News Zootopia and Moana Blue Sky concepts for Disney's Animal Kingdom

[BlakeW39]

Again, is that even an option? From what your insiders have been saying, it seems Disney will be building in Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom.

I think longer term DHS will need investment too. It still doesn't have enough capacity or attractions

 

[Brer Panther]

Again, is that even an option? From what your insiders have been saying, it seems Disney will be building in Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom.

I have the feeling Disney thinks Hollywood Studios is fine for now because they just added Galaxy's Edge, Toy Story Land, and Mickey's Runaway Railway. In actuality, it still needs a lot more.

 

[BlakeW39]

I have the feeling Disney thinks Hollywood Studios is fine for now because they just added Galaxy's Edge, Toy Story Land, and Mickey's Runaway Railway. In actuality, it still needs a lot more.

Disney probably won't invest in DHS for a while. But it definitely needs more to do. I mean two of those expansions also exist at Disneyland, a park that already had more to do than DHS ever has.

 

[MrPromey]

Disney probably won't invest in DHS for a while. But it definitely needs more to do. I mean two of those expansions also exist at Disneyland, a park that already had more to do than DHS ever has.

...a park that already had more to do than MK ever has (by double-digits) - and that's saying something considering the MK has way more attractions than the other three (also by double-digits).

Its embarrassing that the attraction count between the two parks in California is roughly the same as the four here (slightly higher over there, I believe and yes, including shows on both coasts), especially when you look at total attendance numbers for the two resorts.

 

[BlakeW39]

...a park that already had more to do than MK ever did - and that's saying something considering the MK is so much more filled out with attractions than the other three.

oh yeah, honestly there's really no excuse for Disney to keep pouring money into Disneyland when MK has so much less in comparison. MK needs investment far more than Disneyland does

 

[SpectreJordan]

In a little different idea, I was thinking the ride could be about mammals, with a history component. Since early mammals appeared during the age of the dinosaurs, a dino scene would make sense to me, but are you saying that would bother you?

Also, I don't understand why Shanghai couldn't have this as an extra ride in the future, as has been suggested in this thread.

Forcing the Zootopia IP on some ride about seeing prehistoric animals would make the latter annoying & be a waste of using Zootopia in the parks. If they actually cared about making a Zootopia ride educational, they'd just make it about all the different biomes in the city & relate that to their real world counterparts.

Fair. Modern Dinosaur is a more entertaining attraction than Kali I guess, because Kali was always weak. Ditto for Na'vi.

On the other hand though Kali is a (weak) D ticket in a fantastic land, the village of Anandapur in Asia. Dino is a now an E on the weaker side that is the marquee attraction for a very poor quality land, Dinoland USA. And yes the land has a cool backstory or whatever, and fits the theme of Animal Kingdom, but it's a very later-Eisner style land (reminds me of DCA) and was clearly budget cut to all hell with pretty minimal visual theming. Sure it's kitschy and whatever and I enjoy Restaurantosaurus enough but the land isn't transportive in any way. And I'm talking about outside Dinorama mind you.

I'm curious to what the original plans for a Dinosaur land were. I imagine Dinoland wasn't the original idea & they had something a lot cooler planned when they thought they had a bigger budget.

... and MMRR would have had a much smaller footprint in a new build (like DL) since it would have been going into something built for it rather than being stuck in a gigantic show building built for a much larger ride, now leaving a ton of space unused and wasted.

GMR was in desperate need of updating* - not a replacing.


*not just adding movies to the end reel but a new story line with or without interaction elements and serious re-working of some of the show scenes. From almost day one, Tarzan felt ripe for replacing; Alien, while intially very cool was well past it's sell by date as a "non-classic" movie (at the time it opened) by the time it closed, etc. There is a lot they could have done to "fix" this ride over the years if they were interested in really investing in it but I'm sure they were happy to replace it with something that likely has considerably lower maintenance costs.

Alien didn't fit that specifically anymore, but by the time the ride closed that film had cemented itself as an all-time classic. It's always in the conversation for one of the best horror movies of all-time. Alien definitely deserved its spot on that ride.

oh yeah, honestly there's really no excuse for Disney to keep pouring money into Disneyland when MK has so much less in comparison. MK needs investment far more than Disneyland does

I'm pretty sure the main reason they do it is because that's "their" park. The one most of the corporate Disney people go to, execs, Imagineers, etc...

 

[MrPromey]

Alien didn't fit that specifically anymore, but by the time the ride closed that film had cemented itself as an all-time classic. It's always in the conversation for one of the best horror movies of all-time. Alien definitely deserved its spot on that ride.

Except the effect with the xenomorphs which at one time would elicit an audible response from people with the one in the ceiling often getting guests in the car under it to kind of duck, in later years, were creating barely curious glances in all the ride-throughs I'd been on.

The movie might be a scifi-horror classic but it's representation with the Ripy animatronic (can a rotating head on a manquin be called an animatronic?) and the anything-but-scary xenomorph interactions were not.

It went in there representing something intended to be current and if all that ride was going to end up being was a tribute to classic movie scenes with all the "current" stuff lumped into the reel at the end, of course it was going to lose the interest of an audience that over time would become more and more disconnected from the main draws of the attraction.

I mean even some of the classics like Casablanca - sure, most people have heard of it but how many people under 40 have ever seen it or really have any clue what it was even about?

If it's a classic and needs to stay, what other things could be replaced, then?

With something like this, you can't keep it all and expect it to work for 50 years. You gotta pick and choose what you keep and what you update so that newer generations will continue to find it relevant or you end up with... MMRR... which... is the direction they went.

 

[SpectreJordan]

Except the effect with the xenomorphs which at one time would elicit an audible response from people with the one in the ceiling often getting guests in the car under it to kind of duck, in later years, were creating barely curious glances in all the ride-throughs I'd been on.

The movie might be a scifi-horror classic but it's representation with the Ripy animatronic (can a rotating head on a manquin be called an animatronic?) and the anything-but-scary xenomorph interactions was not.

It didn't go in there as a classic movie and if all that ride was going to end up being was a tribute to classic movie scenes with all the "current" stuff lumped into the reel at the end, of course it was going to lose the interest of an audience that over time would become more and more disconnected from the main draws of the attraction.

I mean even some of the classics like Casablanca - sure, most people have heard of it but how many people under 40 have ever seen it or really have any clue what it was even about?

If it's a classic and needs to stay, what other things could be replaced, then?

With something like this, you can't keep it all and expect it to work for 50 years. You gotta pick and choose what you keep and what you update so that newer generations will continue to find it relevant or you end up with... MMRR... which... is the direction they went.

It was always going to be a hard ride to keep relevant; the only true way to retain relevancy would be to rip it up every 2 decades or so & replace most of the show scenes. This is even harder nowadays where the film studios aren't as friendly with each other.

I would've liked them to do that but it makes sense that they just said "Screw it" & outright replaced it.

 

[MrPromey]

It was always going to be a hard ride to keep relevant; the only true way to retain relevancy would be to rip it up every 2 decades or so & replace most of the show scenes. This is even harder nowadays where the film studios aren't as friendly with each other.

I would've liked them to do that but it makes sense that they just said "Screw it" & outright replaced it.

Hard?

Who knows? They never even tried.

One show scene every 5-10 years would have probably been enough along with, maybe updating the script - just updating the few scenes that were supposed to have been "modern" one at a time would probably have done it.

The hokey "in the movies" live sequences - literally, the easiest thing possible in the ride to update - were never updated, either. I mean, the awful dialog between the "driver" and the "character" was just... lame. Who thought dialog written for what was supposed to be a "real person" having a "spontaneous" interaction in 1989 would play the same way in 2020?

How much would changing a few lines in a script delivered live on each ride have cost them?

We've seen things they care about (or with sponsors) get updated plenty of times - Spaceship Earth, Pirates, Haunted Mansion (keeps getting stuff it doesn't even need) and then you have things like this - the marque attraction of a park left to basically rot - just made no sense but then, so much of what they do makes no sense anymore which I guess is why a movie that wasn't about animals* and another about animals standing in for humans in a very human-like world will probably end up going into a park about animals and tangently about nature in general.**

*I know, I know - water and the environment blah, blah, blah but Moana wasn't about that. They talked about living with their environment in one song that was more about staying put (kind of like the Truman Show) than about the earth and ultimately, the water wasn't some natural resource to be protected - it was some magical living thing and the big conflict wasn't resolved by people learning to recycle, it was resolved by a demi-god learning to accept his value outside of praise and making atonement for bad actions by returning something to a god that he stole from it and a girl-power character standing up to her father and charting her own course and relating to a "goddess" which was labeled and misunderstood which is all fine - I thought it was a great movie - but it had about as much to do with the actual concepts of nature as the Jungle Cruise movie did... oh wait, she saved a baby sea turtle from being eaten by another natural animal... like happens as a part of nature - she got in the way of that so of course this is a movie about earth and nature or whatever - sorry, this rant was not directed at you!

**It's called Animal Kingdom - not Wild Kingdom, not Nature Kingdom but Animal Kingdom. They have walking trails where you can see Tigers and a ride that shows animals with an attempt to fake their natural habbitats. There are no trails devoted to plant sightings and no rides of full ecosystems the way there are in the Land pavilion. They do point out the big fake trees in the safari tour so I guess that's something but I don't think anyone is there to take in the cement trees with doors on the back sides.

 

[Bocabear]

It was always going to be a hard ride to keep relevant; the only true way to retain relevancy would be to rip it up every 2 decades or so & replace most of the show scenes. This is even harder nowadays where the film studios aren't as friendly with each other.

I would've liked them to do that but it makes sense that they just said "Screw it" & outright replaced it.

The fact that they never updated any of the show scenes... and yet is was still popular, will show that it would not be that difficult... They could have completely replaced Aliens... Some of the other show scenes could have been freshened up with some digital mapping to make the sets feel more cinematic. (footlight Parade Fountains) They could have actually brought in a good script writer to reimagine the cast interaction a lot better. There was room for another show scene where they could not use the tornado sequence for Wizard of Oz...
MMRR is adorable and very sweet, and it should have been in a theater in the Animation Courtyard...as the cornerstone of a giant section celebrating the animated works of the Disney Studios...not replacing the main theme attraction for the whole park...
Much like EPCOT, the lack of refreshing and updating caused the need for replacement...

 

[BlakeW39]

Hard?

Who knows? They never even tried.

One show scene every 5-10 years would have probably been enough along with, maybe updating the script - just updating the few scenes that were supposed to have been "modern" one at a time would probably have done it.

The hokey "in the movies" live sequences - literally, the easiest thing possible in the ride to update - were never updated, either. I mean, the awful dialog between the "driver" and the "character" was just... lame. Who thought dialog written for what was supposed to be a "real person" in 1989 would play the same way in 2020?

How much would changing a few lines in a script delivered live on each ride have cost them?

We've seen things they care about (or with sponsors get updated plenty of times) - Spaceship Earth, Pirates, Haunted Mansion (keeps getting stuff it doesn't even need) and then you have things like this - the marque attractions of a park left to basically rot - just made no sense but then, so much of what they do makes no sense anymore which I guess is why a movie that wasn't about animals* and another about animals standing in for humans in a very human-like world will probably end up going into a park about animals and tangently about nature in general.**

*I know, I know - water and the environment blah, blah, blah but Moana wasn't about that, either. They talked about living with their environment in one song that was more about staying put (kind of like the Truman show) than about the earth and ultimately, the water wasn't some natural resource to be protected - it was some magical living thing and the big conflict wasn't resolved by people learning to recycle, it was resolved by a demi-god learning to accept his value outside of praise and making atonement for bad actions by returning something to a god that he stole from it and a girl-power character standing up to her father and charting her own course and relating to a "goddess" which was labeled and misunderstood which is all fine - I thought it was a great movie - but it had about as much to do with the actual concepts of nature as the Jungle Cruise movie did... oh wait, she saved a baby sea turtle from being eaten by another natural animal... like happens as a part of nature - she got in the way of that so of course this is a movie about earth and nature or whatever - sorry, this rant was not directed at you!

**It's called Animal Kingdom - not Wild Kingdom, not Nature Kingdom but Animal Kingdom. They have walking trails where you can see Tigers and a ride that shows animals with an attempt to fake their natural habbitats. There are no trails devoted to plant sightings and no rides of full ecosystems the way there are in Living with the Land. They do point out the big fake trees in the safari tour so I guess that's something but I don't think anyone is there to take in the cement trees with doors on the back sides.

Yeah Moana doesn't fit that well in DAK. I mean by the standards of IP it's better than most, but it still has almost nothing to do with animals, which is what DAK is primarily about (made very clear both by Joe Rohde and the park's official mission statement)

 

[BlakeW39]

It was always going to be a hard ride to keep relevant; the only true way to retain relevancy would be to rip it up every 2 decades or so & replace most of the show scenes. This is even harder nowadays where the film studios aren't as friendly with each other.

I would've liked them to do that but it makes sense that they just said "Screw it" & outright replaced it.

Well this is part of the issue with IP. Except for the most iconic properties, like Star Wars or WDAS classics, most IP becomes outdated as time goes on.

 

[Rich Brownn]

Except the effect with the xenomorphs which at one time would elicit an audible response from people with the one in the ceiling often getting guests in the car under it to kind of duck, in later years, were creating barely curious glances in all the ride-throughs I'd been on.

The movie might be a scifi-horror classic but it's representation with the Ripy animatronic (can a rotating head on a manquin be called an animatronic?) and the anything-but-scary xenomorph interactions were not.

It went in there representing something intended to be current and if all that ride was going to end up being was a tribute to classic movie scenes with all the "current" stuff lumped into the reel at the end, of course it was going to lose the interest of an audience that over time would become more and more disconnected from the main draws of the attraction.

I mean even some of the classics like Casablanca - sure, most people have heard of it but how many people under 40 have ever seen it or really have any clue what it was even about?

If it's a classic and needs to stay, what other things could be replaced, then?

With something like this, you can't keep it all and expect it to work for 50 years. You gotta pick and choose what you keep and what you update so that newer generations will continue to find it relevant or you end up with... MMRR... which... is the direction they went.

Part of the reasons people weren't impressed in later years is the Alien moved much much much slower than it did originally

 

[MrPromey]

Part of the reasons people weren't impressed in later years is the Alien moved much much much slower than it did originally

Okay, that makes sense. Having "grown up" with it, it was hard to tell if that was me just feeling like it wasn't as effective as I did as a kid when I first experienced it or if something had changed.

Wonder if the slower movement was to make it less scary or to ease wear on the parts by making the movement less violent on the system (intentional maintenance cutbacks) or if it just became incapable of performing at the original standard without better repair/maintenance than it got.

The swinging Tarzan effect was always pretty lame, though, right?

 

[Bocabear]

Yeah Moana doesn't fit that well in DAK. I mean by the standards of IP it's better than most, but it still has almost nothing to do with animals, which is what DAK is primarily about (made very clear both by Joe Rohde and the park's official mission statement)

it does have an environmental storyline ...about respecting the earth and the sea...Which very much does fit into the Animal Kingdom park...also the aesthetic of the film, the cultural items and artistry, the spirit of exploration...those things fit in nicely too. If they add some animal exhibits that tie into the South Pacific region, they have got it.... and honestly would tie in as much if not more than Expedition Everest....Which is not about real animals to be honest. No one ever complains about it not having animals...because it feels right for the park...Moana would look and feel seamless if implemented well.

 

[BlakeW39]

it does have an environmental storyline ...about respecting the earth and the sea...Which very much does fit into the Animal Kingdom park...also the aesthetic of the film, the cultural items and artistry, the spirit of exploration...those things fit in nicely too. If they add some animal exhibits that tie into the South Pacific region, they have got it.... and honestly would tie in as much if not more than Expedition Everest....Which is not about real animals to be honest. No one ever complains about it not having animals...because it feels right for the park...Moana would look and feel seamless if implemented well.

Animal Kingdom is about 'animals real, ancient, and imaginary,' that is the subject of the park. Themes, tone, subject, premise. These are all different things. The themes of animal kingdom are the intrinsic value of nature, transformation thru adventure, and a personal call to action. The tone is grounded and authentic. The subject is animals living, extinct, and imaginary. The premise is a wildlife theme park.

If you have a Moana land that differed from the film and focuses more on wildlife than it does on the human characters which lead the film, then it wouldn't be a terrible fit for DAK. But as far as the grounded, realistic, authentic tone of DAK, it would be better to create an Oceania themed land similar to Harambe and Anandapur, with a Moana attraction maybe if there has to be IP. And this is why I say Disney is trying too hard to be like Universal these days. Even when Disney utilized IP in the past, they never based entire lands on just a single IP, they based on overarching themes and concepts instead. Basing an entire land on Moana imo would be a mistake. Pandora makes sense bc that needs its own land really to even work. Moana doesn't.

 

[James Alucobond]

Animal Kingdom is about 'animals real, ancient, and imaginary,' that is the subject of the park. Themes, tone, subject, premise. These are all different things. The themes of animal kingdom are the intrinsic value of nature, transformation thru adventure, and a personal call to action. The tone is grounded and authentic. The subject is animals living, extinct, and imaginary. The premise is a wildlife theme park.

If you have a Moana land that differed from the film and focuses more on wildlife than it does on the human characters which lead the film, then it wouldn't be a terrible fit for DAK. But as far as the grounded, realistic, authentic tone of DAK, it would be better to create an Oceania themed land similar to Harambe and Anandapur, with a Moana attraction maybe if there has to be IP. And this is why I say Disney is trying too hard to be like Universal these days. Even when Disney utilized IP in the past, they never based entire lands on just a single IP, they based on overarching themes and concepts instead. Basing an entire land on Moana imo would be a mistake. Pandora makes sense bc that needs its own land really to even work. Moana doesn't.

Rapa Nui theming for a hypothetical village section would be pretty cool. Also, the kakamora are technically mythological creatures, though the way they’re presented in the film is likely too overtly human to fit.

 

[SamusAranX]

I have the feeling Disney thinks Hollywood Studios is fine for now because they just added Galaxy's Edge, Toy Story Land, and Mickey's Runaway Railway. In actuality, it still needs a lot more.

Added is a very loose term too. Even with all these new attractions many shored up what had already been lost in capacity or replaced existing, in MMRR’s case: I think the park still comes out ahead from say 5 years ago, but barely. I think AK is way, way worse off. It needs massive, faithful park expansion

 

[BlakeW39]

Rapa Nui theming for a hypothetical village section would be pretty cool. Also, the kakamora are technically mythological creatures, though the way they’re presented in the film is likely too overtly human to fit.

It would be perfect man. There are so many directions you could go in for a third location-based DAK land. A Europe land semi-similar to Beastly Kingdomme. A Rapa Nui themed land with island/oceanic wildlife, or an Australian land with a mix or reef life and Australasian fauna. Or even a Latin American type land with fauna from Central and South America. I could go on. I want one so badly lmao

 

[Mike S]

Because the original came and went and because this movie bombed at the box office?

Unless they decide to come out with a new movie about dinosaurs, I don't see it happening.

Who knows, maybe Rex and Trixie can get their own spinoff the way Buzz did - the movie about the dinosaurs they're based on that Andy loved?

Sucks that Disney is so severely lacking in creativity that they can’t come up with a suitable concept based on freaking DINOSAURS without an IP.