Originally Posted By mousermerf I know this is going to be a tough decision for many people but.. Which part of the Imagination pavilion is worse? Journey into Imagination with Figment or Honey I Shrunk the Audience? One was never funny, one stopped being funny in the mid-90's. One is utterly incoherent and the other is utter incoherence. Which to choose? It's like trying to choose the reddest of the reds amid your stepchildren. Which one is worse?
Originally Posted By Coconut Telegraph Someday I'm going to go in Imagination and go upstairs to have a look around. Acutally I love today's Imagination and yes I saw the original original, the one that broke down every hour.
Originally Posted By leobloom The ride is worse on all counts. The movie, despite its age, still does pretty well with visitors who don't go to the parks every month.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I'm bored with the movie. I really like the ride... I think it is better than the original.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<Naturally, but that's because you have bad taste in attractions, RT.>> I'm not so sure about that. My picks on the Best/Worst of Epcot seemed not too far from the norm. The original JIYI had a great opening scene with Dreamfinder, Figment and the Dream Machine. I will admit that was truly a classic. But after that opening scene the original was an incoherent mish-mash. Sorry... I prefer the new one. I know my opinion is in the minority and that doesn't bother me a bit!
Originally Posted By leobloom I'm not surprised HISTA ranks low with people on LP. Like I said HISTA plays much better for audiences who aren't frequent visitors to WDW. Most posters on LP, I'm guessing, have been visiting Epcot for much of HISTA's run and are quite ready for something new. I'd be happy for something new as I certainly don't go to HISTA when I visit the park. I'm just pointing out that casual audiences still react to the gags in the film (the lion, the snake, the mice) and the motion-based theatre is still more impressive than Uni's Shrek movie, which is relatively new. All in all, HISTA could be a lot worse, like, for starters, "Honey, I Imprisoned the Audience in SGE." *shiver*
Originally Posted By dennis-in-ct I have seen HISTA waaaayy too many times (even the Paris version) so my vote for 'worse' is HISTA. The ride is cute. Not great but cute.
Originally Posted By davewasbaloo Well, it is interesting how much bashing these both get. I actually quite like the new Imagination ride. And I am with RT, I actually think it is the best version. My kids adore it. And I have always been a figment fan.I miss the opening scene with Dreamfinder, but the rest of the original was not great either. AS for HISTA, I miss Captain Eo, and I do not bother with HISTA anymore having seen it dozens of times. However, for my MIL, it is one of her favorites. And it is my BIL's fav attraction at DLP after PotC!!!! So, it does have it's audience. But I would welcome a new film. I would still rather enjoy those tow attractions than bother with Mission Space (which is a shame as I love the notion of space travel).
Originally Posted By X-san I think they're both fine. HISTA is way old now though. It was fine in its' day.
Originally Posted By X-san ***The ride is worse on all counts.*** Worse than the original, you mean? Maybe. It's fine for what it is though. What most people tend to forget is the original was way past its' prime when they retired it. The ride was a guaranteed walk on any time of day, even when the rest of the park was packed. That ain't good for bidness.
Originally Posted By Labuda I enjoyed HIStA the first time I saw it, but it doesn't have the repeatability factor for me that the other 3-d movies have. Journey, on the other hand, is just fun! I love singing along with Figment. And he's SO CUTE!
Originally Posted By plpeters70 "The ride was a guaranteed walk on any time of day, even when the rest of the park was packed." As is the new ride - I haven't seen a line for this since it first opened. And even then, it never had much of a line. Personally I think the new ride sucks and really needs to be replaced. There's almost nothing to look at - and large areas that have nothing but empty walls. Go back and watch a video of the original - that ride was FULL of things to look at in almost every corner. The new one, not so much.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 I have to say the ride is worse. Because as other spirits have wisely pointed out, HISTA is still enjoyable to many guests who have never seen it before. The storyline is simple, the effects cool. The problem is it is a movie. And even if you take into account WDW's demos (and EPCOT's version seems to still get crowds as opposed to DL's and DLP's versions, which are always empty when I'm there), at some point dated is dated. This thing has been running since the early 90s ... and it has absolutely no relevance to most newbies today vs. say Terminator at Universal, which has a new FOX series that keeps it so. In my perfect theme park world, 3D movies wouldn't stay more than 3-5 years. But in the real world, they still are incredibly dated and tired after 8-10 years. As to the ride, I steadfastly disagree with anyone who feels that this version is better than the original. The original had whimsy. It was immersive. It wasn't a ride through large warehouse like rooms that are more noteable for what was removed from them than what it currently in the space. At some point it just comes down to opinion and taste. But from a cold business standpoint, Imagination has sucked up close to $80 million over the past decade in two redos (that in my opinion were largely creatively bereft) and the attraction still can't pull in anymore bodies than the original version did in its last few years. That tells me the attraction is a huge failure. And likely why we can expect a 4.0.
Originally Posted By mousermerf I always wonder how people can state that the old ride "didn't get any riders" when we have videos of even its last year clearly showing at least a small line and constant stream of guests. Juxtapose that with the current ride and it's complete lack of line and well known position as the least attended attraction in its class/style group, one has to wonder what the motives of these folks are. Are they misled? Are they mistaken? You can't argue the new ride is doing better than the old one. It simply is not.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<You can't argue the new ride is doing better than the old one. It simply is not.>> Probably no better, but no worse either. I've been on the original many times when there were only three or four people in line ahead of us. I've also been on the new one when there was actually a five or 10 minute wait. Overall, I say the popularity seems about the same. I will admit that the original in its prime attracted far more people than the current version ever has.
Originally Posted By mousermerf Now we're too "well, they're equal." Nope, they're not. The new one is doing worse.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I'm going to say the ride is worse. HISTA is fun if you don't see it all the time. It's probably been about 5 or 6 years since I last saw it, so it's probably time that I venture in there again (in DL most likely). It's fun in moderation, but when you see it all the time, it can get a little old. As for the ride, it really isn't terrible, but it's not great. I would put it about on the same level as the ET ride at Universal (at least what I remember of it from a long time ago). It was fun and I enjoyed it, but nothing memorable enough to make me want to ride it again. It's a nice diversion, but certainly not Disney's best. As for the many incarnations of the ride, I know this is heresy, but I actually liked the second version a lot more than the current one...and maybe even more than the first. The current one is just sort of a random tour of the institute with no real purpose. They have all the little effects and gags, but there is no reason that we are going there. In the second one, we saw that we had no imagination (which is very true in most cases, even if you thought it was insulting). Then we sort of participated in one of the Imagination Institute's experiments and by the end, we had so much imagination that we broke their little machine. In my opinion, that last scene alone is enough to put the second version above the current one. For starters, we already knew what the screens were for, and had a general expectation for what was going to happen, along with an understanding of what was going on. In the new version, they throw us into them with almost no explaination, and then they explode, with no explaination. The yellow background in the new one makes it really easy to see the monitors lowering and the ceiling raising, while the original black made that all a mystery. The screens (the absolute best use of screens in an attraction ever, IMO) made the room look huge, even though it was quite small. It also flowed very well into the starfield to unloading, where that's now another abrupt change. The second one had a ton of other great effects (the constilations for example) that were taken out when they redid it, and added in Figment, who just seems annoying now. I still haven't figured out whether or not I like it better than the original, but the second one is far superior to the third.
Originally Posted By sun-n-fun I think HISTA is worse. We still enjoy every other 3D show, but this one we skip. The ride is fun, not anything intellectual, just a fun ride with a cute song. We still ejoy it each time we visit.
