Originally Posted By pheneix I was one of a lucky few that got to experience a rough cut ride through of Spaceship Earth tonight. First off I can say that I really like the new ride. Mercifully they did not screw this one up. It is not without flaws though, especially towards the end. Here are my first impressions of the ride… Dame Judi Dench’s narration is pretty good, but I would have much preferred Patrick Stewart handling the job. She gave it a very light hearted reading, which will probably surprise a lot of fans of the ride. Its also very fast paced. Almost information overload fast. This is a ride that will demand several ride thrus to absorb it all. That might be a good thing, but I think fans of the old ride will be caught off guard by how fast everything goes. The ride itself… There’s great, there’s good, there’s some bad, and then there is some ugly. Again, this ride is still under construction, so it is hard to tell what is complete and what is not, but I can say I am not impressed with the descent tunnel at all. The LCD screens basically take over and that is all you are expected to look at for the remainder of the ride. All of the static figures, the future city, the SSE model, and the neon are all gone. In their place are lots and lots of fiber optic stars that were not operational on my ride through last night. Allegedly there are some peppers ghost surprises in the finale, if there are they were not operational either. Still, if the finale of the ride is entirely based on these screens they severely dropped the ball . This ride should have a grand and majestic finale and an animated movie on an LCD screen just doesn’t cut it. On the upside, the new animatronics are amazing. They look like they could jump out of their sets and run over to MK to slap Jack Sparrow back into the 70’s. They are that good. One major item of note are the new Phoenician merchant ships. In the old ride they used to sway back and forth gently if ever at all. Now both ships rock back and forth as if in choppy seas, with brand new AA figures riding on top of them to boot. Very well done. The three new show scenes are also spectacular as well. The main frame computer room in particular is a stunning use of the space. It gives the impression of a very wide and open environment. I can’t believe they crammed that scene in that building! I also loved the living room scene that preceded it. A nice nod to the former incarnations of the ride, the family is viewing coverage of man’s first steps on the moon, covered by Walter Cronkite. As I said before this ride is not complete by any means. That is reason enough to not offer a review of the ride at this time. We’ll have to wait until February to see the finished product. However, if you do make it over to Epcot in the coming weeks and are lucky enough to see Spaceship Earth open consider it a fascinating peek into the final stage of designing a major attraction. The sets are not finished, the lighting is not quite right, and many animatronics are not even in place, but it is a great experience all the same.
Originally Posted By pheneix Ugh... Sorry for the lack of spacing. That'll teach me to blindly cut and paste!
Originally Posted By MPierce Thanks for the review. I think the descent will improve with time. That seems to be everybody's complaint so far which leads me to believe it just isn't operational yet.
Originally Posted By pheneix BTW, I did not ride the attraction tonight. I wrote the review last night but never got around to posting till now.
Originally Posted By brotherdave When you said 'fast paced', do you mean literally as in they actually increased the speed of the ride system? Or that there is just much more to see now and it goes by too quickly?
Originally Posted By pheneix The ride doesn't go any faster. There is just so much information presented that it feels much more fast paced. If anything, the ride was probably going slower than normal because over half of the ride vehicles did not even have their audio activated and the ops crew had to load guests into certain cars.
Originally Posted By brotherdave Thanks for the clarification! For a moment, I thought some imagineers might have gotten their way and made it sort of a 'thrill ride' by increasing the vehicle speed!!! ;-)
Originally Posted By mrkthompsn I have seen some use of giant widescreen 3D LCDs in some recent trade shows (including Global Gaming Expo in Vegas), and you guys would not believe the visuals that about to be shown using these screens. True 3D images ~without~ the use of glasses. They look just as good and Muppet-Vision, HISTA and others. I would have expected to see these things in use at the end of SSE, or in the walk-thru palace after it.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 Thanks for the review. I've heard similar from a few other spirits. I have to say I don't like this habit of opening things that aren't working nearly complete, even though I know it is an old Disney habit. I remember taking a visiting friend on the Mansion after its recent redo, right after opening, and she loved it and was so impressed. I then had to explain to her everything she missed in the attic scene that wasn't operational. To me, you work out the quirks with CMs and maybe their families. Not guests. Bad show is bad show, even if you still have new attraction smell ;-)
Originally Posted By TDLFAN Spirit... you know the current management motto is: Do not upset the guests with closures and cancellations. This is the resort where they send Cinderella and Charming out on the parade, each holding umbrellas over their heads...on those pesky rainy days of summer and early winter.
Originally Posted By Skellington88 Overall, im hearing aside from the improved audio animatronics the new ride is a (surprise surprise) fiasco. I hope John Lasseter and Siemens Corp. take a look at these complaints and visit the attraction adn than fire the entire WDI staff. This is really the last straw...we keep getting let down time and time again by these half wit morons who think we want to look at projections and videos at a theme park. Lame, Mediocre, childish, stuff. Let's get a new WDI team that really loves Disney and wants to blow audiances away not disappoint people with lame "interactive" stuff that isnt revolutionary. Sure Haunted Mansion refurb was good and the plans for Disney's California Adventure look promosing but everything else from these people have been met with disdain and disappointment. Keep Tony Baxter and Joe Rhode...but please please PLEASE fire Tom "Video projections rule" Fitzgerald and his cronnies like eric "I helped design the wand" jacobson. __________________
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 ^^have you ridden SSE yet? Do you realize it isn't finished? I don't believe you should jump to negative conclusions about something that you haven't experieneced and isn't even in operational mode yet. But, yeah, some of us would like to see Tom and Eric move on. They've had far more disasters of late than hits. And they've spent a lot of company funds to design things that aren't going to last.
Originally Posted By barboy "Sure Haunted Mansion refurb was good" Well bones, let me just say the Haunted Mansion was done beyond exceptionally well. Easily, easily the best attraction in Florida now, no the best in the US in my opinion......and this was an attraction that I had little interest in before--- an unbelievably awsome refurb. Aside from improving the existing ride from fang to foot claw imagineers have added in 3 mouth watering show scenes..... one of which will blow your mind, just blow you clear out of the water. Imagineers are so proud of that specific scene that disney created a special collectors pin just for it.
Originally Posted By mousermerf Spirit, the new finale is a nightmare. Everything else is black in the tunnel while you watch a poor quality flash animation on your ride vehicle's screen. It's absolutely horrible.
Originally Posted By leobloom Spirit, this is further reason why soft openings shouldn't happen before attractions are completed. If Disney still has something up its sleeve for the descent part of SSE (which I highly doubt), then they shouldn't be previewing the ride to park guests who are going to turn around and post scathing reviews on the internet.
Originally Posted By pheneix So after discussing the ride with an Imagineer friend of mine I was told that the finale is indeed the finished product. Aside from a few lighting effects that were not turned on, that is exactly what they intended. Whoever was in charge of this project should be immediately fired. The ending of this ride is a disgrace.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << the new finale is a nightmare. Everything else is black in the tunnel while you watch a poor quality flash animation on your ride vehicle's screen. >> I guess I never understood the "finale" of Spaceship Earth. I always believed the "finale" to be a the top of the sphere where the ride vehicles rotated and prepared for the descent back to the loading/unloading area. There never were any compelling show elements in the descent portion of the ride -- just some randomly placed neon lighting tubes along the way. The descent has been a non-showstopping experience since 1982. I don't know what people are expecting here, but it seems odd to fault the descent portion of the ride for attempting to provide some sort of show element when there were no there at all in the previous incarnation.
Originally Posted By TDLFAN It's hard to predict the future now a days, reason why the finale is always a blur...
Originally Posted By plpeters70 The biggest problem I see is the complete change in tone from the beginning of the ride to the ending. Even with the new, more light-hearted script, the beginning is pretty majestic and awe-inspiring. But then we have this cheesy, Flash animation ending that makes the future look like a scene from The Jetsons -- how exactly does that mesh with the rest of the attraction?? This ride is supposed to be about creating the future - the future as we would imagine it TODAY, not how people imagined it in the 1950s. Those animations don't look like a believable future at all - they look like a FANTASY - which is not what they should be going for at EPCOT. I think WDI needs to seriously think about re-working this ending. And while they're at it, they might want to think about adding things to look at OUTSIDE of our vehicles during the ending! They should still use the screens, but how about having them interact with the attraction outside of your vehicle -- now that would be impressive.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << I think WDI needs to seriously think about re-working this ending. And while they're at it, they might want to think about adding things to look at OUTSIDE of our vehicles during the ending! They should still use the screens, but how about having them interact with the attraction outside of your vehicle -- now that would be impressive. >> There was never anything to interact with in descent portion of the previous version of SSE -- just cheesy neon tubes squiggled about on the ceiling and walls. There is very little real estate to deal with in the descent corridor -- the main reason why there weren't a whole lot of show elements there from the start. These criticisms just seem really weird when you consider that they have taken the effort to spice up the descent portion of the ride, which previously had nothing.
