|
If it was up to me I'd kill Liberty Square because it is trading on bicentennial fervor that is 50 years out of date and send Hall of Presidents to the graveyard with it for being boring. All the space except Haunted Mansion gets reclaimed by Fantasyland and build something there, a Tangled dark ride maybe, the inexplicably themed rest area is right there. Haunted Mansion and Frontierland get turned into an Americana land, fill in Rivers of America except for the loop around Tom Sawyer island and it's got space to grow, which is great, you can do like a '60s-ish art deco pop area and put an Incredibles ride there eventually. Then you take the space between it's a small world and Haunted Mansion and build upwards, using the already spooky Haunted Mansion to transition into Dark Fantasyland.
CapnAndy fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Apr 4, 2024 |
#
¿
Apr 4, 2024 22:29
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 11, 2024 13:26 |
|
|
Omne posted:Haunted Mansion would be the perfect transition between lighthearted/kid-friendly Fantasyland and a scary villains-themed land.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 4, 2024 23:31
|
|
|
Hazo posted:Millennials and Gen Z love Yzma and Kronk, but neither of them could anchor a villain land because they’re too goofy.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2024 17:55
|
|
|
Fartington Butts posted:Just sell some spinach puffs out of a kiosk with a drink called Yzma’s Poison That's the poison I want.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2024 18:50
|
|
|
SweetMercifulCrap! posted:And this is how it should be listed on the menu
|
|
#
¿
Apr 5, 2024 22:12
|
|
|
The line for the Blumhouse house in HHN2022 was the Fast and the Furious queue and it was so long and boring.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2024 03:04
|
|
|
Coasterphreak posted:The reason I say IOA is because Lost Continent is literally a giant Coca-Cola stand, a spitting fountain, and a mediocre restaurant that was last good fifteen years ago. They’re clearly preparing to do something with it. (Zelda) oh no my trusted vizier LORD MALEVOLOUS betrayed me, how unforseeable
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2024 22:40
|
|
|
I'm very okay with the prospect of MiB either getting an overhaul so it actually loving works or just demolished and something else put in there.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 10, 2024 17:55
|
|
|
Hutzpah posted:Our Disney trip is a month out now. Is there a good primer on the fastpass/genie+/whatever so I know what's worth it and how best to take advantage of it? Now for a bedrock, let's explain the system. (Sorry if you already know this from visiting other theme parks.) Nearly every ride will have two lines; a standby (the normal one) and a priority (the lineskip). The lineskip line is usually physically shorter and has less switchbacks in it. The two lines meet at a merge point, close to where the ride vehicles are boarded. A cast member is in control of the merge and will bias towards the priority lane -- I don't know the exact ratio, maybe some cast member goons can chime in if they know it, but it seems to be somewhere between 5:1 and 10:1. That is, for every 5-10 groups from the priority line that get sent by, one standby group will also be sent. This, not the shorter distance, is why the lineskip wait is so much shorter, and it's also why in standby, most of the time you're just standing around and not moving; priority guests are getting merged while you wait. The number of rides without priority lines is vanishingly small and any ride without one is almost always a walk-on, so we don't need to worry about those. Disney calls its priority lines Lightning Lanes (LL). So from now on we're going to be talking about how to get access to the Lightning Lanes, which means you get to go in the short line and get biased towards at the merge. There are two methods. Keep in mind that although the methods are different, the result is the same -- you get to use that ride's Lightning Lane. If you have access to a Lightning Lane, the way it works is that your app (the app is important! You have been practicing with it, right?) will offer you the soonest time it has available. You don't get to choose, and if someone else takes the last of those slots before you finish confirming your reservation, it'll give you a different one instead. Once you make the reservation, you're locked in. You have, officially, an hour from the displayed time to show up. So if you've got a 2:30 Lightning Lane for Frozen: Forever After, at any time from 2:30 to 3:30, you can get there, tap your MagicBands or phones at the LL entrance, it'll flash green, and the cast members will let you in to use the line. Unofficially, you have a grace period of 15 minutes in either direction, and cast members may let you in earlier/later than that, at their discretion (they're pretty nice, but don't count on it as a certainty). The main method is Genie+. This is a paid service with a floating price with a floor of $14.99, based on demand, sold per person per day. You don't have to buy Genie+ every day. You don't have to buy it for everyone in your group -- but if you don't, the people you don't buy it for don't get the LL access. If you're wondering why they call it that instead of something more reasonable like "lightning lane pass", well, see above re: deliberately confusing. Your purchase also includes access to ride photos taken that day, some camera filters, and some audio files, basically all so they can be like "no you're not buying Lightning Lane access, that is just one facet of the incredible service", but that is a lie, Genie+ is only and always ever bought because the purchasers want the lineskips. Once you've bought Genie+, you have access to Lightning Lanes for almost every ride in the park you're in for the day. There are limitations; you can gain access to each ride's LL once, and once you have an active reservation, you can't make another until you tap into that LL or until two hours have passed, whichever comes first. Because that's still pretty confusing, let's do an example with specifics. Let's say you're in the Magic Kingdom, it's 10:00 am, and you want to ride Peter Pan. Genie+ offers you 11:30 for Peter Pan, so you take it. You can't use Genie+ again until then, so you go and do other stuff for about an hour and a half. You arrive at Peter Pan at 11:45 and tap into the line. As soon as you do, you can make your next reservation -- and since you'll still be spending some time waiting in line, just less, it's very much in your best interest to pull your phone out while you're standing around and make your next reservation right then and there. If you had been offered 12:30 instead, since that's more than 2 hours from 10:00, you could have made your next reservation at noon, even though you hadn't tapped into the ride yet. If you want to ride Peter Pan again later in the day, you must wait in the standby queue -- you've used your Peter Pan LL for the day. That's Genie+. I did, however, say almost every ride is included in that service. Disney is both smart and greedy, and thus they take one ride in each park -- always the newest and most popular ride -- and withhold it from Genie+. With the exception of the Magic Kingdom, where they hold back two. That is the Individual Lightning Lane (ILL) ride (or rides). The Lightning Lane is offered the same way, but if you want it, you have to pay an individual floating price per person making the reservation. You don't have to have bought Genie+ to do this, and Genie+ offers no discount. Anyone who's willing to pay the price can get an ILL. You can only get one ILL per ride per day, which means that for all parks except Magic Kingdom, you can only use this once per day. The ILL ride at Epcot is Cosmic Rewind, and at Magic Kingdom the ILLs are Snow White Mine Train and TRON. There is also Virtual Queues, which are not lineskips -- you wait in the standby line. But for rides that use them, they're the only way to get into that standby line at all, so you need to know it. (Also, the line tends to be shorter overall, since the virtual queue is staggering entrances.) Guardians of the Galaxy and TRON use VQs. The way they work is that, from the ride board, you click the Join Virtual Queue button, it'll ask you which of your party wants to ride the ride, and then it'll put you all in a boarding group, based on when you signed up. When your group is up, you'll get a push notification telling you you've got an hour to head to the ride and get in line. This is free. The only thing to be aware of is that it's an actual queue, which means the sooner you get in, the better. VQs open up at 7 am and you don't have to be in the park to join them, so set an alarm for 6:55, get to the ride board, and start setting up; you want to be ready to refresh and hit submit as soon as the clock ticks over. The VQs tend to fill up pretty quick, but if you can't get in at 7, Disney opens them back up with more slots at 1 pm. For that, though, you do have to be physically present in the park to join, and also you're going to be behind everyone who already joined and there's no guarantee that everyone in the queue will actually get to ride that day, so, again... if you want to ride those rides, set your alarm and hit the button. In your app, you can see all of this stuff by hitting the plus button and selecting My Genie Day and Tip Board, which gets you to the ride board, so play around with it and get familiar. That page is useful in general, since it shows wait times for all the rides and next showtimes for all the shows. Now, do you need it? General consensus is that Genie+ is worth the money in Magic Kingdom or Hollywood Studios, but not Epcot or Animal Kingdom -- they don't have enough rides with really long waits, which means that everyone funnels to the same few rides, their LLs get slammed, and you only end up skipping one or two lines all day. Also, the price is per person per day, and you're a party of 4, so it's going to cost you at least $60 per day. That's not pocket change. But, on the other hand, you're only there for two days, so your time is more precious than someone who's there for 4+, and your overall cost is less, since you're only paying twice at maximum. It's really up to you. To get the most advantage out of it, the primary tip is the same as if you don't have it -- be there at rope drop. The hour after park opening is worth three hours later in the day. In this case, not only can you beeline for the most popular ride on your list before the line has time to grow, but you can get a LL reservation immediately, which is good because they can fill up fast for the big rides and by 11, you could be looking at 6 pm return times or sold out entirely. Otherwise, like I said, make reservations for the next ride when you're in line for the current one, not when you get off, and pick strategically. You can only have one reservation at once, so if you're using it on a ride where the standby time is short, you're wasting it -- your return time might not be for hours, when you could just walk over, get in line, and ride it in much less time. CapnAndy fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Apr 12, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2024 23:49
|
|
|
SweetMercifulCrap! posted:That post is really thorough and should probably be linked to or quoted in the thread’s OP. Honestly we’re probably due for a new thread.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 12, 2024 00:07
|
|
|
Hutzpah posted:This is incredibly helpful. Thanks a million. One other thing you ought to consider is Memory Maker. When you're there, there are ride photos, which you either claim after you get off the ride and see all the photos displayed, then tap your magicband or phone under the one that's yours, or they just automatically attach them to your account because they tracked your band/phone (which usually works, but not always -- ask me about the photo I have of some people I've never met in my life riding Haunted Mansion). Disney will also have photographers stationed at all the obvious spots to get your picture taken -- anywhere with a nice view and/or a landmark, basically -- and at all character meets, including if you do character dining, and you link those photos to your account with another band/phone tap. But they're not free. You'll have the option to buy photos individually or pay a flat price for access to all of them, which Disney calls Memory Maker. And if that's something you're going to want, you should buy it ahead of your trip, because there's a discount if you do. The pricing is $16.95 per photo, $185 for Memory Maker if you buy it at least three days before your trip (just buy it, you don't activate it until you come home and it's time to download all the photos), or $210 if you don't. You can also get Memory Maker access to a single day's worth of photos for $75, which, as you're only going to be there for two days, would save you money unless you ended up deciding to do one of those fancy dining experiences on another day and wanted those photos too. Which brings us right to the question of if you need it, and the answer is, you can get by just fine without it. Disney photographers are nice (all Disney employees are nice, it's a job requirement) and they have no problem if you want to hand them your cell phone to take some pictures with that too, so you can absolutely come home with pictures you didn't have to pay for. You don't get the ride photos, obviously, and the employees' cameras are way better than your cell phone's, also obviously. Also, for posed pictures, the photographers will often have you do something that doesn't make sense at the time -- cup your hands and look at them, point off to the side and look amazed, be really scared, and that's because they're adding some graphics to the picture, so when you download it, it turns out you were pointing at Tinker Bell flying by or Sully from Monsters Inc. was scaring you or something like that. What I can't answer for you, obviously, is how much pictures matter. There's a full spectrum of opinions here, from people who don't care to people who feel like if you went to Disney and didn't get pictures, what was even the point of going. I would guess, given that you're bringing your kids for the first time, you're gonna want those pictures. But that's me playing the odds, and if you don't care or only care a little, hand your phone to the photographers, take pictures yourself, no biggie. But now you know your options.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2024 20:16
|
|
|
Aphrodite posted:You get ride photos with Genie+ now I think?
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2024 20:23
|
|
|
Top-right can't be the actual animation, can it? I thought that the key to making Spider-Man and therefore also Transformers work was that the animation was pre-warped in the inverse of how viewing it from an angle would warp it, so that if you ever watched the screens head-on the whole time, you'd see the figures constantly stretching this way and that to compensate for ride vehicle motion.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2024 01:51
|
|
|
What happened to that nice blonde lady who I think used to be on AllEars but then she split off to do her own thing? The one who was super into min-maxing Genie+? DFB really does have the market cornered though, even if they are a touch mommy-blog for my tastes.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2024 05:20
|
|
|
Yeah, I was thinking of Molly, thanks everyone. Arquinsiel posted:I know the numbers were off because of where I had my phone in both places, but the average parks day isn't much longer than a lazy wander around a local shopping center according to my step counter app. CapnAndy fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Apr 19, 2024 |
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2024 16:30
|
|
|
Anya posted:I did 26k (10 miles) with my then first grader in one day back in June 2021, when we hit all four parks (when you couldn’t hop until 2pm). He still talks about that day with pride, he was a total champ and wanted to try it.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2024 19:24
|
|
|
Fluffy Bunnies posted:Is it just me or is the Soarin' line particularly rough? It feels hilly.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2024 21:24
|
|
|
Darth TNT posted:One question, the memory maker also mentions videos? Are there video cameras set up? Remember that if you're going to be there Thursay and you haven't bought Memory Maker but you already know you're going to want it, buy it now -- you have to get it at least three days prior to get the discount.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2024 23:55
|
|
|
SweetMercifulCrap! posted:They keep giving movies to rides that don’t actually have a story but yet they won’t make a legit Tower of Terror movie. I know there was the made for TV one but it’s not great and kind of changes the story too much.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2024 20:06
|
|
|
Quixotic1 posted:Just had the worst lunch ever from all my trips to Disney at Space220. Ranking it below Pizza Rizzo and pizza windows. Plus the screen was busted.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2024 03:34
|
|
|
It's definitely food court pizza, but I'm of the opinion that you can't eat fancy at every meal -- one of the reasons I ended up disliking the time I tried the dining plan was that all that rich food started to make me sick after a while. So I can appreciate some extremely mid pizza or chicken fingers.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2024 17:42
|
|
|
Darth TNT posted:Second day of Disney world.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 26, 2024 20:37
|
|
|
Tiana's Bayou Adventure is going to be open for MNSSHP, so at least we've got an upper bound on opening date now.
|
|
#
¿
May 8, 2024 00:06
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 11, 2024 13:26 |
|
|
C. Everett Koop posted:I thought they werent changing the structure of the ride but just all of the theming around it. e: They’ve now removed Tiana from the list of MNSSHP rides, so who knows what’s going on. CapnAndy fucked around with this message at 02:56 on May 8, 2024 |
|
#
¿
May 8, 2024 02:11
|
|