laffiteslanding

[laffiteslanding]

I love the way you talk about theme parks! Do you have any theme park book recommendations?

All of them lol.

My top one would Theme Park Design by David Younger and Joe Rohde’s Instagram feed,

Designing Disney by John hench is the OG, and Walt Disney imagineering, or the art of reassurance are also good. Any old issue of the e ticket is great as well as the passport to dreams blog. There’s also a bunch of biographies of imagineers like Marty sklar and Kevin Rafferty that are great. Defunctland YouTube channel is wonderful.

There’s also the amusement park by Stephen m Silverman and theme park by Scott A Lucas though tbh I don’t remember exactly what was in those but they’re more general histories. Which is great too many books are just Disney. Imagineering an American dreamscape is a good history of regional American parks.

Rohde always recommends a pattern language - which I do think is interesting but is extremely dense and not specific to theme parks but it gets you thinking about design as a whole. Ruined by design is also a fun one also not specially about parks.

[laffiteslanding]

If you’re a fan of Atlantis the Lost Empire, I recommend you pop into the Toy Soldier toy store in the United Kingdom Pavilion in EPCOT.

Go to the back, at the Kidcot Fun Stop, to find a book with Atlantian writing on the spine and framed concept art by famous comic book creator Mike Mignola.

I’ll say it again, the parks have so many details that no one ever notices and many of them are being done away with to make way for new things.

Eyes wide, heads up, hearts open, take it all in while you can! 👀 🫡💖

[laffiteslanding]

Haunted Mansion - Corridor of Doors.

Photo by Todd Hurley.

[laffiteslanding]

If you could build the perfect theme park of your dreams, what would it be like?

Very walkable, lots of trees, plenty of attractions, no lightning lanes, kinetic movement, live actors, and lots of surreal, theatrical transitions.

In terms of actual theme, at the moment it’s a One Thousand and One Nights-themed park as the frame, with lots of different genres and stories folded into it. You’d enter the park through an ornate Arabian palace, which would split off into a labyrinth of story worlds. Just as stories are framed within stories, the lands would feature attractions, rides, and walkthroughs grouped by similar themes. Note this is slightly different from existing lands like Fantasyland, because the land surrounding the attractions would be explicitly telling its own story and it would be up to the guest to draw parallels between them.

For example, one story world might be Aladdin, where you see the events of the story play out in the land, but if you go down an alley you might find a tavern with sailors telling stories of Sinbad within that story world, which is actually the entrance to a Sinbad ride. This is one example, but featured stories, myth, and folklore would be taken from various cultures around the world. I wouldn’t mind IP being present as long as it naturally fits the themes of its area.

What really interests me about this type of park is that 1) you essentially have attractions with attractions, which is interesting, and 2) you could get into some really crazy themes. So much of the time now theme park lands are either inspired by archetypes or specific IP, but one of the most interesting parts of the medium is its ability to translate abstract concepts into physical space. So what does a story world/land based on Revenge look like? What does one based on Hope look like? On Romance? It feels silly to ask, but theme parks are supposed to be a bit silly anyway.

I don’t think this concept would ever really happen, but I feel like I could get lost in it for days, which is all I really want out of a good park.

[laffiteslanding]

You know how Trent Reznor wrote “Hurt” and then Johnny Cash covered it and it became his song, with even Reznor saying so?

That’s basically what happened with Monsters Unchained and the Kuka arm ride system. It’s not Forbidden Journey’s anymore. And that’s crazy because ride systems simply don’t do that, but in this case I will argue it is absolutely true.

[laffiteslanding]

Too much negativity today - let’s talk fun stuff.

Ask box is open!

[laffiteslanding]

very cool that the 2025 movie is somehow less progressive than the 2002 movie because disney is so chickenshit of pissing off literally anybody that regressed in mentality from that era

[laffiteslanding]

Also just gonna add that “authentically Disney, distinctly Emirati” is an extremely funny statement. This park’s target audience is not UAE and it’s 10 million people. This is not a park built for a billion potential “local” guests like Shanghai.

Of course UAE has its own culture, but cities like Abu Dhabi and Dubai are essentially playgrounds for the ultra rich and were designed as such. The culture of these cities is Fortune 500 brands, oil money, and insanely extravagant experiences. So while not intentional, they’re basically saying “Disney but more expensive and soulless”.

[laffiteslanding]

Announcing Disney Abu Dhabi is such a bizarre move on so many levels. I mean, even the announcement itself was incredibly vague, not even giving a name for the park and Iger’s messaging was a warmed over rehash of his Shanghai Disneyland posturing. But more than that just the entire context of the park makes little sense.

Disney has only agreed to license theme park rights one other time, for Tokyo Disneyland, and that was at a time when they needed the capital to finish Epcot. 2025 Disney is in a completely different situation. Sure they want the money, but they don’t need it. And why license a project in an already saturated theme park market in a devastatingly hot area of the world with significant human rights issues where it is clear thousands of migrant workers have died in the construction of similar projects? This is just brand damage waiting to happen. Also it’s coastal, which will cause even more issues for them as climate change progresses.

I just don’t understand how any of this makes sense from a business perspective. For better or worse, Disney has always been the leader in the theme park market and now they’re acting like this Six Flags-level move is their biggest accomplishment yet.

Just baffling decision-making on every level.

[laffiteslanding]

Also they’re bringing more attention to their low-attendance competitors in the region and also even if this park is well-attended, it will likely cannibalize at least some of their European market - both in Europe and in European groups going to Orlando.

Announcing Disney Abu Dhabi is such a bizarre move on so many levels. I mean, even the announcement itself was incredibly vague, not even giving a name for the park and Iger’s messaging was a warmed over rehash of his Shanghai Disneyland posturing. But more than that just the entire context of the park makes little sense.

Disney has only agreed to license theme park rights one other time, for Tokyo Disneyland, and that was at a time when they needed the capital to finish Epcot. 2025 Disney is in a completely different situation. Sure they want the money, but they don’t need it. And why license a project in an already saturated theme park market in a devastatingly hot area of the world with significant human rights issues where it is clear thousands of migrant workers have died in the construction of similar projects? This is just brand damage waiting to happen. Also it’s coastal, which will cause even more issues for them as climate change progresses.

I just don’t understand how any of this makes sense from a business perspective. For better or worse, Disney has always been the leader in the theme park market and now they’re acting like this Six Flags-level move is their biggest accomplishment yet.

Just baffling decision-making on every level.

[laffiteslanding]

Announcing Disney Abu Dhabi is such a bizarre move on so many levels. I mean, even the announcement itself was incredibly vague, not even giving a name for the park and Iger’s messaging was a warmed over rehash of his Shanghai Disneyland posturing. But more than that just the entire context of the park makes little sense.

Disney has only agreed to license theme park rights one other time, for Tokyo Disneyland, and that was at a time when they needed the capital to finish Epcot. 2025 Disney is in a completely different situation. Sure they want the money, but they don’t need it. And why license a project in an already saturated theme park market in a devastatingly hot area of the world with significant human rights issues where it is clear thousands of migrant workers have died in the construction of similar projects? This is just brand damage waiting to happen. Also it’s coastal, which will cause even more issues for them as climate change progresses.

I just don’t understand how any of this makes sense from a business perspective. For better or worse, Disney has always been the leader in the theme park market and now they’re acting like this Six Flags-level move is their biggest accomplishment yet.

Just baffling decision-making on every level.

[laffiteslanding]

This park has so many red flags it’s insane.

Would have preferred a new park in a place I felt safe to visit. And that’s all I’ll say on that.

[laffiteslanding]

Oh for sure, if we’re talking thematic cohesion that’s the most important thing in the long term. I responded to rides specifically because that was the question, but the surrounding context is that they have to make sense in the context of the land and ultimately the context of the park. This presents unique problems for Disney specifically because their existing parks were not thematically built for IP-based lands. They were built around abstract concepts and broader themes in a way that really contrasts with Universal, who has been building IP-centric park models since 1999 and arguably earlier.

Where Disney has succeeded with IP rides and lands is either A) placing them in appropriate contexts (TRON in Tomorrowland, Pandora in Animal Kingdom) or B) incorporating them into the initial park (Treasure Cove in Shanghai, Atlantica in Disney Sea). Outside of that the retrofits just do not work as much as they try to smooth it over. Even something of general quality like Disney Springs struggles conceptually because it does not fully align with the original ethos of the park.

Epic Universe makes this all the more obvious amongst the Orlando parks because you can feel the intention of the master planning in the layout and use of IP. It’s hard to describe but makes sense if you’re there, and makes the Hollywood Studios retrofits look worse in comparison. Not that the quality of those lands is bad per se, but they really feel tacked on.

I think there needs to be more stewardship of when and how lands fit in their respective parks, because the answer can’t be to just shift the theme of the overall park again and again. The commitment to lands over park is something that isn’t talked about as much but it really does have a negative long-term impact on the overall park ecosystem.

Opinion on modern IP rides? :-333

They’re a mixed bag, but in general I like the direction they’re going. Look at something like Epic Universe, which is a largely IP-based theme park and actually most of the attractions are original stories set in IP worlds. They have their own identity and aren’t just a regurgitation of popular elements from films, video games, etc. In the best cases, IP rides/lands can build on the world in interesting ways. Look at Treasure Cove in Shanghai, or Pandora in Animal Kingdom as good examples of this.

My biggest problem with IP rides has always been that they don’t do anything the movie doesn’t do, or you just redo the movie but worse, or in the case of Fast & Furious just completely fail across the board. But as long as there’s some sort of unique element or reason for the IP to be there, I’m good with it. I’d still prefer a mix of original offerings/rides and IP ones, but I’m not inherently against IP attractions as a concept.

I went to a talk with Tony Baxter where he said Indiana Jones Adventure could have been done without the IP, but it likely would have been seen as a knock-off Indiana Jones anyway, and that the ride was stronger thanks to the IP and everything that comes with it. I generally agree, and think this is true of more modern attractions as well. Monsters Unchained could have been made with generic monsters, but it is a much stronger attraction thanks to the use of Frankenstein, Dracula, etc.

Not everything lands, of course, but when IP hits, it hits. My personal top attractions is a mix of IP and original rides, if that tells you anything,

[laffiteslanding]

Opinion on modern IP rides? :-333

They’re a mixed bag, but in general I like the direction they’re going. Look at something like Epic Universe, which is a largely IP-based theme park and actually most of the attractions are original stories set in IP worlds. They have their own identity and aren’t just a regurgitation of popular elements from films, video games, etc. In the best cases, IP rides/lands can build on the world in interesting ways. Look at Treasure Cove in Shanghai, or Pandora in Animal Kingdom as good examples of this.

My biggest problem with IP rides has always been that they don’t do anything the movie doesn’t do, or you just redo the movie but worse, or in the case of Fast & Furious just completely fail across the board. But as long as there’s some sort of unique element or reason for the IP to be there, I’m good with it. I’d still prefer a mix of original offerings/rides and IP ones, but I’m not inherently against IP attractions as a concept.

I went to a talk with Tony Baxter where he said Indiana Jones Adventure could have been done without the IP, but it likely would have been seen as a knock-off Indiana Jones anyway, and that the ride was stronger thanks to the IP and everything that comes with it. I generally agree, and think this is true of more modern attractions as well. Monsters Unchained could have been made with generic monsters, but it is a much stronger attraction thanks to the use of Frankenstein, Dracula, etc.

Not everything lands, of course, but when IP hits, it hits. My personal top attractions is a mix of IP and original rides, if that tells you anything,

[laffiteslanding]

I love Grizzly Rapids in the evening! (via)

[laffiteslanding]

Will write up a full review at some point, but Epic Universe is the real deal. Easily the most ambitious park Universal has ever created, and the most innovative piece of theme park design since DisneySea. From a design standpoint it’s an incredible achievement, and from a guest standpoint it’s a remarkable treat.