Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt "They just filter out everything that is not 110% in complete favor of what the Disney Co. does." It's just like a day at DL, isn't it?
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt MiceChat has a new blog post with pics of the Mine Train with some of the construction walls down, and wow, it looks great. Maybe the ride will suck, who knows, but it sure will be pretty to look at. Here's an image from their photo essay: <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.miceshots.com/usr/72/DatelineDisneyWorld02122014-_DSC2341.jpg">http://www.miceshots.com/usr/7...2341.jpg</a>
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt I think it'll be fun too, but you know it's the thing to hate WDW these days, so.
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance Yes, it is. I think it's funny how in one post WDW haters say Disney is crap because they only are adding theming/restaurants/non e ticket rides in Fantasyland but then in another thread they say it's okay that the new Harry Potter expansion is mostly theming/restaurants and non e tickets because they could lose themselves all day long in a nicely themed area.
Originally Posted By Disneymom443 I love all the water falls that they are adding to the New Fantasyland, and the mine train is just as beautiful.
Originally Posted By 9oldmen >>I think it's funny how in one post WDW haters say Disney is crap because they only are adding theming/restaurants/non e ticket rides in Fantasyland but then in another thread they say it's okay that the new Harry Potter expansion is mostly theming/restaurants and non e tickets because they could lose themselves all day long in a nicely themed area. << Well...what Universal has been adding has been mostly non e-tickets, with the exception of the things they are adding that ARE E-tickets (i.e. Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, Transformer, and Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts). When was WDW's last E-ticket? (and Avatar doesn't really count since it's not going to open for a while).People might be "hating" on WDW because they see the parks as sort of "stagnating" and maybe run by management who are more excited about some confusing "Magic Band" system then they are about new attractions. And all those people flocking to IOA in 2010 for the first year of "Potter"(the year that IOA had a 30% in attendance, while all the Disney parks in Florida saw a decrease, except DAK which went up 1%). Are you saying all those people are wrong, biased, WDW haters, or have no taste?
Originally Posted By 9oldmen I might add, if WDW doesn't want them "hating" them so much, then they need to build some more upscale attractions, and make it snappy! In the time it took them to build this little coaster, Universal has added, or will add Harry Potter: Hogsmeade, the "Springfield" expansion, "Transformer" and Harry Potter: London, Diagon Alley. And maybe people are liking Universal's theming more then Disney's because maybe they perceive Universal's theming as being BETTER or MORE EXCITING.
Originally Posted By Yookeroo Seems Constance has pushed someone's button. Waiting for Brad. 3....2....1....
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance I hold my tongue 99% of the time because I can't bare to read the same response over and over again.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >> In the time it took them to build this little coaster, Universal has added, or will add Harry Potter: Hogsmeade, the "Springfield" expansion, "Transformer" and Harry Potter: London, Diagon Alley.<< Not to beat a dead horse, but the reason the Mine Train construction is so slow has multiple factors that simply don't exist for most of the Universal projects. For one, it's a complex structure; it's not a tilt-up warehouse building with a pretty facade on the side. It's physically shaped like a mountain, with lots of weird angles and joints, and it takes a lot longer to build than a simple square shed (like the Gringotts show building). Because of this, the facade must be built in-place, rather than assembling pieces that were constructed off-site and slapped on the side of the structure. Personally, I think Universal will have long-term maintenance problems with their facades due to this process (lots of room for error, leading to mold and mildew between the facade and structure), but that's a different discussion entirely. When you have a mountain shape, it really cuts down on the amount of work you can do off-site, and nearly everything needs to be constructed in its final location; this approach used to be known as the Disney Difference, now fanboys just whine that it's not open yet Even if it's not the case in the real world, a lot of people remember the initial Fantasyland expansion announcement, and tie all the projects back to that date. The Mine Train was not a part of that announcement, and design wasn't done on it until much later. Construction didn't really begin until a few months before the opening of the first chunks of the expansion, meaning it's always been on a trajectory for a later opening date. As an observer that has watched construction in that general area for years on end, it feels like they're taking an excruciating amount of time, but they also got off to a very late start Additionally, it was built in the middle of a functioning theme park. With the exception of its earliest foundation work, there were guests on every side of the construction site. It's far easier to work on a project when you have full access to the site and don't really have any noteworthy noise concerns. With the limited site access and hours of operation for this site, construction was necessarily slowed down as a result. If all of the Fantasyland expansion were to open at the same time, allowing full access to the Mine Train site, it could have been built faster, since there was far more flexibility. It's similar to trying to build a skyscraper in Manhattan, where there's no staging area for materials for a complex structure, compared to building an average Wal-Mart, with more room than they know what to do with, and a very simple structure Does it seem to be taking a ridiculously long time to build the Mine Train? Absolutely. However, it also has a much more complicated history and construction process than the slash-and-burn-and-rebuild that we've seen a lot of from Universal. When you have a lot of constraints, everything gets slowed down. From Disney's perspective, I'm sure they wanted it ready with the rest of the land; this would have really cut down on the number of ho-hum reviews of the new additions. But in a real world, sometimes those things just aren't possible
Originally Posted By 9oldmen >>Not to beat a dead horse, but the reason the Mine Train construction is so slow has multiple factors that simply don't exist for most of the Universal projects.<< Thanks for the detailed explanation, but the problem seems to be that to some of us, it seems like the whole WDW resort has been stagnating as far a new attractions. Hopefully, the "Avatar" land is being built in an area that can be more easily accessed than the "mine coaster". >>I think Universal will have long-term maintenance problems with their facades due to this process<< And to be fair, Disney has also had some long term problems with some of their attractions, like an AA "Yeti" that I guess worked for about 5 minutes, but that too is another story.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>...it seems like the whole WDW resort has been stagnating as far a new attractions.<< No arguements from me on that one. I just don't like that the Mine Train has become the "poster child" example of this, since it's actually moving fairly quickly all things considered. I really do dislike how infrequently things have been added recently (before the Fantasyland expansion, the last addition was TSMM in 2008?), but once they actually begin construction it seems like things move along at a more-or-less reasonable rate I also don't like how the wristbands are becoming the symbol for everything that's wrong with MyMagic+, though it seems like people are beginning to parse out the individual failures of the system more clearly. Although awkward at times (hotel room doors, I'm looking at you!), I was surprised at how well the wristbands worked for our needs; it was pretty much everything else from MM+ that had bugs in the system
