yensidtlaw1969
Well-Known Member
Lots of people in this thread mistaking Chester and Hester's Dino-Rama for Dinoland U.S.A . . . one is a subset of the other. Dinoland itself isn't really the problem, Dino-Rama is.
Conceptually it is actually solid, both within Dinoland and within the greater park. The execution of that concept is also strong. People say it, but lots of us here don't seem to recognize that Dino-Rama is really-for-real low-key brilliant. But a Theme Park is an empirical artform - telling people all the reasons why they should enjoy something doesn't work if they simply don't enjoy it. That's where Dino-Rama falls, and where it differs from Dinoland as a whole.
That there's a big aesthetic disconnect between Chester and Hester's and the Dino-Institute is no accident. That there's a disconnect between all of Dinoland and the rest of the park is no accident either. At a Magic Kingdom, most of the inhabitants are Animatronic Americans - caricatures of varying degrees who exist within caricatured environs. That's part of the soul of that park. The inhabitants at Animal Kingdom are . . . wait for it . . . Animals, who require photorealistic environments for not only our immersion but also for theirs. If you want to see what the world of animals looks like today, you look at nature. And since this park is a place where People and Animals meet, you look at the parts of nature where they do that. So any part of the park that features live animals is gonna need to pull from that source. This has the fortunate side effect of offering Animal Kingdom an aesthetic personality distinct from the other parks. But then what do you do when you get to the animals who no longer exist?
Well, you run into a funny corner here - you can't go the Jurassic Park route, for obvious reasons, and if you get too close to it you end up with a result that feels like a knock-off. Would you rather ride 'Kentucky Buck's Jungle Journey', or 'The Indiana Jones Adventure'? So you go to the other end of the extreme, the one that follows the same thread as the rest of the park - what does the world of Dinosaurs look like to us today? The answer is a little disappointing - it's Bones, it's Museums, and it's Roadside Attractions that try to inject some fun in an otherwise literally lifeless pocket of the animal kingdom (disambiguation). Considering these are some of the most exciting, dynamic creatures that ever walked the earth, it's a bit of a letdown. Disney gets that, which is why in addition to the Boneyard you get Dinosaur!, which travels you back in time to the age of the dinos - it's a more "literal" way of letting you experience these beasts, since you're not bringing them into the present day where they 1) Would feel like Jurassic Park, and 2) Aren't actually alive anymore. So you're giving the guests that wish-fulfillment of getting up-close with full-size Dinosaurs while also obeying the rules of your park and the laws of copyright . . . with the one allowance that this institute has somehow mastered time travel and opened the line for commercial use. A small price to pay.
This part of the land actually works - you get your "live" dinos, you get an exciting (if imperfect) attraction that no other "zoo" will ever offer, you skirt Jurassic Park, and you do it all while speaking both to the soul of your park and to the style of your brand.
The problem comes in where the other half of your land has to answer for the premise this ride has hung its hat on. The Boneyard lets you (or, more truthfully, your child) dig up your own fossils, which you can't do anywhere else, so that's the best version of Bones you're gonna get. The Dino Institute transports to back to when Dinos were alive, which you can't do anywhere else, so that's the best version of Museum you're gonna get. So to finish setting the scene of how Dinos exist today, you've got your Roadside Attraction. Now, the rest of the park is painted in pretty literally - you're in a condensed, curated version of real-life environments. So logically, the Roadside Attraction should be like this too, or it stands out within the park for the wrong reasons. Now, you could say that Dino-Rama does stand out within the park for the wrong reasons . . . and you're almost right.
Dino-Rama acts as almost a morality play on what happens when Animals go extinct. Instead of getting to experience them in awe as they walk the earth in their own natural environments, as we get to with most of the other animals in the park, we instead confront the constructs that arrive in their wake when man is left to imagine what they were, since that is the real-life status of Dinosaurs in this age. We're filling in the blanks of what really was. In the case of the Boneyard and Dino Institute, this actually offers some cool stuff. In the case of Dino-Rama, not so much. But that is part of the problem with what happens when Animals go extinct - instead of the majesty of these creatures, we get this. Imagining the animals isn't as satisfying as experiencing them for real. Even when Disney does it at basically the highest level throughout the rest of the land. Now, I don't think anyone would blame man for the extinction of the dinosaurs, but we're certainly related to the extinction of other animals. It's an important lesson for the park to disseminate, and Dinoland gives you the chance to do it without pointing fingers.
But as I said before, a Theme Park is an empirical artform. Most guests likely don't walk out of Dino-Rama thinking "wow, we should be more careful with animals facing extinction", they more likely walk out thinking "wow . . . this part of the park is lame. They couldn't think of anything better to do with DINOSAURS??", but as we see the problem isn't quite that simple.
So what do you do? Presumably you tear down Dino-Rama and build something better . . . but what do you do about the rest of the land? Dinosaur! still works, there's no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater, right? But Dinosaur! Also cements the land pretty squarely in the present day, positing that the Dinosaurs are back in time. And even if you removed that stipulation, it goes against the ethos of the park to just build a Dinoland where Dinos roam freely when the reality is they really don't. That dinosaurs are extinct is a big facet of their identity, so you can't just build a new ride on the Dino-Rama plot that uses Dinos in a wildly different way from what is already established.
So then, do you just build The Excavator? Tear down Primeval Whirl to build a new coaster with different dressing? That's a lot of cap-ex for a net gain of merely better theming (not that I wouldn't like it, just that I don't see them doing it). I don't think the higher-ups Disney is THAT worried about what's going on at Dino-Rama, unfortunately. I don't think they see the usefulness of that the way we do.
I would love to see a slow-moving dark ride with a bunch of Dinos that the kids can go on without getting the pants scared off of them, but what sense do you make of that next to Dinosaur!? Do you play it up as a "ride" where everything's known to be fake, an elaborate museum display, unlike Dinosaur! which is an "excursion" into "reality"? That those dinos are fake as opposed to the ones you visit in the Time Rover? Or do you build another ride where you're traveling back in time? Any one of these might be more exciting for the guest experience but still undermine the park in a meaningful way. And you still can't do Jurassic Park, no matter how bad any of us might want that.
You COULD still just level the whole concept and turn Dinoland into Indiana Jones, as has been speculated, or something else entirely, but what's an Animal Park without Dinosaurs?
I'm as ready as anyone else to see Chester and Hester's bite the dust, but there aren't actually a lot of easy answers here. Anything they do to resolve Dinoland is likely to take a lot more serious investment than anyone anticipates, and more than Disney is willing to spend without some serious anticipated upside for them.
And all this is written without any regard for what's going on in the world today - unless Disney has a massive, mega-hit movie about Dinosaurs come out that they think they could overlay on the land, I suspect Dino-Rama won't be the next thing they touch at Animal Kingdom. Or the one after that. Unfortunately.
EDITED To Add: Jeeze . . . THIS turned into a dissertation, didn't it.
Conceptually it is actually solid, both within Dinoland and within the greater park. The execution of that concept is also strong. People say it, but lots of us here don't seem to recognize that Dino-Rama is really-for-real low-key brilliant. But a Theme Park is an empirical artform - telling people all the reasons why they should enjoy something doesn't work if they simply don't enjoy it. That's where Dino-Rama falls, and where it differs from Dinoland as a whole.
That there's a big aesthetic disconnect between Chester and Hester's and the Dino-Institute is no accident. That there's a disconnect between all of Dinoland and the rest of the park is no accident either. At a Magic Kingdom, most of the inhabitants are Animatronic Americans - caricatures of varying degrees who exist within caricatured environs. That's part of the soul of that park. The inhabitants at Animal Kingdom are . . . wait for it . . . Animals, who require photorealistic environments for not only our immersion but also for theirs. If you want to see what the world of animals looks like today, you look at nature. And since this park is a place where People and Animals meet, you look at the parts of nature where they do that. So any part of the park that features live animals is gonna need to pull from that source. This has the fortunate side effect of offering Animal Kingdom an aesthetic personality distinct from the other parks. But then what do you do when you get to the animals who no longer exist?
Well, you run into a funny corner here - you can't go the Jurassic Park route, for obvious reasons, and if you get too close to it you end up with a result that feels like a knock-off. Would you rather ride 'Kentucky Buck's Jungle Journey', or 'The Indiana Jones Adventure'? So you go to the other end of the extreme, the one that follows the same thread as the rest of the park - what does the world of Dinosaurs look like to us today? The answer is a little disappointing - it's Bones, it's Museums, and it's Roadside Attractions that try to inject some fun in an otherwise literally lifeless pocket of the animal kingdom (disambiguation). Considering these are some of the most exciting, dynamic creatures that ever walked the earth, it's a bit of a letdown. Disney gets that, which is why in addition to the Boneyard you get Dinosaur!, which travels you back in time to the age of the dinos - it's a more "literal" way of letting you experience these beasts, since you're not bringing them into the present day where they 1) Would feel like Jurassic Park, and 2) Aren't actually alive anymore. So you're giving the guests that wish-fulfillment of getting up-close with full-size Dinosaurs while also obeying the rules of your park and the laws of copyright . . . with the one allowance that this institute has somehow mastered time travel and opened the line for commercial use. A small price to pay.
This part of the land actually works - you get your "live" dinos, you get an exciting (if imperfect) attraction that no other "zoo" will ever offer, you skirt Jurassic Park, and you do it all while speaking both to the soul of your park and to the style of your brand.
The problem comes in where the other half of your land has to answer for the premise this ride has hung its hat on. The Boneyard lets you (or, more truthfully, your child) dig up your own fossils, which you can't do anywhere else, so that's the best version of Bones you're gonna get. The Dino Institute transports to back to when Dinos were alive, which you can't do anywhere else, so that's the best version of Museum you're gonna get. So to finish setting the scene of how Dinos exist today, you've got your Roadside Attraction. Now, the rest of the park is painted in pretty literally - you're in a condensed, curated version of real-life environments. So logically, the Roadside Attraction should be like this too, or it stands out within the park for the wrong reasons. Now, you could say that Dino-Rama does stand out within the park for the wrong reasons . . . and you're almost right.
Dino-Rama acts as almost a morality play on what happens when Animals go extinct. Instead of getting to experience them in awe as they walk the earth in their own natural environments, as we get to with most of the other animals in the park, we instead confront the constructs that arrive in their wake when man is left to imagine what they were, since that is the real-life status of Dinosaurs in this age. We're filling in the blanks of what really was. In the case of the Boneyard and Dino Institute, this actually offers some cool stuff. In the case of Dino-Rama, not so much. But that is part of the problem with what happens when Animals go extinct - instead of the majesty of these creatures, we get this. Imagining the animals isn't as satisfying as experiencing them for real. Even when Disney does it at basically the highest level throughout the rest of the land. Now, I don't think anyone would blame man for the extinction of the dinosaurs, but we're certainly related to the extinction of other animals. It's an important lesson for the park to disseminate, and Dinoland gives you the chance to do it without pointing fingers.
But as I said before, a Theme Park is an empirical artform. Most guests likely don't walk out of Dino-Rama thinking "wow, we should be more careful with animals facing extinction", they more likely walk out thinking "wow . . . this part of the park is lame. They couldn't think of anything better to do with DINOSAURS??", but as we see the problem isn't quite that simple.
So what do you do? Presumably you tear down Dino-Rama and build something better . . . but what do you do about the rest of the land? Dinosaur! still works, there's no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater, right? But Dinosaur! Also cements the land pretty squarely in the present day, positing that the Dinosaurs are back in time. And even if you removed that stipulation, it goes against the ethos of the park to just build a Dinoland where Dinos roam freely when the reality is they really don't. That dinosaurs are extinct is a big facet of their identity, so you can't just build a new ride on the Dino-Rama plot that uses Dinos in a wildly different way from what is already established.
So then, do you just build The Excavator? Tear down Primeval Whirl to build a new coaster with different dressing? That's a lot of cap-ex for a net gain of merely better theming (not that I wouldn't like it, just that I don't see them doing it). I don't think the higher-ups Disney is THAT worried about what's going on at Dino-Rama, unfortunately. I don't think they see the usefulness of that the way we do.
I would love to see a slow-moving dark ride with a bunch of Dinos that the kids can go on without getting the pants scared off of them, but what sense do you make of that next to Dinosaur!? Do you play it up as a "ride" where everything's known to be fake, an elaborate museum display, unlike Dinosaur! which is an "excursion" into "reality"? That those dinos are fake as opposed to the ones you visit in the Time Rover? Or do you build another ride where you're traveling back in time? Any one of these might be more exciting for the guest experience but still undermine the park in a meaningful way. And you still can't do Jurassic Park, no matter how bad any of us might want that.
You COULD still just level the whole concept and turn Dinoland into Indiana Jones, as has been speculated, or something else entirely, but what's an Animal Park without Dinosaurs?
I'm as ready as anyone else to see Chester and Hester's bite the dust, but there aren't actually a lot of easy answers here. Anything they do to resolve Dinoland is likely to take a lot more serious investment than anyone anticipates, and more than Disney is willing to spend without some serious anticipated upside for them.
And all this is written without any regard for what's going on in the world today - unless Disney has a massive, mega-hit movie about Dinosaurs come out that they think they could overlay on the land, I suspect Dino-Rama won't be the next thing they touch at Animal Kingdom. Or the one after that. Unfortunately.
EDITED To Add: Jeeze . . . THIS turned into a dissertation, didn't it.
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Attractions should be do-able, but if you're going for the animals, it will be limited. (and eat before you go)
