Magic of Disney Animation the latest casualty at Hollywood Studios

I'm looking forward to the boat ride, especially since it appears that all or most of its course will be indoors. The prospect of a new indoor water-based Disney dark ride is a very good thing.

Frozen Ever After, my friend....we'll be there when it opens. See you in Arendelle..er...Norway!

:)

Frozen Ever After, taken on its own terms, should be a perfectly pleasant and well-executed attraction, although the crushing demand on the ride will probably rub folks the wrong way (amount of time/effort to ride vs. the length/scope of the attraction no matter how well-done). I assume the name of the game will be FastPass+ with whatever remaining lost souls going stand-by ala Mine Train.

The building visible from the Animal Kingdom parking lot for the Avatar stuff is completely massive.

The floating mountains are rumored to reach around 140', which would put them at Tree of Life height. With themed stuff of that scale, "floating" rocks with waterfalls pouring down off the sides, it won't matter whether or not Avatar the movie has any pop culture relevance. We'll have to see how the specific attractions, shops, etc. shake out but the land itself will likely be a 'win' on the environments alone.

The floating mountains are based on Zhang Jia Jie in Hunan province in southern China (just visited there last week - my new daughter is from Hunan). Granted, the actual cliffs are 1200 m. tall but if Disney can capture even a fraction of the splendor and awe of the real thing, they will have a winner. It really feels like you're walking on clouds up there.

Considering how impressive the Cadillac Range looks at Cars Land I have every faith that Disney can make the floating mountains work in a theme park setting. Cars Land at night is incredible.

And then there's this little rumor...

Link

I hate it when sites post crap like that. Yeah, you're really going out on a limb when you say they're gonna build a bunch of Star Wars stuff. That's a really low risk bet to make.

Whatever does eventually happen I'd imagine it will be quite a while before new attractions actually open. They might use special events like Frozen Fun and Star Wars Weekends to cover the gap until then. Aren't they building a new special event building/theater over by Rock 'n' Roller Coaster in the backstage area?

I'm not sure. I go there rarely, and the list of people I know working there keeps shrinking (it's apparently pretty bad in software circles). I'm interested to see what they do with the lights this holiday, because I'm reasonably certain the New York set is going away before then. Obviously they have two other streets, but we'll see.

Reading that Theme Park Univ. piece, I wondered about the Osborne lights -- they're popular, but where could they go?

The entire main street, along with the street out to the thrill rides, I'm sure would work fine in terms of display space, use the hub for the stuff they fly higher. The trick is the traffic flow... which the single street worked well to control.

Jeff said:

I'm not sure. I go there rarely, and the list of people I know working there keeps shrinking (it's apparently pretty bad in software circles). I'm interested to see what they do with the lights this holiday, because I'm reasonably certain the New York set is going away before then. Obviously they have two other streets, but we'll see.

Nope, Osborne lights are still happening as usual this year. Permits have already gone out for the work to start, so they should start showing up on Streets of America in the next few weeks. Now, after this year...that's anyone's guess right now. They've still done a whole lot of nothing to Catastrophe Canyon, or most of the Backlot Tour for that matter (you can clearly see that Catastrophe Canyon is pretty much untouched from the upper level exit stairs of the LMA grandstand, and nearly all of the props that remained along the ride path on closing day are still just sitting there). The only work going on in the park right now and for the immediate future is on the black box theater between Coaster and Tower of Terror and the additional track for Toy Story.

Since they're not building this stuff at Magic Kingdom, they can build a Mos Eisley Cantina complete with adult beverages. (Yes, I'm such a noob to Disney that in March I couldn't wait to get my hands on a frosty brew at Gaston's only to learn it was a "dry" park)

Now how cool would that be? A little Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes serenading you...sampling some tasty drinks while surrounded by little alien life forms...my god they need to rethink this whole "character signing" for adults.

Complete with gift shop, of course.

Be Our Guest restaurant serves wine and beer.

I did learn that (and enjoyed that). Everything about that dinner was incredible. :) Something tells me the proverbial can o' worms about how ridiculous it is that the park doesn't serve alcoholic beverages has been opened and discussed. More than once.

Well, at least somebody's thinking of the children.