Blog of Much Holding

Warning: This post contains extreme geekery and wish-fulfillment and should not be considered as anything more than my blue-sky fantasy on my part. I think it is a good idea, and hope that someone somewhere with the ability to “make it so” is reading…

One of the many things that Star Trek doesn’t have that its rival space epic Star Wars has is a tourist attraction. Star Trek used to have the great Star Trek Experience attraction in Las Vegas, but that has been gone for over 18 months now. Star Wars has the long running (and soon to be revamped) Star Tours ride at Disneyland and Disney World, and Disney also offers the Star Wars weekends special events every year in Orlando.

Yes, Star Trek has a traveling exhibition, which is cool, but it’s not like the Experience was – a must-see destination for Trekkers like me. They are still trying to get the Experience revived but the economy – especially in the troubled Las Vegas region – is not helping matters. So, I thought to myself as I was daydreaming the other day, how do you do a permanent Star Trek destination on the cheap?

The answer came in a flash. Retheming.

Retheming is the term used when a theme park attraction is, in affect, “re-skinned”; When a new tie-in or story is applied to an old attraction, to leverage the legacy hardware and building. And no one does it better than Disney.

Disney has rethemed buildings at their parks numerous times, a fairly recent example being when they changed a mostly-empty stage building to the American Idol Experience at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It’s cheap (compared to building a new attraction), it’s relatively quick to implement, and can draw people in who would not have gone to the “old” attraction before.

I have three retheming ideas Disney can use if they cut a deal to license Star Trek (which would not be unprecedented – Universal licenses Star Trek form Paramount for an attraction in the 1980s).

Option 1: Stitch’s Great Escape. Instead of having Stitch in the center of the auditorium, have a Borg be the specimen that has been captured. Enhance the ride with two or three cast members in Borg outfits browsing through the audience.. and give the audience Phasers attached to their seats that can let them defend themselves. Leave in the dark, scary moments and re-theme the entryway and signage to be Starfleet. It’s already been rethemed once before, why not again?

Option 2: Innoventions. Add Star Trek theming to Innoventions, and surround the new inventions to a Star Trek scenario. Have the cast members don the red, blue and gold tunics and divide the areas into science, engineering and command. Sell Star Trek merchandise in the carts in front of both entrances.

Option 3: Mission Space. This is one of my favorite rides at Epcot, and features a great spaceflight simulator that (unfortunately) not a lot of people ride nowadays. The thing is, the ride uses a fictional space agency and a futuristic space ship you pilot…. So how hard would it be to replace the agency with Star Trek and the space ship with a long-range shuttle in the ride film? Not very, I think. Rebrand the whole thing “Starfleet Academy”, put the cast members in Trek uniforms, and then rebrand the Advanced Training Lab play area and gift shop. Heck, you can even add on to the building and create a quick-service area/bar like Quarks (from the Star Trek Experience) or you can use the nearby (and mostly abandoned) Odyssey Center for the new Quarks Bar and Restaurant… Or a Star Trek museum.

It’s this last option – rebranding Mission Space – is the most ambitious and the one that I think would resonate with the most folks (it would also take away from the stigma the ride had after two people died on it the past few years). Of course, all this would cost money, and Disney is already tying up a lot of cash with a refresh of Fantasyland…

But I can’t help that it would work. As we saw with last year’s Star Trek reboot, a lot of people still love the property and a lot of new fans were created from the film. It would be expensive but not THAT expensive. And it could live up to the promise of Epcot, the city of the future. What’s more futuristic than Star Trek?

Anyway, it’ll probably never happen. But a man can dream…

The rumors two months ago were true – Disney just announced that they will be doubling Fantasyland by 2013. They will also be revising Star Tours by 2011, integrating prequel trilogy aspects such as the Episode I pod race. More deets at the DisneyParks twitter page here.

Comic geeks across the globe felt a tremor in the force this morning when it was announced that Disney is acquiring Marvel Entertainment for 4 (Doctor Evil voice) BILLION dollars. Disney hopes to capitalize on Marvel’s 5000 characters (a long list, with 90% of them characters you have probably never heard of, like Hydro-Man and Ka-Zar).

The first reaction of many many fanboys on the ‘net was a dramatic NOOOO! Many are afraid Marvels’ more cutting-edge adult comics will be quickly killed under the new Mickey-masters. I don’t know, and quite frankly, don’t care – I stopped reading comics regularly a long time ago (and, quite frankly, Disney bought Marvel for the merchandising potential of the characters Marvel has and the movie studio, not the comics).

My reaction was different, and a product of a particular interest of mine: What the heck is gonna happen in Orlando?

Orlando, of course, is where Disney and Orlando goes head-to-head in the theme park business, and the ride that many say is the best one in Orlando is The Amazing Spider-man ride… and Universal’s Islands of Adventure. It’s the centerpiece of the “Marvel Super Hero Island” which features a whole lot of Marvel characters and themed rides – the Hulk Rollercoaster, Doctor Doom’s Fearfall, etc… And very soon, Disney will own Marvel.

Hmm.

Today, a spokesperson for Universal said that they had the rights to the characters and that the attractions will not chage because of the acquisition. My response: of course you’re going to say that. Licensing deals are not perpetual contracts – they come up for renewal, and they will come up for review in a few years. And then…

Disney will either A) ask for a boat-load of licensing money or B) pull the rights to the characters from Universal. Personally, I’m guessing B – no way is Disney gonna let Universal make money off the characters they now own. So, if that day happens… what happens?

Retheming, that’s what. It happens a lot, and has been done quite a bit already in Orlando (remember the Earthquake ride at Universal? it’s now “Catastrophe!”) So what do they DO with the space that these rides and shops now fill?

I have an idea.

(Please be aware that the following is total fanboy blue-sky fantasy and I have no inside information. If these were actual rumors, you would be advised where to tun in the event of an emergency. Please stand by)

What is missing at both of the Universal parks? Sci-Fi. With the exception of Men in Black Alien Attack at Universal, they have no rides or areas with a SF theme… as opposed to the Magic Kingdom which has Tomorrowland, SF with all the fixins. So, what SF properties does Universal already own? Two properties they can use without having to pay a rival studio? One they had ALREADY used for many year prior? Two big ones:

Back to the Future and Battlestar Galactica.

With some work Spider-man can be rethemed to a new Back to the Future ride, and the Hulk coaster can be painted Cylon silver and renamed the “Galactica Space Launch” or something like that. Doctor Doom Free-fall can be painted gray and themed to be “space mission training” (and tied to Apollo 13, too). The rest? Paint everything silver and sell SF DVDs and toys in the shops. Make some of the empty space a mini-version of the SF Experience Museum based out of Seattle, and you’re good.

Heck, if you want to do something REALY cool, license Star Trek from Paramount again, as you did in the 1990s, and fill an available space with a Klingon photo-op.

Done.

Now, as I mentioned, total fan-boy stuff but if it DOES come to pass? Universal, give me a call – I got tons of other ideas, and my consulting fee is very reasonable.

UPDATE: The great Nikke Kinke is on the story and has this great report/analysis.

Look’s like it’s “Disney weekend” at josephdickerson.com, as I have to note the huge amount of attention being paid to a leaked blueprint that shows (supposedly) an expanded Fantasyland at the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida. Gone is Mickey’s Toon Town, moved is the Goofy ride (and also doubled in capacity), added is a Little Mermaid ride, as well as a “Pixie Hollow”, new Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast areas and a new Beauty and the Beast restaurant.

Will these plans prove to be true, and is this a reaction to the upcoming Harry Potter land at rival Universal’s park? Lots of speculation online, and many think that this is real (and was originally intended to be announced at the D23 Expo in September). At any rate, here’s a great article that covers the whole situation.

I for one would love to see this happen, if only to provide me an excuse to go back to Walt Disney World…

UPDATED: Disney at the D23 Expo just confirmed all of the above: the expansion will be completed by 2013. Click here for the Twitter feed with some details.

Just got back from the Magic Kingdom park at Walt Disney World in Orlando… a great trip, highly enjoyable. When I was there I saw this:

That’s the brand new stage recently constructed in Tomorrowland to house a new show called Stitch’s Super Sonic Celebration. The show started in May and… is now gone. Yes, less than six weeks after it started they pulled the plug on a new attraction that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce.

Many people are wondering why they stopped it (many say because…well, it stunk), but I started thinking about it from a different angle – why did they decide to do it in the first place?

I started thinking about crowds, and crowd management.

I know nothing about Disney’s user experience/imagineering team and how they work, but I do know, from previous work regarding traffic patterns and crowd control, that they have people whose sole job is to monitor, analyze the crowd levels at all their parks. Disney is one of the most detail-oriented corporations in the world when it comes to theme park numbers – attendance, parks, ride volume, capacity, etc. They have people doing deep analysis on their numbers every day.

So, how does this point apply to the Stitch attraction? I’d wager that part of the motivation in building this stage area where it is – the heart of Tomorrowland – was to help “smooth out” crowd volume in the parks.

While we may look at Disney as the most “magical place on earth,” we also need to remember that it is also one of the most structured and planned environments that has ever been created. Right now, two of the major attractions in Tomorrowland section of the park – Space Mountain and the Tomorrowland Transportation Authority – are closed for refurbishment. Even before this refurbishment began, I’d bet that the number-crunchers at Disney were seeing an uneven mix of crowds in the various “lands” that are in the Magic Kingdom… which is not good for the bottom line.

Crowds spread out “unevenly” in the different lands means longer wait times –
which means park visitors have less opportunities to pass through the “hub” at the heart of every park. When the park visitors are in line for a ride, guess what they can’t do? THE CAN’T BUY ANYTHING. That’s bad for business. It also impacts their attitude and satisfaction with Disney – if too many customers leave complaining that all they did was “stand in line” it affects Disney’s reputation and “word of mouth” (I think that the FastPass system they instituted a few years back was intended to minimize this as well).

So, why did they do the Stitch stage show? As stated above, I think that it was to draw more people into Tomorrowland, to help spread out the crowds more. When the numbers came back that it wasn’t attracting as many people as they had hoped, they killed the attraction dead (heck, it may have negatively impacted traffic patterns).

While I was there I also noticed a new “dance party” show they had added to the many different parades they have during the day. I watched and enjoyed it, but keep traffic patterns in mind when I ask: why do they do these parades? I think it’s not purely for the show or “magic” of them… it’s to get people out of the ride lines and towards the “hub” on a regular basis, so they can buy drinks, snacks and spend more money.

Sound cynical? Absolutely… but I still love Disney. Just because I’m aware of how they control their environment and try and influence behavior doesn’t make me love them any less. It is, as I mentioned before, one of the most controlled user experiences in the world, and I marvel at how thought-through everything they do is.

And finally, that Stitch stage… what will they do with it now? Well, I still think that a new show will arrive someday, and my guess is we will be seeing a robotic (and more profitable) Wall-E taking questions from the audience within a year at that location.

Just a hunch.

The Tron footage, an updated and really cool lightcycle race, is here.

UPDATE: The Disney marketing people really outdid themselves for San Diego – they set up in secret a replica of Flynn’s arcade from the first movie congoers had to locate, as well as a life-size lightcycle. Click here for video and pics.