The Spirited 11th Hour ...

[WDW1974]

^Experienced both for the first time last spring. FJ fell below my lofty expectations for a number of reasons while Gringotts met or exceeded them. I'd go as far to name Gringotts the best attraction in Orlando since Tower of Terror.

For me, the biggest test was the set-to-screen integration/transition. FJ's is somewhat jarring and took me out of the moment, whereas Gringotts was much better integrated in both the queue and ride.

FJ was groundbreaking. Gringotts is not.

But Gringotts is also a ride that more people can ride. FJ is borderline extreme. I know I had some concern putting my 70ish parents on it a few years back.

I don't share your, or the UNI Wand Wavers, enthusiasm for it at all. It is fun and quality, but not special at all.

 

[Andrew C]

So, everyone is interested in Bob Weis's Tweets all of a sudden?

haha, I think that is on me. Just found it interesting that his tweets were very political in nature...."not that there's anything wrong with that"

 

[WDW1974]

Two more questions:

2. Will the currently spending spree include anything that remains unannounced for EPCOT?

1. Does the current spending spree also include more things that remain unannounced for Disney Studios?

How come question 2 comes prior to question 1. Are you a disrupter? They are all the rage today. From Netflix, which is at least legal, to Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, DraftKings etc that are basically not!

I will still answer your questions.

2.) Who knows? Everyone and their fanboi will tell you there are 'plans for EPCOT' ... but never anything specific. My guess is they are simply looking at festival ideas to fill in the 3-4 months a year that they don't clutter the place up and reminds you of just how little there is there now.

1.) There is a third phase of the makeover that has a Pixar tie that hasn't been announced yet, but has been widely speculated on.

 

[CaptainAmerica]

2.) Who knows? Everyone and their fanboi will tell you there are 'plans for EPCOT' ... but never anything specific. My guess is they are simply looking at festival ideas to fill in the 3-4 months a year that they don't clutter the place up and reminds you of just how little there is there now.

I thought that was all-but-confirmed. Some kind of Technology thing.

 

[WDW1974]

He may have sold his soul, but since he has taken over WDW, especially magic kingdom, has been cleaner and nicer and better maintained. (Better, but not perfect).

I have not experienced that at all. Most attractions have atrocious show quality. Hell, they've turned Pirates into a water ride ... and Small World looks like it needs the Paris treatment at this point ... CoP is embarrassing ... Buzz is eternally ghetto ... and Space ...etc ...

And the parts that look really nice, like Fantasyland, are the result of work that he had no hand in whatsoever.

Whatever you see as cleaner and better maintained, I do not.

 

[ford91exploder]

wow.. people really have no confidence on Meg.
Is she really that bad in management and business?


.

Meg is best known for reducing the QUALITY of the products, Whatever else Tupperware is incredibly high quality, This move is seen as a bad one because once Meg get's her claws into the business. Tupperware will lose its quality advantage and become just another plasticware vendor who can be supplanted by no name chinese imports.

 

[WDW1974]

On what basis do you say he "hates the parks"? He has spent more money expanding/overhauling all the existing resorts (as well as constructing a new park in Shanghai) than Eisner did in his last 10 years. Yes there were misfires like Mymagic+ and New Fantasyland but we also got stuff like the redo of DCA with Cars Land and Star Tours 2. Just look at what we are getting in the next few years: Avatar Land, Rivers of Light, Star Wars Land, Huge retooling of Hollywood Studios, and then there is stuff that hasn't been announced yet (Marvel Land for DCA, Changes to Epcot, etc.) in addition to little stuff like a new Soarin' and Frozen-Strom. Under Eisner something like Soarin' or Frozen would have been hailed as a "Major addition" to the parks and would be used as an excuse not to reinvest for at least 5 years.

Well, he did look into selling all or part of them. That pesky fact that any entertainment analyst on Wall Street will tell you.

More money? Really? In MDE's last ten years, Disney opened five theme parks across the globe, including a new resort in Hong Kong, a new water park at WDW, a new Cruise Line, countless attractions, parades and entertainment at existing parks. You want me to bring in @ParentsOf4 with pie charts and numbers? And that's nice that you are including a $3 billion tech boondoggle in NGE as part of Iger's accomplishments. You may not have liked what was opened from 1995-2005, but a whole lot more was than what was opened from 2005-2015. How many years do you give someone to show results? A decade isn't enough for you? Because I would have tossed Iger out by 2010-11 based on what was happening at P&R.

And you really think that DIS isn't going to hugely play up an expanded Soarin with new film (borrowed from Shanghai, except for the ending) and an attraction based on Frozen?!?!? Seriously. You wanna go with that?

 

[WDW1974]

So because it was Bob Iger who greenlit Star Wars Land now all of a sudden Star Wars has no place in DL? LMAO. Have you forgotten that Star Tours has been one of the most popular rides at Disneyland since it opened in the late 80s??

I'm assuming the other attractions George Lucas designed with WDI (Indiana Jones, Captain EO, Alien Encounter, etc.) for DL & WDW are A-OK and Star Wars Weekends was a genius idea because they all happened under the watch of our beloved leader and creative genius Michael D. Eisner.

Neo, Neo ... Neo.

Don't be daft. I have already written why I ... and why any fan of DL and Walt and his beliefs ... should have a big problem with SW going where it is. And it has nothing to do with the moron who approved it, beyond the fact he wanted to make a mark on DL and hadn't been able to in a decade.

One ride in Star Tours is not hacking the RR and TSI and the RoA ... and destroying one of the most idyllic places in the park to fit in a land simply based on a non-Disney IP that Bob was able to acquire. DL's ethos is very clear. There is no place for a fantasy space soap opera land. SW belongs either in a park like DCA (where you just throw anything regardless of fit, which is why Marvel will be there) or, if it is so strong and so popular, than you use it as the basis for a third gate with all the land you currently own (and they are slumlords to plenty of their CMs).

This isn't an Iger vs. Eisner question. It's a "How much faith do we have in the Force?" question for Bob ... and a matter of right and wrong. And almost any old school WED/WDI guy/gal will tell you that SW in DL is a big, big mistake and a fundamental altering of Walt's park for the first time in 60 years.

 

[PhotoDave219]

Are you a fan of Pole based sports Mr. Dave?

Yes. They're my clients. Its like any other form of dance.

 

[WDW1974]

I hope you noticed I said "early Eisner" was successful, not the man who later ran everything into the ground.

Iger is investing in the parks when it needs to be done. The parks simply aren't his passion. They're also not his focus; many of the changes came through others who fought for the money (e.g. Lasseter and even Staggs). Iger's babies are Pandora and MyMagic, and he largely doesn't understand what how the parks function when you aren't being whipped around by a tour guide.

A few years ago, he was legitimately looking at selling them off.

However, I'm pleased with his latest changes to WDI. It looks like Iger is wisely allowing someone with the necessary passion to run the division, and we might see a renaissance as a result.

Or he's wisely allowing someone to head WDI in his last 2.5 years with the company who he never, ever, ever would have chosen to because ... well, things will be a lot cleaner that way!

 

[PhotoDave219]

BTW, can't help but see Bob has less than 2,000 followers, which yet again tells you what a lie Twitter is. Either that or convince yourself that folks like Tom Amity and Tom Bricker and Epcot Explorer and Ricky Brigante and any of the Parkscope bois or any lifestyler you can possibly name (even that Swedish chick who borrowed the Disney Lifetyler moniker for herself) have many thousands of REAL people following them. They flat out do NOT. They have IPs tied to a device anywhere on the planet that have been bought in bulk or simply tagged their account once for whatever reason. But I am sorry to all of them, a few who I actually like, but 10,000 people are not reading your tweets on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.

.... and at least one of those people you mentioned has a company employee writing tweets for them.....

 

[WDW1974]

I won't defend the years of stagnation and insane price hikes, but I will concede that the MK had to fix a decade's worth of neglect before it could move forward. Even then, the refurbs took too long and in some cases (SPACE), weren't completed.

It's time for a welcome rush of projects at all the parks (especially Epcot), along with overall maintenance.

I don't see the MK as being fixed just because it got the very overpraised Fantasyland project, a hideous Hub redo, and opened a restaurant in Adventureland that had been closed since the mid-90s. The MK sorta gets a pass on quality because it still has quantity.

 

[WDW1974]

Oh, back to Lifestylers briefly ... but isn't it amazing how many of them now openly shill for Disney's retail unit, whether it is tweeting about sales at Disney Store online, new merchandise that will be coming out etc. ... I know, they are just trying to help their fellow fans.

 

[WDW1974]

@WDW1974
I'm curious as to whether or not you've heard if Mr. Weis has an opinion on the upcoming redo of MGM given his involvement in the design of the original park. I'm sure he feels the park has been butchered over the last 15+ years and needs a change, but I would imagine that there may be aspects of the original park that he would be sad to see go (The Earful Tower for example). Is it possible that his new role in Imagineering could affect the end result of the redesign?

I would surmise that Bob has lots of opinions on the park. I know that one of his 'demands' when agreeing to return and 'fix' DCA was that the hat go bye-bye. It happened three years later than it was supposed to, I might add.

He can have an effect on the Extreme Makeover: Typical Disney Theme Park Edition. But things that are already in the pipeline are going to happen and largely happen as has been planned under Bruce and Craig. The further out you go, the more of a difference Bob can make. I would expect that he will make a considerable one on this park because it is so early in the process and it means so much to him. But the basics of TSL and SWL are not going to change.

 

[flynnibus]

Nope, expected that they'd be more. Not that Disney would add $50+ to every other previously booked night.

Wow.. yeah 'pound sand' would be my response

 

[michmousefan]

Look at the bland feeds of Imagineers from Joe Rohde to Jason Grandt to that British dude that was working at HKDL, but has relocated to the swamps. Never has so much been said of so little substance. Why? Because they are all afraid of Bob and Zenia.

Rohde's Twitter feed might be bland, but not so on Instagram... he's a lot of fun to follow as he frequently shares design and art inspiration, even throwing in a lecture here and there. 100X more interesting and entertaining than most IG accounts.

 

[flynnibus]

No if you try to add rather than make a separate reservation they will attempt to jack up the other nights

Mind boggling..

 

[FigmentForver96]

Its the cost of the plane ticket combined with their bias that since DLR is smaller, there isn't much too do. And every bad experience I've had has been at the resorts, never at the parks. So its a weird dichotomy.

Every trip out there, my sister refuses to go. She says all the pictures she has seen makes it seem like the parks are dirty. I wish people would just give it a chance.

 

[asianway]

Oh, back to Lifestylers briefly ... but isn't it amazing how many of them now openly shill for Disney's retail unit, whether it is tweeting about sales at Disney Store online, new merchandise that will be coming out etc. ... I know, they are just trying to help their fellow fans.

No they just saw how lucrative affiliate links are for stitch kingdom and want their piece

 

[PhotoDave219]

At this point, Small World just needs to close for a year (or more). It was utterly disgusting the last time I rode it. Caked on dust all over the white facades, grimy boats, broken/non-functioning AAs (didn't the sun in the South Pacific scene used to move), trash in the queue and in the boats, just filth everywhere. This same observations can be placed on just about every attraction at MK.

We've been over this many times..... As Disney has shifted the crowd to fill in the previously "dead" or off-season times, they've essentially eliminated any time available for necessary rehabs and maintenance. Thats what September-October and Jan-Feb used to be for. Close something for a few weeks just to clean and fix.