First impressions.
The environment scenery is overall quite pretty. I'm not spotting any instances where they just left structural areas exposed and blank walls. This was one of my biggest problems with attractions such as Little Mermaid, Frozen Ever After, Mickey etc. Lighting looks nice as well, at least after you get past the initial Slippin Falls drop daylight spillage. I also liked one little detail they added to compensate for the fact that WDW's version has less water-filled show scenes around the beginning- it looks like the floor around the intitial Tiana and critter band was given a glossy overlay to make it appear like it's filled with water. Not a bad little touch.
Negatives are that the few instances of video projection used for characters are extremely poor. The giant Tiana and Louis heads in the shrunken parts are really awkward and look stupid IMO. Not a fan of this being used to fill out the windows in the finale either. The "effects based" projections on the backgrounds such as fireflies and such seem to look good though.
While I appreciate that the finale scene is more filled out with physical characters than expected, it looks like Big Daddy and Naveen's parents got the video screen treatment and aren't physical figures. Shame. And most of the critter characters are indeed limited motion and have nowhere near the range of motion of many of their predecessors. The quality of their exteriors are at least much better than Mermaid, but still sad that they have so little motion. I'd have hoped at least the larger critters such as the bears, bobcats and giant frogs would have a greater range, but unfortunately they don't seem to have it either.
The new song is decent, not great and not bad. At least it sounds appropriate to the time period though and doesn't seem to mix in modern instrumentation. But it doesn't hold a candle to you-know-what that came before it.
I think it's mostly a downgrade from what it replaced. It's not nearly as much of one as some other replacements we've seen IMO. I think it's far better than Frozen Ever After for instance, and infinitely better than Mickey or any of the Future World replacements. On its own merits ignoring what came before, it's really quite good. But given that it's a replacement of a ride that easily stood strong among the best of the best, it's impossible not to compare it. And it indeed just doesn't compare.
Everyone here touts Shanghai Pirates as some sort of wondrous phenomenon. Let's not start with the screens complaints!
I'm not nearly as crazy about Shanghai's Pirates as some other people are. I think the original over at Disneyland (and also the updated Paris variant) are still unmatched. At the very least though, Shanghai's can better stand on its own because it was a completely new thing and not a gut/replacement for an existing ride.
A rumor that was true. But then retracted and disowned. But then actually true. Fascinating.
I don't know if it WAS ever retracted. Someone claimed it was and then never gave a followup source when asked for it.
According to
@MerlinTheGoat, there were 17 "legitimate" AA's. This discounts any limited range figures, which would be like the frogs in the Tiana finale. So I would say it's about the same, removing those frogs.
That's is indeed accurate to the amount of legitimate AA's in the original. Disneyland had a larger amount at 26. Unfortunately it appears that most of the critters in Tiana's finale are limited motion and I wouldn't classify those as genuine AA's since they're far less articulated than what came before.
