Originally Posted By mousermerf A thought.. How many people in this discussion have ever actually been white water rafting? *raises hand* And the water was between 36-42 degrees.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros As long as we're on the topic, does anybody know what's happened to the 360 spin at the end? The last few times I've been on it (at least since January), the raft has hardly spun at all. The rollers and big rubber piece are still there, but for whatever reason, the rafts don't spin. There's a slight spinning action going on, but nothing more than the other drop. It looked like the piece of rubber that makes the rafts turn may have finally worn out, but I couldn't tell. As cheesy as it is, that part is always fun, because people get all freaked out about who is going to get soaked on that drop, and then the spin just confuses the you-know-what out of them (not to mention that you really don't get wet on that drop anyway). It adds a lot to the community aspect of the ride, since it's so random, especially for first timers.
Originally Posted By tashajilek How many people in this discussion have ever actually been white water rafting? *raises hand* Its pretty damn cool and loads of fun.
Originally Posted By mousermerf Stop talking about the "community aspect" like it's anything more then some froofy postitive-action self-reassuring crapola you made up to justify the fact that you simply don't like getting wet on rides.
Originally Posted By mousermerf <<<How many people in this discussion have ever actually been white water rafting? *raises hand* Its pretty damn cool and loads of fun.>>> And don't you get soaked? And isn't Grizzly supposed to be a rafting simulation?
Originally Posted By FerretAfros "How many people in this discussion have ever actually been white water rafting?" I have, and the experience you get on GRR is completely different. It's a theme park ride that tries to approximate the feeling of rafting (much like Soarin with hanggliding). It gets kind of close with the general concept, but the actual execution of it is completely different. Not neccesarily better or worse, but just different. Who has been on a boat (whether a cruise ship, ski boat, sail boat, row boat, galleon, etc)? How would you compare that experience with your boat ride on POTC? Yah, they're kind of similar, but completely different at the same time. As for the authenticity of the water temperature, I think that's one of the places where theme parks are allowed to take artistic liberties. Unless they also want to outfit every guest with a wetsuit (and let's be honest, I'm not sure we want to see that), life jacket, helmet, and paddle, there's really no reason to make it that authentic. It's a fun approximation of rafting, but still very much in the theme park world. To expect them to chill the water to frigid temperatures just for authenticity's sake (especially when it's expensive, unwanted, and unnessecary) is just foolish.
Originally Posted By tashajilek I dont think he said he didnt like getting wet on rides. He said he liked how you never know whos going to get it, which makes the ride fun.
Originally Posted By plpeters70 <<<How many people in this discussion have ever actually been white water rafting?>> I've been, but I really just don't see what that has to do with this conversation. Just because I wanted to get wet while rafting, doesn't mean I want to do the same thing at a theme park. Why are you having such trouble grasping this concept?
Originally Posted By mousermerf God you go off into crazy town quickly - I never said they should chill the water. I was suggesting you're a bunch of pansies who cant get wet on a rafting simulation - which is completely ridiculous. If they wanted a slow boring dry ride past nature then they would have made it with pirates style boats - heck Epcot actually has that ride. No, they wanted rafting and failed miserably at good rafting rapids and absolutely no good scenery. Yet you still try to justify your Disney love as rational.
Originally Posted By tashajilek "Yet you still try to justify your Disney love as rational." Most people on here are saying they agree the ride isnt what it should be. Some people dont like getting wet but hey you cant please everyone.
Originally Posted By mousermerf How about this.. It's fairly well known that I don't enjoy rides with drops/freefall (which strangely enough I don't mind on raft rides.. but that's besides the point..) I don't sit around justifying why WDW's Pirates is better then DL's because it has one less drop and therefor is more "family conscious" by including more people who don't like drops.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros "Stop talking about the "community aspect" like it's anything more then some froofy postitive-action self-reassuring crapola you made up to justify the fact that you simply don't like getting wet on rides." Please show me where I said that I don't like getting wet on rides. While that may be true at certain times (10pm in December), for the most part, I think the ammount of water you get on GRR and (especially) Splash is quite reasonable, even if you're the one who gets the most wet. For me, it adds something more to the experience of the ride when you get to see other people's reactions. Doing single riders on Splash can be downright creepy at times, because everybody is in a straight line and you're just tacked on the end. On GRR, single rider makes it really fun, since you don't know anybody, but you all share the same experience together. You get to know eachother a little bit going around the first curve and up the lift, and then point and laugh with/at each other for the rest of the ride. You'll probably never see them again, but having them there for 6 minutes really does make it a lot more exciting. Have you ever been on one of those raft rides with 3 or fewer people on it? Who all knew eachother before going on it? It's not nearly as fun as going on a full raft with strangers. You may disagree, but for me, a big part of these types of rides is seeing everybody else react to getting wet. Because you all know that if they didn't get the wave, you very well could have. As I said earlier, I really don't mind getting wet, so this isn't an excuse. It's something that makes this type of ride unique compared to others, and I appreciate that part of it.
Originally Posted By plpeters70 <<I think it's perfectly legitimate because Disney continues to clone these attractions at their parks around the globe.>> Personally, I think Disney continues to clone those rides because they're a cheap way to add capacity to their Magic Kingdom parks. They've been doing it since WDW, and frankly, it's something that I think is a little lame. (Though I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it if they would build all brand-new E-tickets to go with them, but half the time they just clone those too. It all seems creatively lazy to me, but that's just an opinion.) <<The expectation that everything they build has to be on that level is simply unreasonable.>> I didn't say they all had to be, but the main, all-new signature rides should be. Like EPCOT Center, all of the main rides should be incredible, with the extra smaller things designed to supplement those main rides. At DCA, to many "filler" attractions ended up being sold as the "main" attractions.
Originally Posted By mousermerf It's a raft ride! Do you come back from white water rafting proud that you didn't get a drop on you?
Originally Posted By FerretAfros "I was suggesting you're a bunch of pansies who cant get wet on a rafting simulation - which is completely ridiculous." It's also a completely different context. Going rafting for a day is completely different than going on a single 6 minute ride during a day at a theme park. When rafting, you know you will be wet all day, and you dress accordingly. Much like oc_dean at a waterpark, people don't mind getting soaked while rafting, because that's what they're doing the whole time. But when it just a small portion of a bigger experience, it's alright to tone back the water some so that everything else isn't miserable. "If they wanted a slow boring dry ride past nature then they would have made it with pirates style boats - heck Epcot actually has that ride." Really? The only boat rides in Epcot that I know of go past screens of the Three Caballeros and through a science lab. Neither of which look remotely like nature.
Originally Posted By tashajilek "Please show me where I said that I don't like getting wet on rides." Poor guy, getting accused for something you didnt say lol. " It's not nearly as fun as going on a full raft with strangers" I agree, you always seem to have a blast with new people, people who havent been on the ride before then they get soaked. Im sure everyone here agree's the ride could be MUCH better but that doesnt mean everyone should hate it and not have a good time on the ride.
Originally Posted By mousermerf <<<Really? The only boat rides in Epcot that I know of go past screens of the Three Caballeros and through a science lab. Neither of which look remotely like nature.>>> You just proved you have no idea what you're talking about. And Epcot's version has AA's.
Originally Posted By mousermerf <<<I agree, you always seem to have a blast with new people, people who havent been on the ride before then they get soaked.>>> So the fun is people getting soaked, but somehow you have to exclude others in the boat or its suddenly unenjoyable? Or, considering ridership and public opinion - it's vastly more likely to be true that not getting wet is less fun and people who don't get wet feel left out of the experience?
Originally Posted By FerretAfros "You just proved you have no idea what you're talking about. And Epcot's version has AA's." Are you talking about Maelstrom? I wouldn't really call that slow moving, nor past nature. The Viking scene at the beginning looks pretty civilized to me, and the scenes with trolls are pure fantasy. The finale takes riders past an oil rig, which is about as not natural as they come. I guess there's that scene with the polar bears, but that's really not the whole attraction.
