JoeCamel
Well-Known Member
That is the point, they don't route the busses down the service road to get to the park, they used to care about that stuff but now it's "good enough" and "that isn't too bad is it?"
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News Tron coaster coming to the Magic Kingdom
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
James Alucobond
Well-Known Member
It would also, relatively speaking, be quite easy to fix. Honestly, the exposed show buildings and backstage views are far more irksome to me than any of the arguably misplaced attractions or underutilized spaces.
yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
On the plus side, I've just stumbled on a bunch of concept art for some proposed upgrades around the MK! Clearly these are all marked improvements over how things are now:
yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
It used to be that you wouldn't see the backside of a building from the Monorail or Bus.
SplashJacket
Well-Known Member
Honestly a very good visualization of the problem (minus HM, that one goes a step too far).
It's a lot easier to disregard something new with "visual deficiencies" than something familiar because we've seen it in its pristine state so many times. So seeing these challenges that notion.
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yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
In fairness, the Mansion one was a rendering I did back in the day to illustrate the problem with Cosmic Rewind.
I agree with your second point - and I would add to it that I think some people willing to accept this a little bit more with "futuristic" rides like TRON because "clean lines" are part of the aesthetic, and so a bare, unornamented building is not as far a step from a Tomorrowland aesthetic as it is from the other lands.
I can almost see why someone would be persuaded to believe that it's "part of it". . . But I would argue that's one of the great failings of Disney's recent "futuristic" work. That it lacks an identity totally discernible from an unthemed warehouse is a minus, not a plus, and they shouldn't ever choose to rest on that crutch. Instead they seem very willing to rest on it even for the biggest projects happening in the resort.
SplashJacket
Well-Known Member
Honestly though, what the hell? The whole point of the Florida project was infinite space and infinite control. It's not like it adds a tremendous cost to manage these things, it's just lazy design, and in an era where everything is digital, and you can hop into a project with a VR headset, it should be worlds easier to manage these things.
I just cannot wrap my head around the current state of the company. Everything is done at such a tremendously different quality. No consistency between projects. Some things are handled with meticulous detail, while others are seemingly entirely neglected.
Let's compare two different instances of drastically different quality that feature the exact same IP and an identical opening date.
The Star Wars Hyperspace Lounge looks like utter garbage. Barren, sterile, and bland room that resembles an attempted homage to Star Wars without actually being it.
Bland walls with some college dorm lighting. Nothing special, nothing classy, nothing luxurious, only colloquially Star Wars.
Compare this to the Star Wars area in the Kid's club just a couple of hundred feet away:
This is insane! Absolute out-of-the-park home run! Looks like Star Wars, sounds like Star Wars, and tastes like Star Wars. Incredible detail from the floor to the ceiling. Very well done.
This company has the most obtuse quality control measures. They make a masterpiece and make everyone think they have rekindled the magic only to follow it up with the next instance of flaming hot garbage. Their standards are all over the place. I genuinely don't know what's the missing piece. Lack of direction?
doctornick
Well-Known Member
Just FWIW, it seems like the building is visible from inside SDL as well so its probably more of a "this design doesn't work for a park trying to hide backstage buildings" as opposed to "this was not designed properly for MK".
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Animaniac93-98
Well-Known Member
In this case why is the KIDS club, which has a limited audience, far more elaborate than the bar that generates its own line of revenue?
James Alucobond
Well-Known Member
That's the thing, though ... They're leaving them completely unthemed when fitting in would be a really paltry ask with Cosmic Rewind and TRON. Practically any façade that looked even halfway considered would make both buildings far less offensive.
SplashJacket
Well-Known Member
That also irks me; for a company trying to take my every penny, I could take my money way more efficiently. Who builds a Toy Story land without a gift shop? Did they challenge themselves to make the smallest Cantina possible in Galaxy's Edge? Neglecting the adult areas on the Wish means fewer opportunities to sell pure profit alcohol and fewer opportunities for parents (the people footing the bill on most cruises) to enjoy themselves. But oh! Don't worry about it! Just slap Robin William's beloved Genie on your upcharge service and make Elsa twirl around in the main dining room; they'll never notice.
yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
Absolutely. It feels like the very definition of cutting corners.
I don't think anyone's insisting it was designed for MK - we've long known this was a direct clone of the Shanghai ride, and that the sightlines in Shanghai are also poor. This is why the people who said "wait until it's done" before judging sightlines were told that we already knew what it would look like when it was done, and indeed it does.
Which is a shame, because now they've built a lousy building for an arguably kinda lousy ride not just once, but twice. This TRON ride exterior doesn't work anywhere it's been built.
I pray they get some sense into them before deciding that Disneyland needs a version of this as well. It really, really doesn't.
are the sightlines in china really poor? looks incredible on all the videos ive seen of TL in shanghai.
James Alucobond
Well-Known Member
You can see the box between the two humps in the canopy and to the right of the right-most hump from many angles.
Animaniac93-98
Well-Known Member
Maybe they'll redress it as an Avengers ride and stick it in the Campus?
Wouldn't really look any better, but at least Disneyland proper would be spared.
Rich Brownn
Well-Known Member
But you could from the old sky ride. (And of course the original - Disneyland - you could definitely see the backside of buildings from the monorail... and the hollow interior of the Matterhorn with the beams holding it up).
yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
People have been saying this for a long time, but I think people forget that seeing the plain, white roofs of the Fantasyland buildings really isn't the same as some of the things Disney's trying to get away with now. Some context is missing when that argument is made.
Look at the Peter Pan Facade for example:
The ride is very clearly housed . . . inside a building. You can see the castle walls above it. This is not an accident - they are part of the idea. The original conceit for Fantasyland was that these were rides that took place inside buildings in a medieval faire within the courtyard of Cinderella Castle. While the roofs weren't anything special to look at, it's not like seeing the roof of the building took away from the illusion, because it being a ride housed within the kingdom's walls was the point. It's a fairground ride in a fantasy realm- the building is diegetic, so to speak.
This is very different from a ride that's trying to pretend it isn't in a building, the way something like Little Mermaid is in New Fantasyland. Mermaid buried its showbuilding in rockwork to conceal the fact of there being a building with a ride in it. Peter Pan, Small World, Snow White, Mr. Toad, The Mickey Mouse Revue . . . none of these attractions followed that conceit. They were rides that took place inside buildings in a medieval fairground within the courtyard of Cinderella Castle. It's not like you'd look and say "What do you MEAN Peter Pan's Flight has a roof??" the way you might with the Mermaid showbuilding, which when viewed from above might be expected to be covered more rocks and grass. Strangely enough, the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train does this, but that's sort of a happy coincidence.
I think, too, that people oversell how bad the views of the Fantasyland buildings really were. Here's the view from the Skyway of Mr. Toad:
Snow White:
And Peter Pan:
None of them are lookers, really, but not particularly egregious either when you consider the concept of the ride and the fact that these relatively unthemed angles could only be seen from the Skyway. I'd say they showed more respect for sightlines here in 1971 than they frequently do in the present day, despite the company being far smaller and having far fewer resources back then. The view of Ratatouille from the Skyliner is far more offensive, and totally destroys the illusion that the cityscape continues beyond what guests can explore.
For 1971, that's pretty good if this was the worst of it. Even 20,000 Leagues, whose show building was larger than a Football Field, was able to reduce its visibility down to almost nothing:
Now, the Matterhorn did originally have its internal structure visble . . . in 1959, four years after Disneyland opened. But even then, this was not quite to the extent people remember. There was lots of interior rockwork surrounding the supports, it just didn't amount to tunnels and caverns the way it does now.
Not their best work, but considering Disneyland was 4 years old and The Matterhorn was already such a massive undertaking with nothing else like it on earth, I think they deserve more credit than they get for their efforts on the inside. The way people talk, you'd have thought they didn't even try. But even then, this imperfect attempt was rectified less than 20 years later in 1977 when the pride in their work could be matched by their bank account. The Matterhorn has had a very handsome fully themed interior ever since.
Disneyland's Fantasyland Dark Rides originated with the same conceit that was used in WDW's Fantasyland, but that changed in the early 80's when the land was redone. This resulted in wonderfully elaborate new Village Building facades for most of the rides, and you could argue that the view from the Skyway sort of spoiled that this architecture didn't continue all across the top of the buildings. I'll give you that one, I guess - here's Mr. Toad and Peter Pan at Disneyland from the Skyway. Not perfect, but also not tragic considering they were still working with the bones from 1955:
Of course, hardly any of this is totally relevant, given that the roofs of these buildings at both DL and WDW have not been viewable to guests for 25+ years now, and all these buildings (at least the ones that remain) inarguably have fully healthy sightlines as a result.
The point is, even back in the day when Disney was working with comparatively very little they managed to make minimal mess of the showbuildings in Fantasyland, and where they couldn't they basically went back and bettered things before too long. That demonstrates a higher level of show quality standards than they're exhibiting with something like TRON, where minimal thought has been given to attempting to hide the building, to what the ride's building is meant to "be", where its visibility undermines the concept that the riders are getting sucked into a computer game, and where the show building can so clearly be seen from many places, up to and including the building's money angle.
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Goofyernmost
Well-Known Member
Because people go to a bar to relax and have a drink or two. The atmosphere is important and it has that. The kids on the other hand go to theirs to play and be entertained. Whole different audience.,
Dan Deesnee
Well-Known Member
- It adds a feeling of nostalgia in the park.
- Walt loved trains
- It's a real stream engine that you can watch them refill the water tanks on
- The train adds kinetic motion and energy to the park
- The train whistle and sight of the train, especially in Frontier Land, adds tremendously to the atmosphere
- it is a fun, narrated, ride that gives views of Magic Kingdom you can't get on any other ride