Originally Posted By tangaroa Yeah Swan, Dolphin, Hilton, Convention Center, Giant UFOs, Area 51.... All good stuff. Here's my problem: I don't like this idea that the perfect theme park is just a pipe dream. This idea that a creative team like Braverman's can build an incredibly cheap, flawed, boring, horrible theme park, but just so long as they "tweak" it and make it work, it's all good. WHATS UP WITH THAT? That's what I meant when I said "absolve" them of the blame. Sure they get points for going back and fixing the park, but they wouldn't have had to go back and fix it, if they did a good job in the first place. Tower of Terror (or one other major E Ticket) should have been built in Hollywood from the get go. SuperStar Limo should have been pulled if they weren't going to go thru with the full plans. Expansion should have been planned for, announced, and started RIGHT after the park opened. Just really blantantly obvious stuff like this.
Originally Posted By tmonee11 <<<This idea that a creative team like Braverman's can build an incredibly cheap, flawed, boring, horrible theme park, but just so long as they "tweak" it and make it work, it's all good. WHATS UP WITH THAT?>>> Incredibly cheap? Where are all these theme parks being built all over the world that cost more then DCA? When did 850 million become incredibly cheap? When did a company investing $1.4 billion in a resort expansion become incredibly cheap? <<<flawed, boring, horrible theme park, but just so long as they "tweak" it and make it work, it's all good.>>> If that is how you feel about DCA...that it is a "horrible theme park" then you are right, no tweaking will make it "good." There are however, many people that like DCA, or like aspects of DCA...and tweaking the park, adding new entertainment, adding new attractions, etc. will increase the joy and satisfaction they get at the park. By the time ToT opens, Disney will have spent over $1 billion on DCA. Many don't find that cheap...many will find attractions such as Soarin', GRR, ToT, Screamin', etc as things worth going on, and many will enjoy visiting this horrible theme park.
Originally Posted By jonvn "This idea that a creative team like Braverman's can build an incredibly cheap, flawed, boring, horrible theme park, but just so long as they "tweak" it and make it work, it's all good. WHATS UP WITH THAT?" What's up with that is that these are your feelings, and while that's fine, it doesn't make it true for the rest of us who don't agree. It's unfortunate that you do not enjoy this park, but there are many who do. There is nothing to absolve anyone for. They built a theme park. Some people don't like it, for whatever reason they can dig up. Others, probably the vast majority if you believe certain folks, do like it. It's not Disney's job to create a theme park that EVERYONE will like. It's their job to create a park that the general public will enjoy. As I've said before, not everything that Disney does is going to appeal to you. Some things you like, some you don't. The best thing to do is to recognize that and stick with the things you enjoy. This is true of everything, not just Disney.
Originally Posted By ArchtMig Going WAY back to Jonvn's post #30. (It's amazing how quickly the posts add up on some of these boards!) >>>Come on, Mig. It's not THAT bad. So, ok, you can see the power lines in a couple of spots, and some sight lines aren't as good as they could have been. I think it'd be better to give it more of a chance.<<< It IS that bad, in a way, Jon. It's bad because it could have (and should have) been dealt with better than it was. Now it's too late, and it will NEVER get fixed. Trust me on this one. >>>The main thing that people ought to be happy about is that it got built AT ALL.<<< I guess I'm happy there's a second gate, yes. I just feel it's such a let down from what I know they could have done with all the elements that are already in this place. >>>This was not something they OWED us, and the big hump was just getting it off the ground, as far as I'm concerned.<<< Of course they didn't build it out of a sense of "owing" anything to us. They did it as a money making venture, first and foremost. It is merely a "product", just like their movies and TV shows and merchandise are "products". But if they release a movie and it's a dog, they just pull it from circulation, put it out on video, and it's forgotten forever. If they broadcast a low rated TV show, they just cancel it after a few episodes and write it off as a loss. But they can't afford to make a blunder of that magnitude on an entire theme park. Once it's there in steel and concrete, it's really difficult to make any "tweaks" that fix the fundamental problems. >>>I know you're a pretty reasonable person, and that you're a very dedicated fan of Disney things. I think you know I am too. Perhaps a lot of the feelings towards this park come from disappointment in its execution. I can understand that.<<< Bingo. And yes, I know you to be a sincere and thoughtful critic of Disney, too. I gripe because I love the Disney theme parks, and until now, I never had such fundamental problems with any of them, and I never felt so much anger toward any of the more isolated, individual problems in any of the other Disney parks. With the possible exception of the New Tomorrowland at Disneyland. ;-) BTW, as I have said before, it is absolutely impossible to hate everything about a Disney theme park, even their weakest one. Therefore, I recently became an AP for the first time, partly because it gets me into TWO Disney parks, not just one!
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >> Sure they get points for going back and fixing the park, but they wouldn't have had to go back and fix it, if they did a good job in the first place. << I think they did a pretty good job in the first place. That's just my opinion, of course. Perfection? Nope. But a solid foundation for starting out, and my family and I have enjoyed ourselves very much at both our visits to DCA. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- this park will grow and change over the years, and isn't that part of the fun? I know I wish I could have been at Disneyland in 1955 and been able to compare how it's changed over the years. In the unreal world of Disney fandom, it's easy for us to sit on the sidelines calling what they did a mistake. Disney fans don't have to answer to a board of directors, shareholders, etc. But for every Monday morning quarterback concept I've read on these boards over the last year, none of them, not Westcot, DisneySea, a Villians park or anything else would be a guaranteed, sure fire spectacular hit. What amount should they have spent, considering a billion bucks is "cheap"? $10 billion? $100 billion? Westcot would have been blown off by many of those who hate DCA as "a cheap, scaled-back EPCOT." If they built DisneySea, even at the detail level as has been done in Tokyo, no one knows how well such a park would do here. How many years before it generated a profit? Would buzz build instantly that this park was a must-see? Or would it be so alarmingly different from Disneyland that people would shy away from it? DCA at its most "hip and edgy" seems to frighten people so much, imagine how terrified they might be at TDS! Throw in a recession, massive layoffs and 9/11, and good luck predicting any theme park that would do record-setting business right out of the box. In hard times, people spend money on safe bets. So who could possibly know for certain how DCA would do? Maybe Ms. Cleo knows, but she ain't telling. If DCA angers you, is no fun for you, then simply go elsewhere. It's clearly not everyone's cup of tea to say the least, but it kills me when I read things like "I was there for the 147th time last Saturday, and I still hate the park." Disneyland is a hundred yards away if you prefer that experience.
Originally Posted By woody >>Disneyland is a hundred yards away if you prefer that experience.<< At least we can go to *Disneyland* and see where the Magic began. In the meantime, I will avoid the hardhat construction where DCA sits. Major tweaking going on.
Originally Posted By tangaroa I offer this as a counterpoint to all those who replied to me: Why isn't the same "tweaking" excuse used to explain Tomorrowland? Sure it may not be good now... but they will add to it, and tweak it, and make it great again. So what's the big problem there?
Originally Posted By woody >>So what's the big problem there? << DCA debuted last year. Its like you drive a car off the parking lot (so to speak) and it gets recalled almost immediately. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of a new product.
Originally Posted By jonvn Tweak? It needs to be rebuilt. The difference is that there are a lot of areas that are abandoned in Tomorrowland. Things that are just sitting there rusting. In DCA, it's all new. Some adjustments need to be made, and some stuff needs to be added. Rebuilding the Rocket Rods or the Subs into something that functions is not a tweak. TOT, I would not call a tweak, either. Adding more in park entertainment, that seems more like what the word "tweak" is meant for.
Originally Posted By damon63 These discussions all start to sound the same after awhile, don't they? I thought the article was, for the most part, fair and balanced. The writer seemed to get a few details mixed up however. "Visual intrusion" to one degree or another, has always been problematic for Disney's designers, both inside and outside the parks. I've always hated how the Matterhorn was positioned, for example. It's far too close to Tomorrowland, especially the Submarines, therefore ruining the whole futuristic effect. It is, in fact, out of place. Another thing that's always bugged me is how the DRR tour around the park gives guests some really ugly views of some of the park's backstage areas. Why wasn't Walt more particular about that? Disney has admitted that DCA needs some time to ramp up and that there are some problems that need to be addressed. So what? Big deal? Does that make DCA "horrible" as one person put it? Given what the park DOES have to offer, I don't think any reasonable person would think so. Some of these extreme comments against DCA by people who claim to know this or that about Disney theme park design sound ridiculous in light of the fact that nothing they've ever built has been perfect. Like the one guy who posted an article somewhere about trash floating in DCA's waterways! It's really quite remarkable that DCA is being placed under such incredible scrutiny.
Originally Posted By GCOND4 Okay, if you watch the Disneyland USA dvd's you can clearly see Power lines, The parking lot and the Disneyland Hotel construction going on from inside disneyland. It took a long time for the greenery to grow so you could not see the outside. Sure I have noticed the power lines and convention center/hilton but I am not there to look at those things. I am there to see DCA. Stop looking around outside of the park and enjoy looking at what is inside the park. I have not been to WDW so I don't know if you can see the Swan/Dolphin, but I am going for the first time in Dec. and I know I will be too busy enjoying the parks to look for flaws such as hotels or ToT a mile away.
Originally Posted By disneywatcher >> What amount should they have spent... << After reading the articles in the Register and Times about DCA's one-year anniversary, I'm even more convinced that the park has been undermined far more by poor decisionmaking and clumsy creativity than by budget and dollars. It's ironic how the DisCo's animation department has gone overboard by making sequels to previously successful, already classic movies, while their Imagineers seemed to want to re-invent the wheel with DCA, even though the Magic-Kingdom-type Disney parks remain far and away the most popular of all the company's parks worldwide. I understand DCA's head planner, Barry Braverman, used to be a school teacher. I wonder if he was the type who thought that in order to improve kids' academic performance, a lot of unproven, untested teaching methods -- where the basics are happily dumped -- had to be introduced. Concepts such as contemporary (and inexplicable) math, reading without phonics, and classes with words of encouragement but without traditional A-through-F grading. Of course, many students have ended up doing worse under such a new-fangled way of education, and the back-to-basics concept came into force. The DisCo's DCA reminds me of a school that's been under the influence of avante-garde teaching concepts while DisneySea in Tokyo has been pushed closer to the stick-with-the-basics formula.
Originally Posted By damon63 >Okay, if you watch the Disneyland USA dvd's you can clearly see Power lines, The parking lot and the Disneyland Hotel construction going on from inside disneyland.< Of course you can, which make so much of what's being said today about DCA seem totally silly.
Originally Posted By disneywatcher >> Sure I have noticed the power lines...but I am not there to look at those things. << Developers of tract housing -- at least in Southern Cal -- routinely left power lines aboveground in their projects built over 30 years ago, certainly back in the 1950s when Disneyland was built. I can think of even a variety of better-income neighborhoods of decades ago that had unattractive (and potentially dangerous) power lines strung over back yards --- no self-respecting builder would allow such a thing today, and, in fact, many cities have banned that format where electrocution is more possible. Standards and expectations were lower decades ago, but I'm sure some at the DisCo. today -- just as many real estate developers did years ago -- would favor a notice-and-ignore attitude.
Originally Posted By Jim in Pasadena CA <if you watch the Disneyland USA dvd's you can clearly see Power lines> That was close to 50 years ago -- in the infancy of the modern theme park that we know today. Visual intrusions had barely been introduced as a concept. It's now 2002. It's like saying George Lucas shouldn't bother using state-of-the-art special effects in his Star Wars movies, because during the late 70's, they used matte paintings, optical printers, and in-camera tricks. And he should continue to use film stock because he did back then -- and forget about this digital technology. Time marches on! And if Disney wants to be considered the leaders in Theme Park design, construction and implementation -- they can't expect us to one minute notice every detail, and then the next minute not notice the big gaps. It's either attention to detail or it isn't. They had options to not have such blatant visual intrusions, and they chose to not fix them.
Originally Posted By JohnS3 "The DisCo's DCA reminds me of a school that's been under the influence of avante-garde teaching concepts while DisneySea in Tokyo has been pushed closer to the stick-with-the-basics formula." Good analogy. To take it one step farther - Disney Sea is a private school and DCA is a public.
Originally Posted By gadzuux Let's be careful to not mix apples and oranges here. Some intrusions (PP hotel, hilton, convention center) are just insurmountable; they're already there and they're big. There's really not much that disney or anybody could do about that. Other intrusions, such as the power lines, could have (and should have) been dealt with before park construction began. They buried some of them, and not others. Why? Best guess is that they didn't want to spend the money, or they were unsuccessful in lobbying the city/county to do it for them. Either way, it's a sign of slipping standards within the company. It's not an oversight, they just blew it off and said "so what" instead of adhering to long standing principals of disney theme park design. But then, there's a lot of that around DCA. The cob-job they did on the hyperion is a good example. And to my mind anyway, so is the sculpture in the sun court. This thing would look more at home in front of most any non-descript post-modern office building. Or the ticky-tackiness of mulholland madness; the presence of mcdonalds; the ugliness of the monorail corridor; and the lack of forethought and pre-planning for the lagoon. THESE are things that mgmt could have done something about relatively inexpensively during park construction. Now that the park is up and running, it's (almost) too late to effect improvements. So I think that disney deserves to take some lumps from the public about things that could have been done better, but weren't because the cost mattered more than guest satisfaction. But I give them a pass on being able to see large "outside" buildings from inside the park. Those buildings have been there for years, and there's just no hiding them.
Originally Posted By woody >>It's really quite remarkable that DCA is being placed under such incredible scrutiny.<< That's why I go to Magic Mountain occasionally. That's a park that deserves no scrutiny!!!
Originally Posted By JohnS3 "That's why I go to Magic Mountain occasionally. That's a park that deserves no scrutiny!!!" Just a barf bag.
Originally Posted By Jim in Pasadena CA <That's why I go to Magic Mountain occasionally. That's a park that deserves no scrutiny!!!> Funniest quip you've written, woody. Good stuff.
