Mulholland Madness: worst theming ever?

Originally Posted By Moon Waffle

I love Wild Mouse coasters and when I heard Disney had one at DCA I thought this could have had so much potential...especially to be a relatively affordable indoor coaster with some decent traffic-jam theming.

Instead the painted flat boards that surround only random parts of the ride just baffled my mind. It seemed like this had to be the worst job of theming a ride Disney has ever done.

What in the world happened here, and how can they possibly have not fixed this by now? I mean, this ride could become one of the most popular in this park with a little TLC. I don't know if it's very popular now, but there has to be something on the horizon for fixing this thing.

Some may disagree but I've got to believe this is the most misplaced, non-"Disney" ride in the entire DLR.

 

Originally Posted By trekkeruss

Nah, the Maliboomer wins the award for worst theming, because it has none. Zero, Zippo. Nada. Plus it's not anywhere near as fun as MM.

 

Originally Posted By Hans Reinhardt

Mailboomer is themed (very loosely, I know) to a giant version of one of those mallet-pounding things you see at boardwalks and county fairs.

At one time I thought that MM was the worst theming ever until I went to Disney Studios Paris this past Spring. There is so much bad design and poorly executed theming in that park I don't even know where to begin. As I stated over on the Paris boards, the place is so lame that I can't believe that park is even remotely associated with the name Disney.

 

Originally Posted By oc_dean

What's there to theme with Maliboomer? It's a vertical "space shot" ride .. over with and done with in 10 seconds. How does one do "lots of theming" to a 10 second ride? Answer: none!

 

Originally Posted By oc_dean

And on Mulhouland Madness? Where do I start???

How about the fact that a year later, they went through all this trouble for vacationers in nearby Grand Californian .. to encase the ride with sound barrier walls wrapped around it .. stretching all the way to the top.

The best part .. they did this nice job of painting it a sky scene with clouds .. on the inside ... all the metal support pieces painted green.

(What color are trash cans?)

What poetic justice they actually ended up doing ......

Showing Mulhouland Madness exactly what it's worth:

Trash within a trash bin.

That's exactly what it looks like now after the sound walls went up.

 

Originally Posted By oc_dean

Dirty
Canned
Amusement

 

Originally Posted By planodisney

I believe MM is the worst Disney park attraction of all time.

It makes the mad mouse coaster at AK feel like an E-ticket.

The ride is jerky, short and uncomfortable, the vehicles suck and the theming is ridiculous.

 

Originally Posted By Dabob2

MM and Maliboomer earn their derision, although extending it to the rest of the park as some do is going too far.

What I'd love to see is getting rid of Route 66 and replacing it with a proper SF area. Then they could do the following with MM:

Enclose it completely and make the exterior look like an SF Victorian house/apt. building. Turn an eyesore into a positive.

Call it "Lombard Lunacy" and theme it after the multi-S-curved Lombard Street - a natural.

Put in faux bricks below the track on the top section to make it look like Lombard Street. These could just be horizontal blacklit flats painted with faux bricks - easy.

For the S-curve section at the top, put in flats along both sides of each straightaway with the "buildings" taller at the beginning than at the end, lending the illusion of going downhill.

After the S-curve section, you're finished with Lombard Street and are now going up and down SF's famous hills. Have some "headlights" coming at you (and honking their horns), a cable car or two crossing perpendicular - with it being essentially in the dark, you wouldn't need much.

Voila. You've turned a horribly themed ride into an attractive exterior and a fun ride that people want to go on without breaking the bank.

 

Originally Posted By Hans Reinhardt

MM always seemed like some sort of rediculous place-holder to me. 5 years later and it's still there. I guess I was wrong.

 

Originally Posted By RoadTrip

<<Voila. You've turned a horribly themed ride into an attractive exterior and a fun ride that people want to go on without breaking the bank.>>

I like your idea, but people would still deride it as a "spinner" just because it exists at Paradise Pier. If they fixed all of Paradise Pier, it would still be derided because it exists at DCA. Disney would just be throwing good money after bad.

Some folks are never going to be happy until they get Westcot, and they ain't going to get Westcot.

 

Originally Posted By juicer

Yes...The ride should be enclosed -

 

Originally Posted By gadzuux

The ride should be sold off.

It's virtually indistinguishable from the cheesy contraptions that can be found at most any county fair and has no place within a disney park - in fact it cheapens the overall park by it's presence.

Maliboomer is inappropriate too, but not as much as MM. The biggest problem with maliboomer is that it's visible from numerous locations outside the park and even inside DL. Not only is it an unattractive and graceless iron ride, but it telegraphs the wrong message to guests and evekes a ideas of a seedy carnival.

BUT, it somewhat fits within PPs unfortunate "theme" and within it's constrained location inside the 'sreamin' spiral, and not much else would, so it gets half a point for that alone.

For me, another offender is 'orange stinger' - just as garish and un-disney as MM and maliboomer, only more prominently placed. Not only is it a bad ride but an eyesore as well.

Surprisingly, I like 'golden zephyr' - not as an actual ride, but as eye candy. Same with 'jumpin jellyfish'. I would choose to relocate both to somewhere else - given the child-friendly nature of them, perhaps as an extension to 'bugburg' with slight retheming.

And yes, 'route 66' is a bad idea and needs to be ripped out. "Korndog Kastle"? Purple dinosaurs? McDonalds? Throw in the cheesy spinners and it's all just an ugly corner that shows a complete lack of taste on the part of the designers of this corner of the park.

Think about it - if you were an employee of the disney park development group, would you want your name in any way associated with this area? Not me, I'd be ashamed.

 

Originally Posted By RoadTrip

<<For me, another offender is 'orange stinger' - just as garish and un-disney as MM and maliboomer, only more prominently placed. Not only is it a bad ride but an eyesore as well. >>

I actually like Orange Stinger... both as a ride and the color it provides to that part of the park. From a design standpoint, I actually think it is kind of nice... as shown in this photo:

<a href="http://www.laughingplace.com/ShowPic.asp?ID=attl-dca-pp&Filename=/files/AttGuide/attl-dca-pp/04.jpg&ZA=2&Caption=Looking+across+Paradise+Bay+towards+the+Sun+Wheel" target="_blank">http://www.laughingplace.com/S
howPic.asp?ID=attl-dca-pp&Filename=/files/AttGuide/attl-dca-pp/04.jpg&ZA=2&Caption=Looking+across+Paradise+Bay+towards+the+Sun+Wheel</a>%2C+Maliboomer+and+Orange+Stinger

 

Originally Posted By tonyanton

I don't mind Orange Stinger too much either. If they actually do go ahead with a Victorian re-theme for the Pier, they should ditch Maliboomer and do an old-fashioned Parachute Drop. It would look a lot less contemporary.

 

Originally Posted By Hans Reinhardt

Doesn't Knott's have a parachute drop?

 

Originally Posted By Dabob2

<It's virtually indistinguishable from the cheesy contraptions that can be found at most any county fair and has no place within a disney park - in fact it cheapens the overall park by it's presence. >

If it was enclosed and themed, it would be quite distinguishable, and wouldn't be an eyesore from the outside either. Lots of parks have Vekoma coasters, but only the Disney parks have Space Mountain. The themeing and the indoors/darkness makes the difference.

 

Originally Posted By FerretAfros

My first reaction after going on MM was that it would have been a lot better without the walls. It is much more disorienting when you see tons of stuff moving around you, than just going around a green box. It looked like they were going to make it an indoor ride, but gave up at the last minute. I think they should either add a roof or ditch the walls, but not keep it as it is now.

 

Originally Posted By disneywatcher

>> Surprisingly, I like 'golden zephyr' - not as an actual ride, but as eye candy. Same with 'jumpin jellyfish'. <<

I think all the attractions in Paradise Pier are schlock-o-rama time. I still remember in 2001 seeing at mouseplanet.com a photographic side-by-side comparison of the design of DCA's Jellyfish with the indoor version of it built at DisneySea, and the truly cheap, tacky nature of the ride in Anaheim was even more clearly evident.

I've long relished the idea of all the junk at DCA being crated and shipping over to the front lawn of Michael Eisner's house.

 

Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA

<I've long relished the idea of all the junk at DCA being crated and shipping over to the front lawn of Michael Eisner's house.>

Boy howdy, that'd show him...

 

Originally Posted By BrigmanMT 2

I agree with gadzuux completly on both the pro and con assesments.

I rode Mulholland Madness once, they sat me next to a stranger and while avoiding to be introduced to each other on each and every turn I managed to slam my knee caps against the puny vehicle quite a few times. It was a painful experience and the ride isn't worth the metal its made of. Its existence, along with %80 of this area, is hurting the park.

Hans, Knotts took out its parachute drop quite a few years ago, the mechanizm is still there but the parachutes and the cables are gone, just that central view platform remains.

I always thought that Jumping Jellyfish served as an elegant junior version to that type of experience. I want to see Disney develop that skinny, vertical space into a truly unique experience that would fit both the new themeing, and the Disney values. As neato as a parachute drop would be, I would not ride it any more than the maliboomer. Something innovative, with a nod to the past needs to be done here.