Why I like Monsters Inc Coaster and Muppet's Rock n' Roller Coaster

[Tim Lohr]

I first joined this site 13 years ago when the plans for Disney World's New Fantasyland were announced/leaked... but in that time I've been really confused by most of the announcements for new additions to the Walt Disney World Resort. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that they seem to constantly ignore or change the "Theme" of the existing "Theme Parks" …I’m also an artist and film maker; I’ve done all types illustration jobs for children’s books and games to advertising, and I have fairly good understanding of how storytelling and the whole “creative process” thing works… So I just wanted to make these posts here to give people my perspective of this kind of stuff, and maybe it’ll be interesting to others, and I’m going to focus on “Theme” and how that effects the design process but also who it effects the audience’s perception of the finished product…

The reason I like this addition of Monsters Inc coaster and the Muppet's Rock 'n' Rollercoaster is because they both fit the existing theme of the Disney MGM/Hollywood Studios Park. People on the sites tend to argue a lot about “What Walt Would Do? or Not Do” but this was never Walt’s park, it was Michael Eisner’s park, and when it opened in 1989 I thought it was a great addition to the Walt Disney World Resort.

Disney MGM/Hollywood Studios was something different from Magic Kingdom and EPCOT Center; it was a park themed to “The Movies” but not necessarily Disney Movies and 2 of the people who were brought on board to flesh out this new park were George Lucas and Jim Henson.

Part of the reason Jim Henson sold the Muppets characters to Disney/Eisner was that Jim Henson was just a big fan of Walt Disney World, and the deal was that Disney would be financing Muppet's film and theme park attractions that Henson would be involved in creating.

Jim Henson unfortunately died shortly after shooting the MuppetVision 3D film for the Disney MGM Studios attraction, but there were a lot of plans in the works for other Muppets attractions in the "Muppet Courtyard" area of the park

So, as sad as it is to see the Muppets move out of this area of the park, this area was never really fully finished anyway... To me there are a few good reasons to move the Muppets, 1 is that it's an opportunity for a fresh start as the New York Back lot area basically has disappeared anyway...

The 2nd reason is that the Sunset Boulevard/Sunset Strip area of Hollywood Studios seems like a pretty good "Thematic" fit for the Muppets. The Sunset Strip in the actual Hollywood is home to comedy clubs, music venues and old historic hotels like the Tower of Terror; it's kind of a perfect area/neighborhood/themed location for the Muppets.

The Muppets have been part of the “Theme of the Park” since nearly the beginning, they are part of the history of the place, and were part of the original concept of the park. If done well this could be a great addition to the Sunset Boulevard themed area near Tower of Terror, plus this new location has room from “future expansion” the Muppets theme could grow in this area and get a chance to be something they never go to be in the original location, but also be something you, your kids and grand kids can get to enjoy into the future.

So those are things that are important to me because I like returning to Disney World again, but it’s also something unique that people who are only coming here once in their life can only see at Walt Disney World.

The next post will be about what I like and don’t like about The Monsters Inc Coaster.

 

[Tim Lohr]

...So on to The Monster's Inc Coaster, I like the ride system, but I don't really like this location for it.

Basically this is an inexpensive location to build this coaster, I’m assuming that’s why they’ve chosen to put it here, but I personally don't see the need for a whole big land themed to the first Monsters Inc movie.

There’s been a trend the past few years, which I don’t understand, of building giants areas in them parks themed to 1 movie or IP. This trend is also the opposite of how the Magic Kingdom Park laid out, and Magic Kingdom is pretty consistently ranked as the #1 theme park in the world... but Magic Kingdom has a wide variety of attractions throughout it, and those attractions are all loosely grouped together by a fairly generalized “themes”… Fantasyland for example, is a “medieval themed area” home to many of Disney’s Classic Fairytale characters …So let’s created an new “themed area” for Hollywood Studios, one that I think is a much better area for the Monsters Coaster, and one that could have a lot more options “creatively” and "thematically". This is an area of Hollywood Studios that I'm going to refer to as The "Hot Mess" Zone

This area is a hot mess for a number of reasons. It’s left over chunks of Animation Courtyard with Star Wars Launch bay stuck in the middle of it… It was also supposed to be home to Roger Rabbit’s Toon Town which never happened, so what was going to be Toon Town instead is a lot of offices and employee parking lots… and this area is RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PARK!!

Now let’s try and clean up this mess by using pieces of the original theme of this area… “ANIMATION Courtyard” and “Toon TOWN”. The monsters of Monsters Inc live in an “Animated City” called Monstropolis …so let’s look around and see which other Disney Pixar characters also live in “Animated Cities”

Along with Monstropolis there’s also Zootopia, and all the game lands of Wreck it Ralph are connected by Game Central Station, and The Incredibles live in a city called Metroville …So now that we’ve grouped these similar characters together, the “theme” of this new land is “Disney and Pixar animated characters who live in modern, urban, cities” so let’s call this new land “Animation City”, and let’s say that these are the E-Ticket attractions of this new land…

…but there are actually more Disney and Pixar characters who fit the theme of “Animation City”, in fact, over in Magic Kingdom they’re trying to put a bunch of modern animated characters in the middle of the Old West theme of Frontierland…

It seems completely insane to me that Disney wants to put the Cars in the middle of Frontierland …anyone remember the old Sesame Street segment “One of these things is not like the others” brought to you by Jim Henson? …but Cars is a great concept and rides system, just like the Monsters Inc Coaster, so let’s move the Cars to our new land where they also “fit the theme” of “Animation City”

Or maybe the Cars fit this area “thematically” but this particular ride doesn’t fit this space “physically”, maybe there’s not room for this particular Cars attraction in this new land, you could “re-theme” the Cars ride system to something like Sugar Rush and have a smaller Cars attraction in this city… Rolly Crump once said the designing these things “is like making a salad, you have lettuce and tomatoes and croutons and dressing” it’s the combination of those elements that make it something you want to eat or not.

So maybe we want add the Cars characters some other way to this part of the park and there are actually even more Disney Pixar characters that thematically could fit the theme of “Animation City”. The characters from Onward and Elemental both live in animated cities, so maybe there should be an Elemental themed restaurant and an Onward themed gift shop in the Animation City…

To me this wide variety of characters seems a lot more interesting than 1 one big land only themed to something like Monsters Inc… If there’s a fairly generalized theme like “Fantasyland” or “Animation City”, then there’s a lot more options creatively for an Imagineer and a lot more options for a theme park guest to explore. This also connects to the history of Animation Courtyard and the history of Hollywood Studios, because there used to be a wide variety of characters running around MGM Studios and there was also another “urban themed area” in this park as well

The Osborne Lights may be simple and sentimental, but they were also a great reason for guests to visit Disney World during the Holiday season… it doesn’t always have to be a lot of roller coasters and E-Ticket rides to be worth the visit. And the large variety of stuff to do and see at Magic Kingdom, seems to me like the reason to visit the Magic Kingdom park


Ok 1 more of these posts and I’m going to wrap this thing up…

 

[Tim Lohr]

So, let’s say that The Muppets have vacated the MuppetVison 3D theater for a new home on Sunset Boulevard, and maybe we’re starting to think that turning that area into Monsters Inc Land isn’t the best idea…

This concept art is a relatively inexpensive idea though; they’re really just making some cosmetic changes to these existing buildings in this Monsters Inc concept art… My “Animation City” concept from the last post is a really, really, expensive idea, and long term design process, and long term construction project… I don’t think people realize just how much times goes into figuring out things like “where do we put the pluming and air conditions ducts?” So reusing buildings that already have that parts of the construction process done makes things a lot cheaper and much quicker to complete…

This post will be a fairly cheap, potential "Re-Theme" of this area of the park, and since this area is in between Star Tours and Galaxy’s Edge, this time we will just repurpose the existing buildings into a new Star Wars themed area.

Galaxy’s Edge is amazing, but it has a few issues with “theme”, the main problem is that it’s set in the time period of Rey and Kylo Ren. So most things from before “Episode 7: The Force Awakens” don’t really fit into the theme of Galaxy’s Edge… which is “a lot of Star Wars”. So this new area will be themed to things from “Star Wars Episodes 1 to 6” which includes these guys

So this is just a rough idea how you could potentially repurpose the buildings in this area, and this is more like an “event space” type of area, think of it like a place to have something like Star Wars Weekends on a regular basis.

You may be looking at this and thinking “this is all old stuff” but it’s really just the “setting and locations” for this themed area of the park. Since Disney bought LucasFilm they made 2 movies set just before Episode 4, and a lot of Disney+ shows that take place either just before Episode 4, or just after Episode 6.

So nearly all of these characters can be integrated into this new land in different ways, maybe just as additions to Star Tours or as “walk around characters” but I’m going to focus of the now Muppet’s theater. It seems to me if you’re going to convert the Muppets Theater into a Star Wars theater, Frank Oz should be the guy that helps make that transition, and if the theme of this new land is to cover “Star Wars Episodes 1 to 6” his character covers that time span. If the purpose of the film in this theater is to “recap” those first episodes Yoda would be a good narrator, and since it’s also a 4D Theater, Yoda’s “power of the Force” could be what triggers those effects in the theater. This film could jump backwards and forwards in time, so there could be new footage of Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen has Obi Wan and Anakin fighting together in The Clone Wars and then cut to Rosario Dawson and Pedro Pascal as Ashoka and the Mandolorian. This theater could sever other purposes that just running this one short film, the “Jedi Temple Theater” could also be a “fan event space” or you could show “enhanced versions” of the classic films like “The Empire Strikes Back” with the theater’s 4D effects going off, like lasers going off the way they did for Captain EO, or the theater could host “premier parties” for new films or for the latest episodes of the various Star Wars Disney+ series. This theater could be “theme park attraction” by day and a kind of “Star Wars Fan Club House” on special occasions.

Star Wars has been around for nearly 50 years, and it could potentially continue on for many more years, so this area of the park may need to keep growing as well. I think since Disney doesn’t have the right to use Marvel in Florida, they should double down on investing in Star Wars at Hollywood Studios.

So that’s “my 2 cents” on why I like the Muppets moving out and why maybe Monsters Inc aren’t the best thing to move in