Progress City, U.S.A.

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.

For nearly two decades, beginning with Frank Wells wining and dining Chinese officials in 1990, the Disney corporation has danced around the possibility of building a theme park in Shanghai. China’s largest city was long a target destination for former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, but despite frequent negotiations during the 1990s the park was never built. Some sources claim that Disney themselves delayed the plans, unsure that the city was ready to support such a project. On the other hand, in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre the Chinese government was keen to stem the tide of western cultural influences in their territories.

Map of the future Shanghai Disneyland site, zooming from a global view (top) to the site itself (bottom). Click to enlarge.

By the turn of the century, Disney’s attention was diverted to the planning and construction of Hong Kong Disneyland and Shanghai was put on the back burner. Work continued on the project; Disney signed a deal to build a park on the Chinese mainland in 2002, and, rejecting bids for the park by Beijing and Tianjin, contracted with Shanghai’s Lujiazui Group to develop a site there. But when the park in Hong Kong opened to poor reviews and seriously underperformed financially, Disney was forced to enter into years of intractable negotiations about the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to enhance that resort and progress stalled again on the Shanghai project. These delays were compounded further by a 2006 corruption scandal within the Shanghai government, which implicated local Communist Party chief Chen Liangyu. Still, Shanghai remained one of Disney’s key initiatives; the now-famous rendering from the 2006 Disney annual report shows a “new Disney theme park” that many believe to be a concept for the Shanghai park.

Possible rendering of Shanghai Disneyland concept, 2006

The rendering, shown above, depicts a new type of layout for a Disney park. Surrounding a central lake, it more resembles Universal’s Island of Adventure. Various lands that can been seen in the illustration; one resembles Tokyo DisneySea’s Mermaid Lagoon, there’s a futuristic area visually reminiscent of the original DisneySea’s Future Research Center, a fairytale castle sits atop a hill with a rollercoaster in the distance behind, there’s a South American temple straight out of Indiana Jones, and a European village surrounding the castle. Despite the prominent placement of this image in a widely-distributed publication, little else was seen or heard stateside about the Shanghai efforts.

In the Asian press, though, gossip about the park continued over the years. In March of 2006, Shanghai’s mayor had announced “preliminary preparations” for the park. Two years later, in March 2008, Mayor Han Zheng announced that the city had officially applied to the Chinese central government to build the park. Negotiations ground on.

This year, though, the wheels of progress began to slowly turn once more. A series of approvals, leaked in the state-run and local media, traced the slow but steady development of the resort plan. Since January when Mayor Han Zheng announced that the city had signed a nonbinding agreement and project report with Disney, and Disney themselves confessed to the plans, all parties have been waiting for word from Beijing. In June, it’s believed that the project was approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Chinese government’s economic planning agency. Earlier this week, the state-run Securities Times reported that the central government in Beijing had given its final approval to the plan earlier this month, and that it was now up to Shanghai officials and Disney to finalize the details of the deal.

According to Reuters, they may finally have a deal. Sources are speculating to the wire service that a deal may be announced during U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to China from November 15th-18th. A front-page editorial this week in the state-run Shanghai Securities News called for such an announcement, giving a great deal of credence to the notion. News stories anticipating an “upcoming” announcement have popped up frequently over the years, but the recent string of significant advances suggest that the rumors might finally be true. Stocks in construction companies and other related local industries spiked on the announcement, at least the second time this year that has happened. Leaked quotes over recent weeks insist that all that remains to be negotiated are small details, and those are insignificant in the grand scheme of the deal.

Another piece of the puzzle has come this weekend, when the ever talkative Mayor Han Zhang announced he’d hold a press conference this week to discuss the project. According to the Mayor, since he apparently gets asked about the Disney project at every press conference, it’s now time to discuss the issue and there are so many aspects of the subject to discuss that it requires its own press event. Other reports echo that a deal is near, with many of the few remaining points of discussion surrounding various trade and media deals that accompany the park agreement. Disney is using the Shanghai park as its major entry into the Chinese entertainment market, and so the eventual deal will have a far greater scope than the park itself. It also hinges, in part, on the continuing progress of Sino-U.S. trade negotiations.

Rumors about the resort itself have flourished over the years; most recent reports peg it as a $3.6 billion development, of which Disney will own a 43% stake and a local government-owned holding company would own 57%. While the Shanghai government originally suggested that Disney build on the underdeveloped Chongming Island, Disney rejected that site and opted to build on the mainland. The park will now occupy an 8-10 acre site in the town of Chuansha, on the southern edge of Shanghai’s Pudong district. It is currently slated to open in 2013. While the delay in an actual deal might have proved frustrating to fans, it has also allowed the Chinese government to make the necessary infrastructure upgrades to the fairly rural area. Shanghai Disneyland, when built, will benefit immediately from high-speed rail links and direct connections to major highways.

Rumored “leaked” site plan for Shanghai Disneyland development. First phase of development is outlined in red; the theme park area is circled in pink. Note how the C-shaped lake resembles the park’s rendering from 2006. Also note the MagLev depot to the north of the park. Personally, I think the Piggery will be a definite E-ticket. Click to enlarge.

What the park’s attraction lineup will resemble has been a source of great speculation recently. While a leaked site plan, allegedly by the ARUP development corporation, contains a water feature that greatly resembles the 2006 park rendering, it’s unknown if the eventual park will match any of these designs. After all, Hong Kong Disneyland itself differed greatly from even its early official press releases, and the pirate land concept for Hong Kong that was also featured prominently in the 2006 annual report was eventually abandoned.

Much of the discussion online has been about how Disney’s new franchise mania will affect the park’s aesthetic. Many expect pirates, princesses, pixies, and Pixar to rule the day, and if fans think the current park attractions are character-heavy then they haven’t seen anything yet. The latest gossip, featured on Screamscape and elsewhere, brings up the possibility that the Shanghai site will be Disney’s first park to include characters from Marvel Comics. Others expect the park to receive Hong Kong’s rejected pirate land, although that is sheer speculation.

Nevertheless, this will be the first Disney park to fully reflect CEO Bob Iger’s oft-stated push for “franchises” and “properties.” The sole purpose of this park, from management’s perspective, often seems to be to fully inject Disney’s intellectual property into the subconscious of billions of young Chinese. Regardless of Imagineers’ sincere efforts to build a quality theme park, some fans are concerned that the real purpose of Shanghai Disneyland is not to create a great park but to capitalize on all those viewers of the new Disney cable and satellite channels and of millions of hopefully non-pirated DVDs. The final product’s makeup can be deduced by the occasional comments by management over difficulties in Hong Kong; they often speak of how Chinese children are unfamiliar with western fairytales and are thus unaffected by the traditional Fantasyland attractions. Unless they’re planning on basing Shanghai Disneyland on traditional Chinese stories, which I doubt, or letting quality attractions stand on their own merits, which I also doubt, one fears that the order of the day will be Pixar, Pixar, Pixar.

But again, this is all speculation. It appears that Disney is trying to build a new kind of Disney kingdom, which is good considering that there are already two traditional Disneyland-type parks within the region. There’s certainly room for innovation, and hopefully in the shadow of Hong Kong Disneyland’s difficulties the Imagineers will be given wider leeway to really build something that impresses. We still have no idea when we’ll ever actually find out something substantive about the project, but all signs indicate that it will be sooner rather than later.

UPDATE: It looks like land expropriation for the resort has begun. Apparently, for several years the Shanghai government has been filing preparatory expropriation plans for something called “Buenaland Shanghai”. Very clever, guys. Apparently the Shanghai press, who didn’t pick up on this at all, needs to hire some Disney nerds.

Aside from the brief distraction of Comic-Con last week, the entirety of discussion in the online Disney community recently seems to have centered around the “leaked” blueprint that supposedly shows an upcoming expansion for Florida’s Fantasyland. With no comment from Disney, except a possibly telling statement from Imagineering that they have nothing new to announce “at this time,” all that’s left to go on is speculation and a few vague facts from a handful of sources. So, let’s try and whittle down the possibilities at least a bit.

The first question everyone had when the plans appeared was whether or not they were real. While no one I know personally can confirm this specific plan, I’ve had reliable people confirm that at least the various elements of the plan have been discussed at WDI and are not just fanboy speculation. This led to the next question: was this plan a legitimate WDI concept for the area, or just a bunch of real (and therefore plausible) rumors that had been collected together to fool people?

This is an area in which we’ll have to trust a number of prominent bloggers, as they’ve circulated the news recently that the plans are, in fact, from Imagineering and that Disney management is none too happy about their leak. This has been confirmed by Al Lutz in his recent update at MiceAge, and Lance at Screamscape, among others. So if the plans are real, how real are they? We all know that even the most definite, fully-designed attraction can vanish in a puff of smoke if something goes wrong. Projects much better known that this – projects that have been publicly announced! – have fallen by the wayside many times in Disney’s past.

Any analysis of the rumors must also factor in consideration of the motives behind the leak, possibilities for which have been mentioned in an earlier thread by our valued poster “Another Voice.” Of course, there’s always the chance that someone in the know decided to leak a juicy tidbit to a friend and it wound up online. But there’s always the possibility that the leak was an attempt by an Imagineer to drum up public support for their project, or to affect some desired political goal inside the company. With the fiscal year approaching its end, Imagineers could be trying to justify their positions, or to drum up some additional funding. It could also have been an intentional leak, designed to draw attention away from other Disney woes – some have speculated online that it was ballyhoo to distract from economic issues or even the recent monorail fatality.

One subject that online discussions about the leak seem to return to time and time again is the popular supposition that the plan is Disney’s official retort to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which opens at Universal’s Islands of Adventure park next year. Some seem to think, with varying degrees of hyperbole, that Disney is worried they’ll take a huge hit in attendance from Potter’s arrival in Orlando and are planning a wave of new attractions to fight back. Others, including “Another Voice,” insist that Disney management is not at all concerned with the new competition.

Rendering of Hogwarts Castle for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – no cartoonish rendering here!

I tend to believe that this is the case; Disney has maintained their market share fairly consistently over the years and concerns about competition seem to have faded away. To put it more pessimistically, if you look at the things they’ve chosen to offer in recent years, it’s hard to believe that they don’t think that guests will swallow anything that they put out if they just slap the Disney name on it. A company that respects its customers and feels the need to compete for their dollars does not create something like Stitch’s Great Escape. But, having said this, I still find the timing interesting from a historic standpoint.

Conceptual rendering of Hogsmeade Village from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Having followed Disney rumors online for quite a while now, the last time I can remember such a quantity of “insider-vouched” speculation going on was in 1999 – coinciding exactly with the impending opening of Islands of Adventure. The story at the time was that Disney was indeed concerned about the new competition; after all, Animal Kingdom had just opened to less than overwhelming attendance. Universal invested heavily in Islands of Adventure, using a staff heavily populated by laid-off Disney Imagineers, and many of its major attractions looked to top some of Disney’s offerings. It also featured a few attractions, including the Dueling Dragons coaster, that bore a striking resemblance to concepts originally developed for the Animal Kingdom’s abandoned Beastly Kingdom area. Disney head Michael Eisner saw the new park as a challenge to Disney’s dominance in Orlando, and allegedly allowed Imagineers to develop a slate of ambitious new projects which would be greenlit should the new Universal park prove a success. It seemed that Orlando was on the verge of a theme park arms race.

Sadly, it all came to naught. There’s been a lot written about why, exactly, Islands of Adventure never drew even a sizable fraction of the crowds it expected those first years. The park was gorgeous, and wonderfully themed in some parts. It contained an ambitious slate of attractions, and one – The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man – is among the greatest dark rides of all time. Unfortunately, over the years, park maintenance took a downturn and there was a lack of expansion due to a series of changing corporate owners that held no interest in the theme park business, but in those first years it was quite a jewel. Still, a botched pre-opening ad campaign completely failed to create awareness of the new park, and instead misguidedly tried to create an identity for the entire resort as something called “Universal Studios Escape.” This disastrous campaign left potential guests confused, and unaware that Islands of Adventure was a completely new park. Disney never got the competition it expected, and the grand plans to best Universal were abandoned.

It’s easy to see how, despite the sudden resurgence of so many rumors, Disney wouldn’t see the new Universal expansion as competition. After all, Universal gave it their all in 1999 and still failed. And while I do believe than in the long term Disney will remain fairly bulletproof due to their space in the collective consciousness, the upcoming Harry Potter attraction will have an effect. Certainly in the short-term, and possibly in the long-term.

Conceptual art for The Three Broomsticks tavern from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

I think it’s sometimes difficult for Disney fans and theme park fans in general to step back and put themselves in the mindset of the general public. As the person who, since childhood, was always known as the “Disney guy,” I’m usually the go-to person for anyone at school or work who is planning a trip to Orlando. For most of these people, usually first-timers, the Orlando theme park landscape is kind of nebulous. There’s “Disney” or “Disney World”, of course, and that usually means the Magic Kingdom. Then there’s EPCOT/EPCOT Center, and Universal, and that animal thing (Is that Busch Gardens? Is Sea World part of Disney too?). These people have no resort loyalty, and the second they see that Harry Potter is in Orlando they’re going to start packing their bags no matter which park he’s in. They might still think Universal is in Disney World, and will have no idea what Islands of Adventure is, but they’ll call the number on the screen to make their reservations. I have a number of friends, all otherwise perfectly respectable adults, who’ll flip out when they see the Potter art and want to go – immediately. I don’t know if any of them have ever been to Walt Disney World, or if they even like theme parks, but they’ll be peeling out of the driveway before I even get to give them directions.

This is the danger to Disney in the short-term. I’ve no idea if people will take a pass at Disney parks for a while, but I know that they will spend a day at Islands of Adventure. If the new ride, allegedly to be called Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, lives up to its potential, then Islands of Adventure will finally get the attention it deserves. Even if it’s only for a short time, I would imagine that any dips in Disney park attendance would mostly affect Animal Kingdom or the Hollywood Studios. Those are always the first parks to feel the effects of any downturn, anyway.

The danger to Disney in the long-term is impossible to determine; but while it will most likely be negligible, it’s possible for Universal to do some real damage. This, for the most part, is in the hands of Universal. The Harry Potter area will bring them attention that they’ve rarely, if ever, received on a national scale. If they leverage the attendance boost into a wave of new expansion and manage to expose those new guests to the other legitimately impressive attractions in the park, it’s possible that Islands of Adventure will finally make its name in the public consciousness ten years after its opening. Will they ever overcome Disney’s lead? No. But if they play their cards right they can certainly cement a permanent rise in attendance and start, at the very least, to threaten the less-attended Disney parks.

The interaction of these events with the Fantasyland leak is speculative, but again I point out that this is the most heated period of rumor-peddling since the debut of Islands of Adventure. Not only have we had the Fantasyland leak, but there’s also been a resurgence of talk about the Animal Kingdom expansion. Then there’s the always-forthcoming Monsters, Inc. coaster at the Studios, and some sort of rehabilitation of EPCOT’s Imagination pavilion. In the Magic Kingdom, there’s the often-rumored and much needed remodeling of Tomorrowland. And as for Fantasyland, with all the talk of the leaked plan there’s been no meaningful discussion of the Personal Experience Portal, the X-Band/RFID technology, or any of the other rumored technological upgrades for existing attractions.

Al Lutz, in his story today, says that Imagineering is mad because the Fantasyland plan was to be their big reveal for the upcoming D23 convention. Of course, some more cynical readers suggested that they’re mad because the plan they’re going to announce is pared down from the leaked designs and will leave fans cold. That’s definitely a possibility, but if WDI does plan to bring a worthwhile plan to announce I think the leak might have had its benefits. First, they got a massive and unsolicited focus group, as well as an enormous amount of publicity. If they do announce a plan, and if it’s of comparable scale, they’ll actually have details and renderings that will far surpass the vague leaked blueprint.

The key, of course, is whether they’ll announce anything. Lutz is the most significant indicator that they will, but we won’t know until then what the scale of the remodeling will be. At the very least, week by week we seem to be learning more. These plans are real, the intent to expand the park is real, and now we just have to see if they’re going to make up for past mistakes by making this something really special.