Disney has released a new video hosted by Imagineer Chris Beatty who gives us a sneak peek at the making of Under the Sea ~ Journey of the Little Mermaid. The video includes some never-before-seen sketches, artist renderings, attraction maps and more, and shares some details on Prince Eric’s castle and the attraction’s creative queue.
Also included is a brief talk by Imagineer Eric Miller with some behind the scenes glimpses of rock work from a few weeks ago.
I am very seldom disappointed by Disney walk-around characters at the meet and greets. They do such a good job maintaining character, handling the little challenges that come with interacting with all sorts of guests, and enduring extremes of heat and humidity often while wearing… Read More »Rapunzel and Flynn Meet the iPad, Viral Video
Starting in the lobby, there is a great new ‘mosaic’ on the floor. The 1901 is a hidden reference to the year of Walt Disney’s birth. Thankfully Disney has resisted the urge to use every square foot of the lobby for selling things. The lobby, as it stands now, has a good balance between the waiting area for Tony’s restaurant, the photo shop, and the entrance to the meet and greet queues. The flow worked nicely.
If you look in the door of the queue to see how long the wait is, you’ll get a pretty good feel for the Mickey Mouse queue. As I mentioned, it never grew over 10 minutes the Saturday we were there. But if you look to the back and see no queue for the princesses, keep in mind that there is an extra hidden room that hides a wait of up to 35 minutes (depending on Fastpass volume). I know the princesses are only in this location temporarily, but this blue room is worse than soulless, it’s mind numbing. Can they at least bring in one or two monitors and some wall art like they had in the old location? Better yet, have a play area for the kids and a queue for the adults like at Pooh.
Once you get through this area, you may have an even longer wait in the single room for the Princesses. Which brings me to my other chief complaint about the Princess Meet and Greet. Because there is only one room for the Princesses (as far as I could tell), they only way to speed up the queue is to reduce the interaction time with each Princess. The day I went the queue was pretty small (never longer than 30 minutes) so the the Princesses were generous with their time. But I can see pressure turning this into a photo factory.
Alright follow me below the jump back to Mickey, where the magic is happening:
As you may have heard Mickey and Minnie are moving to a new meet and greet location in Town Square at the recently renamed, but not yet open, Town Square Theater. We posted recently about how this will be the first character meet and greet to feature a Fastpass option. There is still quite a bit of construction going on around the area, but rumors of exactly how the Fastpass system will work are beginning to circulate.
Here’s a new video of a walk-around Mickey Mouse talking to guests outside his house in Disneyland’s Toontown. After watching a couple different videos of various interactions, Mickey appears to have a limited dialogue capability. That’s to be expected as there is only so much… Read More »Talking Mickey Mouse gets more play at Disneyland
The big news earlier today was that Mickey and Minnie’s Main Street Meet and Greet would be opening with the benefit of Fastpass to avoid the long waits that the Toontown Fair location had become known for. I’m a bit on the fence about this. I don’t like Fastpass in general because I think it A) is unnecessary for most attractions, B) upsets the guests in the standby queue which is bad show, C) artificially inflates the guests in public spaces which means a lower overall capacity for the parks, D) totally negates the chance to enjoy an afternoon in the parks with an equal chance to enjoy the fastpass attractions… I can go on… but I’ll stop now. Positioning FASTPASS as convenience, which you’ll see Disney has done in their press release, is only true for those who are able to use it. Once Fastpass runs out or the return time passes beyond your availability, then it’s no longer a convenience and instead becomes a huge burden.
That said, I can see Fastpass working for character meet and greets if, and it’s an important if, they dedicate one room to that queue and then manage the standby queue to keep it under a reasonable length (say 20 minutes for the Big Cheese). Do I actually see Disney managing the queues that way? I doubt it, but I hope I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Yes, I know that people “hate” to wait for attractions and characters. Nothing sucks more than waiting 45 minutes for a 30 second experience with a character that can’t even talk to you. To me that is a staffing problem and a capacity problem. Fastpass does nothing to address either of those. But it does make the guests that use it happy and they say good things about it, so it does have that one thing going for it. I don’t see how that outweighs the rest, but oh well.
Disney’s full press release for the announcement is below the jump. Please jump in on the comments with your thoughts on the changes:
What happens when two worlds collide? Tangled stars Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi pose with their character counterparts, Rapunzel and Flynn Rider at Disneyland this past weekend! They were also interviewed for this video: I got the chance to see Flynn Rider and Rapunzel up… Read More »Tangled Characters meet their Actors
The popular fairy meet and greet at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom has a new face. Vidia is new fairy introduced in the next Tinker Bell film – “Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue.” Guests can meet Vidia and her pixie pals — including… Read More »Pixie Hollow Welcomes Vidia, New Fairy at Magic Kingdom
