[Isaac]

Originally Posted by Cadaverous Pallor

Can we start hating Lasseter now? He was supposed to save this one.

Well, here's what Al said on Tuesday in his latest article:

For the first time, major Disneyland projects were announced at a press party in Florida instead of Anaheim last week. The new big-budget dark ride for DCA we've been filling you in on for the last year was finally fessed up to at last weeks Florida press announcement, and the title appears to have finally ended up as "Toy Story Mania."

This concept was initially created and designed for the dark ride expansion slot in Paradise Pier behind California Screamin'. The same basic ride system, with much of the same special effect technology, is going in to Tokyo Disneyland as their new Monsters Inc. attraction in a reworked transition space that will bridge that parks World Bazaar and Tomorrowland.

But after the mock-ups and concept design turned out so strongly, Jay Rasulo felt the DCA version of the attraction had the potential to be the next "franchise" attraction, much like the sleeper hit Buzz Lightyear ride originally retrofitted onto a frumpy, old Omnimover ride at Walt Disney World. Eventually, the executives in Florida agreed to add a slightly slimmed down version of the Mania attraction to the Disney-MGM Studios park out in Orlando.

While the original title of the attraction was Toy Story Midway Mania to play up the Paradise Pier location, the addition of a version for Florida has changed the title to Toy Story Mania for now. There is still some debate on whether or not to give the rides slightly different names on each coast, but many people in WDI want to avoid the Buzz Lightyear scenario where that same basic dark ride has a different name in each of the five locations it has been installed. The thought here for Mania is to create an attraction "franchise" like Pirates of the Caribbean or Space Mountain that retains the same title from one side of the globe to the other.

The boardwalk location of the DCA version of the Mania ride had always been earmarked for a dark ride at some future date. But what was assumed five years ago to be a simple C Ticket dark ride is actually going to be a much larger D+ Ticket dark ride, and that means the construction of this facility has taken over that end of the pier (as seen above and below). Add in to this big project the sudden hands-on involvement of John Lasseter, and this ride promises to be the next Submarine Voyage when it comes to heavy involvement and expanded budgets simply demanded by Lasseter.

While the project managers from WDI have tried their best to work around the operation of the E Ticket roller coaster than runs directly above this busy construction project, it's becoming harder and harder to keep the coaster running seven days a week. In the last few weeks there have been several unplanned instances when California Screamin' had to remain closed for the entire day, or for a good part of the day, without warning. During the cold winter months when very few people want to be drenched on Grizzly River Run, that leaves DCA with just two other E Tickets for customers when Screamin' is closed.

Even with the light crowds and nonexistent lines this time of year, a closed California Screamin' ticks off a lot of customers with DCA's razor thin margin for error as a park. And looking ahead to the rest of 2007, there is now the possibility that Screamin' may have to remain closed until early afternoon for several months at a time later in the year.

What's interesting about this latest article is that Al mentions 2 other future additions coming to DCA :

Carland:

sig alerted

and a water show called "Walt Disney's Wonderful World Of Color":

Oh my, did we stumble into Cher's closet?

He also mentions that Ed Grier wants the Paradise Pier portion of the placemarketing to be completed by summer 2008.

I guess Disney is still interesting in flushing more money down the toilet that is DCA.