Brer Panther
Well-Known Member
That dog probably won't be in the retheme. As I've said before, they'll likely remove all the animatronics in the Laughin' Place and stick some fiber-optics around the room to represent fireflies.
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Tiana's Bayou Adventure: Disneyland Watch & Discussion
- Thread starter Californian Elitist
- Start date
Rich T
Well-Known Member
Funny how other parks manage to keep their maintenance standards up and train people to maintain beloved old attractions without taking the cheap, easy way out.
The thing that’s changed is Disney. Current leadership has made the company name synonymous with “greed.”
This lifelong fan of Walt Disney’s work is done with the Disney parks. For five decades I made yearly trips to DL with my family. Those memories will stay with me all my remaining days, but it’s been four years since my last visit to DLR and I have no interest in giving Bob’s Disney any more of my money.
Don’t forget, many of the people flooding into the parks this year think they’re in for the same quality experience they’ve had in the past. The next few years will be very interesting to watch, though I have no hope for the next CEO to be any better than the current one.
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el_super
Well-Known Member
Bit of confirmation bias in this I think. Lots of parks have switched to or built screen based rides that are cheaper to maintain than older animatronics driven offerings. Even just down the street, Knott's ended up replacing Kingdom of the Dinosaurs with a screen based ride. On the flip side, Disney tends to keep those older rides around longer as well, due in part to the historical significance.
Hopefully we can all accept that the longer something is around, the more expensive it is to maintain and keep it around. That's just a fact of life. Animatronics were expensive in the 1960s, but finding qualified machinists and technicians in the post-war era was easy to do. Now there is a significant shortage of skilled labor and people in general are turning toward communication and marketing degrees instead. That adds to the cost to keep these figures maintained.
Additionally OSHA standards and requirements have changed that also impact how many people can do a job, and where they can do a job. Someone once told me that Disneyland specifically spent about the same as an E ticket every year on worker's comp claims. Sending someone into a ride to repair an animatronic just isn't as feasible in every case, and if the animatronic has to be removed for servicing, it is easily going to require two or more people to perform the task. That definitely adds to the cost. Factor in that most of the service shops are offsite now, and transportation has to be included in that figure now too.
The easiest, and cheapest thing to do for Disney, would be to bulldoze lots of these AA laden rides and rebuild something entirely different. Something that doesn't depend on this ancient technology for entertainment value. That they haven't done that, and have continued to commit to keeping the animatronics, hiring and training new people to work on them, and even rebuilding a shop for their maintenance off site, seems to suggest that Disney isn't just about the money...
People have been saying this for decades and it has never been true. In all these years that people have said that show quality has slipped, attendance has just kept going up. Turns out you don't need a moving animatronic to get the perfect Instagram post.
el_super
Well-Known Member
Why is it so hard to just answer the question? If a ride was going to be down multiple days to fix an AA, would it be worth it to close the ride? What if it were to be weeks to fix?
Or what about Splash Mountain where we know CMs can't reach areas of the attraction overnight due to OSHA safety requirements? You want them to violate OSHA rules to keep the ride show ready, or would it just be better to have the ride down 50% of the time?
If the cost of maintaining AAs has doubled, or even tripled in the last 20 years, would you be in favor of doubling or tripling the price of admission to pay for their maintenance (or I guess in this case, historical preservation)?
Of course making the case that seeing broken AAs is so disappointing and unacceptable, and knowing how difficult it is to maintain them, seems to make a pretty clear cut case for Disney to remove them entirely from Splash and just be done with them. Which we all think is going to happen anyway.
Anyone taking bets on whether the new ride will be a success or not?
It’s not hard. I simply didn’t want to answer it again. Again, yes, it would be worth it.
I’ve already made my stance on this perfectly clear. Not here for the excuses.
el_super
Well-Known Member
Not really excuses, just reality.
Rich T
Well-Known Member
And yet, there ARE still parks in the U.S. and the rest of the world that maintain their classic attractions, put quality first, and charge reasonable prices. You speak as if Disney is never wrong, there are no practical paths beyond Bob’s Law, and that everyone should just accept it all and keep holding their wallets up to the Disney executives’ vacuum mouths.
If that’s truly how you want Disney to continue evolving, then keep supporting them. I’m done with Bobsyland. There are plenty of other, better sources of recreation and entertainment out there that don’t insult your intelligence and charge steak prices for McCrap.
One point I’d like to clear up, though: I do not think screens are always bad and AAs are always a better choice. They’re just the tools; the final product is what matters. But it’s important to remember that AAs are what really set Disney apart in the public consciousness. And AAs continue to wow and startle people; they’re something you don’t encounter every day in the real world. Pirates still impresses first-timers to this day. The Ratatouille ride impresses no one. It’s great to see quality AA‘s being used increasingly at non-Disney sites.
I just came back from my first trip to MK. I had a good time, but the maintenance and upkeep issues bothered me and, unfortunately, stood out to me. And I’ve been hearing a lot about the maintenance issues at the DLR, which is sad. I’m in no great rush to return to DL if Fantasmic! is not up to par, effects aren’t working on Indy, Snow, and other rides, etc. Not after paying a bunch of money to get in.
Guests notice these things. But, please, continue to make up excuses as to why Disney can’t and shouldn’t do better, despite DISNEY THEMSELVES creating and setting the previous standards.
Guests notice these things. But, please, continue to make up excuses as to why Disney can’t and shouldn’t do better, despite DISNEY THEMSELVES creating and setting the previous standards.
Dear Prudence
Well-Known Member
Unfortunately, they really are excuses and have very little to do with reality. They were able to comply with OSHA previously, for decades (and I actually know about OSHA because this is the sphere of the world I work in)! Name one OSHA law without Googling it. I understand that the laws for OSHA change regularly, especially if you take into consideration the over 30+ years operation of Splash Mountain. Disney are also supposed to update, are required to update, their own facilities to accommodate. I guarantee you it's less about OSHA and much more about not wanting to pay union workers OT. The state of the Disney parks and their attractions (Splash included) are disgusting, full stop. There are no excuses. There is no equivocating it. They are absolutely pitiful. The actual reality is is that the parks are dilapidated squalor covered in trash and filled with attractions that do not work. It is absolutely repugnant.
Dear Prudence
Well-Known Member
I cannot get over how so many people are acting like it's being too hard on Disney or that Disney is helpless. 1. they are not a person, they are a corporation, and 2. they did this to themselves? Like even the issues with Splash existing in the first place are 1000000000000% their fault. No one did that to them, they are not hard done by, like STOPPPPPPPPPPPP lmao
el_super
Well-Known Member
This isn't just a Bob directive... or the other Bob.... or the other other Bob... this move away from AAs has been decades in the making. Remember what DCA was like when it opened?
It's not a matter of Disney being wrong or right. They are making choices that strike a balance between providing a show, providing value in an attraction, maintaining their history and yes, being efficient with their money and resources. I strongly disagree that AAs are an important part of what sets Disney apart. The audience has moved away from thinking that robot shows are great entertainment, and Disney has to be aware of and respond to the audience expectations.
They will probably never build another Pirates or even another Tiki Room. But they still include AAs in their premiere rides. It's a balance.
Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong, but if the attendance keeps going up and they keep making money, we can be sure they are making the right decisions.
el_super
Well-Known Member
But you can't even answer the hard questions on whether rides and shows or even the whole park should be closed to maintain those standards. You went to the MK, despite knowing about the maintenance issues (if you read these boards) and you want to say that you found no value in your visit, or that you would have preferred that the park was closed?
I think you're right here. It's definitely in their best interest to get rid of most of the animatronics to save on maintenance and reduce these complaints that they don't work.
RIGHT. They’re charging us premium dollars. In return, I expect a premium experience. Instead, everyone’s complaints are reminding me of Lester’s Possum Park. Broken animatronics and just a ghetto atmosphere overall.
????
I have answered the “hard questions.” You’re just not paying attention.
How would you know if I was fully aware of MK’s maintenance issues or not? I also never said I found “no value” in the trip, so I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I literally said I had a good time not even an hour ago.
YES, I WOULD PREFER THEY CLOSE RIDES OR EVEN THE ENTIRE PARK FOR UPKEEP AND MAINTENANCE. And I’m not being sarcastic either.
Dear Prudence
Well-Known Member
OMG, it's literally this at this point. This is where we are. A sick parody of itself.
el_super
Well-Known Member
So you have some experience in how people weigh maintenance issues against the overall enjoyment of the park.
And just based on the above, it's easy to see that a lot of people wouldn't want that, and would be rather put off if the whole park had to close due to maintenance issues.
At the end of the day, this just isn't that big of a deal to most of the people going to the park.
Dear Prudence
Well-Known Member
Which is legitimately pitiful if people are seemingly just perfectly content with shoveling out almost 200 bucks a day for attractions where the vast majority of the lights aren't on. People get exactly what they deserve, I guess!
Too Many Hats
Well-Known Member
Haven't really been following this conversation, but it's interesting that it evolved into a discussion about the difficulty of maintaining AAs relative to other more modern effects.
AAs probably are objectively much more difficult and expensive to maintain, but you wouldn't know it from a day at Disneyland in 2022. Sure, the America Sings AAs from 1974 might not be working, but neither are the brand new projections on Snow White, the projections and smoke on Big Thunder, the hitchhiking ghosts, 10% of the kinetics on Small World, the mouth projected onto Lightning McQueen, the fire and lava and boulder on Indy, the audio on Haunted Mansion, etc. There's just no excuse.
AAs probably are objectively much more difficult and expensive to maintain, but you wouldn't know it from a day at Disneyland in 2022. Sure, the America Sings AAs from 1974 might not be working, but neither are the brand new projections on Snow White, the projections and smoke on Big Thunder, the hitchhiking ghosts, 10% of the kinetics on Small World, the mouth projected onto Lightning McQueen, the fire and lava and boulder on Indy, the audio on Haunted Mansion, etc. There's just no excuse.
Mkay.