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…)

Nothing to see here… these aren’t the toys you’re looking for… (Photo: DLP.info)

One of the stranger moments of my D23 Expo experience was having one of my questions shot down by Bruce Vaughn, the Chief Creative Executive of Imagineering. At a press conference following the panel discussion of the creation of Pixar-based attractions for the theme parks, I asked about some of the attractions they hadn’t mentioned – those being planned for the Walt Disney Studios park in Paris. To the apparent surprise of many of the fellow Disney obsessives in the crowd, Vaughn’s response was that no new projects had been announced for Paris.

To those in that audience who were less-informed, I might have come off as simply wrong or trying to be sneaky. Truth being told, I was trying to be sneaky – just not in the way you might think.

We’ve known about the upcoming Toy Story Playland for quite some time now. The expansion has been rumored for a few years, and more recently the expansion’s plans and construction permits have been posted online. We even discussed it at length here in April. Obviously, the old adage is that until ground is broken plans can change. The thing is, in this case ground has been broken! The always-informative DLP.info has posted construction pictures of the site, as well as the construction wall art that heralds the arrival of the Toy Story characters. You can understand why I didn’t bother to check to see if a press release had been issued before asking my question!

I wasn’t really asking about the Playland, though. In my oh-so-clever craftiness I thought that by asking a vague question about the Pixar projects underway in Paris instead of asking specifically about the Toy Story rides, I might get a comment about the rumored Ratatouille attraction that is also said to be underway. I couldn’t care less about Toy Story Playland and its three carny rides, but I’m darn sure interested in the rumored trackless Ratatouille dark ride. It’s pretty funny that I didn’t want to look like a jerk asking about a Ratatouille ride that I wasn’t sure had been officially confirmed, so I thought I’d cover myself by asking about the Toy Story Playland which I thought was fair game. Busted.

Obviously, I have no gripe with Vaughn over his answer. After all, if they haven’t announced anything, they haven’t announced anything. The look on the faces of the Imagineers when I asked the question was worth the price of admission anyway. Sorry guys, I knew not what I did! But my question is this: why hasn’t the Playland been announced? This seems to be a Disney trend lately; you might recall the constant denials of a new resort project as the Bay Lake Tower was built in plain sight of thousands of daily guests.

At least with Bay Lake Tower I can understand the reasoning; Disney still had plenty of DVC units to sell at Saratoga Springs and Animal Kingdom Lodge, and didn’t want to spoil that market by dumping all the Bay Lake rooms into the mix. But why the secrecy about the project in Paris that is obviously underway? I can think of two possibilities. The first is that there’s some contractual weirdness with Euro Disney S.C.A. that requires those announcements to be made in specific places and times. The second is that they’re trying to keep the Parisian version of Toy Story Playland under wraps for as long as possible, because an exact clone of the area is one of the three highly-touted expansions for Hong Kong Disneyland. Disney already had the area planned and ready to go for Paris; the Hong Kong version is a copy, and Disney might not want that to be obvious as they deal with testy Chinese officials. Surely the Hong Kong officials know, though; Toy Story Land was a last-minute addition to the HKDL expansions, joining the lineup when Chinese officials nixed the proposed Glacier Bay area.

As for Paris, the toys are on the way. Unless this is the most committed disinformation campaign ever!

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.

There have been many intense rumors lately that the Magic Kingdom’s desperately needed Fantasyland facelift was coming, once more, perilously close to a greenlight. We’ve heard that before, and the Fantasyland rumors now go back several years. But today, things got a little more interesting:

Today, the D-Report’s Soft-Opening site posted the above image; allegedly it’s a leaked copy of plans for the new Fantasyland. There are a few possibilities here: First, it could be some excellent work by an internet fan who collected the best of the online rumors and put them together to trick rubes like me. Or, it could be the real plan; the problem is, we all know that until the shovel hits the soil, plans are just that. Even if this came straight from Glendale, without a budgetary greenlight we still might never see it built. Also don’t forget that even if it’s a real proposal and gets approved, plans often tend to get downsized.

But what if this is real? How does it jibe with existing rumors? Alain Littaye and the webmaster of WDWMagic have already both said that this plan matches what they’ve heard from other sources; what if this is what we’re getting in Orlando?

Well, if so, it’s far more vast than I expected. Mickey’s Toontown Fair will mercifully face the bulldozer, removing this half-hearted “land” twenty years after it was originally intended to be removed. It seems that much of the existing Fantasyland area will be enclosed and set apart with a castle wall; this was a conceit seen in much of Disneyland’s original concept art, and will in effect set the Carousel in a medieval courtyard. The area outside the castle walls seems to be fairly heavily landscaped with lots of water features, and seems more bucolic in nature.

The largest addition, as has been so often rumored, is a new dark ride based on The Little Mermaid. Taking up much of the footprint once occupied by the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea show building, the Mermaid attraction will be modeled after a similar ride now under construction in Anaheim. In the blueprint, one can make out an extensive queue area and an Ariel meet-n-greet area.

Next to the Mermaid attraction, taking up the space currently occupied by Ariel’s Grotto, is a new area themed to Beauty and the Beast. Earlier rumors had a dark ride based on this film replacing Snow White’s Adventures, but that older attraction remains in this plan. The new Beauty area features a “Be Our Guest Restaurant,” “Gaston’s Tavern,” and something labeled “Belle Attraction.” The blueprint doesn’t seem to show an area large enough for a ride attraction, so one assumes that this is another meet-n-greet. Earlier rumors said that Mickey’s Toontown Fair would be removed and converted to a series of Disney Princess photo stops; in this plans, those photo stops seem to be sprinkled throughout the land.

Rendering of the unbuilt Beauty and the Beast attraction/restaurant from Disneyland Paris

What’s really mysterious is the “Be Our Guest Restaurant.” While this could, of course, be another simple food court or restaurant, one can see that the Pinocchio Village Haus still exists in this new Fantasyland to suit that purpose. Could this new restaurant be a revived version of the unrealized dining concept for Disneyland Paris’s Fantasyland, which would feature an animatronic dinner show based on Beauty and the Beast? In that attraction, guests would dine while the Beast’s castle slowly came to life around them; it would be as if they had combined the Enchanted Tiki Room with an actual restaurant. It would certainly be a nice addition to the park.

Where the 20,000 Leagues lagoon once sat, and where the Pooh playground sits now, the blueprint shows another “attraction” themed to Cinderella. This, and the Aurora “attraction” next to it, are most likely photo opportunities similar to Belle’s area mentioned above. A small remnant of the Pooh area looks to remain across from the Pooh attraction; this, too, will be a photo spot.

What was once the main street of Toontown will become Pixie Hollow as was rumored, where Disney’s latest marketing opportunities will hold court. Across from Pixie Hollow sits the Barnstormer; while it’s labeled as such on the blueprint, its current theming as Goofy’s barn would make absolutely no sense in the new layout. Could this kid-friendly rollercoaster be re-themed to the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves mine train coaster that has long been rumored?

One of the most intriguing (and to me, most pleasing) rumors that had emerged of late was that the Aladdin spinner attraction would be removed from Adventureland, where it is a terrible eyesore, to Fantasyland where it better belongs. In this design, it appears that the ride will be moved but given a facelift; in this blueprint, there are now dueling Dumbo flying elephant spinners sitting next to each other where the Toontown show buildings now are. This would be a big move for the little elephant, moving him clear across the east side of Fantasyland and doubling his capacity. Next to the spinners is something labeled “NextGen Interactive Queue” – whatever that means – and the Toontown train station will also gain Dumbo-related theming and be renamed as the Fantasyland Station.

It’s a pretty bold plan – far bolder than we’ve come to expect from the Florida resorts, yet it still seems to aim lower than Disneyland’s 1983 Fantasyland renovation. Of course I’d like to see more new attractions – I’ll always say that – but can’t we have at least one more C- or D-ticket? We’re still several attractions short of Anaheim’s tally. I could also grouse that I’d rather have the Bald Mountain Flume from the late 1990s instead of those meet-n-greets, but all that open space could certainly be used for future expansion. Still, if done correctly and on a decent budget, this could be a nice transformation for the Magic Kingdom’s outdated Fantasyland, and at least start to bring it up to the level of its peers. The cosmetic change alone could be extremely impressive. If it’s real, the devil of the plan will be in the details. If it really winds up bringing only a lot of new shops and meet-n-greets, it could disappoint. Then again, if it truly leads of the removal of the Flying Carpets from Adventureland, I’ll bow down and kiss Phil Holmes’s shoes.

We’ll hear more about this, I’m sure, and I’m going to do some sleuthing. But does anyone know anything about this?

There are four things in this picture; they are all cooler than anything in the current Imagination! pavilion

Let’s say we’re taking a trip to EPCOT, and decide to check out the Walt Disney World website for some information. In the Imagination pavilion, we might decide to check out the ImageWorks – the interactive post-show area for the Imagination ride. Looking at the official Disney page for the ImageWorks, we find the following attractions listed:

ImageWorks – The Kodak “What If” Labs features a vast array of hands-on, sensory-themed activities and exhibits where you can exercise your imagination and explore your creative side in exciting exhibits that include:

* Dreamfinder’s School of Drama – Become the star of your very own film using greenscreen technology

* Stepping Tones – Create your own music by stepping on electronic picture panels

* Figment’s Coloring Book – Using electric paintbrush guns, add a little color to Figment and Dreamfinder

* Electric Philharmonic – Conduct an orchestra through the use of electronic sensors

* Rainbow Corridor – Stroll through an illuminated tunnel where colored lights follow you

* Vibrating Mirrors – Watch as your reflection changes right before your eyes

* Kaleidoscopes – Spin eye-popping colors in intricate designs via large-size kaleidoscopes

* Voice-Activated Lumia – Speak out and behold a bevy of shimmering light effects

* Bubble Projectors – Blow virtual bubbles on a circular screen and create colorful colors

* Figment’s Melody Maker – Help Figment play an instrument to the tune of “One Little Spark”

Those of you unfamiliar with EPCOT might say, “so what?” Those of you who know EPCOT’s history are probably falling out of your chairs laughing by now. The fact is that these attractions, with two exceptions, aren’t part of the post-show exhibit – they never have been. Instead, they were part of the former ImageWorks area that occupied the second floor of the Imagination pavilion from 1982-1998. The new version opened with the controversial and much-maligned Journey into YOUR Imagination attraction overhaul in 1999.

WE ARE HAVING FUN WE SWEAR!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The original ImageWorks, whose attractions are listed above, came from a less technologically advanced era but was larger and far more creatively executed. Fans have long hoped for a return of the original ImageWorks, along with a rumored impending fourth version of the Journey into Imagination ride, so it’s no surprise that the discovery of this list on Disney’s website started a conflagration on fan-frequented message boards.

It’s pretty obvious that this is some weird glitch caused by the web team having to cut-and-paste old information, but it’s fascinating that site has remained this way for at least three days since it was widely noticed. Conspiracy theories have blossomed, but it’s universally reported that no actual work has been done in the former ImageWorks area so this is not something that’s currently happening. Some hope that this is some trial balloon for fan reaction – which, if so, they definitely got a reaction – but more than likely it’s just a weird little mistake.

What is interesting is that these events have shaken out a few interesting rumors about that hoped-for restoration of the Imagination ride. The last few years have provided a steady stream of whispers about plans being drawn up for the pavilion, but these always seem to be stymied by one reason or another. It’s said that Disney knows this attraction is a dog, but the fact of the matter is that someone has to cough up some cash before the rehab begins. In any case, one of the leaked tidbits that has come from several sources is that one potential plan for the attraction that is under consideration involves the remodeled ride expanding into the area currently occupied by Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. This would make up for the massive reduction of the attraction’s footprint in the 1999 remodeling, and would save Disney from having to shoot yet another 3-D film to replace the threadbare current presentation.

The pavilion really needs the work, so hopefully these changes come sooner rather than later, but for now we can assume the brief rebirth of the ImageWorks owes more to a fluke of copy-editing rather than a sneak preview of things to come.