RSoxNo1
Well-Known Member
True.
-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
News Tron coaster coming to the Magic Kingdom
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
RSoxNo1
Well-Known Member
It is my understanding that the "choice" of new trilogy for the Galaxy's Edge timeline was Scott's.
Even with that choice, @MansionButler84's points about the major issues with the land cannot be dismissed. Underbuilding ride capacity has been a HUGE issue over the last decade. They can build great things, but if they're unreliable or don't have the necessary capacity they need to be dropped down a peg.
They also missed the mark on the Smugglers Run ride film. The good thing is, that that's more fixable than a capacity issue.
It really is an issue of getting things 80-85% correct. Theming in Pandora is top notch for example, but I knew before ground breaking that ride capacity on Flight of Passage was going to be comparable to Soarin' with two theaters. How does that get approved? Na'vi River Journey needs another 2+ minutes of ride time. They also shouldn't be in the same building.
What's especially frustrating is that things like Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Flight of Passage, Frozen Ever After, Na'vi River Journey and Rise of the Resistance opened after they felt obligated to increase capacity to things like Dumbo, Soarin' and Toy Story Mania.
Last edited:
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
I don’t know any insider information but I highly doubt that. I don’t think anyone at WDI had any say on that.
But perhaps he did push to keep everything in the new trilogy so it was all consistent? Who knows.
ToTBellHop
Well-Known Member
When will they learn? Yes, WDI has a budgetary problem that must be examined (why hasn’t it been?). But if the company is willing to, say, drop $400 million on a new coaster, it shouldn’t be that hard to say, “each train needs 30 seats, not 18 or 20.” Somehow they understood this for Big Thunder and Everest but not now. That points to a loss of experienced Imagineers and the few who are still around being overly confident in themselves.
Rohde was amazing and made mistakes. Watch him defend Dino-Rama. Granted, perhaps he was being inauthentic to preserve his power (playing the long-game with knowledge that bigger projects would come along)?
Imagine how hard it will be to get on TRON when it opens in a park with almost double SDL’s attendance.
Last edited:
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Why? Most of the Magic Kingdom uses shared facilities. People marvel at things like the way Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Alice in Wonderland and even a bit of Peter Pan‘s Flight are layered at Disneyland. Poor use of space is one of the biggest problems with current Disney. It is how you get tens of acres that only hold a few things with little room for easy expansion.
ToTBellHop
Well-Known Member
Power-related issues. The type of park management issue that WDI seems to ignore now. Build something pretty and don’t worry about actually running it.
Remember the fluorescent, reactive walkways designed for Pandora? I expect WDI could have pulled it off for Epcot in 1982 but couldn’t figure it out at DAK in 2017!
Ever look around Rome and say, “my goodness they could do incredible things back then. Where did all that knowledge go?” It died with people.
The same thing is happening at Disney and the pandemic will exacerbate that. So much talent—gone.
yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
In fairness - and I'm generally inclined to agree with this post - Rohde's defense of DinoRama is basically that it's thematically sound, not that guests are wrong if they don't enjoy it.
I don't think he's ever dismissed the notion that the area overall has failed to connect with guests, he's simply defended the lens through which they designed it as a legitimate thematic choice. Doesn't mean Dinorama ultimately "worked" - Themed Design is an empirical art form, and no amount of finger wagging can convince guests to enjoy something if they simply don't - but lots of critiques write off the land as an exercise in ripping off the guest both financially and thematically, and that's not really what happened there.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
It has in the form of overlays and the justification for franchises. There is also a bit of a false association with the Disney Difference. The problem though is the lack of trust and respect for the parks business. The type of person with the required knowledge to be able to slim the process would never be trusted with so much power. We know why Walt Disney Imagineering is not trusted as we’ve all heard stories about them doing something that Operations had to fix later, sometimes behind their back, and that only gets worse with the loss of institutional knowledge that you mention and the increasing specialization of the industry.
yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
Indeed - I'm the kind of person who loves seeing attractions weave together in creative ways, but when your land features only two of them and they're in the same building you've kind of put all your eggs in one basket.
The Fire Alarm going off in Pan may also shut down Toad and Alice, but it doesn't close Fantasyland. You know?
I seem to recall it being suggested that Na'vi River Journey was built because the team saw a creative opportunity to use the open space under the Flight of Passage queue for a ride - I guess the alternative would have meant having to sink the Flight of Passage projection domes into a pit to keep the queue at grade, which is a lot of cost for no great return - so when looked at from that perspective it does seem like a nice bonus, but the guests are almost certain to never see it that way since the truth that it's under the FoP queue is concealed. So that's one of those situations where managing expectations is necessary. No one else knows that the ride is making use of space that would have otherwise been wasted, they're wondering why it isn't longer/better.
All that to say, I can see why they did it, and I enjoy Na'vi River Journey for what it is, but there are many good resons a 3rd and separate attraction would have done wonders for Pandora as a land.
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
I wish both Pandora and Galaxies Edge had people mover type attractions that showed off the rock work, scenery and showed off little glimpses of the attractions.
Especially at Galaxies Edge I feel like they could even see each other... like the peoplemover transport could be looking down at the rise vehicles and the rise vehicles could be looking up and seeing the tranporter train... both would add to the story.
Especially at Galaxies Edge I feel like they could even see each other... like the peoplemover transport could be looking down at the rise vehicles and the rise vehicles could be looking up and seeing the tranporter train... both would add to the story.
Last edited:
yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
Have you heard about the Bantha Transport ride that had been in development as a Peoplemover-type attraction for Galaxy's Edge?
This is purportedly the route it would have taken around the land, with guests riding on the backs of Animatronic Banthas:
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
Yes I have! I wish that even if it had got cut as a ride, it would have remained as a kinetic element. Would have added so much life to the land.
It did have a crazy low guest capacity, I’m not sure what’s wrong with park designers. The design the people mover and Omni-mover systems and then go “eh why don’t we go back to low capacity rides?”
yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
I guess the issue is that the people designing today are not the people who designed the Peoplemover and the Omnimover.
Imagineering seems to have an issue with the transfer of Generational Knowledge.
Bocabear
Well-Known Member
They have an entire curated library of everything they have ever drawn, every concept floated, everything they ever built... Why wouldn't they take advantage of that huge cache of knowledge... It's not an issue with transfer of knowledge but maybe an unwillingness to invest the time into research on the lessons they have learned...
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Art and drawings are not going to tell you why something was done and give you the skills to make it happen. That is the sort of thing learned from experience and shared through collaboration.
yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
The problem is that huge cache of knowledge can only get you so far without the proper mindset. The culture that made Imagineering what it is (was?) has largely not been passed down.
I don't blame the Imagineers for this specifically, but it does seem to be true. Tony Baxter has talked at great length about his mentorship from Claude Coats, and you see where those germs took root when you look at Tony's work.
The 2nd generation of Imagineers visibly stood on the shoulders of the 1st generation, and the work benefited from it - we're now in the 3rd and 4th generation of Imagineers and we're seeing fewer and fewer influences fromt he 1st and 2nd generation. Which wouldn't automatically be bad if they were consistently creating work greater than that of the first two generations, but . . .
Brer Panther
Well-Known Member
Apparently, they're already making plans for Zootopia...
RSoxNo1
Well-Known Member
He defends lousy projects to be a company man. You can tell the projects he truly has passion about if you actually listen to him speak.
corran horn
Well-Known Member
TrainsOfDisney
Well-Known Member
Gross.