NASA
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
RMH
noise dept.
taylor price
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#extradirty
Origami Around
Cosimo Galluzzi
$LAYYYTER
occasionally subtle
PR's Tumblrdome
Jar Jar Binks Fan Club
oozey mess
cherry valley forever
official daine visual archive
macklin celebrini has autism
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Game of Thrones Daily
Cookie Run:Kingdom Official!
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@grizzlypeakofficial
My feelings on theme parks are complicated. On the one hand I have an infinite amount of complicated theories about immersive storytelling. On the other hand, they’re just life size miniature railroad dioramas and if it would make a good diorama it’s probably a good theme park.
Disneyland After Dark (via)
defunctland episode released immediately upon your death chronicling all failed career paths and relationships and somehow michael eisner is still at fault
A new trend is people announcing theme parks that don't really exist, with AI concept art, vague promises of interactivity, and unbelievable time tables, often promising to open a massive theme park in the space of the year. It is, after all, incredibly easy to throw together some buildings and roller coasters and say "hey, I could build this, give me money"
This, of course, brings me to Dracula Land.
Investors are being sought NOW to bring Dracula Land to life!
In a year. Maybe two. To bring all of this to life
The arena is boring...but then you enter
DRACULA LAND
This will be the FIRST ever Dracula theme park, the first classic monsters theme park to open anywhere, since this May
There are multiple areas: Moonlight District, Family Kingdom (for kiddie rides)...
...and Transylvania, whose video is endlessly buffering for me, but thankfully a website got screencaps
Then we have! Dracula's Castle
Dracula's Castle is, of course, an augmented reality attraction
What's the fifth land, then?
It's the French Quarter, of course!
This area supposedly features the "WEREWOLF RUN MULTI-LAUNCH COASTER 4D CINEMA JAZZ CELEBRATION" but the video is...literally just the French Quarter. But sloppified
What's the FINAL land of Dracula Land? It's somewhere dark and terrifying:
LONDON.
They've got ALL the sights!
SCOUNE YARD YARK!
LONNDON!
The Bettles! From Liverpol! With a crowd cheering in perfect unison!
A wee mascot taking the kids while the adults on the sidewalk don't move!
THE TERRIFYING GOTHIC SPIRIT OF DRACULA LIVES
(Supposedly this area has the "VAMPIRE HUNTER TRAINING PARKOUR & OBSTACLE COURSE", but of course, we don't see that)
Their Fashion District has all the brands
FIRRIGAHO. FI[symbols] who are calling for rescue! SOS! SOS! HELP!
Let's stay at the hotel
Okay, it doesn't come through in a screencap, but: everyone in this shot but the bartender is frozen in place
There's a family hotel too, which is p. boring, so I don't think there's anything else her
SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER, A WHOLE ASS RACE TRACK
F1 RACING PAST DRACULA'S CASTLE
Well that's it then it can't
Oh? What's next? What's next after the castle slide with an endless stream of people coming down it?
It's time to enter...
THE DRACULAVERSE
But what kind of game IS Dracula Land?
Dracula Land...
IS A OPEN WORLD FPS
WHERE YOU CAN DO ANYTHING
[continued]
Chat over dinner
Chat with your...
Teleport. I don't know
Chat with NPCs in the digital theme park that's the real theme park
(these metaverse concepts always run into the problem that you would never design a real theme park and a virtual theme park the same way but they have to be 1:1 for the bullshit to work. So you have game spaces you have to teleport around in bc they're too big, and real life spaces that lock features behind apps and shit)
Earn Dracula Coin
I don't know, they say all this will be ready in ONE YEAR. Two year tops. It's not like these AI slop merchants run into the wall that it would take time to actually make the buildings they prompted into being. No you can do this by 2027 it's fine. You'll be either buying teddy bears or shooting people in the 1960s London district of our gothic horror park with an F1 track any day now
#Jesus#I work for a company that does actually honest to god design work in an adjacent industry#And we are starting to have clients come with AI Gen images as inspo pics#And we have to tell them things like#Hey I dont actually think. You want a full sand pit in the middle of your gallery for people to walk through even though#Yeah no I know it adds immersive ambiance to the diorama or whatever#But its going to be a maintenance and accessibility nonstarter#Hey man so best conservation practice actually reccomends AGAIST a fountain in the middle of a room full of paintings haha I know#Nono I agree the interactive element pictured here IS cool#But none of that technology actually exists so#What a cool floating installation! I see there's no way that its being supported or suspended!#No I get that our proposed design solution isnt as sleek as the original but they didnt actually have to work with physics or gravity so#Well the thing is the reason we cant do the design as proposed is because what this would cost is roughly 5 thousand dollars a square foot#And you dont want to spend that#So. We are going to have to compromise a little on the fucming Vision here
vintage style space moutain view from Bay Lake Tower
Defunctland, 2025
watching the new defunctland
This scene was, without a doubt, my absolute FAVORITE part from the whole 4 hour long video
Actually fuck Disney and fuck defunctland too for saying all those mean things I love you 13 feet tall 11,000 pound big dino they should have let you crush all the small children you wanted it would be a small price to pay for big dino
Just watched the latest defunctland video and couldn't stop thinking about this
big dino my beloved let imagineering make gigantic mechanical abominations again
i recommend the new defunctland video to anyone who wants to see a gigantic frightening robot
One of the engineers said of this 18-foot tall monstrosity "this could kill people"
Lighting in Darkmoor from Victoria's era, Henry's era, and pre-Frankenstein times
it’s too early to tell with epic universe but the degree to which Disney parks abandon their core concepts frustrate me. Main park land genres of tomorrow, fantasy, the wild frontier, and cars (2006). Same thing for hollywood studios, what tf does Monsters inc have? An homage to California except a marvel and pixarified version. Everything getting rethemed to ip and nostalgia bait. AaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAUHH
Replacing Great Movie Ride with Runaway Railway turned me into the Joker. I'm a shell of who I once was. Theme is dead.
Honestly I do worry about Epic's future but not in this specific way. More in terms of like, how long until general public does enough shenanigans to get Ygor pulled? How many hurricanes do the outdoor dragon animatronics have in them? Etc. I think it would be pretty hard for them to fuck up the park's central concept honestly. Even just the physical structure of the portals ensures that integrity can be kept pretty intact. Universal Studios is fine as long as it involves riding the movies, which it always will. And Islands of Adventure gave up on the theme of literature a while ago so that ship has already sailed. Universal knows how to do it (though their park concepts are a lot looser than Disney's).
This was part of why I made the call to go to Epic while it was still new, despite my reservations about going to Florida (thankfully everything went smoothly). The only other brand-new theme park I ever witnessed was California Adventure, and I saw how even THAT went downhill quickly (after, uh, already starting partway down that metaphorical hill). I didn't want Epic to be yet another thing I had heard "used to be good before." I definitely think meet-and-greets/roaming characters won't last as crowds increase and Universal tightens budget for the park. Given that Pandora at Animal Kingdom somehow still looks decent after a few years (didn't expect that), I hope Berk manages to hold on as well.
My whole "villain origin story" of this blog was California Adventure removing Tower of Terror and thus gutting it's (just installed at the time!) thematic integrity, and my taking on the task of attempting to document what had been there. My fear is that Dark Universe eventually gets replaced with another portal, under the same justification Tower's detractors said-- "Modern audiences just don't care about black and white horror movies/shows, and only new fancier IPs are good." It's not a good sign that Universal doesn't currently offer most of the monster movies on streaming. I'm still stunned that a classic horror land ACTUALLY TRULY GOT BUILT in the wake of the post-Tower "only new IPs" movement.
Universal is DEFINITELY better at picking themes it can maintain integrity for over time though. Even though Islands isn't literature anymore, there's no denying that at least all their themes are still solidly within the adventure genre. Actually, I think that as of now (with Zelda not in Lost Continent yet) technically all the lands still are literature too? Even though HP is the film versions?
I’m not worried about Epic’s thematic integrity for the same reason I am worried about the Disney parks. Epic is the only major theme park to open post-IP land craze, and it has been built to support those types of lands conceptually and physically. Disney parks are trying to retrofit IP lands into parks where that was never the intention, and the only park I’d say they’ve truly succeeded in doing so while supporting the park’s intended themes is Animal Kingdom. Honorary mention to Journey of Water though.
Universal has it a bit easier, given they’ve always leaned into their IP first and foremost in a way Disney hasn’t, but they’ve still done a great job keeping their park identities intact. I think there’s a struggle with Disney in that they still want to keep the high ground of doing these big bold overarching themes in the wantonly they can do, but they also don’t want to leave money on the table by not doing IP-lands. Like if they just fully committed to one or the other it wouldn’t feel so disjointed.
Back to Universal, Islands has always played fast and loose with the literature theme when it wants to. Jurassic Park was absolutely based on the film despite being a book first, and this is the case with later additions like Kong and Potter. Even Spider-Man is grounded more in the 90s cartoon than the comics themselves. I’d argue its current iteration holds much closer to the original vision than something like Hollywood Studios.
As for Dark Universe, I’m not particularly concerned. Of course it’s possible it gets rethemed like twenty years from now, but it has a ton going for it that is hard for Universal to ignore.
First, the whole reason it exists in the first place was almost certainly due to the failure of the modern Dark Universe movie series. The version of the land we got was likely a result of creatives being able to sell the company on the timelessness of the original monster films and characters. It’s telling that in a park with Mario and Harry Potter, DU arguably has the most famous characters of all. These are new versions of these characters, but they are cultural juggernauts.
On top of that, Monsters Unchained just won Best Dark Ride at the Golden Ticket Awards, is a world-class spookhouse (a classic theme park archetype), and is an absolute capacity monster in a park that desperately needs high capacity rides. The ride is definitely a draw. Plus, unlike Disney, Universal isn’t one to cut back on scares or thrills, so a retheme to reach a more cautious audience seems unlikely.
Then look at the rumor mill - one of the most likely new Epic additions is a Creature from the Black Lagoon boat ride. If that ends up happening, I’d say this land is safe, but also consider the sheer amount of expansion space Epic has. Universal parks have some dead zones but Epic doesn’t really. Plus with Universal being aggressive in trying to take Disney’s marketshare, I doubt they’re going to remove existing attractions any time soon unless A) they’ve reached the end of lifespan like Rip Ride, B) they’re unused, like Lost Continent, or C) are truly bad for the guest experience, like Fast and Furious. Call me optimistic, but Dark Universe is none of these, and I believe it’ll stick around for a long time.
I just found out that Disney+ put up a whole bunch of POV ride throughs of Disneyland rides for the 70th.
Okay, so we watched them all (excluding Incredicoaster, because who cares?) and it turns out there's also a few land walkthroughs. But since we did rides first and then lands it took a while to realize... The camera kept slowly panning over and lingering on the Coke products. It also went through Coke Corner on Main Street. These POV videos are sponsored by Coke.
It actually got kind of comical, when the camera would barely linger on anything in Avenger's Campus, but strolled on into Pym Test Kitchen, not to watch the pretzels get changed in size, but to look at the Coke machine. My god. XD
