I was once interested in finding out about the park's initial reception and so went searching around on google groups. The most interesting thing I found was by a poster called Splistream who posted this...
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I recieved this IOA trip report from an anonymous source. Chuck Ballew is a senior WDI show designer, and I heard he was the main man behind INDY.
ISLANDS OF ADVENTURE
A HUMBLE REVIEW
CHUCK BALLEW
Although IOA isn't officially open, it is allowing guests inside, and I've been in twice to check things out. I also took a pile of photos. If anyone wants to peer at my pics, let me know.
RESORT
There are two hotels under construction, Portofino resort and Hard Rock hotel. I could only see Portofino from the top of the parking structure, and from most reports it looks an awful lot like the Portofino hotel for Disney Seas. It has a lagoon in front of it, much like many of the Disney resorts. It looks as though boats can shuttle guests to the theme parks. The Hard Rock hotel has only just broken ground, so I have no idea what sort of design it will have. Hard Rock will be right there next to the parks, within easy walking distance of both Universal and IOA. The parking structures seemed very well organized to me. It took a LOT of walking to get to the parks though. A long covered bridge crosses a roadway to get to City Walk and the parks. Instead of trams for guests, the bridge has long moving sidewalks. Its a much less labor intensive operation than the trams we tend to use and it forces people to walk through City Walk.
CITY WALK
The path from the parking garage leads people right through City Walk, which is laid out pretty wide to accommodate the crowds that will be inevitable when IOA opens. This City Walk is much less quirky and gaudy than the one in California. In fact, its down right ugly. Hideous. The only building that the group I was with agreed had any design value was the Nascar Café, which has a strong graphic design to it. The rest just seems randomly funky, but rather forbidding and unfriendly. It has a street off the main street called the Latin Quarter which has numerous small night clubs (their version of Pleasure Island). This area is laid out to be reminiscent of New Orleans (balconies) but all of the architecture is sheet metal siding and is just about as ugly an area as imaginable. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up with gang problems here, because the atmosphere is very unsoothing. City Walk is definitely the only part of the area that is poorly designed. The rest of it is VERY GOOD. City walk is directly between the parks, and therefore very convenient to get to. Certainly more convenient than getting to the Disney Marketplace. They've added a very pleasant body of water there between IOA and Universal, which seems designed so they can do some sort of water show or spectacular out there, because the shoreline has built in bleachers.
ISLAND OF ADVENTURE
All of the attractions aren't open yet, but enough of them to be VERY impressive. This is an extremely well planned park. Although it wasn't packed, I could tell it will have very good guest flow. Most Disney parks use a basic hub layout, but IOA is strictly a circle (like Epcot's World Showcase). You have two choices of where to go when you enter: clockwise or counter clockwise. There are no shortcuts bypassing any lands (although there is a water ride which can cut you across the park to a different land, but its not really much of a walk). The lands are mixed up in such a way that they don't really blend with each other. Rather, they are all separated from each other by bridges and waterways. In spite of the bridges and the large body of water at the center of the park, there is nothing about the lands that feel like they're islands. Not that it bothered me much. The only thing that bothered me is how the scenery in each land sort of obscures the body of water in the center. Its not nearly as open as the lagoon at Universal Studios. They probably did this to differentiate them, but if you aren't going to use the water, why pay for it? Overall, the design of the park is FANTASTIC. It only falls slightly short in the realms of final finishing of rockwork and paint, which aren't nearly as brilliant as the work done on Animal Kingdom. But it doesn't really hurt the design, because the design of each land is very bold. The size of the park is pretty small relative to the other parks in Orlando. It is probably smaller than Disneyland even. But it is absolutely full. One of the things we were most impressed with was that when the rides are open, this will be a FULLY FINISHED FULL DAY PARK. There aren't any obvious expansion areas (though they have some tucked in here and there). In fact, its hard to imagine they'll need to do any expanding for years and years.
PORT OF ENTRY
This is the name of IOA's Main Street. It is an ecclectic collection of weird storybook architecture, that looks exactly like Dinotopia without the dinosaurs, or a sort of pumped up Myst. There is a huge funky looking lighthouse at the entry to IOA. Its very impressive when you stand at the bottom of it, but seems somewhat small when viewed from a distance. This street is very well laid out, with merchandise, camera stores and restaurants laid out in the same places you'd find them in Disneyland. We ate in a very nice restaurant in this area (with a real menu and real food and prices that weren't insane) called Confisco grille. This is the 'customs house' of the land and is decorated with props which were confiscated from the various other lands in the park. Its a kind of strange idea, and I doubt most guests get the concept.
The main street leads to the edge of the water. Seuss Landing is to the right, but most guests seem to go to the Left, toward Marvel Super Hero Island (Unwieldy name for a land), because it has a humungo green roller coaster roaring away.
MARVEL SUPER HERO ISLAND
THE HULK is the big green coaster. Those who rode it (not me) say its a pretty good coaster. It has an accelerated launch on the lift, and lots of rolls and loop and stuff. THE STREET of this land is designed to look like a standard city street in a Marvel Comic. The store is called STORE, the ice cream stand is called ICE CREAM. The land itself has a bit of a sci fi quality to it, because they used a lot of interesting materials to create the buildings. Special kinds of glass and metal. There are numerous superhero graphics hanging on the buildings, and I can't make up my mind whether I like them or not. They are oversized comic book drawings of super heroes and villains battling it out. They were obviously drawn by some professional comic book guys, and are very well done. Their graphic presence, however, makes the land feel less lived in than most of the park.
DR DOOM is a pair of towers which rocket people 150 feet up into the air for a freefall experience. Nobody in my group rode this. But it looks good if you like that sort of thing.
SPIDER MAN is, simply put, the best ride in the park, and uses a groundbreaking technology that will cause hundreds of Imagineers to have to rethink the projects they're working on right now. You enter the Daily Bugle (the paper that Peter Parker works for) and wind through the offices of the paper. Everything in here is themed as if it came right out of an animated Spider Man cartoon. That is, everything is laid out simple and bold, with a limited color palate. For instance, a persons desk may have a phone, a computer, a bagel and a cup of coffee, but all of it will be painted turqoise blue, with simple highlights on the edges. Its not very attractive, but very effective. There are a number of video monitors throughout the queue with short animated segments depicting how a group of super villains has used an antigravity weapon to steal the statue of liberty. The owner of the paper, J Johah Jameson needs you, the visitors, to go get the story by riding a prototype vehicle called 'the scoop'. (JJJ sounds an awful lot like Crusty the Clown). These videos are slightly amusing, but in one room at least the video loops again and again, and you're likely to see it four or five times while you're waiting... but the ride is in testing, and maybe they aren't up to full capacity yet. Somewhere along the way you pick up 'safety goggles', that are relly your standard 3-d glasses. You board the vehicle, which is a 12 person ar similar in size to Indiana Jones. The sides of the car wrap up to restrict your view to the front, which is important for the effects in the show to work. The vehicle itself feels a lot like the Indiana Jones car, in that it has a motion simulator, and drives on a track. But its different in that it can also spin 360degrees on axis. This is also necessary for the effects in the ride to work. You drive through some city streets, spotting the Spider Signal on a wall. The vehicle drives backward for a short distance then spins around suddenly, and you are now looking into an Imax screen, which is framed by dimensional city flats. The image projected on the screen was created with computer graphics, and is 3d. In this case, Spiderman jumps onto the hood of the car. He looms in the foreground thanks to 3-D, and the motion simulator makes the front of the vehicle sag under his weight. Its pretty effective. The vehicle never stops moving. It basically follows an arc toward a screen then away from it, finally rotating quickly away to look at another screen. You'll have to ride this ride to understand how well this works. For instance, each 'virtual' scene is designed to pan, so as your car makes its arc in front of the screen, the entire perspective in the background shifts, really ENHANCING the 3-D. Personally, I thought the figures that loom in the foreground looked less dimensional than the stuff in the deep background. Maybe its just my eyes, but I cant quite focus on a 3-D image when it gets very close to me. There are, I estimate, about 13 screens in the ride (more or less) each telling a part of the story, which is basicly a sustained battle sequence. At one point our vehicle gets hit with the anti gravity gun and floats high up over the city. How they figured out how to make this work is beyond me. But it does. You really feel like you're eighty stories up, spinning and falling out of control, in spite of the fact that the ride track is perfectly level. Amazing.
I rode this ride maybe 5 times in the two trips I made. Personally I found the story kind of annoying, and after only 5 times I found it kind of boring. I've ridden Indy hundreds of times, and still get excited. In my opinion, there's something to be said for real scenery. As great as the computer scenery in Spider Man is, you know its not real, so it isn't as impressive. BUT that said, the technology is awesome, and the folks who created this ride are just brilliant. I ran into one of the creators, former Imagineer Phil Bloom, while waiting on line. He was very happy and proud. Apparently the concept for the ride was more like a dark ride, but Phil and a few others came up with the groundbreaking concept for the ride and when they proposed it they were instantly supported by their bosses and were able to implement it without the severe second guessing that Phil experienced at WDI.
TOON LAGOON
Just past Marvel, is the next land, which is the home of a slew of cartoon characters that Universal either owns or has licensed for use. This land has a VERY GRAPHIC approach to design, and I really didn't like it much. Everywhere you look are enlarged graphics of cartoon characters, from Hagar the Horrible, to Betty Boop, arranged in such a way that it looks more like a Warner Brothers store than anything else. It's colorful, anyway. There is going to be a big stage spectacular in this area, but it hasn't opened yet.
This land has two big water rides. One is DUDLEY DOORIGHT'S RIPSAW FALLS, which is a flume ride that isn't open yet. It is very heavily themed, sporting a mountain face with a sort of mount rushmore made up of characters from those Jay Ward cartoons. The big drop is interesting in that it has a dip drop at the bottom, which I bet will be pretty exciting.
POPEYE AND BLUTO'S BILGE RAT BARGES is a white water raft ride. I rode it twice and its the best white water raft ride I think I've ever been on. Not only is it exciting and bumpy and twisty and wet, it also has a story. Bluto has kidnapped Olive and you and Popeye are trying to save her. The figures on this ride are very simplistic, but right in keeping with a Max Fleisher cartoon. I've ridden the Kali River Rapids at Animal Kingdom, and as far as ride experience goes, Bilge Rat is much more fun, and probably only slightly wetter. (I got soaked down to my undies) Of course, the queue is not nearly as fantastic as the Kali River queue, which is just about the most beautiful Queue on earth. But the ride is just plain funner.
ME SHIP THE OLIVE is a ship that serves as a playground for kids. Its an extremely ugly looking thing, the compromises made to accommodate guests have made it hardly look like a ship at all. But what'cha gonna do?
JURASSIC PARK
Just clockwise of Toon Lagoon is our favorite Dinosaur Enclosure. I'm not too impressed with this land, simply because it doesn't live up to its source material. There aren't herds of dinosaurs on hand, and the ones that are here aren't half as well made as the ones in Animal Kingdom.
CAMP JURASSIC is a large kiddie play area, which I didn't go into. It looks fun enough, but not very visually inviting. Around its edge is a ride called PTERADON FLYERS, which has two person hanging cars that soar over camp Jurassic. I wanted to ride it, but the line was an hour long. The days I went none of the rides had a line longer than ten minutes, which leads me to believe that Pteradon Flyers has a very low ride capacity.
JURASSIC PARK RIVER ADVENTURE is the exact same ride as the one here in California. The dinosaurs aren't terribly impressive, neither is the scenery. Its got a monster drop, but its kind of lame. The ride building is gigantic, and looms over the entire land, looking kind of out of place. Next to the ride, however, is a very nicely designed fast food restaurant which has huge windows that look down on the runout of the big drop.
TRICERATOPS ENCOUNTER is a place where you get to meet a Triceratops up close and personal. You wind through a pretty long queue through a jungle. You are ushered I groups into a zoolike enclosure which has a full size audio-animatronic Triceratops that occasionally looks alive, and occasionally looks like a big statue. A live actor plays the part of its keeper. This show is very dry, pretty much exactly like a similar experience in a real zoo, meeting a real elephant. There are no explosions or "and something goes terribly wrong" moments. The Dinosaur just stands there, pees, farts, burps, sneezes and grunts and roars. It even lifts one foot off the ground, to prove its real! I could tell that some of the smaller guests really believed it was real. I think they need to work on their script a bit. This show is so mundane as to be boring. I think they're going for a sense of magic, however, and they fall just a little short.
JURASSIC PARK DISCOVERY CENTER. This is a building that is a sort of reproduction of the main building in the movie, including the large dinosaur skeletons in the center of a rotunda. It is two stories tall. The second story has food and a store, and the first story has this discovery center, which was intended to be sort of a kid's science museum. But the displays are pretty lame.
THE LOST CONTINENT
Now we move onto a VERY NICE area, made up of mythological areas from various time periods. At the entrance on both ends of the land are some very nicely made hippogryph statues.
DUELING DRAGONS is a large hanging roller coaster. The guests queue into a dilapidated midevil castle. The queue is heavily themed throughout, and winds deep into the bowels of the scary castle. There are dead knights hanging from the ceiling, skeletons inset into the walls, magic stained glass windows and the disembodied voice of Merlin the magician. But when you reach the load platform the theming stops! In fact, the opposite wall and ceiling of the load area are entirely unthemed. Its very strange, almost as if two entirely different groups were working on it. The coasters themselves are very interesting. They are a pair of coasters that intertwine. Both vehicles are dispached at the same time, so they spin around each other (dueling, so to speak). Those who rode them say the ICE coaster was better than the FIRE coaster, and both of them are much better if you are sitting in the front row. Otherwise you really cant see anything but the person in front of you. The coaster is almost entirely unthemed, and painted extremely unattractive colors. They're still doing some major landscaping below the coasters, and boy do they need it.
ENCHANTED OAK TAVERN is a large self service eatery inside a huge tree stump. Its very pretty inside, and even features some subtle animal shapes worked into the rockwork. Joe Rhode thinks this must be an intentional Homage to Animal Kingdom's Tree of Life. (the stump of life).
EIGHTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD is a stage stunt show that I missed. There is an Arabian village around the entrance to it that is very nicely designed. It has numerous shops and a bunch of carnival games. One thing that really impressed me is that the employees in this area aren't wearing a standard uniform, but each is individually dressed in a particular and unique costume. This made this area of the park feel incredibly lived in, just like the experience of going to a renaissance fair. The Architectural details and themed lighting fixtures in there area are just plain beautiful.
POSEIDON'S FURY is a ride that isn't open yet, and I have no idea what sort or ride it is. But the area in front of it is just FANTASTIC. It features the remains of a collapsed statue of gigantic proportions. Just awesome. Has to be seen to be believed. The finish on the rock work is kind of scaly and fakey, but this area will make for perfect photography. I bet this will be the most photographed area in the park.
MYTHOS RESTAURANT is a beautiful sit down restaurant. The outside of the building looks like a mountain carved with huge looming faces. Inside it is a very large cave. Some of the details are strange, but the rockwork is very impressive.
FINALLY we come to
SEUSS LANDING
This is the absolutely best place in the park, in my humble opinion. It is an almost perfect 3d realization of the good doctor's design sense. There are Seussian creatures everywhere, and little plaques with bits of his inimitable poetry. The only thing I'm not too sure about is that the concrete has been painted some pretty bright colors. Eventually foot traffic is going to make the pathways look gross. I think they would have done better to pour tinted concrete, instead of painting it so brightly.
CAROSEUSSEL is a giant carousel that dominates the land. It is a veritable Seussian mountain topped with Horton and various Seussian birds. Instead of
horses, it has a plethora of beautiful Seussian creatures to ride. Just amazingly well designed. I am in awe.
THE CAT IN THE HAT is a great ride through a classic story. This ride is mostly lit with white light, but has some black light sections. The ride vehicles spin on axis, and can speed up and slow down. Its very dynamic. I think they are still adjusting it, because when I first rode it I felt like my eyeballs were going to be spun out of my head, but on my second trip a week later, the spinning was tolerable. The thing I am most impressed with about this ride, though, is that is tells a simple and complete story. Each little scene delivers a bit of easy to understand dialogue, and by the end you really know what the story was. Most of our dark rides are simplified versions of complex movies, so they end up just reminding you of the movie. But the story of the cat in the hat is so simple it is perfect for a dark ride. Another thing that is different about this ride from most similar Disney rides, is that it doesn't have scenery everywhere. They spent their money on the story telling elements, and the spaces between are almost entirely blank walls that are interesting to look at because of the weird lighting on them. A neat touch is that throughout this ride there are several family photos on the walls of this cartoon house. Each photo is actually a little sculpture with the characters almost popping out of them. A weird and very whimsical touch. I like this ride very much!
ONE FISH, TWO FISH, RED FISH, BLUE FISH is a Dumbo like ride, of which the ride vehicles are a variety of shaped fishes. The difference is that this ride has lots of squirting going on!! As it spins various jets of water shoot out at the guests, getting them pretty wet in some cases. A song is playing that gives guests clues to go up or down, which is supposed to save you from getting hit with water! But whether this actually works or not I don't know, because I didn't ride it.
CIRCUS McGURK's is a large self service restaurant in a giant Seussian circus tent. The interior of this restaurant is very cool. It has animatronic circus performers on the ceiling, and a live performer playing silly selections on an organ. There are numerous gems throughout the land. Pretty much a reference is made to every Seuss book in the library.
FINAL ANALYSIS
WOW... all I can say is WOW. Universal may finally be able to compete with Disney. This park will be a full day experience from the moment it opens. Unlike Animal Kingdom which has some expanding to do before it can claim the same. In some ways I kind of hope IOA does well, because that will give our company the incentive to invest a bit more in our projects. At least I hope so. Has anyone worked on a project where just 1 million more dollars wouldn't have improved them significantly? I also visited Universal for the umpteenth time. IOA is truly a significantly better guest experience (except T2 3-D which is my favorite show of all times), and it leads me to believe that Universal's policy of hiring laid of Imagineers is finally going to pay off for them!
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Here is the link:
http://groups.google.com/group/fl.a...65065ce3?hl=en&&q=ioa+disney+imagineer+review
