You're far too kind - I only wish I were surprised by how many people are committed to engaging in bad faith about this ride.
It’s all very childish and even weird, getting that worked up and coming to irrational conclusions over a theme park ride. The hive mind isn’t helping.
Curious, did you see it in person recently?
Gotcha.
It seems a puzzling choice, but didn't someone point out that from the riders' perspective it blocks the distant view of Space Mountain?
My issue is the design of the mountain. Its a set of escalating tiers leading to that focal point of the tree. Without the tree, the mountain leads up to a large flat area without any feature to draw in the eye. It is the problem I have with modern Imagineering. They don't take design into consideration and as long as something doesn't look terrible, its good enough. Take for instance the blacked out area in Mission BO's facade. This isn't an interior set where blacking something out makes is disappear. They used the area for projection a few times, but that's it. Its just a confusing element where they ignored the design in place when trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.
Was the view of Space a problem? Being able to see the entire park was one of the best things about the drop on Splash. Covering up the view is an L.
I'm indifferent to the watertower at this point. Its not horrific. Its not amazing. I think the crown is a bit on the nose as I don't feel like it fits Tiana or the locale so instead it comes across a bit like the gaudy castle decorations. I'd rather have Ray and Evangeline represented as stars in the "i" and the apostrophe of "Tiana's" as a subtle Easter Egg that fits the locale and story, but its not that big of a deal.
That would be me. I took the placement on the model and looked at it from a ride-through on YouTube and noticed it conveniently blocked the view of Tomorrowland. Whether this was intentional or a coincidence I don't know.
My theory is the tower is to distract guests from looking at the big drop right before they go around to Slippin' Falls.
That's not where it is located though.
No one thinks that's going to happen. Zero.
Totally agree about the track record. And I can’t stand the tiara at this stage. But when people are starting to worry about the view from the drop or whether people will be drawn to the ride if the sight lines have changed… I think it’s ok to step back, remember that the ride is a long, long way from completion and realize that sometimes all of us armchair Imagineers (and I’m absolutely an armchair Imagineer) maybe… just maybe… fret a bit too much about log flumes.
