VIDEO - First look at Toy Story Land after dark

LOL. On the contrary, Disney is counting on CMs having loose lips about “everything ever wanted in a land!”

Rather than assume things, you could have actually looked them up. Ryan Wineinger, for example, has years of experience behind him as a theatrical set designer and some impressive fellowships and awards under his belt (http://www.ryanwineinger.com/documents/resume.pdf). I couldn't find CVs for the other two, but they wouldn't be working for Disney if they hadn't likewise distinguished themselves. Young or not (and they look like they're in their 30s to me), they are surely more qualified than all the armchair imagineers here.

this made me laugh....in so many ways.

LOL. I didn’t say they were unqualified. I suggested they did not have adequate guidance from WDI veterans on this project. If you had those Imagineers with Joe Rohde at the helm, they would have learned a ton and this project wouldn’t have so many glaring issues. It also would’ve cost $500m but that’s neither here nor there.

Even Joe Rohde was once a new Imagineer. The company had a depth of existing talent at the time to have him work with the pros who could combine his unique vision with their decades of experience building rides in the parks. For example, “are you sure you don’t want a themed awning over the queue?” or “This looks awesome but I’m not sure the scale is consistent.” You can be an excellent new Imagineer but that still doesn’t adequately provide the knowledge that comes from 40 years of building both the iconic Disney rides and a few flops. Unless you were around to build Test Track and Radiator Springs Racers, you won’t immediately know the difference between the two and where the successes and shortcomings of each come from.

What we are seeing is a WDI that has lost a good deal of its talent, so the remaining A team gets the Pandoras and the Galaxy’s Edges, which are spectacular as usual, while the B team gets the Toy Story Lands and the Pixar Piers.

If the original Fantasyland (in either DL or WDW) were to be designed and built today, people here would excoriate the imagineers for the shoddy and lackluster job they'd done. To me, TSL's theming looks fun, impressive, and immersive. It doesn't match Pandora or Galaxy's Edge in elaborateness or ambition, but it was never supposed to.

I'm confident in saying that the imagineers, whether A-team or B-team, know what they're doing much, much better than any of us here.

I didn’t say real. I said “not campy.” It wasn’t viewed as silly. Pirates of the Caribbean is clearly fake but not viewed as silly even today. Same for Tower of Terror. Or GMR.

Jungle Cruise wasn’t always a roast of itself. The whole reason why it can make fun of itself is because it was originally viewed by Walt, himself, as a true life fantasy. Back when the land was going to be True Life Adventureland with real animals. On the begrudging realization that live animals were impractical, Walt didn’t suddenly decide to change the ride to its current tone. That change happened organically.

Have you seen old-school ‘50s carnival haunted houses? Jungle Cruise was worlds ahead of that at the time.

I think part of that problem is simply a sheer lack of projects for them in recent times. There was no need for anything but a single A-team with the backup for the spill over.

I'm hopeful that this big round (and really globally there is a metric tonne of projects now happening) gives ample experience to the current crop. Talent tends to gravitate to where things are actually happening.

I think Walt would excoriate his own Imagineers if they built Fantasyland rides today to the same level as they did in the 1950s. They don’t. See Shanghai’s Peter Pan’s Flight. Or the updated Disneyland ones. Only Florida’s dark rides stay in the Dark Ages.

Sure. And if so, we should expect a WDI incapable of producing original content. Not that Disney approves original content for its parks nowadays...

:hilarious:

realized mid-way...
was going to change 'rear' to 'back', but that was used in what i was quoting, so thought it confusing
...pressed ahead hoping the actual content would help me out :joyfull:

bravo...
tried to articulate that in another thread and was't nearly as successful

Wonder no more - here is the original presentation as shown in 1956.

Then why are there glaring issues that we can all see?

Specifically, lack of indoor queues, or even covered queues. Lack of indoor restaurant space. Lack of indoor meet and greet. Lack of gift shop. Extremely low hourly capacity of the 2 new rides. No indoor space to go when the afternoon rain arrives.

These seem like such obvious features that a land like this needs, yet they are not present. I think most people here would know that those are a requirement, and yet the designers do not.

I remember the great Marty Sklar saying at a presentation "meet the needs of the people". This is frequently missing in recent WDI projects.

Individual Imagineers probably know what is best, but once you throw in all the competing demands that come with working in a huge corporation like Disney, whats best doesn't always become reality.

Not all of us see them. Some of us are willing to wait and experience the finished product before making any snap judgements.

Somewhere upthread, a CM (Disone, I believe) said that more of the queue is sheltered than appears to be the case in aerial pictures.

Why is an indoor restaurant a necessity? And I never thought I'd see the day when people would be moaning about the absence of meet-and-greets and gift shops!