Chef Mickey
Well-Known Member
Because they spent more time/money on the queue and building facade than on the ride itself.
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Why the hate for Little Mermaid ride?
- Thread starter geekza
- Start date
drod1985
Well-Known Member
This. The ride makes no effort to conceal the fact that its a ride. It gets even worse when dark rides designed and built 50+ years ago are far more immersive than one built to modern day standards.
Also, the first time I rode it I couldn't help but think that it should've been a water ride and there should've been a lot more real water used in the attraction.
KBLovedDisney
Well-Known Member
Other than them not being able to fix the covering on dancing Ariel's right arm and instead "covered" it with foliage and just gave her arm stitches, I like this ride. But that's just me.
danyoung56
Well-Known Member
Sorry, but not at all true. The only thing they kept was the entryway - the building was built for the ride.
Wendy Pleakley
Well-Known Member
True, my mistake.
They may have been restricted by land availability however.
I still don't think it excuses WDW from taking the lazy route, when they could have improved on the original a bit.
UKDisney Dave
Well-Known Member
For me whilst it’s a nice little ride it has some major issues;
1. The design (lighting, sound, animatronics, set) simply isn’t good enough to convince me to suspend belief and believe I’m actually under the sea. Whilst pirates genuinely transports you into the middle of an under ground jail cell or a burning port town, in Mermaid you never stop thinking your just on a ride passing sceens.
2. The telling of the story misses all the emotional highs and lows. As such I feel no empathy with the characters, and so quite frankly by the time it comes round (all too quickly) I don’t actually care if he “kiss the girl” or not.
3. There is no great climax to end. Okay you could argue that POTC & HM also don’t have a huge climax, but they have a nice gimmic with the treasure room & jack, or the hitch hiking gohsts that help round the ride off.
4. Ursula should scare the pants off you.....but she’s about as frighning as a bag of marshmallows.
As for fixes, I actually think a pan style suspended ride could work. The swinging motion of the ride giving the impression of swimming through the water fish like. Clearly ride capacity per hour would plummet, but that’s okay, as there’s ten miles of queue path available
1. The design (lighting, sound, animatronics, set) simply isn’t good enough to convince me to suspend belief and believe I’m actually under the sea. Whilst pirates genuinely transports you into the middle of an under ground jail cell or a burning port town, in Mermaid you never stop thinking your just on a ride passing sceens.
2. The telling of the story misses all the emotional highs and lows. As such I feel no empathy with the characters, and so quite frankly by the time it comes round (all too quickly) I don’t actually care if he “kiss the girl” or not.
3. There is no great climax to end. Okay you could argue that POTC & HM also don’t have a huge climax, but they have a nice gimmic with the treasure room & jack, or the hitch hiking gohsts that help round the ride off.
4. Ursula should scare the pants off you.....but she’s about as frighning as a bag of marshmallows.
As for fixes, I actually think a pan style suspended ride could work. The swinging motion of the ride giving the impression of swimming through the water fish like. Clearly ride capacity per hour would plummet, but that’s okay, as there’s ten miles of queue path available
I just read the article and, although some good points were made, I felt it was over-analyzing things a bit. I also don't feel like some of the author's suggestions for fixes were better than what is already there.
The idea that Musicals are somehow more difficult to translate into rides doesn't hold water. Yes, transitions could have been handled a bit better in LM, but had the author not brought it up, I never would noticed an issue.
The whole "book report" attractions are bad doesn't feel like it should be an iron-clad rule. I greatly respect Tony Baxter and feel like the attractions he helped design were fantastic. I don't feel like "Book Report" rides are necessarily bad, though. It's fun to relive a favorite story in three dimensions. In this day and age, the Disney films are always available for people to watch, any time they wish. You can use short cuts in rides without losing an audience because they've likely seen the film on which the ride is based during the recent past. That's not to say that rides like Pirates or the Mansion or Mr. Toad, where you are thrown into an environment based around a particular moment in time or an event from a larger story aren't great. They are amazing! Not every property lends itself to that type of attraction, though.
I also disagree that the story is not one that lends itself to a dark ride. I think it works just fine for that type of attraction.
About the only thing I agree with the author on is that some additional dialogue would definitely help out the ride.
KBLovedDisney
Well-Known Member
Don't forget thingamabobs!
I didn't. I got twenty.
KBLovedDisney
Well-Known Member
But who cares, no big deal...
However... I WANT MOOOOOOOORRREEEEEE!
Well... there was no reason why they couldn't have sculpted the faces to resemble the animated characters in 1971. It was a definite artistic choice to try and make them look more realistically human.
Walt Disney1955
Well-Known Member
I like the ride............and let's face it, there is space at Magic Kingdom if they want to do more.
I don't know about too much space, though. They're already back to Magic Kingdom Drive. There's a small amount of green space between that and the railroad, but I doubt they'd want to move Magic Kingdom Drive farther back toward the railroad or enlarge the railroad. They're pretty well packed in the Magic Kingdom. It will be even more packed once the Tron coaster is built.
Indeed, that space, while not impossible to use, is one of the most problematic considering conservation designation, backstage and utilidor access, roadway management, closeness to the fireworks pad, and lines of sight issues. The better expansion pad is The Little Mermaid itself. Instead of one giant ride that aspired to be an E Ticket but wound up to be a C, either make it a real E Ticket or put in two good C Tickets.
Here are the pads available in the MK (each of them with issues that need to be worked out)....
The Mermaid building itself can't really be changed, though. I don't know that there is enough space for a full-on E-ticket dark ride as it is. I don't know. I still think it's fine. No, it isn't the be-all-end-all, but maybe that's Disney's fault for hyping it as something more elaborate than it is. The original idea for it was certainly more elaborate, but it was, after all, just a concept. I don't think it helped that the computer recreation of it on the Little Mermaid DVD a while back colored people's expectations. Honestly, I don't think that the general public are super-disappointed. As theme park fanatics, we tend to obsess over things that most people never even notice. I'm certainly guilty of that.
pluto77
Well-Known Member
I think it’s fine. It could be a little more immersive. It did help a little, last time I went, with having the lights turned off in the under the sea section. My biggest problem with it, as people have mentioned, is that it skips a whole section of the story and ends abruptly. She became human, kissed the prince, and got married. You hardly notice the tiny part where Ursula is being defeated.
Princess Leia
Well-Known Member
I want to say that the third act (Ariel is human) is the act that Disney just doesn’t know how to adapt. The Voyage of the Little Mermaid at DHS has the same problem (and now that the ride exists at MK, Disney has no excuses as to why that show hasn’t been replaced). Voyage essentially shows the entire third act in a quick video before the show ends. The ride at least includes ‘Kiss the Girl’, but leaves out that climax, skipping to the happy ending. A scene with a similar set up as ‘Under the Sea’ (ride vehicles going around the perimeter of the room) would have been perfect for the final battle between Eric and Ursula.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
I think the ride is a nice C/D attraction though. We were able to get FPs for it in the evening, so we got to skip the queue and walk on. But if I waited more than 15-20 minutes, I would have felt really underwhelmed.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
I think the ride is a nice C/D attraction though. We were able to get FPs for it in the evening, so we got to skip the queue and walk on. But if I waited more than 15-20 minutes, I would have felt really underwhelmed.
That's putting it politely.
I like going on there when I'm a bit tired or after eating to chill for a bit and enjoy the music. I never seemed to queue much, was dark and cool and pleasant. Nothing groundbreaking but my go-to at Magic Kingdom for a rest! Pirates of the Caribbean would be (one of my favourite rides), except the queues are usually a bit longer for it to be a quick sit-down rest.