PREMiERdrum

I'm excited to see all the new stuff the Orlando parks have cooked up. We own a timeshare, so we typically trade into a Celebration or Kissimmee-area condo for 7 days. We typically do 3 days at Disney, 1 at Seaworld, and 1 at Universal. Our plans this year are scaled back a bit, waiting to see how Avery handles things. We'll likely do 2 days at Disney, and 1 day split between SeaWorld and Aquatica. The "grown ups" might venture to Universal, and leave the little ones (good friends of ours are travelling with us, they have an 8 month old son) back at the condo with the nanny. (my mom travells with us as our nanny and cook. LOL)

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan. in fact, we just booked our trip for April, which will be our 10 month old daughter's first visit. I love the whimsy of the Magic Kingdom, the built-in (though recently watered down) optimism of Epcot, the perfect placemaking at DHS, and the incredible design of Animal Kingdom. Where I see guest experience declining is mainly an effect of a complacent and "good enough" attitude in management. -Nemo made no thematic sense for The Living Seas, but it was an easy fit. Kids like Nemo. "Good enough" -The "star" character in Expedition Everest has been broken for, what, 4 years now? Point a fan at him and fire up a strobe light. They won't know the difference. "Good enough." -In an age where energy is a hotbutton issue, the Energy pavilion at Epcot hasn't been updated in 17 years. But, what the hell, Ellen's still on TV. "Good enough." -An aerial ride track has been left to rot above DL's Tomorrowland untouched for 11 years. People must have forgotten about Rocket Rods by now. "Good enough." I studied Stagecraft and Design in college with the pie-in-the-sky dream of one day working for WDI. It kills me to see them let go of the high standards that they used to hold themselves too. They're being hanged with their own noose.

DQ also has (or had, a few years ago) reasonable price caps on their products. With it being a "Grill & Chill" location, that means the food product will also be sourced from Dairy Queen (Grill & Chill is the new Braizer system, essentially) so the quality should be there. Oddly enough, with the DQ system, stores that aren't signed as "Braizer" or "Grill & Chill" are free to order their hot food product from whichever supplier they wished, and only have to order their ice cream selections from DQ.

They've been moving this direction for a while.. and it's all designed to appeal to their "agenda-driven" tourist, and prop up their PhotoPass sales. It's another case of TDA and TDO managing from the 10th floor. They look down on the park, see a line of people crowding a character on the street, and decide to give them a permanent 'home'. What they fail to realize, however, is that they're gutting the character experience of any whimsy or magic. Part of the excitement with the walkarounds was their randomness. You rounded the corner and see your favorite character face to face, on your level, and ready to meet you. Under the new plan, you get in a queue, walk up to a set up that resembles a KMart Photography studio, and meet your Princess in front of a cheesy, printed backdrop. The end result might be the same (you meet and get photographed with the character), but the experience is decidedly different.

One would hope. While the old Jet Stream and Zuma Falls are, well, old, they deliver a good ride. The Jet Stream, specifically, delivers a great "Oh Crap" moment about 1/3 of the way thru its course. They have some life left in them.

If the "home" position of the valve is closed, and the valve is properly sealed, I can see it working. My question sits with the financials: How much more expensive is this cup compared to the standard plastic beer cup? There is nasty beer... and there is great beer.

Great! Another reason for stadiums and parks to raise beer prices!

It's nothing personal. It's business. Those two had great intentions, but lacked the time an knowledge to properly execute the project. As I said before:

Exactly. Let's not forget, Rowling signed a letter of intent with Disney back in 2005, and park / miniland / ride concepts were produced. That's on the books. When Disney and Pixar decided to renew their partnership (which looked doubtful for a time), the financials of other large projects and initiatives came under scrutiny. At this point in the Disney/Rowling discussions, an entire Potter Park was being developed. Several on the inside have said that her demands were unrealistic in both financial and operational aspects, compared to the Disney business model. Rowling started whispering with the folks up I-4, Disney re-upped with Pixar, and the rest is history. I'd love to see what they were planning for the potter park, though.

It's never come out on a Disney stage, but it's out there.

There is much to what you say, but there is also an element of "sour grapes anyway" in Disney's rationalization now as to why they didn't get the Potter concept... BUT, the cramped walkways, tiny shops, and overall under-scaled area (relative to the park) lend credence to the imagineers claims. This wasn't Disney brass trying to save face by saying "we didn't want it anyway," this was imagineers expressing their concerns with the project. Concerns that appear to have been validated at IoA. I'll add here, too, that I think the concept is a much better "fit" for Universal than Disney. That potential tie-up always seemed a bit odd to me.

And it is my understanding that it was much more about the artistic control than the money... Disney brass didn't mind to pay the cash (if nothing else than to keep Universal from getting the rights), but Rowling demanded total control and exact replicas of the world she had imagined, which didn't gel with Disney's use of scale, imagination, and overall imagineering outlook. She wanted a literal recreation of the spaces. She got that, with Universal. Some Imagineers who worked up preliminary plans to show her have since said that they had major concerns about capacity and crowd flow with the scale and scope she was demanding. Those issues are now Universal's headache.

The problem with the Orlando property is that, new attraction or not, people come. Visiting Walt Disney World is still the ubiquitous family vacation for Americans and foreign tourists alike. Disneyland has a very local, vocal fan base of SoCal'ers and Annual Passholders that keeps the pressure on TDA for new attractions, as well as the meticulous maintenance of existing attractions. With Disney World, if Splash Mountain has missing effects and moldy boats, people still come. If the glass in the Haunted Mansion's ballroom scene is left dirty, people still come. Hell, the over publicized Yeti in E:E stopped working 6 months after the ride's opening and has been broken since, yet people still come. TDO has shown their commitment to add just enough, while spending as little as possible, to keep the parks from appearing completely stagnant. There are current, incredible concepts for each park just waiting for the greenlight... Carsland and the Monsters Inc coaster at DHS, Journey into Imagination redo at Epcot, and a Mysterious Island (Tokyo DisneySea) area for Animal Kingdom. It will be interesting to see if Rasulo's attention shifts to Orlando once California Adventure's extreme makeover is done.

While her heart may have been in it, the effort was not there. There was nothing insulting at all. The effort was poor, at best. Just look at the website and updates (or lack of updates). it comes off as internet spam. What judgements were passed without facts? The effort was not there, and the project failed. You can call it "passing judgement"- I call it the brutal truth based upon the facts given (or not given) by the fundraising website. If you have more "facts" that have not been released, please enlighten us. Being an enthusiast does not entitle one for fundraising. Where can I acquire the ability to tell how hard someone works simply by looking at their website? Perhaps not a direct reflection of how "hard" somebody works, but definitely an indicator of how seriously they take the project. And couple that with the fact that donors were not directly contacted or thanked after making their donations, and it's easy to see a lack of planning and foresight in their efforts. Nobody is doubting their intentions. They made the classic mistake of applying emotional justification to a business decision without the necessary planning, procedures, or protocol. They claimed to own the ride when they didn't. They didn't even make the full, agreed upon, down payment. They lost any ounce of credibility with me when they proclaimed "the ride could run today if it had power." The ride had been sitting for several years, and the trains were sitting, exposed to the elements, in the exact same spot on the midway where they were on the day of the auction.

I'm excited to see if this (likely Vekoma) rocking coaster system is better than the solidly "meh" eMotion system from Mack. I'm impressed with the changes to the plan... sometimes it helps to have a fresh set of eyes come in to look at a project. Spending that much cash on something that appealed almost exclusively to a reasonably small demographic was, IMO, stupid from the beginning.

Not so much wind to seek, but when it comes to hot air, Kinzel's full of it.

Exponentially so. Food sales have been solid, but get this: You are welcomed to bring your own food and drink into the zoo. They have also made a mint off of the 4 rides offered within the zoo boundaries: The Grant Carousel ($1 per), North America Train Ride ($1 per), Journey To The Islands Boat Ride ($1 per), and the Pony Ride ($3-$4 I think, and not a lame pony-in-a-circle, rather a nice winding wooded course). The POP wristbands for all the rides in Jungle Jack's Landing have also been selling very well to guests visiting both the Zoo and Zoombezi Bay.

LINK - Columbus Dispatch Columbus Zoo broke their annual attendance record (2nd year in a row), bringing in 2.37 million guests in 2010.

Four years of German in HS... and I didn't even notice that the "l" was there.

And, it's German for "Forbidden," which could lend itself to some cool back story.

The potential names, of which one or none will be selected. Hmmm... I like "Verbolten" The others are pretty weak though. "Black Forest Turbo?" That's almost as bad as "Cheetah Hunt."

The SpongeBob license for Action Theater's film comes from the producer (iWerks?), not directly from the property holder like the kids area.

+1 DoT was the best "fit" for AT I think... of course, the theater was designed for it.

Or, use the hardware as "spares" for other parks with the same setup, especially if another park's iteration is more popular. The building isn't visible from many ground-level guest areas, so it would be easy to gut the other half, send the seats and projector to another park, and let the shell wait there for another purpose.