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Tom who? Huck what?
The impact the submarines will have on attendance this
summer has yet to be seen, and the meager daily capacity of the new ride (which
we discussed here ages ago) is the
Achilles heel everyone is worried about. But the other new offering at
Disneyland has already proved to be a big hit, and that’s Pirate’s Lair on Tom
Sawyer Island. While the controversial remake of the island seems to have won
over most online critics who now begrudgingly admit they like the update, the
average park visitor is enjoying Pirate’s Lair even more. The customer surveys
from the Guest Research team are coming back with extremely strong numbers, and
everyone seems to be enjoying the new island.
Even after opening to the public, Disneyland
is still adding details such as this large cannon...
More people are visiting the island too, as the last few
weeks have seen upwards of 11,500 people per day visiting Pirate’s Lair.
Compared to this time last year, when an average of just 2,500 visitors took the
time to go over on a raft each day, those daily numbers are a ringing
endorsement that the Pirate’s Lair concept has been a positive addition to the
park. John Lasseter took his children over to Pirate’s Lair early this past
Saturday morning just after it opened for the day, and he was very happy to see
the island looking as good as it did. Remember, it was John who called Michael
Eisner’s cell phone several years ago after a similar visit to Tom Sawyer Island
with his kids when all he found was decay and decline.
...and these small barnicles both now seen in
the shipwreck area on the island.
Sure, there are still a few Disneyland purists who quietly
grumble that Walt would have never approved of Pirate’s Lair, but the thousands
and thousands of extra visitors having a great time over there each day don’t
seem to hear those grumbles. The Jack Sparrow stunt show the Entertainment team
cooked up is a real crowd pleaser, and the island looks infinitely better now as
it was the last little corner of 1950’s Disneyland that got skipped over during
the 50th Anniversary makeover a few years ago. It was a tired and
forgotten section of the park, but the pirates have brought new life and sparkle
to the entire facility. Even the Imagineers who worked on the Pirate’s Lair
project were a little sheepish at just how run down the island had
become.
Park Icon Update: Good & Bad
While the crowds swarm the south end of the island, the
buzzards are circling the north end. After being delayed for several weeks due
to hazardous material being discovered in some of the grout between the logs,
the demolition of Fort Wilderness is finally about to begin. The current
timetable has the demolition starting this Wednesday night after the park
closes. Five days later it will all be gone, except for the small section where
the newly remodeled restrooms are located. This demolition will all be handled
over night, but day visitors will be able to get a peek of the progress from
across the river near the canoe dock. The rebuilt stockade structure should be
completed by Labor Day.
Wow!
Across the river in Fowler’s Harbor, the Mark Twain is
making final preparations to return to the Rivers of America. The sudden closure
of the boat caused this winter by embarrassing pictures showing up online evolved into a long overdue full refurbishment of the Disneyland
original. The boat hasn’t looked this good in decades, and it seems TDA has also
learned its lesson from this embarrassing saga. As we mentioned before and can
now confirm, instead of just abandoning the
boat to the elements the minute the refurbishment is over and watching it fall
into disrepair again, the Facilities department has now agreed to devote a
couple of Cast Members per week to keep up with painting, staining, wood repair
and general maintenance.
New deck as well as new paint.
The small dedicated crew will resemble the staffing
this icon had up until the late 1990’s when T. Irby slashed the dedicated
staffing and demoted Walt’s own Mark Twain to a maintenance status somewhere
between a parking lot tram and his personal electric golf cart.
When the Mark
Twain returns to service on Friday, it also will feature a new recorded spiel
that replaces the 25 year old version they had been using.
Took 'em long enough
Meanwhile, over in Tomorrowland, the lawyers from Burbank
and the lawyers from Seattle finally agreed on a contract for the Microsoft
takeover of Innoventions (remember we discussed this ages ago?). The software giant will take over the entire lower
floor and remake the revolving platform lobbies into a “House of Tomorrow”
exhibit, and the word is that this time Innoventions will actually showcase
technology not already available at Best Buy or even Big Lots. The upstairs exhibits will
all also be
tweaked and updated, (Siemens was the first) and the whole thing should be worth at least a look around
when it’s done.
Siemens not only is in Epcot, but now in
Innoventions here too.
That’s a good thing too, because the daily attendance figures
for this nine year old attraction have plummeted in the last five years to the
point where only around 2,500 visitors stop in on a busy weekend day. Innoventions never achieved the popularity it was supposed to, even when it was
new, but those are the kind of daily numbers a ride like Pirate’s of the
Caribbean does in one single hour without even breathing hard. When the kitschy
44 year old Tiki Room is attracting 10,000 visitors a day and the revamped Tom
Sawyer Island is getting over 11,000 per day, you would think a huge facility
staffed with dozens of CM’s like Innoventions should be able to pull its weight
and entertain more people than ride Small World does in an hour.
They will be upstairs while Microsoft has the
first floor.
Of course the sponsors footing the bill don’t know the
daily Innoventions attendance numbers are that miserable, but now that the
Microsoft contract has finally been signed we thought we’d let the cat out of
the bag. (Let’s hope they've got something worth seeing! The
overcrowded walkways of Disneyland are depending on something other than an Xbox.) They missed the timing
for the original plan to have this open by this summer to capitalize on crowds
drawn to Tomorrowland by the submarines, but construction will start in July and
it all should be completed by early November with a grand opening just before
Thanksgiving. (Think the Zune will be history by then?)
The Saga Continues...
And no the Imagineers won’t be done with Tomorrowland once
Innoventions is refurbished.
There’s still plans afoot for the PeopleMover
track, and the original WDI pitch to radically update Star Tours for Tokyo
Disneyland may now get a shot at arriving in Anaheim as well. The Star Tours
pitch from WDI also gets a boost from TDA with their plans to begin a West Coast
version of Star Wars Weekends around 2009.
One of the proposals WDI has for Bob
Iger is to go with guns blazing into DCA over the next four years at the same
time they do a phased remodeling of Tomorrowland with a new PeopleMover, an
updated Star Tours, and an altered design scheme for the land as a whole.
Forget the sharks, annual passholders are the
real danger to the CMs here!
This
summer though, Tomorrowland is already the place to be with the well received
Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage creating lines that stretch all the way to
Fantasyland. Next time (once we get over this Sub hangover) we'll be back with the
numbers and
rider feedback from the first few weeks of submarine operation.
In the
meantime, keep a good thought for all of those CM’s who will be dealing with
some of the longest lines Disneyland has seen since Indiana Jones opened in
1995.
Goldfish crackers anyone? They're baked you know. |
