ToTBellHop
Well-Known Member
Disney finally one-upped Legoland and Hersheypark. It’s a proud day. Next year, I understand they’ve set their goal at surpassing Magic Mountain.
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Toy Story Land expansion announced for Disney's Hollywood Studios
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
ToTBellHop
Well-Known Member
(I actually like it, too)The people love it.View attachment 705835
ToTBellHop
Well-Known Member
They’d have to remove Goofy’s Chiropractor School to surpass Six Flags.I’d say it’s better than Justice League already
Poseidon Quest
Well-Known Member
I’d say it’s better than Justice League already
Having been on both, if SF managed to actually upkeep their Justice League rides, I think I would actually prefer them over Webslingers. Webslingers is actually experiencing the same upkeep issues though. When I go to California every few months, I notice that the ride continues to become less responsive over time. I went back in February and couldn't get it to shoot webs higher than about the mid-way point on screen.
UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
Exactly.
I said it above, but the original design of DHS is wonderful. You're in Los Angeles (or the LA metro area, if we want to be technical), and then you transition into a studio backlot -- one which looks exactly like LA area studio backlots. You move from "Los Angeles" into a studio, just like in real life.
It's fine to dislike it, but it's wrong to say it wasn't a specific intention executed successfully.
Also, I'm not commenting on DCA vs. DHS as a whole. I actually preferred the late 1990s or early 2000s version of DHS to current DHS anyways.
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No Name
Well-Known Member
Henry Mystic
Author of "A Manor of Fact"
No Name
Well-Known Member
Did either of us say anything about unthemed warehouses? What you chose to circle as “really bad areas” is not terrible but definitely very opinionated. For example, I see no circle around Pixar Pier!
Henry Mystic
Author of "A Manor of Fact"
There aren't soundstages (which are literally just cheap warehouses at actual movie studios) at DCA except for the Eastern-end of Hollywoodland (around Monsters Inc. & Guardians), and the cheaply themed northern end of Pixar Pier (around Goofy's Sky School) has a similar level of low-quality theming.
I am consistent in criticizing both parks where they have them. I am merely arguing DCA has fewer of them, therefore, I think it's a prettier park given the objective evidence. Your opinion can be different and if you find beauty in them fine, but what annoys me is how people somehow justify HWS' and trash on DCA's un-themed areas. Both parks are about the same size park in acreage if you include guest-facing areas, and HWS just has more poorly themed areas.
Everything I circled at HWS is the ugly soundstages. It would be different if someone was okay with this at HWS and DCA, but there seems to be picking and choosing.
Directly off the hub:
Directly on either side at what is otherwise a beautiful park centerpiece are unthemed show buildings in a concrete wasteland of a hub:
And the lack of theming goes on all the way from the side of MMRR to the end of Grand Avenue:
Echo Lake in general is overrated, but it has legitimately unthemed or borderline unthemed areas:
Rock n' Rollercoaster's courtyard is good (albeit clashes with the rest of Sunset Boulevard), but I like it a lot. The new flex event space that's now Lightning McQueen's Racing Academy looks pathetically bad:
DCA legitimately only has the END of Hollywoodland and the TOP of Pixar Pier where there are completely unthemed spaces like these, and they are on the outer ends of the park.
I'm not criticizing Avenger's Campus, Toy Story Land, etc. as they DO have a theme, cheaper than they should have been but still themed, but my point is, it's embarrassing for a company to charge up to $180 a day for a park that looks like this, and frankly, it's just a bad point of view if someone genuinely believes HWS is a better-looking park.
I also think HWS has beautiful areas: Galaxy's Edge, Sunset Boulevard, and Hollywood Boulevard, but DCA has more with Buena Vista Street, Grizzly Peak, Cars land, Paradise Park, and the southern end of Pixar Pier (from the entrance to Toy Story Midway Mania!).
I mean, an actual working film studio, Universal Studios Hollywood, manages to theme pretty much everywhere except the tiny Lower Lot. Why are people excusing HWS yet acting like DCA somehow has worse theming throughout when it just objectively doesn't?
For the map I circled originally, Click Here.
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Movielover
Well-Known Member
Those "un-themed warehouses" in DHS were designed as real soundstages, and the entire studio area was designed to mimic the look and style of the Walt Disney Studios in California since it was serving as an East Coast satellite studio.
This is a un-themed warehouse:
These are purposely built soundstages and production facilities to aid in the creation of and the showcasing of actual movie production that pays respect to the original studios back in California:
If you can't see the difference than I'm sorry.
Henry Mystic
Author of "A Manor of Fact"
What the "intention was" is irrelevant. It always meant HWS looked worse than immersive parks like EPCOT Center even when they were designed to be visited instead of transportive. It's why Disney California Adventure and especially Walt Disney Studios Paris replicated it because it meant they could hand-wave a lack of theming as "but it is themed!" It's like the people saying "but Chester & Hester's theming is great!" Sure, it's themed to something, but that something can be cheap.
And the thing is, HWS looks bad presently even though they are not serving that purpose anymore. All the areas especially off of the hub and Commissary Lane need to be rethemed just like DCA's Hollywoodland, Universal Studios Florida's Production Central, Universal Studios Hollywood's Lower Lot, and pretty much the entirety of Walt Disney Studios Paris still need to. It looks bad and it's cheap at every park that has it and they all need to go.
HWS just happens to have more of those cop-out theming areas than all those parks but Walt Disney Studios Paris.
Also, that warehouse you showed honestly backs up my point. Anything that looks like either of those things does NOT belong in a world-class theme park.
There's a reason why they themed the Toy Story Land side of the old soundstage that houses Toy Story Mania! If it's not a legitimate working movie studio building that's part of the park experience (the only park in the world that is presently real is Universal Studios Hollywood) then it needs to be themed to something actually themed.
Soundstages are unthemed at actual studios because it's cheaper that way, it is effectively, a warehouse building. I have been to many actual studios from Warner Bros. Studios, to Universal Studios Hollywood, to Walt Disney Studios, and to Trilith Studios in Atlanta, and they are cool as an actual film studio, but the moment they cease production they're not interesting at all. So when Toy Story Mania took over a soundstage it should then rightfully be themed to something else. Otherwise, it's just cheap.
Super Nintendo World, for example, shouldn't have just been soundstages where you enter them for rides and restaurants.
Only the actually working components of the studio should be themed to a studio. I apply that exact same logic to HWS, as everything from Lightning McQueen's Racing Academy to Commissary Lane and all of Animation Courtyard are un-themed, cheap laziness in 2023.
The fun fact is, DCA has objectively fewer of those boxes than HWS (and the only other ugly area that's on that level is again, around Goofy's Sky School), yet people act like HWS is a prettier park. If pretty is the metric, regardless of theme, those boxes are not pretty, and by the nature of DCA having fewer of those un-themed show buildings in numbers (Hollywoodland is universally regarded as needing the most help at DCA), I would argue HWS has far more areas that are just as bad as Hollywoodland.
Therefore, DCA is in my view a prettier park, but I'm backing it up with objective evidence because I think it's hypocritical to excuse the ugliness at HWS and yet blast DCA.
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UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
I can understand having that opinion if you never visited Disney-MGM in the early years, but it worked perfectly then (and it was a better park IMO). I don't think it's accurate to describe anything in your photos as un-themed during that era.
If your argument is they should have gone back in and changed the theming of those buildings once they gave up on the original incarnation, I can understand that (even if it's kind of unrealistic), but to suggest the park was poorly built from the start is wrong. Just as one example, you included a photo of the Backlot Express -- even now I don't think there's an argument that it's un-themed, but it's certainly lost much of the original theming (especially on the interior).
It didn't have enough to do, but what was there was mostly excellent, including the theming.
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Henry Mystic
Author of "A Manor of Fact"
Okay, then semantics is the issue for you.
Chester and Hester's Dino-Rama carnival, to me, looks equally bad as all those soundstage areas at HWS.
Walt Disney Studios likewise looks cheap, feels cheap, and was cheap. There's a reason why two of these photos don't exist anymore. The park is universally considered the worst Disney park in the world by a large margin:
They are both cheap themes to implement. A carnival is cheap in real life as are soundstages (which objectively are warehouses designed for films/tv). They look cheap and they are cheap.
They are not good themes for that reason and should be changed to something better. Buena Vista Street and Hollywood Boulevard are both great examples.
Why then do people take issue with the end of Hollywoodland? According to you, it's themed, right? I'd argue it's a cheap, bad theme and needs to blown off the face of the Earth as it's easily the sore spot of DCA. All cheap themes need to go including studio themes that presently aren't actual studios:
Again, my entire point can be summed it as Hollywood Studios has more of these cheaply themed areas than California Adventure does.
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UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
I significantly edited my post, so I'm not sure this response is applicable anymore -- you seem to solely be talking about the park as it exists now.
Regardless, I'm not comparing it to DCA. I'm saying Disney-MGM, as originally built, was close to a masterpiece from a theming standpoint. Everything was well themed and worked together as a transportive experience. It did not look or feel cheap in any way (and wasn't remotely comparable to Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris). The current version of the park has lost much of that for various reasons; it doesn't work anywhere near as well as an overall themed experience even if it has a better attraction lineup.
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Henry Mystic
Author of "A Manor of Fact"
Yes, because they were actually being used as such back then, so it made sense. I'd argue it was too much of the park's focus, USH has a better split today and thus feels fleshed out and not a half-day park, but regardless.
See my comment about the studio areas of Universal Studios Hollywood making sense as soundstages whereas the actual park-dedicated space outside the Tram Tour SHOULD be themed to something that's NOT cheap to implement (ex. Potter). Just because it's a film studio doesn't mean you should just enter a soundstage for Forbidden Journey. That's cheap, I'm sorry we just disagree there, and until Toy Story Mania became a part of Toy Story Land that happened at HWS. But if you are going onto a film studio area and see animators draw or during a studio tram tour? Yeah, that makes sense.
The soundstages were never beautiful areas but as a park's theme it did work so long as it was balanced with good areas too, just like USH does today, but it hasn't worked in almost 20 years, and MGM was never an elite park, so comparing HWS today to DCA today, DCA is a better themed and more beautiful park. Though to be fair, DCA today would also be more beautiful than MGM opening day as well, but perhaps not as thematically consistent as MGM was.
DCA is most definitely also a better park than MGM was then overall. MGM was ALWAYS designed to be a half-day park, I mean it had 3 rides on opening day. USH has what's presently a vastly superior tram tour than MGM ever did and it has a similar quality ride line-up to HWS today.
I guarantee someone will try to be quick-witted with some aspect of my post that distracts from my main point so I'm not going to continue to respond, but the bottom line is, I think DCA is a better-looking park than HWS given the amount of cheaply themed areas HWS has over DCA.
However, today, if you take issue with Hollywoodland, then I'm sorry, you need to take issue with HWS' plethora of awfully themed areas because there are significantly more Hollywoodland-style areas at HWS than DCA has.
SplashJacket
Well-Known Member
What Hollywood Studios was decades ago is not what Hollywood Studios is now. It’s a theme park and nothing else. Having the park be a relic of something cool is not an excuse for it’s current state.
Communicore/Innoventions may have been great once upon a time, but it hasn’t been in decades.
Hollywood Studios is not a studio. Hollywood Studios does not feel like a studio. Hollywood Studios is not a romanticized studio. There’s nothing authentic about the “sound stages” or their presentation. Currently, every inch of Hollywood Studios with a sound stage is a stain on the park.
The old HS is completely dead. If they weren’t cheap, they would’ve replaced it long ago, yet here we are.
No Name
Well-Known Member
If you were talking about unthemed warehouse buildings, it would’ve helped to mention that when you drew those circles.
You said “really bad areas.” Personally I don’t love those buildings in DHS either, but they fit the studio concept, are mostly consistent in style, and are not really ugly. Sure, there may be more areas in DHS that have flat walls, but I’d say there are more areas in DCA that fall flat in execution. And your opinion, like mine, is by no means objective.
Henry Mystic
Author of "A Manor of Fact"
The soundstage areas at HWS are really bad areas, equally, as the areas around Goofy's Sky School and Dinolandland. They are all cheap, lazy themes.
I don't know why it isn't just inherent knowledge that soundstages look bad, and that soundstages that aren't presently actually working soundstages have no place in theme parks, and they most definitely shouldn't be a significant aspect for a park unless it's pretty much just a studio tour. At that rate, it's not a full-day theme park.
Again, that's most of the criticism towards Hollywoodland, the cheap theming. I am merely applying it to Hollywood Studios, and it is fair to do so since TWDC has had 20 years to remedy it, and hasn't.
California Adventure's soundstages do not look any worse than Hollywood Studios' soundstages.
I think nostalgia is just blinding a lot of you guys.
I met some Parisians who are Disneyland Paris Cast Members and visited Disneyland when I was there last week and then headed to WDW this week. I asked them what they thought of Walt Disney World versus Disneyland Anaheim and Disneyland Paris and they all thought Hollywood Studios was by far the ugliest park they'd been to outside of Walt Disney Studios Paris, but had great rides.
I happen to agree with that.
I don't dislike Hollywood Studios, I just think it has too many ugly areas and is overcrowded so I prefer California Adventure since it doesn't have those issues and has comparable rides. Anyone is free to like anything, but you guys are way too bitter with DCA and act like HWS isn't one of the lesser Disney parks in the world.