What We Would Keep And Change At The Disney Parks Part Two: Change

Earlier this week, we took a deep look at what’s working at the Walt Disney Company’s Disney Parks division. We’re back for part two, talking about what we would change.

The Walt Disney Company is going through a lot of change right now. Some of it is good, some will require some time to watch, while unfortunately some of them mean reductions in multiple divisions of the company. I talked about it a bit in the earlier piece, and honestly, it’s worth reading the think pieces I’m starting to see about it.

But at the topic at hand, what should the Disney Parks be looking to change under this new management team?

Soarin’

Getting this out of the way first. I said in our first entry that Soarin’ Over California should remain the same. It’s pretty damn perfect. However, Soarin’ itself is a pretty flexible attraction. The ride mechanism is several rows of seats on a large gimbal in front of an Imax sized screen, with speakers and a scent sprayer (seriously, it sounds weird, but if you’ve ridden it, you get it). Not simple, but also incredibly flexible, hinging entirely on the screen. 

In short, outside of the California version of the film, there’s no reason for the films to be static. While I’m not proposing a Star Tours-style experience, where you’re never sure exactly what combinations of films you’ll get, rotating through a few different films, while rotating in new clips occasionally and rotating others out would keep an already great experience fresh, exciting, and will allow for fans to see more of the amazing cinematography the experience is known for.

Soarin’ is already one of Disney Parks’ most popular experiences, and a constantly evolving experience would just plain make it better.

Pirates of the Caribbean

This one is going to seem like sacrilege. Pirates of the Caribbean is one of the attractions within the Parks that Walt Disney had a direct hand in overseeing. It’s one of the oldest and most beloved attractions across the Parks, with a multi-billion dollar film franchise spun out of it. Pirates is notable both as Disney’s most (and perhaps only) successful “Parks to Pictures” transition, and perhaps the only pirate movie(s) of the last forty plus years to actually be successful. Only Disney’s own Muppet Treasure Island comes close.

But over the last twenty years, Disney has taken the two original Pirates, in Anaheim and Orlando, and gradually made tweaks. The biggest was the addition of the lead movie characters Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Hector Barbossa. But beyond updates, they removed sexism and a moment of human trafficking, replacing those scenes in a way that changed nothing in the spirit of the ride.

So in the spirit of adding pirate-ess Red in the most recent redo, let’s keep making tweaks. They don’t need to be a big deal, just something to keep a classic fresh. Except for the song. That’s a stone cold classic.

Tiana’s Bayou Adventure

I have to start here — this is not a stealth #SaveSplashMountain entry in the post. Splash Mountain was a good ride based on an extremely outdated and obscure IP. I’m not going to debate anything about Song of the South. Disney was right to bury it, and frankly, removing that IP from Splash Mountain was the right call. Though I personally would have replaced it with an IP other than Princess and the Frog (my personal choices would have been Robin Hood, A Goofy Movie or Lion King — like Paris’s upcoming log flume attraction), replacing Brer Rabbit and company with this Tiana-centered adventure was the right call.

But as a replacement, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was DOA.

The ride is an adventure in which you help Tiana, Louis and Mama Odie find a band to play at Tiana’s Place’s Mardi Gras celebration. Halfway through the ride, you get shrunk down to find the band amongst the Bayou critters, then restored to normal size on the ride’s famous drop hill. Not that you will understand any of that plot from the ride itself.

Now this is saying nothing about the ride mechanism itself. That was and remains perfect. Sure it’s prone to breakdowns, but it’s a water ride full of complex audio animatronics. There will be breakdowns.

My issues with Tiana’s are entirely story-based, and they’re pretty universal amongst fans. The story is unclear, confusing, and has no tension or conflict. It also essentially leaves out two major characters — Prince Naveen and Doctor Facilier. (The promo image above is Naveen’s only appearance, without dialogue, and Facilier is completely absent.)

I think it’s a pretty easy change. First of all, make the story of the ride clearer, both through details in the queue and dialogue at the beginning of the ride. Add Naveen (while still centering the story on Tiana and Louis), and make Facilier a background villain, maybe striking a deal to try to redeem himself to be released from his otherworldly prison. Lastly, make Facilier’s “Friends on the Other Side” the lift hill song, particularly the “are you ready” bridge.

Oh and rename it “Splash Mountain: Tiana’s Bayou Adventure” because we’re all still calling it Splash Mountain.

It’s a softball and doesn’t require a complete re-do.

The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh

This is a short and sweet entry, and while I’m specifically talking about Winnie the Pooh’s delightful attraction in this entry, it’s worth noting that this isn’t the only ride my suggested change would benefit from.

It’s time to modernize the technology in multiple attractions. Tokyo’s Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh is on a trackless system that allows for a lot of fun movement in the ride car that just doesn’t happen on a track. Adding that system to Disneyland and Walt Disney World’s versions of the ride would be a lot of work but for a major payoff. It would also make it less of a ride for toddlers as well.

And as I said, other rides across all of the parks could benefit from this change, such as Pinocchio’s Daring Journey, and Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin.

Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin

Speaking of this ride…

This is another one that might seem like sacrilege, but I’m going to say it. It’s time to update Car Toon Spin with a new Intellectual Property. Roger Rabbit is great. He’s a wonderful character who starred in an absolutely amazing movie.

But at this point, the movie is almost forty years old, and is unlikely to get a sequel. There’s no Roger Rabbit presence in the park outside of this ride. And as we get further and further away, that problem just will get worse.

Updating the ride and story with a more evergreen character at its center would be huge. Hell, Mickey Mouse just got his first official ride in the last five years in Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway (a perfect ride), so maybe it’s time that Donald Duck follows.

Grizzly River Run

This is a very uniquely California request.

Grizzly River Run is a raft-style whitewater river/drop ride in Disney’s California Adventure. (I don’t know the official name for the style of ride, sorry.) It’s great, an absolute must-ride for hot California summers, even if it does mean changing your socks afterwards. (Seriously, I carry flipflops in my backpack just to keep my shoes and socks dry on water rides.)

But after riding Disney Animal Kingdom’s Kali River Rapids –– essentially Grizzly’s Florida sister — I realized that the ride needs some sort of story. Now, I’m not saying it needs an injection of IP — Kali is a story about conservation amidst illegal deforestation. It just needs a little something.

Though if you did want to use IP, you could make it a story about Donald Duck learning about why we need to keep our national parks clean and maintained from Humphrey the Bear and Ranger J. Audubon Woodlore, maybe while Humphrey gets into some antics.

It doesn’t need much, especially since the ride is fairly fast, but it just adds a little “oomph.”

Web Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure

I love Spider-Man. The character is one of my absolute favorites, period. That’s why it’s frustrating that his theme park ride (found in Anaheim and Paris) is so lacking.

In the ride, you jump into a ride vehicle to help Spider-Man. An assistant robot Peter designed has malfunctioned, and has stuck in its self-replicating mode, flooding Avengers Campus with thousands of replicating Spider Bots. If Peter (and you) don’t get it under control, the bots will over-run the Avengers Campus.

Now, Tom Holland’s performance as Peter is pretty great within the ride. Yes, the ride is an upper-arm workout, but that makes it fun and unique. And I don’t mind the MCU-adjacent theme. But the ride’s conflict is entirely based on “Spidey screwed up bad, and we need to fix it.”

It’s a very easy change that makes the experience so much better, and only requires some scenes be re-programmed and re-animated (just like they recently did with Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, debuting in the next few weeks).

The ride needs a villain to cause the Spider-Bot malfunction and for you to help Spidey defeat in the final scene. 

Now, I understand there might be weird rights issues between Universal, Sony, Marvel and Disney that might prevent someone like Doctor Octopus or Electro appearing as said villain. And hell, I’m not even saying that it needs to be an existing bad guy — create someone entirely new for all I care. But changing the conflict from “Peter Parker is a screw up” to “Peter needs to stop this bad guy before they ruin everything” is a much stronger story.

Toy Story (Midway) Mania

Toy Story Mania (or Midway Mania in California) is a great ride, and one of the Disney Parks’ most beloved rides. And rightfully so. The change I’m going to suggest is fairly simple (though it may require some hardware/software upgrades, since the ride apparently runs on Windows Vista).

It’s time to update the characters and games.

Mania is an entirely screen based ride, in which you wear 3D glasses and use a blaster to “shoot” darts, balls and rings at a screen. There’s no story, you’re basically just playing a game or games that Andy or Bonnie got for Christmas. In fact, I believe the Florida version specifically sets it under Andy’s bed. The issue is that it’s based on Toy Story 3, a 16 year old movie, meaning it’s been the same games and characters for 16-ish years.

Let’s get some new games, update the character designs for the core characters and add the new characters that have joined the franchise in Toy Story 4 and the upcoming Toy Story 5, like Forky, Duke Caboom, and the updated, badass version of Bo Peep.

I mean, I get that the technology involved might mean a complete re-do of the behind the scenes tech, since it is rumored to be running on a nearly twenty year-old OS, but that might be necessary anyways.

So what do you think? What would you change? And what other ride could you turn into a Donald Duck attraction? Sound off on our socials!