What’s Really Happened to Imgaineering?

[coachb]

While not everyone agrees on every point, there seems to be a growing consensus that Disney has lost its way to some extent or another in the creative spaces.

I feel like it’s not been able to put the same “heart”, romance (in the classical sense) or even comedic elements into many (not all… I would argue MMRR actually has this) of its new attractions.


My question for this board full of people from different backgrounds which includes some people with deep knowledge of the company is “why?”

What do y’all think has happened?
Is it an over reliance on technology?

 

[wdisney9000]

It's all Megs fault

 

[DisneyCane]

It's hard to be creative when they are pigeonholed by basing things on IP.

 

[CastAStone]

They laid off a bunch of good people, they scared a bunch more off with the planned and later aborted move to Florida, and they’re being micromanaged from above WDI.

Even still I think they’re doing pretty well overall.

 

[monothingie]

Loss of Talent and Loss of Leadership.

Imagineering is not the top of the career ladder, it's just a rung on the bottom to step up from.

 

[CastAStone]

Also I think as you get older it can be hard to feel “the heart” of things the way you did in your teens and twenties.

 

[WorldExplorer]

Tiana's has convinced me it's at least partially incompetence.

 

[JohnD]

This seems like more of a general discussion topic. I could tell you what I really think but then my opinion would need to be in the politics thread.

 

[coachb]

Great point about Fantasy Springs! That may be some proves it is actually not a loss of talent, but something to do with the Disney company corporate culture to be a problem there… That does not exist in the Oriental land company!

 

[Bocabear]

The original imagineers all came from the film industry...Set and production designers that understood how to stage and create spaces that were more than the sum of their parts. They understood how to convey the story without having a complicated backstory narration... Everything seems to be so literal now with the designs... And the rest all seems to be about the management and over-management, design-by-committee approach to everything. Like the entire imagineering department has to really understand what the old guard was doing.... and not copy...but learn and understand what they did that made the earlier attractions so good.....

 

[The Mom]

This seems like more of a general discussion topic. I could tell you what I really think but then my opinion would need to be in the politics thread.

The politics thread no longer exists - posters just couldn't behave and got very nasty - which is why NO POLITICS is the rule for all threads.

 

[JohnD]

The politics thread no longer exists - posters just couldn't behave and got very nasty - which is why NO POLITICS is the rule for all threads.

Ah.

 

[MoonRakerSCM]

The original imagineers all came from the film industry...Set and production designers that understood how to stage and create spaces that were more than the sum of their parts. They understood how to convey the story without having a complicated backstory narration... Everything seems to be so literal now with the designs... And the rest all seems to be about the management and over-management, design-by-committee approach to everything. Like the entire imagineering department has to really understand what the old guard was doing.... and not copy...but learn and understand what they did that made the earlier attractions so good.....

I've seen similar conversations that may apply to this about modern film making and why it is 'bad' compared to the great films we previously had. The overall concept is that previously film makers were 'primarily' raised on books and had to create the worlds in their heads leading to inherent artistic abilities and specialty in creating a scene, an emotion, or overall conveyance of something to the audience. A book spends time explaining a setting, a feeling, character emotions, and how things are playing out... these film makers all grew up with that. Today's film makers 'mostly' grew up with movies and visual media/stimulus. With everything being shown/presented to them in the manner that the creative aspect has already been done for them. So they did not spend as much time growing up thinking about scene settings, formulating ideas and worlds in their heads and thus we now have a much poorer presentation on film (or a medium such as a ride/physical land) due to their inherent lack of creativeness.