BTW sorry to everyone else I didn't post my reviews for last week. I was really busy so didn't have the time. I could still post them if you guys want.
Goofy’s College of Practical Knowledge
The appearance of the land would be of a beautifully landscaped college campus with rolling hills, regal buildings, and large trees that just beg to have a picnic under them. Peppering the landscape are larger than life sized mockups of various things that Goofy has destroyed in the course of his cartoon career with plaques on them saying the year and name of the cartoon, how the destruction happened, and any lessons learned, written in Goofy’s own unique style.
The Art of Skiing
The marquee ride of this land would be situated on the far side of the land on the edge of the park boundary. Themed to a snowy mountain with a ski jump, this will be one of the taller rides at any Disney park. At just over 200ft tall, this B&M Dive Coaster will be custom designed for Disney taking out some of the more extreme elements of SheiKra and Griffon but leaving in two different vertical dives, with one of the dives themed to a ski jump and the other to a ski slalom course.
The station will be modified to have an unload platform added to help increase the capacity of the ride. The queue line will be themed to a training session on skiing with snippets from the 1941 classic cartoon.
Motor Mania
This ride is themed directly to the 1950 cartoon that it derives its name from. The cartoon is about how to be a good driver, with Goofy haplessly failing and turning into an extremely aggressive driver. The queue area will show various driving techniques demonstrated by the Goofster himself, along with vehicles that were destroyed by forgetting a certain rule of the road. The vehicles will be small four seat cars with a steering wheel themed to a small sports car. The cars will be on a trackless system, controlled by a system similar to Pooh’s Hunny Hunt where the vehicles are independently controlled by a master computer system. The vehicles will be able to accelerate and break quickly and make quick turns in a very small turning radius. The design goal here is to have a system that could simulate a wild mouse coaster without the track. The ride proceeds through a series of increasingly irritating driving instances before it is unleashed into a fast driving segment followed by an arena area. The arena area is just a wide open space with many different paths available, but the main area is a wide open arena where guests can drive right at each other. Just before you arrive at the arena area, Goofy speaks through the audio system in the car and tells the person in the driver seat that they are now supposed to put all of the teaching to use, and then yell that someone needs to grab the steering wheel until someone takes charge. The cars will be mostly under the drivers control at this point; the ride control system will ensure that there are no collisions and make course corrections to the vehicles if drivers try to run into scenery items or other vehicles. For those who can find them, there are paths that can be found that offer up many different driving experiences, if driving at other cars at high speeds in the open arena area gets old. After a set amount of time, Goofy will take control of the car and drive the guests to the exit. With around 20-30 people in the arena at any moment playing bumper cars that will never hit each other and different paths off the arena to explore, the re-ride value of this attraction will be extremely high. The cars themselves will be electric and recharging will be via charging bars in the floor that run along all of the system controlled sections of the course and loading/unloading platforms, sitting flush to the floor.
How to Ride a Horse
While it derives its name from the 1950 cartoon, only the queue area of the ride sticks to the incidents in the cartoon, themed to the proper way to ride a horse; the ride itself is a bit different. The ride vehicles are designed to look like carousel horses (the only type of horses Goofy thinks you are now qualified to ride), not overly ornate, but something that can take some heavy wear and would fit in the schema of Goofy’s University. Below the floor, the vehicles are designed similarly to the Steeplechase horses at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, with the addition of an electric control motor, a power bar mounted in the track, and a collision avoidance system, using the same single rail design of Steeplechase. The load platform will look exactly like a merry-go-around with the horses configured in circles. The load platform will have three different "platters" of horses to help speed up loading. When loading commences, it is done merry-go-round style where there is a bum rush to load all of the horses at the same time. When the ride starts, it behaves exactly like a merry go round for three turns, and then then outer ring of horses start to peel off and disappear. Then the inner rings of horses start to follow suit using different tracks hidden under the floor of the carousel. Using fast track switches, the carousel of horses empties out and sends the riders down a random selection of 5 different tracks. All of the tracks start in the same area themed to a stroll down a country lane, but then the all peel off and have a unique adventures, one running down a city street dodging traffic, one running through a city park zoo, one running in and out of houses, one racing through an underground cave system, and the final one will be dodging trees and low hanging branches in a jungle. While mostly gravity powered with lift hills, the motor can take over and speed up or slow down the horse, and stop it to avoid running into the horse in front of it, allowing the system to pack the rails with horses. At the end of the split sections, the horses combine back together for a race down a horse track and a photo finish with one horse declared the winner. After unloading, the horses are then assembled back into the merry-go-round configuration under the load platform and hydraulically lifted into the load platform as a formed up set.
Home Made Home
The final attraction in this area is a walk through pseudo-scare house themed to the 1951 Goofy cartoon of the same name. In the cartoon, Goofy is trying to build a house and having a tough time doing it. The walk through attraction would be designed to scare the people walking through the house that Goofy is currently building. With drop floors, swinging beams, dangerous power tools rocketing around, and live electrical wires that Goofy accidently touches among many other gags, people will find themselves laughing at how they were scared. The attraction ends just like the cartoon does with the whole house falling down around his ears.
Goofy’s Goofy Shop
The shop would be a shrine to all things Goofy and goofy. There would be plush, clothes, toys, jokes, magic tricks, and bizarre items found nowhere else on property like remote control trash cans, windshield wipers for a computer laptop, and USB fans, the more eclectic the better. The shop would also have several large video screens playing the greatest moments of Goofy’s cartoon career. After each cartoon, there would be a physical bit with a Goofy animatronic head that would peer down through a hole in the ceiling asking everyone to not worry about the sounds, because he is trying to fix some problem (there will be multiple problems for Mr. Goof to deal with. His head will then retract and then we hear the sounds of Goofy horrifically messing up the job before it escalates into a gigantic mess and Goofy’s iconic Goofy Holler, before the video screen starts back up again. For the sake of making the writer’s jobs easier, Mickey, Donald, and Pluto will have guest appearances at this shop, but only on the video screen and in the sounds coming from above.
Goofy’s College Cafeteria
In an area with such a dense packing of rides, any restaurant in this area will need to be ultra-high capacity in order to keep up with the crowds. Since the area is designed around a college campus, the restaurant will keep that theme alive and is styled to a college cafeteria. The menu will be diverse enough to satisfy the tastes of almost every visitor to the park with different stations specializing in different food types. In true college cafeteria style, the over the counter servers will be dressed in uniforms that are a very stylized versions of the "lunch lady" from your elementary school. The seating area is a little more interesting, as the different areas are themed to classrooms, which are then themed to different college subjects Goofy would think are important, yet with a very Goofy slant on them; for example, instead of a physics classroom, there is an impact classroom showing the proper way to hit the ground or crash through a wall.
Covering the kitchen area and back of the restaurant, there is a faux Gymnasium facade that features Goofy shaped holes showing him exiting the building through the wall in many positions and carrying different types of sporting equipment. The holes in the walls are taped off or poorly patched, covering the classic cartoons on self-defense, baseball, football, golf, fishing, tennis, swimming, and many Olympic sports.
Most buildings in this land would show some sort of damage from Goofy exiting the building rapidly and not through the door. Some facades will be smoking with signs suggesting that a show takes place there but has very recently been cancelled due to the destruction.
Game Central
You press the Power button on the console. You hear the satisfying whirs of the disc spinning as you are taken to the menu screen, where you select your game. This is the ritual that millions of people around the world complete daily when playing video games.
Believe it or not, Disney has a handful of quality games in their library. And now, for the first time in Disney history, Disney is bringing some of their virtual worlds into Shanghai Disneyland!
When you enter the land (under a sign with the land's logo), you can tell this is Heaven for gamers. Everything is fairly futuristic and silver (just so it looks "next-generation", which many games and consoles are).
There are 4 attractions located in Game Central: a simulator, a dueling roller coaster, a go kart track, and an ATV live show, all themed to Disney Interactive Studios video games.
~Attractions~
Kingdom Hearts: The Ride
The acclaimed video game series is now getting its own 3D simulator attraction!
The ride is located in a building in an area that looks similar to Traverse Town, the hub from the first Kingdom Hearts games.
The ride, similar to Star Tours: The Adventures Continue takes you on a brand new journey on every ride! You visit 4 locales per ride, and they are played at random to encourage riding again. Some of the locales visited include: Pridelands (Lion King), Halloween Town (Nightmare Before Christmas), Timeless River (Steamboat Willie), Olympus Coliseum (Hercules), Neverland (Peter Pan), Space Paranoids (Tron), 100 Acre Wood (Winnie the Pooh), Agrabah (Aladdin), Port Royale (Pirates of the Caribbean), and others.
The basic storyline of the ride is Sora, Donald, and Goofy are taking you on a journey to defeat the Heartless.
Mickey vs. Oswald
Choose your track and go on a high speed adventure based on the Wii game, Epic Mickey.
The queue of the ride tells the story of how Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was created by Walt Disney, but was later sold to Universal Pictures and forgotten completely.
Then you pick which track you will be riding in: Mickey (red), or Oswald (purple). The vehicles are shaped like paintbrushes, but are standard roller coaster vehicles. The tracks nearly collide several times, and each feature several inversions and loops.
Mickey's Super Speedway
Board your kart and race against your buddies in a go kart trace based on the Nintendo 64 game Mickey's Speedway USA.
12 guests race at once on the very large course (it would be large because this is Disney, not a small budget theme park). The vehicles would be your standard go karts that are fully controlled. There would be 3 laps total, but don't worry: the track is large enough to make your race worthwhile.
The track will be lined with sensors able to track location and positioning of all drivers. Passing certain spots on the track will give you items. You press buttons on the kart to use your item. The sensors will tell where the item would land, and will cause any drivers that drive over the item to stop momentarily.
PURE: Extreme ATV Racing
Watch as professional ATV drivers race in a show based on the ATV racing game, Pure.
Guests sit back in a small "stadium" as they watch racers jump and do tricks on the track.
Shows would be shown about every 45 minutes, giving the racers time to practice before a race.
~Shops~
Gamer's Gateway
Gamer's Gateway is the place to get your games! The store, set up like most game retailers, sells the games that the attractions are based on, as well as other Disney Interactive Studios games.
Game Gear
Game Gear is the shop to get your gaming souvenirs. You can get gifts based upon Kingdom Hearts (Keyblades, action figures, manga, etc.), Epic Mickey (stuffed dolls, magic paintbrush replicas, etc.), Pure (ATV gear, remote control ATVs, etc.), and others.
~Restaurants~
Power Up Pizzeria
This restaurant is more along a fast food joint, with hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza as food options served at the shop. The game has a 80s arcade vibe to it.
Gaming's Grill
Gaming's Grill is a table service restaurant that serves Chinese dishes, as well as some American dishes. The diner is set up in the form of an American restaurant (like Applebee’s), and has many video game references located in it.
Characters like Mickey, Sora, Donald, Goofy, Oswald, and others roam the land, giving autographs and posing for photo ops.
Special occasions could be held in this land as well. There could be a video game themed fireworks display or game tournaments.
So thanks for coming down to Game Central. Game on!!!
Few creatures are as intertwined in the culture of a nation as the dragon is to China. Unlike its Western counterpart, where the dragon is often viewed as evil and destructive, the Chinese Dragon is revered as benevolent, powerful and the bringer of good fortune. Emperors adopted the dragon as a sacred symbol of their power and authority, and many Asian cultures consider dragons as a supernatural or spiritual symbol of heavenly power.
The Land of Dragons at Shanghai Disneyland celebrates the thousands of years of Chinese tradition that surround these majestic, mythical creatures. Dragons are revered in China, and the attractions in this Land all portray them with respect and a sense of wonder. Disney Imagineers take Chinese traditions and culture in consideration when creating these attractions.
The Land of Dragons is entered through a magnificent gateway. Written on the gateway, over the visitors as they enter the Land, is the phrase (in Chinese), "Here Be Dragons". All structures in this Land, all support facilities, everything is decorated with dragons, traditional Chinese ornamentation, and representations of the Nine Classical Dragons and the Nine Dragon Children of Chinese legend.
The centerpiece of The Land of Dragons is "The Realm of Dragons", a dark ride through Chinese mythology focusing on the nine "classical" types of dragons found in Chinese art and literature. An omnimover system carries ride vehicles designed like the Dragon Throne of China through spectacular a.a. scenes of these legendary creatures. The nine dragons featured in this attraction are:
The Dragon King
Tianlong, the Celestial Dragon
Shenlong, the Spiritual Dragon
Fucanglong, the Dragon of Hidden Treasures
Dilong, the Underground Dragon
Yinglong, the Winged Dragon
Jiaolong, the Horned Dragon
Panlong, the Coiling Dragon, which inhabits the waters
Huanglong, the Yellow Dragon which showed Man how to write
Each dragon is featured in a beautifully crafted scene representing its place in Chinese history, literature and art. This attraction will be as emotionally stirring to the Chinese People as "The American Experience" at Epcot is to Americans.
Excitement of a different kind will be experienced by guests at the "Duanwu Festival", a flume-type water ride based on the world-famous Dragon Boat Festival.
Dragon boat races are held throughtout the world, but usually on the flat water of lakes or placid rivers. Here the Dragon boat crews of Disney guests are racing through the wild course of a raging Chinese river at flood stage. Four side-by-side Dragon Boats, each carrying eight "crewmembers", race each other in parallel water courses through a landscape reminiscent of the beautiful river gorges that run through China's spectacular mountains. Steep plunges, wild rapids and racing straight-aways make this an exciting and potentially soaking thrill for racers. Unlike actual Dragon boat racing teams, crewmembers do not have to paddle, but are able to just sit back, hold on and get ready for some wild water! This is one of if not the world's first racing flume ride.
"The Temple of the Dragon Kings" is a magnificently designed and detailed indoor theater where "The Festival of the Dragon Kings" is performed for up to one thousand guests nine times a day (nine being a lucky number in China). This is a live production that features "life sized" cloth-and- wood puppets manipulated by teams of performers accompanied by traditional Chinese drummers and musicians, and also the world-famous Dragon Dance.
It tells the story of the four Dragon Kings, each representing one of the four seas of Chinese culture, and their deep influence on the People of China, past and present. This is a dynamic, exciting stage production filled with world-class dancers, huge dragon puppets and spectacular indoor fireworks that will thrill guests from around the world.
Nine Dragons Restaurant is a cousin to the restaurant of the same name found in the China pavilion at Epcot, but here at Shanghai Disneyland it takes on a different theme and more traditional menu. The Nine Dragons referred to are the Nine Dragon Children of traditional Chinese legends, and the design and ornamentation of the restaurant are based on these:
"Bixi" looks like a tortoise and is good at carrying weight. It is found in the carved stone bases of columns and table tops.
"Chiwen" looks like a beast and likes to see very far and to swallow things, so is found on each end of the ridgepoles of the roof, to swallow all evil influences.
"Pulao" looks like a small dragon and likes to roar and cry, and is found on the handles of decorative bells throughout the restaurant.
"Bi'an" looks like a tiger and is used to frighten people in prison. Here, it is used on doors leading to areas off limits to guests!
"Taotie" loves to eat! This design appears on all food-related wares, such as plates, bowls, platters, etc.
"Baxia" likes to be in water, and is found on the bridge leading into the restaurant, and on all drinking vessels.
"Yazi" likes to kill, and is found on the handles of all the decorative swords that adorn the walls as ornamentation.
"Suanni" looks like a lion and likes smoke and fireworks. It is used to decorate all lighting fixtures.
"Jiaotu" looks like a conch or clam and does not like to be disturbed. It is found at its traditional location- on the front door and doorstep to the restaurant.
To Americans, these are almost totally unknown, but to the Chinese guests that will make the Nine Dragons a favorite destination during their visit to Disneyland, they are well-known and beloved creatures. Explanations in many languages will be available, to educate dinner guests not familiar with the Nine Dragon Children, and to provide guests some entertainment as they try to find them throughout the restaurant.
The menu will be traditional Chinese, focusing on five different regional cuisines: Sichuan, Shandong, Jiangsu, Guangdong and Fujian. This is not the Chinese-American foods that we are used to here, but traditional Chinese foods prepared and served in traditional styles.
The Nine Dragons Restaurant will soon take its place as one of the finest restaurants, Chinese or otherwise, to be found in any Disney Park anywhere.
The Fucanglong Market is an amazing collection of traditional Chinese shops. The name "Fucanglong" is the name of the Dragon of Hidden Treasures, and this shopping area is filled with hidden treasures: hand-crafted Chinese art, edible delicacies, and beautifully designed clothing.
Dragon-themed silk clothing, candies and baked goods, and carved wood and jade are just some of the remarkable treasures to be found in this shopping area. Twisting lanes, shaded plazas and charming shops give shoppers the experience of shopping in a small pleasant Chinese village.
The Land of Dragons at Shanghai Disneyland- a place for the people of China to celebrate the ancient and glorious mythological history of their ancient civilization, and for foreign visitors to discover the majesty and deeply-interwoven importance to the Chinese nation of this King of all traditional creatures, The Dragon.
Jeff- Your land reminded a bit of a goofy themed toon town for an Asian park. I think you included some great ride choices in your proposal this week. I think you had a clever idea turning the Motor Mania short into an attraction, I thought it was very charming. It seemed like it would be an autopia attraction on steroids! I thought Your How to Ride a Horse attraction was very interesting and innovative. It would definately kick other merry-go-rounds' butts. I think you did a great job explaining yourself with the restaurant, shop, and walkthrough as well. Superb job this week!
Andy- I think you did a good job with the Kingdom Hearts attraction and I think it would work well as a simulator. I think the Mickey's Super Speedway and Mickey vs Oswald coaster were also great fits. I thought the placement of the ATV show here was a bit random. It didn't quite fit with the rest of the rides. I wish you found a more "Disney style" video game or even utilized tron instead. Anyways, Great Work!
James- Probably the most unique concept for a land I've heard since the begining of this competition. I think the land of Dragons would be greatly appreciated in Shanghai Disneyland as an effort to include Chinese culture within a park. I think you really had something with the Realm of Dragons attraction, could be the great new dark ride. The Dwanu festival was a nice relaxing attraction that I'm sure will be great. What really blew me away was the Temple of the Dragon Kings show. It sounds beautiful and I'd love to see this brought to Epcot! Good job on the restaurantand shops as well. I do wish you would have a brought a bit of Disney into the land, as it is the Magic Kingdom, but I get where you were trying to go with the tribute to the Chinese Dragon. Excellent work!
BTW, I just saw Captain America. Another marvelous film within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I proposed a new method of polling for the Mr Universal challenge which it looks like they are going to run with.....we'll have to see if it is any better.....
You do all realize I put just as much work into this as you. I create and post polls, create and posts challenges, and have been moderating USELESS conflicts. I put alot of hard work into running this sort of competition, and that's why I decided to move it solely to Summer. Well after this finale, I'm considering announcing the indefinite hiatus of Theme Park Apprentice, since it causes way too much drama and is obviously not fun for most people anymore. Hope that is what everyone wants. Now lets move on to the finale.
Tim, you have done a great job of organizing this and for those of us who choose to observe rather than participate, it's kept us coming back to the site on a daily and weekly basis. Thanks for your efforts.
IMO, there is nothing wrong with the poll. People have paid too much attention to the percentages and not to the actual votes. Go back and look at the vote totals for each poll. If someone is messing with it, they're not putting much effort into it.
The poll is easy for those of us who like to just click a radio button to choose a favorite. Just b/c 4 people vote for the same person in a row, doesn't mean its rigged.
It's your game, Tim. You do what you feel is best. When people work hard on their ideas and the "best" ones don't get votes, it doesn't mean that it's fixed. It just means the voters didn't like it as much.
I feel like the best part of this is reading different ideas and visions of what people want to see and experience in a themepark. That should be the focus, not the endgame. The more complex the voting becomes, the less interest some may have.
Do it YOUR way, Tim. It's your game. Thanks for all the hard work.
