A salute to all theme parks but mostly Disney

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tourism & Travel > A salute to all theme parks but mostly Disney

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CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Quixotic1 posted:

I was excited for the Universal Monster Area until I read a spoiler on what the setting is supposed to be,I forgot where I read this:

A descendant of Frankenstein has opened up the castle and village to tourists,so the natives are in on the zeitgeist(kinda like some parts of Romania are with Dracula. It turns out all the classic monsters were slumbering under the castle and get unleashed by us/the descendant

That sounds cool and fun, though?

# ¿ May 31, 2023 17:19

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 08:17

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Wizard Paris seems like the clear dud of the Epic Universe lands. Boy, I can't wait to see such iconic locations as, um.... or buy the inventive products from its famous shops like... y'know... and go on adventures with my favorite characters, Why Is Eddie Redmayne Even In These Any More and Oh God It's Ezra Miller Again, I hope they stop Thank gently caress They Recasted Johnny Depp!

# ¿ May 31, 2023 20:01

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Arquinsiel posted:

It really does seem like a very big "okay but why tho?" kind of land. Just... why? Are you afraid that Harry Potter fans with Park-to-Park tickets just won't bother to head over there?

"Look, we paid for the IP, we're gonna use the IP."

DC Murderverse posted:

Here�s my big issue with a Zelda land: what�s the ride? I�m not saying it wouldn�t be cool to build Hyrule Castle but I feel like a Potter-esque screen ride wouldn�t be near as much a slam dunk as a Mario Kart ride or a DK minecart coaster

Trackless ride, you're in a Guardian during that time Ganon invaded and they worked properly, move all around blasting away Bokolins and poo poo while Link and Zelda make periodic appearances to help out, in the end your laser beam distracts Ganon at just the right time for them to kill him.

Boom, print it, write the check.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2023 04:42

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Upsidads posted:

If any game needs to be a free wheeling meowwolf wandering experience it's Zelda and I guess myst

Yeah, that'd be neat too.

Also if some smart guy could figure out how to scale up escape room style puzzles to theme park land size without it devolving into everyone standing in line to solve the puzzle which they know about and know the solution to because there's a line of people waiting and you can watch the guy ahead of you do it, a Zelda land would be the place to do that. Mysteries and puzzles and if you solve them all, you get to pull the Master Sword or something I don't know.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2023 17:50

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

skipdogg posted:

I don't know if it's been discussed in the last few days, but the details on the Disney Dining Plan came out, and I think they missed the mark on it. I'm not sure if they did it on purpose or not though. I've never been a fan of it. We used it 1 trip and I didn't like the feeling of having to "maximize value" of the DDP, and I felt like our entire vacation was planned around eating at restaurants. I know some people love it, but it's not for us. One of the biggest things I've heard is people love having everything taken care of/paid for before they get there. That's kinda true, but DDP doesn't include gratuities, so that's always been extra. Some folks like to load gift cards with the amount they would have spent on the DDP and use those for dining. Generally they have money left over, the mouse wouldn't sell something it won't make a profit on.

I used it in 2019 when they were running a discounted offer, and even at a price where I was absolutely coming out ahead on everything I ate, my experience was exactly the same as yours. You gotta eat at a sit down place every night, everything's gotta be pre-planned because you need reservations, and even though I'd got it at a price where I didn't have to order the loving steak every night to come ahead, all that rich food every single night ended up making me feel sick. I 100% agree that if you want that "it's all paid for" sensation, load what you would've paid for the DDP on a pre-paid card and when you come back home, transfer the remaining money back into your bank account, because you're going to have money left over.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2023 18:45

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Arquinsiel posted:

Yeah, we drastically under-estimated the cost differential between ordering real food and just grabbing corndog nuggets whenever.

The really nice thing about WDW is that not only are all the menus online, but they've got their prices listed. You can go through all the restaurants, say "oh this one looks nice", and then be able to actually take it steps further and figure out both if there's anything on the menu you'd like to eat, and what it'll cost. Pretty great to get the "like gently caress I'm paying $40 for that" conversation out of the way before you ever make the reservation.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2023 21:18

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

The Fallon ride is genuinely not awful. It's honestly a better execution of the "look, just make a great big IMAX with a curved screen and stadium seating and we'll show 'em a 4 minute movie" base system than the Despicable Me ride.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2023 03:01

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Aphrodite posted:

Universal is full of terrible screen rides. It�s a good quality one, and the queue is nice.

Agreed on both. The queue is fantastic.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2023 06:20

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Braksgirl posted:

No. The wait times are already reduced.

Clarification: they're only inherently reduced because there's less people in the park now and because closing LLs lets the standby queue actually keep moving, what a shock. There are no active systems in place to reduce the wait times, which are still ultimately dependent on how many people are waiting in line.

Which is a long way of saying that if you've got the opportunity to ride Haunted Mansion before MNSSHP, do it. The queue times always jump up during the party, because everyone's slamming it.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2023 17:57

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Jose Oquendo posted:

I know things get changed up year to year but generally speaking what do I absolutely have to check out while I�m at the Halloween party?

In order of how cool they are, from most to least: special parade, special fireworks, special castle show. Time it right and you can camp out right in front of the castle for the show and then just not move because as soon as that's done it's time for the parade, and as soon as that's done it's time for the fireworks.

Otherwise, there's a poo poo-ton of free candy and a bunch of unique stuff to buy, both food/drink and merch. The ride "overlays" are very underwhelming IMO. The carrousel and mad tea party get some unique shapes projected on them, Pirates of the Caribbean has cast members in costume stationed at a few places in the line and the ride who'll interact with you (they asked me to share my candy and I chided them for it because what kind of pirates share???), Space Mountain turns all the lights off and runs in the dark, which I did not find to be an improvement, personally, I think it's less scary if you can't see all the near misses with the track.

There's also a dance party out in Tomorrowland and a ton of rare characters, if meet-and-greets are your thing. And every ride that remains open (which is the vast majority of them) will generally have low wait times for the aforementioned reasons.

CapnAndy fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jun 7, 2023

# ¿ Jun 7, 2023 22:06

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Hazo posted:

There are also candy stations everywhere with cast members handing out fistfuls of goodies.

I think we decided we had more fun at the Halloween party than at Christmas.

Yeah, I said poo poo-tons of free candy!

And strong agree that the Halloween party is better than the Christmas one, though I'll note that as I'm Jewish, I have no nostalgia or strong emotions for Christmas, and was left with an oddly anthropological experience of an entire park that was clearly assuming an entire lifetime of memory touchstones they could play on within me, and all of it just bouncing off. Why yes, that is a very big tree with lights on it, I've seen Christmas trees before. But I know apple cider, god drat it, and what I got was apple juice. Sub-par, lukewarm juice, at that.

The one advantage that Christmas does have is that when Elsa "freezes" the castle, that is gorgeous. But she does that every night, not just during the parties.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2023 22:20

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

I did HHN when I was there in October (which I never wrote up, and I have some thoughts, I really should). My impressions:

First off, big thank you to the people who told me in the then-active theme park subforum, which I really wish we had back so we didn't have to use this as a catch-all, to buy the FastPass. It was crucial. I would've had a really crap time without it.

I got a regular ticket for US too. In retrospect -- shouldn't have. The FastPass includes all the open rides too and spending the day in the park meant that I was already half-tired before HHN even started. That said, my one regret is that I'd looked up what rides would be open during HHN online, and the Simpsons Ride was on it, so as I was entering Springfield with like 15 minutes before normal operating hours ended, I saw a HHN waiting pen and was like "ehhh, might as well just get in there". Guess which ride was not, in fact, open for HHN. Goddamn it.

Universal's food offerings are so goddamn bad and, worse, so goddamn sparse on the ground! They seem to want you to just go to CityWalk but loving hell, I don't want to walk through half the park just to leave and walk some more to eat at a god damned Panda Express. I'm not asking for a Michellin star, just let me get some goddamn chicken fingers, ok? HHN's big "instagram this" special food item was a chili dog, and I don't like chili dogs. But while you could get that goddamn chili dog every ten feet, I couldn't find any other option, and I ended up wandering like half the park trying to find somewhere to sell me dinner for God's sake, I was so hungry. I found one open restaurant only to find out that that one was only for people who bought the special VIP package. Eventually I found a random earthquake-themed burger place. When my asks are just "sell me theme park staple idiot food so I can shovel in some calories and get back out there", shouldn't have been that hard.

There was an outdoor night show thing that I watched, mostly so I could sit down. It sucked. They just put some really dim projections on their fountains, you couldn't really see anything.

The outdoor scare zones did nothing for me. Yes, that's a very nice costume and we're in a crowd and you're walking around. I've been to cons before. There was a pumpkin lord or something that some ladies were talking to, I guess there's lore about him? He seemed cool.

Regarding the houses: first, it's kinda an odd experience going through them, since you're walking in line the whole time. Not only can you not get lost or linger, there's not even a sense of "oh no how do I get out of here", because... you follow the strangers in front of you, that's how. They do a good job with blind corners so that the scares don't get spoiled for you even though you've got your eyes on the people ahead of you the whole time, but... still a bit weird.

My absolute favorite was Bugs: Eaten Alive. That one had really neat retro-50s themeing and it told a story the whole way through, putting you in a campy, scary fun B movie. There was actually a plot and everything! This company had developed a new pest control method that worked by overstimulating the bugs' brains so they'd rapidly age, you're in a product demo house where they show it off except oh no, oops, they overstimulated the wrong bit and the bugs get really big instead. In the first room the lady showing off the pest control sets it off, then you travel through a house that's increasingly infested and covered in slime and cocoons and poo poo, and at the end the Army's been called in, and a soldier hustles you out before they call in an airstrike. Strong second place to Dead Man's Pier: Winter's Wake. They had a full-sized soundstage at their disposal, and they used it. (Aside: why are there multiple full soundstages in USO? I asked my brother who works in the film industry, and they don't shoot anything there.) The opening reminded me of that XCOM level where you're in a whaling vilage that's quiet at first until the melee aliens start bursting out of the whale corpses; that same too-empty, dangerous eerieness. And it built to an amazing climax where you end up on the deck of a loving boat, with the ocean around it, crewed by zombie sailors. That was a major "holy poo poo" moment.

The Weeknd's thing was interesting. Lot of neat imagery but it was all disconnected, I couldn't tell what I was supposed to be experiencing except "hey isn't this hosed up". Halloween and Blumhouse houses were both walking tours of movies, like yeah, I guess it is pretty neat to be in rooms that look like the movie sets? Halloween comes out on top of the two because of a really cool room filled with a bunch of Michael mannequins and mirrored walls so you see hundreds of Michael just standing still, and for once the question isn't "okay when is the guy going to jump out of that obvious hiding spot" but "obviously one of these is going to come to life and lunge at me, but which one?" Descendents of Destruction and Spirits of the Coven were both extremely mid. Points to DoD for the cooler theming, which extended to an outside that looked like a post-apocalyptic wrecked subway station and the whole thing was just "here's this society where they've been living in the subways since A Bad Thing happened topside, and this is the generation that was born underground and doesn't even know what they're missing". I grooved on that.

Biggest disappointment, by a mile, was Universal Monsters: Legends Collide. It's sold as Wolfman vs. Dracula vs. The Mummy, and... bullshit. The Wolfman only "appears" in audio logs being played while you're in line. The house itself was just generic Egyptian Spooky House. It's got a mummy, but it didn't feel at all like The Mummy. Dracula was a no-show. I didn't do the others because I got just plain loving exhausted.

CapnAndy fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Jun 10, 2023

# ¿ Jun 10, 2023 00:21

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

SweetMercifulCrap! posted:

Yeah I still think we need different theme park threads instead of this one being a catch-all for everything theme park related. I would be up for making some, but we'd have to decide on which topics get their own megathreads. Like, do you make another one just for Orlando? One just for Universal Orlando? A general theme park thread? When decided, this should just be renamed "Walt Disney World general discussion".

When the theme park subforum went away, I asked for it to come back in QCS and they said it was only temporary, but... *gestures broadly at forums list*.

My general thought process is that because WDW is so big/unique/dominating, we could probably get away with a WDW and generic version of the big threads. We'd need an actual first-timers/advice thread and general chat for each as the megathreads, and then whatever smaller threads people want.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2023 01:15

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Disappointing Pie posted:

We�re going to animal kingdom tomorrow. You probably don�t need genie plus for that park yeah? I�m guessing avatar is still ILL so we�ll probably buy that anyway

You absolutely do not.

If you�re there at rope drop and beeline to Flight of Passage, you�ll be fine there too.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2023 02:54

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Are we just talking vegetarian-wise, because I'm not qualified to weigh in on that, but man, I've never gotten the hype on Satuli.

Also new thread title :neckbeard:

# ¿ Jun 12, 2023 20:24

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Is there a bigger gap between a land's potential and what it actually is than the Jurassic Park section of IoA? Like... it's not a coincidence that the two best Jurassic Park movies are the ones where, for a significant portion of the runtime, the park is running properly. Everyone wants to go to that! It would be amazing. The parts of those movies where you just hang out and watch The Theme Park With Motherfucking Actual Dinosaurs run are really, really fun.

And Universal has an entire land devoted to it, in what ought to be the easiest layup of all time, and... it is some trees. And one crashed jeep.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2023 19:34

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

"Make it look like you're walking through a working Jurassic Park by themeing the concessions and ride buildings so they look like that from a distance and maybe stick a statue of an apatosaurus in the trees" is a ridiculously low bar, c'mon. The Dr. Seuss land manages to hit its theme to that level.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2023 21:21

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Maybe it's me, then; all I've ever gotten out of it was a bunch of trees and one random crashed jeep.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2023 23:43

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Tim Whatley posted:

https://twitter.com/ScottGustin/status/1669375320602935296

Fuuuuuuuuuck

I'm not going two years in a row, but goddammit.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2023 17:32

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Hazo posted:

We're looking at Art of Animation, Pop Century, Caribbean Beach, Coronado, or Port Orleans for an on-park vacation. I've only ever been to Animal Kingdom Lodge, but she's done Pop Century and AoA. Caribbean Beach is kind of sprawling so we're not sure about skyliner access. But I think this thread has said nice things about Orleans, and I like the idea of boat transportation. Any thoughts?

edit: should add it's a very short trip (Saturday to Monday)

My view on the hotels is "I intend to spend my waking moments in the parks, give me a goddamn bed and a shower and we're good". That said, I'm kinda surprised she liked Pop Century, because... who likes the Pops? They're cheap, that's their virtue. They're also insanely sprawling campuses of what's basically 8 full sized motels (door opens directly to outside), with a pool or two and a main building that can be quite a walk if you get unlucky with what building you're assigned to.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2023 20:10

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Aphrodite posted:

But also, Pops? There's only the one.

Oh, yeah, right, I meant it and the All-Stars and somehow got it into my head that they were called "Pop Music" and so on.

alg posted:

what the gently caress

# ¿ Jun 15, 2023 20:43

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

I am personally a big fan of the Good Neighbor hotels. Your dollar goes a lot further at the cost of less convenient bus service.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2023 22:47

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Aphrodite posted:

Good Neighbor are okay, but some have terrible shuttle schedules.

The specifically Disney Springs hotels have hourly shuttles all day though.

Yeah, I stayed at B Resort last year and it was gorgeous; way more hotel than I needed, for less than an All-Star would have cost. Buses did run hourly, the only downside was having to find the goddamn things at the end of the night since they don't pick you up where they dropped you off.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2023 00:08

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

When I went last year I stayed at B Resort and got a room with two beds that looked like this for less than an All-Star single.

It was on Disney property, I got early park entry, I had free transportation to the parks, and if the busses only ran once per hour, at least they arrived exactly on schedule. My takeaway from the experience is that with so many of the previous hotel guest perks gone, I can't see myself staying in an official resort any time soon.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2023 19:23

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

I mean... I was on Disney property (the Good Neighbors are clustered within walking distance of Disney Springs), there were some droids and a Goofy in the lobby along with a Disney concierge. I definitely felt in the bubble. If I was missing out on stuff like free transport to/from the airport and being able to check my bags at the hotel and getting my purchases delivered to the hotel that might be one thing, but all of that's gone. All that I didn't get was a discount on a magicband and, like, a picure of Mickey inside the actual hotel room.

I still might look at Pop Century next time just because of the Skyliner, but... it was a really nice experience.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2023 21:16

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Tim Whatley posted:

https://twitter.com/OOCParks/status/1670398041646325760

Epcot!

If you have to imagine getting drunk and then riding Three Caballeros, I would argue that you're doing Epcot wrong.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2023 00:00

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

alg posted:

Do you get free parking at the parks?

You don't, no. I took the buses so it didn't register to me as a missing perk, I guess.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2023 02:04

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

What's wrong with the show quality on Tower of Terror? Looked good to me in September.

p.s. long live Disco Yeti

# ¿ Jun 21, 2023 22:57

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Aphrodite posted:

I don�t know, Peter Pan�s Flight makes me want to die.

A lot can be forgiven as Disney had to invent the very concept of the dark ride, but he still had some really... ideosyncratic ideas about what made a good one.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2023 01:12

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Aphrodite posted:

In theory a good change but I imagine it will quickly become a way to gouge people.

Given that it used to be $15/day and now that's the absolute floor and they raise it on you at every opportunity, of course it is. If they weren't price gouging, prices for single park would go down, since everyone's been paying the park hopping price previously and now they're getting less. But they're gonna turn around and start charging $30 minimum for park hopping, up to $60 at peak. You watch.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2023 23:22

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Aphrodite posted:

As it stands now, it saves you some money if you're not going to MK.

I don't think it will stay there but for a few weeks it's a nice little bonus for some people.

It used to cost $15! And it was too much at that price!

This is how they get you. Keep raising things until you�re on what used to be the ceiling going �well, at least I�m not up there�.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2023 01:32

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Doronin posted:

Besides Chapek and the Disney board at the time wringing their hands in excitement at another way to fleece park-goers for more money, was there ever an actual, practical reason for the switch to Genie+?

FastPass made the standby waits longer (all prioritized entry systems do) and it was a confusing system that rewarded power users while punishing everyone who didn't want to make detailed battle plans 60 days out, to say nothing of the poor saps who weren't staying on-site and couldn't make reservations until 30 days, by which time all the most desirable rides would have long since filled all their FastPass slots. "Oh, you wanted to skip the line at Flight of Passage or Slinky Dog Dash but you're not staying at a Disney hotel? gently caress you" was hardly winning the hearts and minds of most guests.

So it was definitely a flawed system that could have been improved, and in fact when Genie+ was first announced, a lot of Disney bloggers thought it would be an improvement. No pre-registration meant everyone using it got an equal chance at the rides, and since now instead of coming included with the ticket it'd be an optional, costed add-on, they thought usage would go down, which would mean standby waits would drop too. But as it turns out, no, it's worse and waits haven't dropped at all.

And of course, actually improving guest experience wasn't even remotely in the minds of Chapek and the board. COVID gave them an excuse to kill FastPass (and a bunch of other freebies) and they took it, and it was very much of a piece with everything Chapek did, which was providing suites of micro- and macropayments to make sure that every family spent the absolute maximum amount they were willing or able to, and anyone who didn't would be barraged with FOMO. And if so far Iger hasn't expanded on that or anything, he also has done nothing to reel it back.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2023 17:00

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Arquinsiel posted:

FastPass+ did that. Regular ol' FastPass was pretty great if you were of mindset and physical ability to use it. Apparently it's mathematically the best solution too, ahead of even "everyone just queues".

I'm tremendously fascinated by the problem, honestly. I really wonder what the actual best solution is; if you had a park full of willing automatons who'd follow every order given to them, could you get everyone on every ride, and how low would the wait times be? I'd love to know what that behavior would look like, because to me, the smart thing to do is model the absolute ideal case and then work from there, saying "okay, how can we incentivize real people to hew as closely as possible to this?"

# ¿ Jun 26, 2023 17:14

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Craptacular! posted:

2) It can be priced such that for most situations it�s not worth it and you just do the parks like you did before 1998 when there was no FastPass.

I don't think that's true, though. People kept buying it at $15. When they made $15 the floor and let it float, usage still didn't go down. People are apparently gonna buy this, either becausee they're whales who don't care or because they're once-in-a-lifetime trippers who've saved for this for years, and what's a few hundred dollars more to make sure you have the best experience?

Craptacular! posted:

The best solution for efficiency is just everybody waiting in lines because of foot traffic and line diversion, the best solution for customers is probably close what we have now.

Arquinsiel posted:

Have I got the one hour and forty two minute video for you, my goon! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yjZpBq1XBE

No, I mean full automation. Pack the parks with robots who have no free will and give them precise schedules. Literally tell 20% of the Magic Kingdom's attendance to start in each land, and rotate them all through each ride before everyone does a smooth transition. I watched that when it came out and in fact it frustrated me a bit, because the simulation is so simplistic (walk time matters! a lot!) and it still gives the riders free will, so I didn't learn the answer to my question.

I don't think anyone knows what the parks look like when they're operating at theoretical max efficiency, and while that's obviously not attainable in the real world, I think that knowledge is crucial, because until we know what perfect efficiency looks like, how will we know what behavior to encourage?

Arquinsiel posted:

You need to take another step and define what "efficiency" means here, because it looks like you mean "maximum rides per person per day" whereas to Disney it means "rate of money extracted per customer per minute" and time in rides is not time in shops or getting food.

And by the way, this is why I think Disney's loving up so hard and screwing themselves on Genie+. Because those two definitions of "efficiency"? Mean the same thing. To both guests and Disney, riders waiting in line are useless. They're not riding rides and they're not spending money. That's why line-skip programs exist in the first place; the business side of the park demands wait times be as low as possible too.

CapnAndy fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Jun 26, 2023

# ¿ Jun 26, 2023 17:49

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

alg posted:

I think my wife and I must be whales.

Or you're savers. Whales are the people who don't care about spending an extra $500 for a family of four to get Genie+ and ILL all week, because an extra $500 is to them what an extra $15 is to people like me; not an amount worth giving a poo poo about and I'll never miss it.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2023 17:56

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Arquinsiel posted:

I think this is reductive of the experience TBH. Sometimes waiting in line is fun. All the times I've been to Paris were with friends and we had a great time just spending a week together talking poo poo and enjoying each other's company. At the other end of things, over in Universal the queue for Fast and Furious is somehow better than the ride itself. At least Disney tries to make the queues themselves inherently entertaining for the two-trip Standard Guest, and TBH it works if you aren't going more than once as an adult. Also, see below as to why they're not actually the same thing.

I mean, hey, you do you. I personally don't see why enjoying each other's company and shooting the poo poo couldn't be done in more pleasant circumstances than in line, like walking around the parks or over some food or drink, but if it makes you happy, great. And yeah, immersive queues are great. Flight of Passage and Rise of the Resistance have really good ones, and Cosmic Rewind has a great one, and they all tell stories that are intrinsic to the ride itself. They'd still be better if I wasn't standing still for ten minutes staring at one particular part of them until I was sick of it. (GotG gets the edge because it's so dynamic; whereas Flight and Rise are static scenes, GotG presents itself as an exhibit in its own right, so apart from the much too long and unchanging ramp room, the computer is always saying something different, different parts of the exhibits are lighting up, different clips are playing on the TVs.)

Also I think psychologically it just feels better to be in constant forward motion, rather than the stoooooooooooooooooooooop->quick lurch forward->stop again motion that standby gives you as LLs get prioritized.

Akileese posted:

I typically avoid WDW during the busiest times of the year, but certain attractions always have a long queue (Peter Pan's Flight, looking at you)

Peter Pan's Flight has an abysmal guest/hour rate, it's an inherent design flaw. I've never understood why this is so -- it's ride vehicles on a track, it doesn't seem any different from Winnie the Pooh or It's A Small World -- but it is, and I guess they can't fix it.

Roadie posted:

Actually, and this is a fun tidbit, RFID tags are primarily powered by the scanner: the circuit takes in the energy of a powerful signal and then activates other hardware and/or transmits back a very weak signal using the same energy it just took in. Batteries are still needed for anything else (lights, return signals that go more than an inch or two, etc) because the amount of energy that can be re-used really is minuscule, but that's how the MagicBand scanning can be ready 24/7 without the battery being dead in a week, and it's how credit cards and the like can do tap scanning with no extra hardware.

That was a fun fact! I like to learn new things.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2023 23:12

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Remy's queue is objectively awful. There's one semi-good scene, the Paris rooftop, but you stay there way too long and Gusteau has a very limited amount of thing he can say, so he ends up repeating himself and it's just all around bad.

MMRR is also awful, except for the bit when Goofy comes through the screen.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2023 05:12

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Edna Mode posted:

then he played at the Toontown toddler area while my wife and I took turns doing Runaway Railway lightning line

You know about Rider Swap, right? You just have to tell the people at the front of any line that you've got a small kid with you and only one of you has to wait in line while the other can stay with the kid, and when the first parent is done riding they'll come get the other one and take them directly onto the ride.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2023 22:36

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

Aphrodite posted:

I bet just letting him continue playing while they swapped is probably worth the ILL cost though.

Sure, but they could do that for every ride, is my point.

Does Dumbo have the legendary standby line that's basically one big playroom in Disneyland too? Because, y'know, get the kid on Dumbo, and also... playground.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2023 22:49

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 08:17

CapnAndy: Feb 27, 2004; Some teeth long for ripping, gleaming wet from black dog gums. So you keep your eyes closed at the end. You don't want to see such a mouth up close. before the bite, before its oblivion in the goring of your soft parts, the speckled lips will curl back in a whinny of excitement. You just know it.

The shuttle you get into very obviously having two doors, only for the same door you got in to open again to now reveal the Star Destroyer is the greatest fake-out in any ride ever.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2023 20:55

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tourism & Travel > A salute to all theme parks but mostly Disney

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