Cloning of rides at Disney Theme Parks??

[raidermatt]

Regarding Space, my understanding is that yes, you spin, but you don't realize you are spinning.

AV- you're right, its not that difficult to get a flight to either resort. But living in Northern California, there is a significant cost and time difference when our family decides whether to go to DLResort or WDW. We have made a committment to the Orlando site through DVC, so from a "me first" perspective, I wouldn't necessarily want to see a lot of cloning. If its in either site, I will see it at least every other year. So give me great and different rides at both resorts, across the board. But since I fall pretty close to the Disney Nut side of the spectrum, I know we are not the "typical" Disney guest. So while I don't think everything should be cloned just to save money, the true hits, like Soarin' should be. Like most, I still think different theming is just about always the best way to go.

The overseas resorts? HIGHLY unlikely I will get the chance to hit those, and if I do, it will be once in a Blue Moon, so clone away. The majority of Americans just don't take many vacations overseas.

 

[Another Voice]

The projected cost of the “pavilion” version of ‘Space’ was over $200 million (according to rumors). This cost would have included not only the attraction, but an extensive post-show “space station” with exhibits, a restaurant, shops and other minor attractions. But when the final check arrived from Compaq, the “pavilion” was slashed to an “attraction” to bring the project’s cost in line with the sponsorship fees (e.g. so that no Mouse Money would be spent). The funny thing is now a lot of their “value engineering” is causing a lot of problems and the current “small” version of the attraction will probably cost them more than the full pavilion would have cost them before.

And there are plenty of rumors that you may not see yourself spinning on ‘Space’, but your stomach will definitely know it. One of the design brief is rumored to have requested a cabin that is easier to clean on a very frequent basis.

Mr. Matt, you’ve found the central problem with the whole “cloning” issue. Disney wants to have two full resorts, each drawing guests to stay in onsite hotels for multiple days. The problem is that both resorts are ending with exactly the same attractions. Only Disneyland is much smaller and offers much less. Since getting to Orlando or Orange County is equally easy, why would the average vacationer choose to come to Disneyland and see less? And in order to make Disneyland into a “resort”, Disney’s poked their fingers in the eyes of the locals and the second park is dead on arrival.

What’s the brilliant business strategy here? And for everyone gloating that this is only Disneyland’s problem – next time you think about ‘Beastly Kingdom’, just picture ‘Tower of Terror’ at California Adventure. That’s how The Mouse is paying for the ride.

 

[WDW2002]

Maybe I am odd but I get "excited" when I hear that a ride from WDW is going to be brought to DLR. I will likely only get the chance to visit WDW one time and consider DL "my" disney park and would love to see some of the "better" WDW attraction at DLR. I do not mean to say that I want clones to replace "new" and unique attractions but I am not against clones.

 

[HBK]

I am not against clones.

How about a park full of em?

I think that's the real problem here....the over reliance of clones to bail out struggling parks.

By cloning TOT is Disney throwing in the towel on it's attempts to turn Anahiem into a tourist destination? Are they changing the purpose of the parks from attracting people from Anahiem to focusing on the local clientel?

It's not a bad strategy (although that really hurts the hotel business)....but they're going to have to make up their minds. Either they're trying to make the WDW vacationeers make a trip to Anahiem or they're trying to bring the WDW experince to the Cali for the western states.

 

[Bob O]

I would agree with HBK/AV. We are planning a trip to DL because we want to see the original park. But if they are going to just add clones to DL what incentive would i have to return??? If they want DL to be a resort of several days length it has to be unique and not just a best of park. Because all things being equal you would get more bang for your buck at wdw IMHO.
gcurling i dont think the rides mentioned were groundbreaking like spiderman was where several different rides (3d/simulator/moving) were put together as something totally new. Even the Hulk Coaster has a unique launching system that from what ive heard is unlikely to be replicated due to the cost and the separate power plant needed just for the one ride. Im hopefull Mission Space will be new and groundbreaking and wonder what disney is going to do with some supposed military type technology they bought that could be used for virtual reality type rides.
But with the current management im not optimistic as they seem more content to add carny rides with a little theming.

 

[All Aboard]

Chad, Spidey's a 40" attraction (like Splash, Big Thunder, Test Track, ToT, Dinosaur). The average kid reachs 40" around 3 1/2 years old. Natalie hit 40" at 3 yrs, 3 mos.

 

[larworth]

As we drift away for the clone discussion, and Greg beats me to the height restriction question.

Didn’t someone (Hill?) infer the ride concept that became Spiderman was originally conceived by WDI, but was another idea that migrated to Universal following that big WDI purge. Regardless, Universal deserves credit for developing the idea into a great attraction and spending the bucks to do it right. Man, it sure would have made a great Villians ride at Disney.

Also, heard another misconception is what IOA really cost. That it was not the enormous number that often gets reported (*). Supposedly, Universal had an early press release saying they were going to spend $2-3B at their resort over the next x years. This included IOA, Citywalk, all the new hotels, and other future projects on the board at the time. One estimate I’ve read pegged IOA around $1B? If we think DCA (sans DD) was in the $0.6B range, this does seem reasonable.

Can’t comment on the cutting edge nature of the TDS rides, but isn’t the whole issue is we’re still using Indy as our Disney reference point (1995). We know WDI is capable of cutting edge, the issue is whether Disney (not OLC, and not a sponsor) is willing to fund it.


(*) I just read another article about the Pooh litigation and it again quotes the $4B revenue number. Easy to see how these things just keep getting recycled. I’d asked before whether this was a realistic sum. AV if you have any insight into the Pooh scene, dig up the “Pooh and the Money Pot” thread and enlighten, please.

 

[Another Voice]

The ride vehicle at used in Universal’s ‘Spiderman’ is a significant upgrade to the basic “motion-base” vehicle first used by Disney in ‘Indiana Jones’. And Disney’s vehicle was really putting a theater based motion simulator on wheels. They represent an evolution of the concept rather than massive leaps in technology. The real change on Universal’s part was to integrate the ride vehicle with 3D large format animation – a very difficult challenge. Disney had thought of a similar concept, but killed it because they thought it was too expensive (first versions would have been for a Roger Rabbit attraction). The huge number of other show effects in ‘Spiderman’ are also very impressive.

I too have heard that the ‘Island of Adventure’ park cost around $1 billion (with one clone) – about the same cost of the DisneySea park (also with one clone). Universal’s expansion included CityWalk, two hotels, parking structures and infrastructure. Similarly, the expansion at Tokyo Disneyland included the Ikaspria [sp?] entertainment section, four hotels, a very large monorail system and other infrastructure work besides the new park. The California Adventure expansion (with numerous clones and catalog purchases) included the smaller Downtown Disney and the Grand Californian Hotel. The parking structure, roadwork and garden district were all paid for by my taxes (a complete scam).

The attractions at DisneySea don’t represent technological breakthroughs – they’re just really well done, well thought-out attractions. You don’t have to reinvent the film stock every time to make a good movie, and DisneySea took existing ride systems and made better rides. ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’ is the Test Track ride system, ‘Stormrider’ is an upgraded ‘Star Tours’ cabin, ‘Aladdin’ is a basic boat & canal ride.

Reusing the ride system is not cloning, because that’s not the ride. No one goes on ‘Pirates’ or ‘Small World’ just for the boat. It’s the story line and the show that people are interested in. Cloning is when you take the same exact show and build it in another park. So, ‘Indiana Jones’ and ‘Dinosaur’ are not clones even though they use the exact same ride system and even the same exact track layout. But ‘Big Thunder’ WDW and ‘Big Thunder’ Disneyland are clones even with different tracks.

 

[raidermatt]

Just a comment or two on the Disneyland as a resort topic (I'll try to be brief... )

I've been to Disneyland two times in the last 10 years. I had been a much more frequent visitor before that, and plan to be a more frequent visitor in the future. Regardless, back in 1992, Disneyland could not even be thought of as a resort destination. The thought of taking an entire vacation, even a short 4-5 days and only going to DL never crossed my mind. Last August, we did just that, never leaving the confines of the resort. We spent one day at DCA (yes, that is possible, particularly on a Summer weekend), 2.5 days at DL, and some time in DD, and our hotel, GC.

No, DLResort cannot match WDW. But at least now it clearly is a resort option. DL is still a better park than MK, by most accounts, and GC is a top quality resort that is the equal of the WDW deluxes. The Western States continue to grow, including California, Nevada and Arizona. Florida is a long way away, and its just not realisitic to expect families to make frequent trips from the West Coast (Disney nuts aside). Also, remember that a lot of Japanese tourists visit Hawaii and Calfornia as well as Orlando. DL gives them a viable option for at least 1-2 days longer than it did before.

Also, its my understanding that DD has been very succesful, due in large part to local traffic.

Anaheim is far enough away from Orlando that cloning some rides is not going to kill its attractiveness as a resort.

Again, I don't want to see innovation die at Disney, its just that I'm not yet convinced that is what is happening.

 

[JeffJewell]

...first, we'll never agree on something like this because the term "cloned ride" can mean anything from DLP's Space Mountain to AK's Triceratops Spin to MK's Pirates of the Caribbean to DCA's Tower of Terror (yes, I'm going to speak of it as though it was already built. The aspects of the ride I'm concerned about aren't going to change between now and then), so "cloned rides," as a generic term, can be all over the map of "good" and "bad."

Second, there seems to be a tendency to forget that "cloning" is just a process, a tool for making rides. That tool can be used well or poorly, for a variety of purposes. Even if we agreed on a precise definition of what "cloning" means and which rides are or are not clones, we would be talking about _results_ of a process and not the process itself. The argument "So-and-so is a cloned ride and it's good, therefore cloning is good" is completely hollow. The Salt Lake City Olympics are likely the safest games ever because of what happened on 9-11, but it does not follow that we should crash planes into buildings to help secure the upcoming Grecian games. You simply can't accurately judge the fitness of a process by inspecting isolated results of that process.

So, we can't meaningfully judge whether "cloning rides" is an appropriate general purpose tool for Disney to use when making rides. We'll just end up talking about which clones Group X likes and which clones Group Y doesn't like, and back to the list-y place, we go.

My concern about cloning (already alluded to by a couple of posters) is that the cloning tool, which undeniably has its place in the Imagineering toolbox, now appears to be the primary weapon with which to fight any given battle. In this life, it is the muscles that you exercise regularly that become strong and comfortable to use. My concern for some years has been that Disney was overusing the Cloning and Buying Off The Shelf muscles while the WDI muscle withered.

And now, the WDI muscle has pretty much dropped off, completely.

We can all go enjoy (or ignore, as is our pleasure) the cloned and shelf-bought rides, without even considering their clone status, at the time. But every time one of those rides goes into a Disney park, Disney becomes less of a creative company.

And that brings us nicely back to the same thing I end up typing every time (which is the main reason I just don't do this much anymore); I'm disappointed in Disney because their focus is no longer creating entertainment, it is creating profit; and that change in focus is readily apparent in their product.

Cloning is bad not because it's a bad tool. Cloning is bad because Disney is using it at the expense of other, more robust tools, and with the sole intention being to make money. If Disney was still flexing its other ride-making muscles, with the driving focus being to make great entertainment, no one would bemoan the occasional clone, of whatever stripe.

Jeff

 

[Bob O]

I would agree with JeffJewel in that disney is using the cloning of rides to save money with less concern about the guest experience. I think innovation is dying at wdi and has been so for awhile and the overuse of clones/carny rides is a example of it. Disney at one time was known for innovation and pushing the envelope for rides/shows to increase the guest experince but now they care little about that unless a outside sponser can be found to pay for it. They are letting companies such as Universal and even Six Flags push the envelope in creating new rides/attractions for their guests(unless of course somebody else pays for it like mission space).

 

[raidermatt]

But has Disney always been the "innovator" when it comes to their actual rides? Disneyland itself was a new concept, and therefore much of it was innovative. But most of the rides themselves weren't really state of the art. It has always been the themeing and attention to detail that was the difference, at least in my eyes.

Were Space Mountain or the Matterhorn the biggest, fastest, or even most technolically advanced coasters available? I don't believe so. The Fantasyland dark rides are basically the same old "fun house" rides that can be found in carnivals and county fairs.

The audio-animatronic stuff was pretty innovative, but didn't Disney then just clone it throughout Disneyland?

Its always been about themeing and detail.

Choosing cloning over something brand new and different was never an option until MK opened, and then the decision was to clone the vast majority of it. Next, Epcot came, and it was certainly different, but did it really contain state-of-the-art, innovative rides? Now Disney has 6 parks in the United States alone, not to mention the overseas parks. If they were coming up with 1 new type of ride every 2 years prior to WDW, they would now have to come up with three every year just to keep the same pace per park, and that's only in the U.S. That maybe a nice fantasy for us Disney addicts, but its just not realistic to expect Disney to do this. Ultimately, if a sponser doesn't want to pay for it, the public must, in the form of either higher prices or more frequent trips. If the public is not willing to do that in large enough numbers, a responsible company must act accordingly.

Soarin' Over California certainly fits in the best tradition of Disney attractions. We'll have to see if Space is up to Snuff, but it has the potential.

Disney hasn't slowed there innovations so much as increased the number of outlets they have for those innovations.

 

[hopemax]

And here's where I recommend the book " Roller Coasters, Flumes and Flying Saucers." It's the story of Ed Morgan and Karl Bacon and Arrow Development (now Arrow Dynamics). It's not exactly the best book in the world, the author basically interviewed them and typed up the dialog. After reading the book, I found a greater appreciation for where the amusement park industry really was and how big of deal Disneyland's rides really were, even though now they are standard fare.

I don't know, is the first steel roller coaster innovative or not? From a few minutes checking a couple coaster websites they point to the Matterhorn as *the* defining point in roller coaster history. It opened up so many new directions. I believe Space Mountain was the first coaster to be controlled by a computer, which must have an impact on safety, capacity, etc. Is biggest and fastest the only thing that counts?

Amazon link to the book

 

[JeffJewell]

Soarin' Over California certainly fits in the best tradition of Disney attractions.

I'm puzzled by this. Earlier in your post you say "it's always been about theming and detail" (I'm interested to hear your feelings concerning the DCA Tower of Terror project; particularly the theming and details that Disney won't even bother to clone, just so it can be put up more cheaply). Soarin' is an evolutionary and fairly generic ride mech in front of a movie screen; unthemed in and of itself. You see as you walk in that you're about to watch a big movie. I see Soarin', fun ride or not, as an example of some of the worst of Disney's cost cutting practices. They took a cool idea (hanging-coaster style theatre seating over an IMAX screen) and just stopped. From what I've seen and gleaned, there are no themed details at all in the theatre itself (all the better to to one day put in a "new ride" by buying a new IMAX movie), and there is not even a real story... just random shots of California, over which you soar, for no readily apparent reason.

That may be a fun ride, but to my eye, it's completely bereft of traditional Disney Magic.

"Theming and detail" are important to a ride to the extent that they support the story of that ride. Triceratops Spin has gobs of brightly colored paint, but fails to elevate itself from a local parking lot carnival because the "story" is basically that it _is_ a parking lot carnival.

Mission:Space once had a story, but Compaq didn't cough up enough to cover that. When Disney discovered that the theming and detail that told the "take a trip to another planet" story would come out of their own pockets, suddenly those theme and detail elements are cut from the project, taking the story with them. The "story" now is "ride a g-force simulator," which, interestingly enough, is precisely the story that can be told by anyone else who buys a g-force simulator from ETC.

They basically created the "theme" by copying off of the purchase order. What a cost savings _that_ must have been...

You are right that theming and detail make the difference, but to qualify as the "best tradition of Disney," that theming and detail should serve to tell a good story.

Turns out that good stories often cost more than Disney thinks we're worth.

Jeff

 

[raidermatt]

Hopemax-

I think we are basically looking at it from a guest experience perspective. So the first steel roller coaster would be a big step. I didn't realize the Matterhorn was the first.

The first controlled by a computer wouldn't really be a big deal for guests. Sure, it could improve load times and the such, but we're talking about what makes us go "Wow", and in the case of Space Mountain, as well as the other two Mountains, its the themeing.

 

[raidermatt]

Jeff- Regarding ToT, I'm witholding judgement until there are more details available. From what I gather from AV and other rumors, the pre-ride elements may or may not be included. The main difference AV references is some of the horizontal movement is gone, but I believe even he admits this is rumor. Its not that I doubt his sincerity, but until I hear for sure what's in and what's out, how can I judge? I can say in advance, that IF elements are removed, without some kind of upgrade in another way, I will be disappointed with the decision.

Soarin'- Admittedly, I only rode it once, and it was as my Fastpass window was ending, so I didn't look much at the queue area. Given the theme of the park, soaring over various places in California makes sense. Perhaps their could have been more theme elements added to the ride itself, and perhaps I will notice this more when I ride it again. But I listed it mainly in response to those criticizing Disney for not adding new rides, but rather cloning. Soarin' is definitely not a clone.

Re: Space- I remember this debate from a few months ago, saying that theming something as a simulator is a cheap way out. My first reaction is to say that there is some merit to that. But I think it worked with Test Track, and it COULD work with Space. Again, I will withold judgement until I have more verified details.

 

[Another Voice]

The lateral movement in DCA’s ‘Tower’ is definitely out. It’s not a “rumor” anymore. Some claim the “mirror stop” actually improves the show, I’m not so sure. Even the published artwork of the building itself reflect the missing back section of the “hotel”. The details as far as I know are posted in the “DCA Tower – Details” thread here.

The entire ‘Soaring’ attraction is without any themeing and just the barest minimum of décor. It did have some rather elaborate show elements at one point – including an air show preshow and a themed theater for the film – but those were cut away. Today, the queue is nothing but chains, the “preshow” are pictures and placards on the wall of one of three hallways (and some junkyard purchased wing flaps) and even my local multiplex has more themeing in the “Palace Theater” than ‘Soaring’ has.

The end result is that the entire attraction is nothing but the film and slight simulator effect – and judge for yourself who quickly movies become stale theme park attractions. Even at one year old, there is a decline in attendance at ‘Soaring’.

I’ve been getting conflicting information about ‘Space’ (a lot of conflicting information) so I’ve haven’t written anything about it. When I hear something the seems credible I’ll definitely pass it along.

P.S. I’ve heard that the Matterhorn was also the first rollercoaster that allowed multiple trains on the same track at the same time. But to echo JeffJewel’s comments – the ride technology doesn’t matter, it’s the story that makes an attraction.

 

[Lanshark]

Since chances are I will never make it to DL I would love to see them clone some of DL's rides at WDW.

 

[King Triton]

I agree, I don't want to see the Muppets and Star Wars at Disneyland. Each park should be different. One exception: I wish Disney would build "Journey Into the Center of the Earth" ride in Orlando. I have a question.....why is it all the best rides are over in Japan? Why can't we have a Disneysea over here? DCA is a big let down once you compare it with Disneysea. It looks like the Imagineers spent very little time designing DCA. How sad.

King Triton

 

[JeffJewell]

why is it all the best rides are over in Japan

...because the Oriental Land Company (who paid for TDS) felt high quality was worth paying for; that high quality would continue paying dividends for decades into the future.

Why can't we have a Disneysea over here?

...because the suits in charge of Disney feel that high quality is _not_ worth paying for; that people will pay for anything as long as it says Disney on the side, and that the future is someone else's problem.

It looks like the Imagineers spent very little time designing DCA.

...it's not the time, it's the budget. The same Imagineering Department that came up TDS came up with Dino-Rama, the difference was not how much time they spent on design, it was how much they were allowed to spend on materials.

Jeff