Progress City, U.S.A.

(Photo: MousePlanet)

Might there be a reason that construction has not begun in earnest on the new Fantasyland? Perhaps…

There’s a rumor going around that you’re doing guest surveys in EPCOT as to what countries guests would potentially like to see be added to World Showcase. Countries like Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Russia or “Other”.

I have no idea if this is true or not. I really don’t. But if in fact this is something that even in your wildest dreams you’re contemplating, let me help you out with some free market research.

Please, please, please, please, please do it.

It has been twenty-two years since Norway: Gateway to Scandinavia opened in 1988. Twenty-two years. Think of that. In that time, we’ve seen two of World Showcase’s films replaced – in China and Canada – and a minimal facelift for the Mexican boat ride. But that’s it.

For the love of school bread, it’s time to add something to World Showcase. Stop fuffing about and do something.

Incidentally, the rumor also states that the poll asks guests which pavilion they’d mind the least having removed from Showcase. I take it you’re digging for something here, as the idea that you’d ever cast a nation out of EPCOT seems just a bit too odd. Perhaps you’re trying to find out which pavilion is the least popular, and thus needs expansion the most?

That’s easy – Italy. Italy is by far the worst of the pavilions, but it’s also a nation so well-known to Americans that you couldn’t possibly kick it out of Showcase. The least-known nation of the eleven, at least in America, is probably Morocco. But that’s the most lavish and beautiful of the pavilions, and no way you’re going to phone up the King and tell him you’re throwing him out of the pavilion he built on his own dime.

So what are you up to, friend Disney? What indeed.

At least the whole thing really takes me back to the days of the EPCOT Poll in the Future Choice Theater, and that’s always a good thing.

A saw a story yesterday that made me realize that there have been a lot of little bits and pieces of news trickling out lately about new attractions that are coming to some of the less-covered Disney parks overseas. These developments don’t tend to get the coverage that new American attractions receive, so I thought that I’d summarize them here.

Now, I know I’ve been a bit of a Debbie Downer lately, what with all the disappointing shenanigans at Feature Animation and Parks & Resorts, but I’m afraid that won’t be turned around by these projects. One can pretty much guarantee that any new project at Tokyo Disneyland will be top notch due to the incredibly high levels of quality and service that the Oriental Land Company manages to achieve, but even they’re getting stuck with some new attractions that are less than… inspiring. But let’s take a look:

Concept art for Fantasmic! at Tokyo DisneySea (Disney)

The most recent announcement came a couple of days ago when the Oriental Land Company announced that it would be replacing its current night-time water show BraviSEAmo! with the similarly punctuated Fantasmic! The new show will debut in April 2011 as part of the celebrations surrounding Tokyo DisneySea’s 10th Anniversary, which is on September 4th of that year.

This might seem underwhelming to Disney fans, who might already have seen Fantasmic! in either California (where it’s played since 1992) or Florida (where it debuted in 1998). Thankfully we can hope for a little of that OLC magic (and their roughly $33.5 million investment) to update the twenty-minute show, as the announcement promises scenes from Aladdin, Cinderella and Finding Nemo. One can expect some new staging, too, on the waters of the park’s Mediterranean Harbor area. The concept art above shows Mickey atop some kind of ziggurat rising out of the water, and it seems apparent that the setup of the show will accommodate the larger lagoon.

BraviSEAmo! will perform its last show on November 13th, 2010, and preparation for Fantasmic! will begin soon after. While it might seem sacrilegious in Disney circles, I really am not a fan of Fantasmic!. In fact, I kinda hate it; it’s just not my thing (save for the giant MechaMaleficent). But hopefully the OLC will pull out all the stops to make it worthwhile. After all, their live shows typically tend to blow the offerings in the American parks completely out of the water.

Of course, DisneySea has been paying the price lately for its decade of awesomeness by receiving a string of cast-offs from other parks. Last year they got Turtle Talk with Crush, which fits beautifully with the 1930s ambiance of the American Waterfront area and the stylish S.S. Columbia. The American Waterfront will be the site of DisneySea’s next expansion, arriving in 2012. We’ve talked about this one before – behold:

Eeeeeehh… (Disney)

Toy Story Mania! (what’s up with all the exclamation points?) will be added to the New York area of the American Waterfront. Hopefully its budget of $129 million will lead to a little plussing.

Now.

Over at Tokyo Disneyland proper, there are a few new attractions on the way. The park, of course, has recently received the massively popular Monsters, Inc. dark ride. While unannounced, it also seems certain that the park will be receiving the upgrades to Star Tours that are on the way to parks stateside. In 2011, Mickey’s Philharmagic will be added in Fantasyland. While that’s perfectly reasonable, it naturally makes me sad because it necessitated the loss of the legendary Mickey Mouse Revue which I will now never be able to see in person. Between the Revue and Meet the World, replaced itself by Monsters, Inc., Tokyo Disneyland was a haven for attractions that should exist at Walt Disney World and I always hoped to see them myself.

Anyway.

Another attraction I’d always wanted to see at Tokyo Disneyland was the Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour, a walkthrough attraction that took guests through the bowels of the park’s iconic castle. This attraction has to be one of the most truly bizarre in Disney park history, leading guests through a series of encounters with various villains to a final confrontation with the Horned King from The Black Cauldron as he tries to raise an army of the damned.

So, yeah. I kinda hated to miss that one. It sounded insane, it was the sole attraction ever to reference The Black Cauldron, and it furthered my inferiority complex about the Magic Kingdom having the only one of the first four Disney castles to not have an attraction of its own. But the Mystery Tour closed in 2006, without replacement. Until now.

Now, I understand the closing of the old attraction and I understand the desire to make the new walk-through, which opens in 2011, focus specifically on Cinderella. After all, it’s her castle. And if we’re embarking on a brave new world of endless princess meet-and-greet interactive experiences, this would be a reasonable place for one. But I want you to take a moment and absorb the piece of concept art that was released to accompany the press release announcing this attraction. This wasn’t released as part of a sequence of renderings, or to emphasize one specific aspect of the project. This was, and as far as I can tell still is, the only piece of artwork that has been released to promote this new attraction. Can you tell I’m really wanting to build this up? So much that I’m going to put a page break below to make you click through to see?

Drum roll, please – gentlemen, behold!

(more…)

A brief correction from the Progress City Department of Humble Mea Culpas…

You might recall in all the discussion of the NextGen technology initiative that’s underway at Disney, there was some talk of how this would be implemented. Some suggested that RFID chips would be embedded into guests’ tickets or room keys, while others thought that they might make their way into rubber wristbands. This is a model that is used at a number of other parks and water attractions.

Anyway, about the time that there was buzz about these possible wristbands, the term “X-Band” was… bandied… about and I reported here that it was a possible name for the wristbands – if Disney decided to go in that direction.

Of course, if I had bothered to read the literature, I would have known that the X-band is part of the microwave spectrum that it is hoped can be used for RFID applications. As I understand it, increasing the use of RFID tags depends mostly on lowering their price. This could be achieved through miniaturization, which would allow the chip and its antenna to be cut from the same die. The smaller antenna, the higher the broadcasting frequency needs to be, which pushes the RFID transmission into this now-famous X-band.

Keep in mind this is entirely a layman’s interpretation of some journal articles. Most of what I know about physics was left in Dr. Kolena’s classroom lo those many years ago. But I just wanted to let you know that if you were waiting for your Disney’s X-Band t-shirts, it’s not going to happen.

With Jim MacPhee now in charge of the Next Generation Experience at Walt Disney World, we’ll hopefully be hearing something about this program fairly soon.

Disney put out a press release this evening, which has already led to an article in the New York Times, trumpeting the fact that a deal has been approved for Shanghai Disneyland.

But wait a minute.

No doubt pushed to show their hand by my shocking exposee from two days ago, Disney has done nothing but confirm things we already know. Of course, putting out such a visible and definite statement serves to emphasize the feeling that all but very minor details remain in the final negotiations between Disney and the Shanghai Government. If things still looked iffy after the approval came from the central Chinese government, one doubts that Disney would step out on that limb. For Disney to comment on anything anymore is notable. This could be coming to a head very, very soon.

The only real news from the release is that they speak of the new park as a Magic Kingdom type park. While they might just be speaking in generalities, it could mean that the rumors of a less traditional park layout might come to naught.

This could be an interesting week.