Disneyland Resort

[theparklifekid]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpd4JjJIROg

Partial POV of Mission:Breakout!

Still warming up to the idea of the ride, but I do like the look of the beginning of it.

[Owen]

For some reason it just feels really awkward. There's no atmosphere to it and it all feels a bit like it's missing something to me...

[Robert.W]

If this was a new attraction rather than a Tower Of Terror retheme, I would be pretty happy with the attraction as it seems that the quality is pretty good on the inside. I also think that some smoke in the queue would add some more mystery to the atmosphere.

[Robert.W]

Big Thunder Trail has reopened! Here are some pictures!






Star Wars Land behind this wall!


Really good attention to details!


Construction vehicles spoil the view a bit though!








It seems in Frontierland they don't have Cast Members, they have Cast Miners!






Also, testing of the Mark Twain Riverboat!

Images from The Orange County Register

[Owen]

Disneyland


Pixar Fest

Pixar Fest is a brand new celebration that will not only feature a brand new firework’s spectacular but also see the return of guest favourite, “Pixar Play Parade”. As well as this, the “Paint the Night” returns featuring an all new float to add to this fantastic parade!

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California Adventure
 

Pixar Pier

Paradise Pier is set to have a makeover! In 2018 Pixar Pier will open and be home to all your favourite Pixar characters, from films including The Incredibles, Inside Out and a little more Toy Story. This refresh will ensure that this area is loved by young and old, and who knows… we might see some new rides eventually!

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Marvel Land

The Guardians of the Galaxy will soon be joined by heroes such as Spider-Man and the Avengers in an all new fully immersive land at Disney’s California Adventure. Whilst the new stories won’t be  ready for quite some time yet, you can expect Marvel Land to be a fantastic addition to California Adventure!
 

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will see you venture to a remote trading port at the edge of the galaxy. Here, you will find many familiar faces including BB-8, Chewbacca and even Rex – the pilot from Star Tours. You may also find many new faces, including in the cantina where you can get a drink with new faces from around the galaxy. You will also be able to visit a marketplace selling all kinds of items from a galaxy far far away…
The land will feature two attractions.

Battle Escape
This attraction is the largest that Disney have created, the scale is fantastic. You will feel like you are in a Star Destroyer inside a hanger bay whilst a battle between the Resistance and the First Order ensues around you.
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Millennium Falcon
This attraction will see you and you team pilot the iconic Millennium Falcon. You may be piloting the ship, shooting blasters or preparing for hyperspace all whilst being on a highly important mission. Be sure to do well and you may be rewarded with ‘galactic credits’, do badly though and you may find yourself on the list of a bounty hunter. The way you fly the ship will directly influence your experience in the land!
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Here's an up close look at the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge model. Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will land in Disneyland in early 2019 (no specific date has been set). 

[ThemeCrafter264]

So with the Eastern Gateway project being cancelled (which has now caused a sort of conflict between Anaheim and Disney), Disney have now announced a new 6500 car park structure, on the site of the Pinocchio surface parking. This news may seem good at first but it may potentially reduce the size of the marvel land expansion. Meanwhile, Downtown Disney is going to be shrunk in size, as part of it is going to be replaced by a 600 room hotel. It is believed that the closed Downtown Disney stores will be placed on the bottom floor of the new hotel, while there will be a bar/lounge on the top floor with views on the top floor of Disneyland fireworks.

[Chris]

The following link has all the information.

http://www.ocregister.com/2017/10/25/di ... he-resort/

[Robert.W]

It's good to hear that some progress has been made on the hotel as I had thought it had just been forgotten about!

[Robert.W]

Pixar Pier opening date has been revealed, as well as concept art for the new "Incredibles" themed float for the Paint the Night parade! Click here!

[Robert.W]

I'd just like to link this article in here. It's an interesting read if you've got a spare half hour or so.

The article talks about the evolution of Disney California Adventure, right from its troubled beginnings, then going on to talk about the changes that lead to its re-opening in 2012, then talking about up until present day and the future. What seems so apparent is how Disney seem to have forgotten exactly what they were trying to do with the park in the run up to its re-opening in 2012. They don't seem to know what to do with the park anymore, or where to take it next. They've lost sight of the vision that lead the park through its re-imagining. All the changes up until 2012 helped give the park that sense of identity that it had lacked since opening, but now Disney seem intent on pulling that apart, replacing relevant themes and attractions with things not in line with the parks new concept of an idealised, fantasised California, and instead going back to a mishmash of irrelevant themes which are only there because they're "popular" or "current". Take the re-imagining of the Tower of Terror into Guardians of the Galaxy: MISSION BREAKOUT as an example of this, now being followed by Paradise Pier's re-imagining into Pixar Pier, as well as other smaller, but no less significant changes that have all helped lead the park astray from the concept that Disney have poured so much time, money and effort into creating... 

Really got me thinking, that's all. What do other people think?

[Swarm Chris]

I'm not sure Disney have lost vision here. One of my favourite aspects of this area of the park was looking across the water at the fun wheel and California Screamin', which they've kept in the classic style. Walking through the area felt somewhat chaotic anyway, and other than Toy Story Mania, the rest often felt like noise on a busy day.

Disney's biggest issue in California is real estate. It's quite a sizeable area to give to classic themed attractions, when they're trying to coax people out of Disneyland so it can reduce its number of at capacity days. In terms of bringing new characters into the park, and hopefully returning the fun Pixar Parade, they've done what looks like a good job of keeping the boardwalk character with the new features. Merlin style chicken shack aside that is.

What will be more interesting is what they do to the end of Buena Vista Street. Currently it's nice theming, nice atmosphere, and then you're dumped into a DLP Hollywood Studios type area, with large concrete nothingness and the occasional Marvel meet and greet.

[ThemeCrafter264]

DCA in 2015 was brilliant but slowly, the park has lost its' Californian roots for more IPs. Pixar Pier for instance could actually be quite nice if the focus was a Victorian pier with the Pixar characters there as oppose to worlds of Pixar characters. The issue is with Galaxy's Edge opening, Disney have to encourage more people to visit DCA so the priority is just having major brands.

[abigsmurf]

It's definitely a bit worrying how readily they're sacrificing overall theming for their licenes. Cohesive themes and licences don't need to be a "one of the other" choice you can do both. It's calling back to the Eisner era of "this will be profitable right now and it won't cost much".

I went to DCA when it was at its absolute worst, with Superstar Limo and the bizzarre Whoopie Goldberg "all these chinese died building California... here's a short humorous video of how that happened!" show. Looking forward to going back at the end of next year with all that's been done to the park. Guessing if the Inside Out ride is an E-ticket then it won't be ready by the time I go

[ThemeCrafter264]

The inside out ride will be a rethemed Flik's Flyers so not an e ticket for now

[abigsmurf]

Man, these sorts of cheap, easy re-themes are the kind of thing Six Flags get heavily criticized for. It's not like they're preserving timeless classic by 'updating' these fairly standard flat rides either. Looking at the current map, does this mean there are going to be three very similar aerial rides within a minute or two's walk of each other if they're moving Flik's flyers?

If people haven't been extending their holiday by an extra day to do the park this year, I can't see how these changes will convince people to add it next year. A new Marvel live action show is great for reducing crowds but I'd be surprised if its a ticket seller.

[Dungeon-X-Smile]

I was absolutely outraged when I saw the advert for Pixar Pier. It seems so haphazard and last minute. Recently, I rode Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout, and although I have never ridden the original Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror, it was so easy to see that this was a quick sellout to get more money. Tower of Terror was the ride that saved California Adventure from being a failure, and they changed it out without any respect, which breaks my heart. I don't think that in the long run, Mission Breakout will live up to Tower of Terror, because IPs aren't forever, and without the IP, Mission Breakout becomes nothing more than a drop tower with random scenes, only relying on the audience to have seen the films. 

And these are the exact same mistakes that are being made with Pixar Pier. Paradise Pier seemed to be about one thing and one thing only: Mickey. We had California Screaming where you completed a Mickey shaped loop and a ferris wheel with Mickey's face on it. Mickey is iconic in Disney, and although you can argue that technically he is still an IP, he is the heart and soul of Disney, and deserves this high thrill and family fun attractions more than anyone. Now, when you compare this to Pixar, I think you can see that there is a large gap between the two IPs. Granted, I doubt it will rely on you knowing the characters as much as Mission Breakout does to sell the attraction, but it just another attempt at taking a classic attraction and shoving IP on it to make an extra buck. The fact that they have not only taken an opening day attraction and added a cheap layer of paint to it to advertise it as something new but also removed one of the very few rides that still celebrate Mickey horrifies me and appears to be an act of free fall from a company who cares more about money than story. I mean, when Merlin is making better story lead rides thank Disney, I think we can all recognise that something's gone wrong. 

[Swarm Chris]

But Tower of Terror was already an IP based attraction, and by reports one that Disney no longer wanted to pay for at DCA

[Chris]

The same is happening with Epcot though - look at the Guardian's coaster going in there. Star Wars being installed in Disneyland in California, yet the movie themed park in Orlando?

Some of DCA was a dump in the past, so although the original direction is not being kept to, the new additions have been fantastic. Yet to ride Mission Breakout, so cannot comment on that.

The same has happened with Chessington closer to home. The original concept was to create themed areas of the world - but what we are left with these days has been completely blurred. Mystic East > Tiger Rock. Transylvania > Wild Woods etc

[Robert.W]

I see what you mean with Epcot, but the way I see it, by the time California Adventure was reopened in 2012, it had a new sense of direction, and was a very pleasant park to be in, the theme was mainly consistent, although not completely perfect. Changing the likes of Tower of Terror, something which fit seamlessly in with the story and aesthetic of the park to Guardian's of the Galaxy, just because it's popular and current isn't a very good long term investement really. The Walt Disney Company worked for years trying to refine the Californian theme of the park, and now they are ripping all that apart in favour of irrelevant, cheap, easily outdated themes / IP's. They're literally going in the opposite direction, taking the park backwards to when it was just a bunch of random, cheaply built rides in a park that had "California" in its name.

With Epcot, the situation is a bit different, after all, they're entirely different parks. Epcot's "Future World" segment has been under funded and outdated for most of its life time, and picking IP's such as Marvel and other similar futurist themes is a clever way of updating that area of the park, as well as adding familiar IP's to help market it. It works in Epcot because the themes are mostly relevant (although have potential to become outdated in the future), whereas they are completely the wrong themes for California Adventure.

[Swarm Chris]

They're definitely not adding the cheap rides back into California Adventure . If they did that then the locals would get upset and not bother with DCA, which would clog Disneyland up even further.

Cars Land had an estimated cost of $1bn, and it is an absolutely brilliantly themed area, with the main cars ride having some of Disney's best animatronics.

The Guardians building looks a bit silly during the day, but at night it lights up and looks pretty neat. Didn't get to go on it as it always had a near 2 hour queue and was running a special Halloween version at night with an even longer queue.

Granted it does cause a few odd site lines. Here's a photo I took from the hotel last year, although to be honest I didn't mind it