lot more effectively than many other parks or places out there, even if not everything is perfect. So the only thing that is noticed are the flaws.
And of course, the fanbase is the fanbase, people get in deep, and even people who clearly haven't regularly visited the parks in some time have strong opinions and like to make them known, Disney being a strong drug and all that. But people have been complaining about the decline of Disney/Disneyland/etc. for forever. Michael Eisner shared a story early on in his career at CEO that he received irate comments when a bench was moved at Disneyland. People who loved Magic Kingdom's Delta Dreamflight were belittled and dismissed by those who preferred the earlier If You Had Wings, never mind that both of those rides were essentially glorified ads for US Airlines. All of this has been constant and cyclical. There is naturally plenty of valid criticism to be directed at Disney, but there are also things that aren't that significant in the grand scheme of things that have gotten magnified into Big Deal Problems by overly passionate fans (i.e. Project Stardust). I'm sure one day, I'll get there too-if some don't already see me in that spot, I've certainly made some passionate, frustrated posts as of late myself-they'll finally go too far.
I have my concerns, of course-I'm still a little shaken by how many people on Twitter were confused and dismissive of those who objected to the Hatbox Ghost's placement within the WDW ride-but the park/resort still works a whole lot better than most out there, and a lot more than some people here give them credit for.
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ParkPeeker
Well-Known Member
I have a brother that loves yugioh tcg, and somewhat follows Pokemon tcg( he’s more into Pokémon showdown/Pokémon unite). So I think his tiktok feed shows card games?has anyone been keeping up with the new Disney trading card game Lorcana? Managed to pick up some cards amidst the crazy rollout the other day and I'm having a lot of fun learning it as my first TCG/collectible card game.
A few months or weeks ago he saw a live of a guy unboxing lorcana cards a la what ppl do with Pokémon cards, they go Oooooo, Wowwww at shinys/rares etc. Anyways he told me he thought the guy was not a real person/ was a shill, and that Disney was trying to get into the business
of tcgs to make them a bunch of money like Pokémon/yugioh hahaha.Super random, just made me think of that haha
Californian Elitist
Well-Known Member
Not only these things, but they’re also based on things written in books about Imagineering, what iconic Imagineers have said, books about Disneyland history, things Walt Disney said, etc. A lot of folks here yearn for an era of the park they never even personally experienced, most because they weren’t even alive yet.
PiratesMansion
Well-Known Member
I suppose I'm in that boat too. I wasn't even in elementary school when adherance to the old school values of WED are commonly agreed to have been lost forever. I wish I had the experience of the parks at that time-I do. It is undoubtedly because I don't have that firsthand knowledge of direct experience, on some level, that I look at what is there and see mostly signs that things are fine. I'd argue there's also a childhood nostalgia filter at play-I simply don't believe that most children are accurate critics of the state of DL maintenance at any given time. But perhaps it's not just children, but also changes in visitation, exposure, and how the Disney brand was viewed or consumed, as referenced in this Passport2Dreams blog post. To quote:
"Stuff was still broken and beat up at Magic Kingdom in the 1970s - its just that there wasn't any internet or annual passholders to report it."
| "January 1975 - and look at all the crooked, blown out lights!" |
Undoubtedly, the same thing was true of Disneyland too during the same time period.
Perhaps I should know better, though-ALL of the Asian parks, but especially Tokyo, are in MUCH better shape than either of the US resorts, and on the first visit back to one of the US resorts after that, the difference between the standards of Asia and those of the US are extremely noticeable. But my memory isn't good enough for this sense of difference to hold in any meaningful way, alas, nor do I feel that it's productive to hold on to that level of judgment. And to go the other way, conditions at Disneyland Paris during my 2015 visit were worse than anything I've seen at EITHER US Disney Resort-it wasn't that long ago that DLP was the resort that really was falling apart, but I feel like people have already largely forgotten this. Comparisons to other options in the US are also in play-I usually visit about 20 parks a year-and Disneyland Resort, as it currently exists, still looks pretty darn good in comparison to other places.
So I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. I can't ever really know what it was like in "the good ol' days", unless TDR is literally that with just a language change, and I wish I got to experience that time period myself. I have my frustrations with the place, and I imagine it would be worse if I did have that firsthand knowledge. But I also look at where DLR sits relative to other parks in the US, including WDW, and I don't have too much to complain about by comparison. And some of the complaints I do see seem so far removed from the actual experience of being in the parks now that I can't take them seriously.
Sure, things could be better, but they could also be a LOT worse.
Alanzo
Well-Known Member
I guess I should also mention that my family of 4.6 (expecting in December) had a great time. Have two kids under 4 so took it slow with breaks from the heat and made sure not to just do ride after ride after ride.
I didn't find any cast members to be particularly rude like I was kind of expecting based on comments here and even in the cluster that was Rogers: The Musical: The Seating Experience it felt like everyone was trying to do their jobs, futility or efficiency be damned.
It was great to see our four year old start to understand how theme parks work and even better to hear that her favorite ride was Pinocchio. She was mouth agape on her first real big kid ride, Smuggler's Run, and didn't know how... somewhat pedestrian that rode can be found by adults. Overall, besides the 4 hour flight from ORD there and back it was a kickass, expensive vacation and the whole family had fun, outside of the typical little kid crap like meltdowns and tears. A meltdown at Disney still finds you at Disney when the dust clears.
Side note: I VASTLY prefer Disneyland to Magic Kingdom for little kids. In fact, there's so little charm to me about Magic Kingdom as an adult that I definitely had the aforementioned childhood nostalgia filter applied when looking back. It feels like a Disney park made in a computer game with rides stamped into place separated by so much walking.
I didn't find any cast members to be particularly rude like I was kind of expecting based on comments here and even in the cluster that was Rogers: The Musical: The Seating Experience it felt like everyone was trying to do their jobs, futility or efficiency be damned.
It was great to see our four year old start to understand how theme parks work and even better to hear that her favorite ride was Pinocchio. She was mouth agape on her first real big kid ride, Smuggler's Run, and didn't know how... somewhat pedestrian that rode can be found by adults. Overall, besides the 4 hour flight from ORD there and back it was a kickass, expensive vacation and the whole family had fun, outside of the typical little kid crap like meltdowns and tears. A meltdown at Disney still finds you at Disney when the dust clears.
Side note: I VASTLY prefer Disneyland to Magic Kingdom for little kids. In fact, there's so little charm to me about Magic Kingdom as an adult that I definitely had the aforementioned childhood nostalgia filter applied when looking back. It feels like a Disney park made in a computer game with rides stamped into place separated by so much walking.
Californian Elitist
Well-Known Member
Congratulations on your newest edition to the family.
Happy to hear you and your family enjoyed yourselves. Your observations about the clientele were spot on.
I was born in 82 and was alive for what many fans would consider the end of the Glory Days of Disneyland. The park in the 80s/ early 90s felt more like the 50s/ 60s than the 2020’s feel like the 90’s. I got to experience America Sings and ride the Skyway. I was able walk around a park that was empty on weekdays. When it still felt like a “park.” I was around (although young) for the opening of Star Tours and Splash. Was 12 when Indy opened.
I’ll keep it short. They’ve forgotten some of the basics. Take your Hat Box Ghost example. He has no business being in the hallway but they re catering to a generation that just doesn’t get it or doesn’t really care about those kind of things. So Disney can cut corners. People expect less, Disney gives less, people expect less and the cycle continues. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the general public in any era would have cared where the Hatbox ghost goes but even the “super fans” are much more forgiving or indifferent now.
They also don’t necessarily have Disney on a pedestal like we do because they grew up in a world where Disney had plenty of competition. A generation that grew up with screens who don’t necessarily need all the physical, tangible stuff we do so something like MMRR is just fine and isn’t “missing something” like it is for many of us middle age/older fans.
But you’re right Disneyland (the place) is still Disneyland and better than just about every other park out there. Perhaps only rivaled (in certain aspects) by Disneyland Paris and Disney Sea. Thankfully, there is still enough of the beauty and greatness that Walt and and all the imagineers from the 50s to 90s brought to the park. Not say nothing good has happened after the 90s but anything that makes current Disneyland Disneyland was made in those 4 decades.
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