Yes, we were all so excited to see them this morning. They were doing interviews and stuff. I cannot believe we are missing the Railroad by one day though.
The new area looks gorgeous. It looked already great in the concept arts, but in real life the new train track looks even better.
Looks nice. The landscaping still needs a little time to fill in the ground cover, and hide the Star Wars construction from the upper decks of the boat, but overall it looks really well executed. I'm a little confused why the shaman is up on the cliff (presumably to make him visible to the railroad) since he's not talking to anybody now, but figures all look nice and fresh I'm still a little concerned about how short of a trip it is now before the "return to civilization". With the old river, there was a decent amount of time that you were well hidden from view of the heavily-used walkways on the south side of the river. With the new layout, it seems like there's not much time between when the paths behind you are obscured and when the ones ahead appear. Similarly, while it's great to see a nice active riverfront, it seems a little more unrealistic that there isn't really a quiet spot that's not being used by something along the way; there just isn't enough space for downtime any more, and the whole river's purpose was sort of to create downtime
They really need to fix their timing. When I went on the Mark Twain yesterday, it was stopped for five minutes while the Columbia changed passengers. It just doesn't flow smoothly anymore. Also you can really tell where they condensed the river. Between Fantasmic shows the Columbia was parked in plain sight. Solution: just pick a day when both boats don't run?
When they first announced the river shortening, I was worried that it would mean that they wouldn't be able to run both boats at the same time. Obviously they're still getting used to the operational requirements of having both running on the shorter loop, so they're probably still working out the processes, but I fear that they'll use this as an excuse to keep one of them permanently docked for guests (likely the Columbia, if previous operations are any indication). They're already running the boats slower around the river, so I'm not sure what else they can really do to work on the timing DLP had two riverboats, the Mark Twain and Molly Brown, but due to limited demand only runs one at a time. Both needed serious maintenance a few years ago, but only the Molly Brown got an overhaul; even during last year's year-long draining of the River, the Mark Twain continues to deteriorate in the dry dock. By all indications, it will likely never be used again. Although it means that the rivercraft are seldom open to guests at night, I feel like having Fantasmic! at DL at least forces them to keep both big boats up and running, which is the only silver lining I can find
