While looking for a Disney oriented blogger/blogspot template today I ran across an interesting tidbit about the 'Disney ride template'. On a site purportedly written by various Imagineers for Disney (I am a cynic when it comes to people really being who/what they say they are on the 'net), one of the 'Imagineers' was talking about an 80s Eisner decree that new rides had to have a 'story'.What this means is essentially that non-story oriented rides like "It's a Small World" and "Mad Tea Party Teacups", "Jungle Cruise" and even (for that matter) "Space Mountain" are apparently not 'Disney enough'. Rather Eisner wanted the rides to have a 'hook' and an ending.
Fair enough, but as the writer of the post at 'Re-Imagineering' states:
"While certainly WDI saw some unbridled successes under Eisner’s ‘What’s the story?’ ordinance, it seems Imagineers had little more than one ‘story’ up their sleeve. And they shamelessly told it again and again and again."
Truer words were never spoken! Seems like most of the new rides unveiled since the mid-80s do indeed have a story and it is the same story told time and time again.
- Splash Mountain: Brer'Rabbit runs away from home (gets lost) and we (the riders) go to find him.
- Dinosaur (once called "Countdown to Extinction"): A baby dino gets lost and we...help find it.
- Tower of Terror: Guests in a creepy hotel go missing and...yup...you guessed it...WE go find them!
Now, these aren't the only examples of this particular 'genre' of ride. Others include: Alien Encounter, Stitch's Escape, Pirates of the Caribbean (revamp with Jack Sparrow), the Gran Fiesta Tour in Mexico, the Seas with Nemo and Friends, the Great Movie Ride, Muppet-Vision 4-D, and Mickey's Philharmagic (to name a few more).
To be fair, I had noticed this trend prior to coming across the blogpost, but hadn't considered how prevalent it was. Even newer thrill rides like Expedition Everest and Aerosmith's Rockin'RollerCoaster have a similar story. In EE it's about verifying (or not) the existence of the Yeti (gotta find it again), with RRC, it's the band being late (and we have to find our way to the arena). But in both, we are still going along for the ride. For that matter, Buzz LightYear Space Ranger Spin still has the riders trying to find/collect 'power cells'.
Of course, there are some rides for which this formula doesn't hold true (Alladin's Flying Carpets, Goofy's Barnstormer, etc...). However rides for which this genre doesn't hold are few and far between.
Does the recurring theme detract from our (okay my...) enjoyment of the rides...no. Let's face it, for those of us that turn into a kid once we hit the WDW interstate turn-off, minor genre redundancy isn't even thought of while we are there.
I do however find it a bit sad that this theme is used so often when much more interesting ideas are all around.
- The Seas with Nemo and Friends: Enough with Nemo already...why not have something happen to Dory. With her 2 second memory THAT would be a plot element you could play with!
- Muppet-Vision 3-D: Bean is a peripheral character that most people aren't familiar with unless they are die-hard Muppets fans (alas...like me). So he runs away? Big deal! Most people by that point in the film are stilly trying to figure out who the heck he IS! Forget the whole "someone runs away" nonsense, why not make Muppet Labs the heart of the story?
For that matter, so much could be done with the actual story from some of the Disney animated movies that don't yet have a ride/attraction associated with them -- Hercules, Home on the Range, even Ratatoulle.
On a side note...the whole Alien Encounter to Stitch's Escape fiasco does rub me the wrong way. How stupid did Disney think we were? They are the same exact story, alien in tube, breaks free and goes missing. The only difference is one wants to eat us, the other is just annoying and confirms the conspiracy theorist's view that Elvis was an alien ... to quote Tommy Lee Jones in "MIB" --"Elvis isn't dead....he just went home".
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