LP Lotion: The New Blue Sky Cellar at Disney California Adventure

Discussion in 'Disneyland News, Rumors and General Discussion' started by See Post, Mar 8, 2012.

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    Originally Posted By Dabob2

    Wow. Tough room. :)
     
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    Originally Posted By TP2000

    I think Disney (TDA, WDI, even Burbank execs) were so desperate to humanize and warm up a rather sterile and cold DCA that WDI ended up getting hyper-emotional about the DCA expansion and makeover. You saw it to a lesser extent in the last Buena Vista Street video, where a string of Imagineers told us about their families and histories of growing up or living in Los Angeles, to prove to us they were emotionally attached to Buena Vista Street as a loving homage to Los Angeles. That video started the self-absorbed emotions, and for the Cars Land video they really let loose.

    The result is this latest video, with a grown man crying about how a car ride he helped build reminds him of his father, and a lady Imagineer explaining how all the long hours she works takes a toll on her young kids but she doesn't mind because it's for the greater good of theme park design.

    It's almost as if this is WDI's swan song, their farewell, to the small audiences of a dozen or so APs dutifully sitting on the vinyl benches of the Blue Sky Cellar for the last four years. These Imagineers spent several years of their careers working on DCA, and it's understandable they would be emotionally attached. But this video wears that on its sleeve for you, and it's as if they don't want you to forget them and the work they did. I just want to know about the new rides.

    This is a video that should instead be shown at the Cars Land project farewell dinner in a hotel ballroom, after everyone has had at least two cocktails and before they show the wacky blooper reel and the band crashes into Hang On Sloopy and the party gets a bit messy.

    But instead this video is being shown to paying customers, every 15 minutes, and it's time for them to say goodbye to us. The Imagineers build the stuff certainly, but then it's up to the 10 dollar an hour Cal State Fullerton kids to staff and run the thing in polyester uniforms for the next 50 years, and it's up to us as the customers to pay for it and use it and create our own memories with it, thank you very much.

    Public displays of hyper-emotion usually don't sit well with me, especially when grown men cry about their fathers on videotape. It's rather gutsy and presumptuous of WDI to assume we all care about their tender emotions and personal sacrifices made to create three new rides for an Anaheim theme park expansion.

    Memo To WDI: You are not the only people to sacrifice and pour your hearts into your job. Plumbers do that too, so do stewardesses and doctors and ride operators and salesclerks and astronauts.

    All that said, I'm still really looking forward to going on these new rides in Cars Land this summer.
     
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    Originally Posted By DlandDug

    Oh brother.

    If all you want to see is what the new rides will look like, then go onto any number of sites on the internet, where stuff is being posted 24/7. This is what the folks at Disney are up against. It's kind of hard to offer a truly exclusive look at something that hasn't already been hashed over, leaked and revealed, almost in real time.

    But what the folks at WDI can offer that actually is exclusive is the real back story-- the real emotion-- the real reason they do what they do.

    And the idea of people relating it to their own experience isn't just ego. It goes directly to the heart of what Disney theme parks are supposed to do-- create experiences.

    It's not my cup of tea, either, but I understand what they are doing, and appreciate the manner in which they have elected to do it.
     
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    Originally Posted By Dabob2

    Well, I'm glad somebody else didn't mind it. It was a little over the top even for me, I guess, but I didn't have a terribly negative reaction to it.
     
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    Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt

    I watched the videos and I didn't think they were that bad. Years from now they'll be dusted off and shown in some retrospective about DCA's expansion or added some Disney Parks collector's edition DVD or something. Sure it's corny, but I think you guys are being a little harsh. :)
     
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    Originally Posted By TP2000

    Hans, I probably am being a bit harsh. Wouldn't be the first time. ;-)

    Two things about this video rubbed me the wrong way;

    1. Grown men crying in public. Always makes me cringe.

    2. Ego-driven promotion that does just as much to pump up the importance of the people working on the job as the job itself. I liken this to a construction firm building a new airport terminal, and in their promo video for the project you've got architects and office managers on the verge of tears because the new Terminal 3 will bring families together and soldiers home from war and send lovers off on honeymoons to begin their life together. Give me a break, it's just an airport terminal. Cars Land is just an expansion at a theme park. It's beautifully crafted and designed, and the rides will be fun, but I think the heavy dose of emotion and tears before the thing even hosts its first customer is just a tad much.

    Again, this video would have been fabulous to show in-house at the project's farewell dinner dance. But to show it to the paying customers seems a bit inappropriate to me, and I can't help but catch a whiff of ego driving the thing.

    I won't be going to Guest Relations to lodge a formal complaint on this video, it's not really that big of a deal in the big ballgame of life. But it is interesting to note and to observe taking place. Only WDI could get away with this, really. And it's fun to talk about on the Internetz!
     
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    Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt

    "Hans, I probably am being a bit harsh. Wouldn't be the first time"

    Hahaha... and please don't stop. You are one of my favorite posters here.

    Look, everyone is going to have their opinion. To that point it's only natural that everyone will have a different reaction to these films, and that's OK. All I'm saying is what Doug said, and that is that in the scheme of things the films serve a purpose and are designed with a specific audience in mind. Given all the negativity lashed at DCA since it opened, and now with the task of transforming the place nearly completed, I'd probably be tearing up a bit myself!
     
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    Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA

    Hans, I thought I was your favorite poster?

    Or was that poser?
     
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    Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt

    Note that I said "one" of my favorite posters. Constance is my favorite poser, of course.
     
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    Originally Posted By CuriousConstance

    I was about to shed a tear of happiness and then I realized you said I was your favorite "poser". So now I"ll be up all night contemplating your intentions! ;)
     
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    Originally Posted By TP2000

    I was waiting for you to show up Constance and confront Hans about the poser remark!

    Thank you for the comment Hans, the feeling is mutual. I enjoy the whole community here, quite frankly, and I'm glad we can have these mature discussions without devolving into hair pulling and spitballs.

    Although, after this thread, I doubt I'm going to be on the invite list for WDI's Cars Land Project Completion Dinner Dance where this Cellar video may be shown again. I can't blame them. Ha!
     
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    Originally Posted By CuriousConstance

    ^^^ Yeah, you'd probably throw spitballs and pull the hair of anyone that tears up!
     
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    Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt

    Bahaha.... you guys crack me up. :)
     
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    Originally Posted By DlandDug

    >>Cars Land is just an expansion at a theme park.<<

    Really? That's it? Nothin' more? Then I guess Disneyland is just an amusement park with nice landscaping...?

    (And I also appreciate any discussion where folks can disagree without being disagreeable!)
     
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    Originally Posted By TP2000

    Cars Land is an expansion at a theme park when distilled down to its basic concept.

    Of course, there's a bunch of us who think it's something more, something special and unique, and we buy APs to visit it monthly or more, and we know who designed it and who sewed the costumes for the robots and how the other thing at the '64 World's Fair taught them how to build the thing they use in the other thing. I consider myself one of the people in that category who thinks it's something special.

    But for vast majority of the 8 Billion people on the planet it's an expansion at a theme park.

    Of course, much of this sentiment stems from a concept that's been mulling around in my head for a few months. In this D23 Bloggy Expo Age we live in now, the Imagineers are being put on a pedestal unlike anything they've been on before. I'm not sure it's healthy to have all this exposure and celebrity put onto these folks. In the past it had usually just been the "Disney organization" that built this stuff, and "Disney" got the credit. But now we seem to have constant updates and video blogs and such showcasing the people and names and individual personalities who design the stuff in the parks.

    There's ego building going on at WDI, and that sort of thing rarely ends well.
     

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