Tom Sawer Island closing date

[FettFan]

Disney never starts a project late, nor do they start a project early, they start a project precisely when they mean to.

Speaking of which….who holds the park rights to LotR?

 

[Centauri Space Station]

Totally agree. With the price for a one day ticket on all Disney Parks reaching $200, EACH park should give the paying customer a full day of entertainment. There should be a Minimum of 20 attractions per park. Currently only the MK has 20. As a life long fan of WDW, I consider this the biggest failure of Disney's Corp leadership.

Every park besides DHS has atleast 20 attractions. Attractions are more than just rides but shows as well.

 

[Mr. Sullivan]

Speaking of which….who holds the park rights to LotR?

Embracer Group. They're a company based out of Sweden. However, the rights they do have are a little bit tricky. They can use the LotR property for theme parks, but they cannot explicitly use the books (which is owned still by Tolkein's estate) or use anything from the films or Rings of Power TV show as those are owned by Warner/New Line/Amazon. They are limited to things set within the world of LotR, but not brushing up against what has been made in media already.

Disney or Universal could in theory get the rights to make something based off the films (Universal seems more likely as they're already in bed with Warner), but I imagine they'd have to in some way collaborate with Embracer to do that.

As cool as it would be, I don't see LotR making it to a theme park any time in the near future.

 

[TrojanUSC]

I remember following the construction progress of Islands Of Adventures and visiting within a month of when it opened. People were saying that IOA was going to "blow Disney out of the water". It did not.

IOA was a great park. Port of entry was gorgeous and Mythos was a memorable meal+vibe. I also remember thinking the the cat in the hat dark ride was as a new standard - or rather, Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin did it first. Dudley Do Right Falls surprised the hell out of me. Did not expect it to be that aggressive. The winner at IOA was Spiderman. THAT was the big take-away from that park.

Bottom line - IOA did NOT blow Disney away - and I predict, neither will EPIC.

IOA was their first real foray into truly themed entertainment, as opposed to the Studio parks which are a bit more just "ride the movies" with some window dressing. It is a great park and I would argue still largely better than most of Disney's latest international theme parks.

Harry Potter I think really did blow Disney away in a lot of ways, to the point where the level of success is why we are seeing only IP rides from now on.

Disney fired so many legacy Imagineers in the last 3-5 years that a lot of them just went to Universal, so I think Epic is just going to be pretty incredible.

Disney has nostalgia and kids, so they'll always have an audience but it's going to make it much harder to keep guests on site the entire time instead of venturing down the road.

 

[Phonedave]

Because it is a massive project to fill in RoA and because the lay down yard requires a big clearing. Regulators are very very picky. Answering requests like this is often very expensive too because you have to hire consultants who specialize in what they’re asking for. I wonder if they’re at the stage where they ask Disney to look for an Indian burial ground yet…

Oh SHPO and I used to be best of friends at one time.

 

[EricsBiscuit]

Oh SHPO and I used to be best of friends at one time.

What’s funny/ironic is in many parts of FL you have to dig for Indian burial sites and if you find one on site your project faces some… hurdles! I have a cousin who had to do that when he was doing some work on his farm.

 

[Phonedave]

What’s funny/ironic is in many parts of FL you have to dig for Indian burial sites and if you find one on site your project faces some… hurdles! I have a cousin who had to do that when he was doing some work on his farm.

I used to have responsibility for certain microwave transmission towers. Many of these are in areas that are impractical to serve via fiber or copper telecommunications. Turns out that many of those impractical areas are historic or Native American. Anytime we wanted to anything to a tower that involved construction (such as a fence) we had to file with the SHPO for whatever State we were in. The whole Cape Cod area is riddled with burial grounds.

 

[SoFloMagic]

Disney or Universal could in theory get the rights to make something based off the films (Universal seems more likely as they're already in bed with Warner), but I imagine they'd have to in some way collaborate with Embracer to do that.

As cool as it would be, I don't see LotR making it to a theme park any time in the near future.

Maybe it'll replace super hero island at Universal when they sell the marvel rights back to Disney in exchange for Oswald.

/s

 

[Bocabear]

I am not sure LOTR would even make a good attraction or thematic section of a park. And quite frankly Disney owns a ridiculous amount of Ip...good stuff they are not using in the parks... Only seems to be recent animation or Pixar... So there is no need for them to purchase any additional non-Disney IP at this point...

 

[LittleBuford]

I paid my first visit (or at least the first that I remember) to Tom Sawyer Island last weekend. I really enjoyed myself! It's a surprisingly large and rich escape from the busyness of the rest of the park, and I appreciated all the opportunities for exploration it offered. That said, I understand why they want to make more productive use of the space, which now feels like a quaint throwback to another era (this is something I like on a personal level, but I can't deny it's of limited appeal). What I can't wrap my head around, however, is the loss of the surrounding river, which adds so much to the beauty and spacing of the park. I really hope they reconsider, though I know that's exceedingly unlikely.

 

[JohnD]

I had to Google what that is, and apparently it's not a really fast snail.