Toy Story Land expansion announced for Disney's Hollywood Studios

Rich T

Rich T

Well-Known Member
Flat rides are generally awesome and can be incredibly well themed (Dumbo, Mad Tea Party, Mater's). They shouldn't be all a park has, but they're a wonderful, kinetic element at any theme park, and have been part of Disney since 1955. As a supplement to dark rides and themed coasters, they can be wonderful. I think a lot of people have forgotten just how much fun and energizing riding a flat ride with your family can be. Sure, you can ride a flat ride at a carnival, but y'know what? Walking can be done anywhere, too--but walking through a city dump isn't as much fun as walking through a Disney park (at least that's how it used to be :D)
 
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doctornick

Well-Known Member
Mike S said:
Flat rides aren't really needed though. It wasn't until sometime in the 90's where Disney started adding more and more of them outside of the opening of a brand new castle park and has continued since. There are other and better methods to all ages rides.
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I would agree that you don't "need" flat rides and you can make a perfectly great park without any. That said, there's nothing wrong with some a complimentary attractions. One are where they are beneficial is providing kinetics and visual stimuli for an area.

DHS getting a few flat rides is fine as a ramp up in capacity preparing for bigger things (and crowds) to come. The park actually needs overall more attractions and it can help to fill things out. IMHO the bigger issue is with building an 11 acre land for Toy Story with only minimal increase in rides. Adding a dark ride or two to the existing plans would make a dramatic difference in how the ride would be received.

That all being said, the original plans for TSL was for one flat ride -- the Slinky coaster is not a flat ride.
 
MayorLionheart

MayorLionheart

Active Member
SCOTLORR said:
Honestly, RC Racer looks extremely fun, it's just an incredibly awful eye sore that would likely be visible from immersive areas in other lands of the park. Same goes for the parachute drop.
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It's not fun; you're so tightly tied in to the seats it doesn't have the same free fall feeling as a Pirate Ship Amusement Ride. It also lasts about 45 seconds.
 
Mike S

Mike S

Well-Known Member
TeddyinMO said:
Mike, there are other ways. But what's your definition of better? Would 5 new e-tickets be better? Sure. But at what cost? My point is Disney can essentially complete DHS' revamp with a relatively small addition to the previously approved budget. What's been announced so far is a start, but I think we all think there's something missing.

With millions already invested/planned, adding hundreds of millions more is not really a good idea or feasible for any exec to propose. This is the benefit of flat rides. They fill in the gaps at a low cost. Oh, and they can be fun too. RC and Parachute are actually a lot of fun. Heck, my kids and I love the flat rides at Bugs Life in DCA, which I realize get blasted on these boards, but they fill a specific niche at DCA. And of course, Dumbo and the Carousel are the original flat rides. They don't hurt anything, and they do fill a gap for a relatively low cost.

Look, I know we all want the next, greatest ride. I actually believe we are getting two of those with Star Wars. The addition of flat rides on their own is not good enough. The addition of flat rides as a supplement to much bigger plans is a valuable addition.
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I didn't once say E Ticket. A nice collection of charming and fun C ticket dark rides like what can be found in Fantasyland* would've been just fine but those types of rides seem to have fallen by the wayside recently as a kind of lost art. A D Ticket like Frozen Ever After would've been very welcome as well.

*see Disneyland's.
doctornick said:
I would agree that you don't "need" flat rides and you can make a perfectly great park without any. That said, there's nothing wrong with some a complimentary attractions. One are where they are beneficial is providing kinetics and visual stimuli for an area.

DHS getting a few flat rides is fine as a ramp up in capacity preparing for bigger things (and crowds) to come. The park actually needs overall more attractions and it can help to fill things out. IMHO the bigger issue is with building an 11 acre land for Toy Story with only minimal increase in rides. Adding a dark ride or two to the existing plans would make a dramatic difference in how the ride would be received.

That all being said, the original plans for TSL was for one flat ride -- the Slinky coaster is not a flat ride.
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My point was to the fact that the only flat rides you would originally see were the Carousel, Dumbo, Mad Tea Party, and the Rocket Jets/Astro Orbiter. These are somewhat of a tradition since Disneyland so I don't mind them. At some point though Disney started to see rides like that as the de facto way to please families with young children. I guess the earliest example would be Gadget's Go Coaster* out in Disneyland's Toontown but it was also paired with Roger Rabbit which is a pretty great dark ride. Shortly after MK got Barnstormer and Aladdin's carpets with a tiny Agrobah in the middle of Polynesia. Then to help two other parks they built Dino-Rama and A Bug's Land. Paradise Pier is another land with many flats but it also mixes in other types of rides and on the whole works better imo. Now we have Toy Story Land, another land in the vein of A Bug's Land and Dino-Rama. The 11 acres being taken up by these two rides is a real head scratcher. Especially when just one more acre gets you the size of Cars Land which mixed in the flats instead of making them the focus. Mater's was a fun ride when I went on and is exactly what Buzz will be but there was also Radiator Springs Racers in that land so it was appropriately a side attraction.

I won't mention the worldwide parks here to keep this short-ish and again I don't have anything against the flats that have essentially grand fathered themselves in from the opening of Disneyland.

*Yes, also not a flat ride like Slinky isn't but these kinds of coasters still generally fit the category in the way we talk about them.
 
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lazyboy97o

lazyboy97o

Well-Known Member
Next Big Thing said:
This is why i've always been for a CG Animation land at DHS. Fantasyland leans heavily on Hand-drawn animation, so i'd love to see a land with all the CGI stuff come together under one umbrella. Give the land some unifying name and be done with it.
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Computer animation is a storytelling technique, not an element of story. The only reason so many films seen in Fantasyland are hand drawn is because computer animation is still relatively new.

Rich T said:
Okay, I gotta say this: Army Men Parachute Drop is a LOT better than Jumpin' Jellyfish. Jumpin' Jellyfish is one of the worst rides on the planet. It doesn't even "drop"... it just goes slowly up and down. It's too intimidating-looking for small children, and too boring for anyone older. And the boarding process/seat design is um...potentially very painful for males.
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They are both Intamin Parachute Towers.
 
DinoInstitute

DinoInstitute

Well-Known Member
Matt7187 said:
Flat rides just get trashed because some people think every thing needs to be a super E ticket, or it is Disney being cheap lol.
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That's not true at all. It's not like the only two types of attractions are "super E ticket" and flat ride, there's ways to do lesser quality attractions without them looking tacky and still making fulfilling experiences.

And it's even possible to create nice flat rides. Maters, for example, is a highly themed and very fun flat ride, and fits it's area well. Parachutes isn't really the same thing.

Not that I'm one of the people that are completely against flat rides, I'm just saying that they aren't highly regarded for a reason.
 
Next Big Thing

Next Big Thing

Well-Known Member
lazyboy97o said:
Computer animation is a storytelling technique, not an element of story. The only reason so many films seen in Fantasyland are hand drawn is because computer animation is still relatively new.
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I know that.

However, my point was more, Fantasyland is the Disney animation of old. DHS could have a land of new Disney Animation. It's not hard. I was simply saying, if you're going to have an animation land in DHS (TS Land), at least go bigger.

Right now all of the new Disney animation is being blobbed all around the resort into places it doesn't belong (see Frozen, Possible WIR, BH6 M&G). All of that could fit in a land at DHS. The problem with new Disney Animation is the theme of their movies isn't "Fantasy" too much anymore. Much of it is "Adventure"... but not in an Adventureland way. And then people get all up in arms when these movies don't go into a land where they don't thematically fit.
 
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Mike S

Mike S

Well-Known Member
Next Big Thing said:
I know that.

However, my point was more, Fantasyland is the Disney animation of old. DHS could have a land of new Disney Animation. It's not hard. I was simply saying, if you're going to have an animation land in DHS (TS Land), at least go bigger.

Right now all of the new Disney animation is being blobbed all around the resort into places it doesn't belong (see Frozen, Possible WIR, BH6 M&G). All of that could fit in a land at DHS. The problem with new Disney Animation is the theme of their movies isn't "Fantasy" too much anymore. Much of it is "Adventure"... but not in an Adventureland way. And then people get all up in arms when these movies don't go into a land where they don't thematically fit.
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Moana, if it turns out good enough, would be a fine fit for Adventureland. Much better than Aladdin is.
 

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