Originally Posted By Admin This topic is for Discussion of <a href="http://www.LaughingPlace.com/Lotion-View.asp?ID=520" target="_blank">LP Lotion: The New Spaceship Earth at Epcot</a>
Originally Posted By jdaws47 Um. Why do you need to be seated in ride vehicles to do the stupid create your future thing? Don't get me wrong, it looks kinda cool, but it should be in the post show area. There's no reason to take up 5 minutes of a 15 minute ride with that. I'd much rather actually see something I can only see in a WDW ride. That choose your future thing could easily be replicated in flash on the web. Nothing special about that. Seems like they just cheaped out to me. Oh well. The stuff before that looked cool. Josh
Originally Posted By figment1986 I hope this preview gives them ideas to fix what needs to be fixed, maybe get more money for the ending?
Originally Posted By Westsider Color me unimpressed. They rehabbed the creaky old animatronics and painted the queue. And they added those cheesy touch screen things as the big finale'??? Lame. Why did they need to close for months and months for this? If WDW rehabbed its animatronics and maintained show quality standards in dark rides like it should be doing in the first place, this lame Siemens touch screen addition could have been added in three weeks. Double lame.
Originally Posted By danyoung Kevin Yee had a great review on Miceage. He felt that the first half of the refurbed ride was pretty spectacular, with some of the AA figures being replaced by the latest and greatest figures. But once the touch panel starts, with really nothing else to look at on the way down, he felt that it was really lame. Why would anybody want to waste 1/3 of the ride playing with a video screen? I'm really really hoping that there's more to it than this when they open for real in a couple of months.
Originally Posted By armywife320 After watching the video I am unimpressed. Spaceship Earth used to be one of my favorite rides because there was so much to see. I don't know now if it is even worth standing in line for, they cut out way too much stuff at the end for that screen. I hope they fix that. But I doubt it. Walt would be terribly upset.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA Kevin also has some great pictures -- 'before' and 'after' of several of the show scenes. Excellent!
Originally Posted By stitchcrazy I was at Epcot Saturday night and was thrilled to get in for a ride. I'm not sure how long it had been open but while we were in line still outside they ended up closing the door and stopped letting people get in line which made us even happier about getting in when we did. Possible spoilers ahead: The first half of the ride was fine enough. Cool additions. More familliar things than not overall and many familiar things that are better. Judy Dench's voice to me is kind of a bummer over Jeremy Iron's. Also I felt like some of the lines were too cheesy, trying too hard to be funny or something. The last part before the top in what I told my husband I felt like was the "Matrix zone" was cool but seemed unfinished on the sides as opposed to what was above your head...I'm hoping that gets better because I liked it, it just was blurry on the sides. Happy to still see the stars at the top - its my favorite moment. Right now the trip back down is boring! Not sure what work is still being done to the trip back down. Maybe some people will think the touch screens are big fun but I was disappointed at where its at now. Right now as you first decend backwards there is a REALLY cool effect where if you look around including behind you there are little whie lights that look like they go on infinitely. But then that is over and you only have black walls and the touch screens to look at. I think if its your first trip ever on SSE it wouldn't be that big a deal but for those who visit WDW often... My mom pointed out that she was watching our screen as well as ours to see what was different and she said she thought she made a number of choices different from what we did but that our video looked almost the same. That didn't really make me any more excited about the screens either. Overall I can't wait to get back and ride a few more times and get a more complete opinon of the completed ride. I was so excited to even get a ride in on a trip where I thought I would be without one of my favorite rides that I was pretty keyed up and I know I missed so much that was going on! Oh and it didn't help that my husband has the worst memory EVER and every 10 seconds was whispering if something was new. He cracks me up. We manage to get to WDW 2-3 times a year and every ride could be a completely refurbished ride to him every time. He just doesn't retain that kind of stuff well.
Originally Posted By WDWFreak92 AGHH!! What has Disney done to Spaceship Earth!? I am sooo dissapointed. I was expecting something incredible. Instead I got 10 of ride and 5 minutes of a dumb little touchscreen telling me what the future will be like. Oh the old ending was soooo much better. The lights and music were so inspiring and beautiful to me. They butchered the ending. That touchscreen thing like jdaws47 said belongs in the post show area, not on my awe-inspiring Spaceship Earth. I'm so dissapointed.
Originally Posted By Goofyernmost When was the trip back down not boring. You folks seem to forget the last few years. After the stars and earth it was a real nap fest. I will be going to SSE in February and will reserve my judgement until then.
Originally Posted By danyoung >You folks seem to forget the last few years. After the stars and earth it was a real nap fest.< I could not disagree more! You had the long distance communication demos between mom & doc, archeologist and lab, etc. Then you had that beautiful sparkly city, and then the fiber optic spray that gradually dwindled down and brought you back to the real world. I always enjoyed the most recent ending, much better than the one before with Tomorrow's Child.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << You had the long distance communication demos between mom & doc, archeologist and lab, etc. >> About on par with the static dioramas on the exit ramp from Space Mountain -- not a big piece of showmanship. << Then you had that beautiful sparkly city, and then the fiber optic spray that gradually dwindled down and brought you back to the real world. >> Static displays with sparkly lights. I guess as long as its sparkly and fiber optic, it must be good. I got stuck for about 15 minutes in the descent portion of Spaceship Earth once. It was pretty miserable. Is the new version an improvement? Probably not, but lets not make the old version out to be something worth recreating either.
Originally Posted By MPierce ^^^ That is true, but at least it had a little bit of eye candy, not just a video screen. I was really hoping for more. Maybe it isn't complete yet.
Originally Posted By danyoung >Static displays with sparkly lights. I guess as long as its sparkly and fiber optic, it must be good.< To each their own. I liked it. If that makes me a simple lad who loves a sparkly, then so be it.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 This to me sounds like, if it stays like this, to be typical of WDI efforts at EPCOT of late under Jacobson and Fitzgerald. They destroy a wonderful attraction like Journey Into Imagination, then hear complaints from the fans and take them to mean 'we don't want a quality attraction that tells a story ... we just want Figment put back everywhere.' So they do so. Guess what. Another version and about $75 million later, it is still a disaster and pulling in about the same numbers the original Journey did its last 3-4 years. So now, they have to redo SSE ... and they think about all those people, the geeks who miss Horizons and think 'Gee, it wasn't the 20-minute ride through lavish sets that told a story of future living environmente that the geeks miss ... it's those touch screens where you pick your ending. what if we added them to SSE? We'd have a two-fer. Redo SSE and give 'em a bit of Horizons for their money.' And what do you (apparently) have? A SSE that has some improved scenes and better, modern AAs, that ends with 5-minutes of darkness and touch screens. Yep. This sounds like what certain WDI folks are known for. Iger really needs to wake up.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy Actually, the touch screen additions sound more to me like an effort by the sponsor (Siemens) to give a more direct pitch for their product lines since the actual ride doesn't really give people an idea on what they are selling. It's quite possible that the sponsor influenced the ending moreso than any creative decision. It reminds me a lot of the exit ramps from Space Mountain -- just a sales pitch for a corporate sponsor and not really always in sync with the rest of the show. Honestly, the only really "wow" item about SSE is the fact that they actually engineered a ride that goes to the top of a geosphere and back down again. I think no matter what they put in the show, it's always second rate to the marvel of engineering that exists by the very fact the ride is there in the first place.
Originally Posted By WDWFreak92 I disagree. I loved the old ending. And I've only been to Epcot in the past few years.
Originally Posted By tonyanton I thought the TJ Maxx mannequins of the 1994-2006 descent were pretty embarrassing, though I liked the simple cityscape and fiber optic strands coming down and around the spaceship earth model. At the very least, why not at least some cool lighting on the descent, along with these new touch screens? All I recall of the original finale was projections of seventies looking outlines of children running around...though I loved "Tomorrow's Child."
Originally Posted By pheneix >>>Actually, the touch screen additions sound more to me like an effort by the sponsor (Siemens) to give a more direct pitch for their product lines since the actual ride<<< The movies on those screens tell us nothing about Siemens or any of the products they offer. As a matter of fact, Siemens is not even mentioned in the short film.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << The movies on those screens tell us nothing about Siemens or any of the products they offer. >> Based on the descriptions provided of the questions being asked and the variations in the animated sequences, they all correlate directly with a Siemens line of business.
