You're going to Disney World!
(Sorry, that lead was so easy, I simply couldn't resist.)
Yep, Disney announced today that it is shipping Walt Disney Imagineering's Kathy Mangum off to Florida, where she will assume the newly-created position of "Executive Producer" for the Walt Disney World Resort, overseeing attraction and resort design at WDW.
You could go nuts trying to draft a linear organizational chart for Walt Disney Imagineering, which is co-lead by Craig Russell and Bruce Vaughn, with four senior vice presidents and six executive vice presidents (plus an additional VP for Tokyo Disney) on the management roster, too. Mangum's one of those executive VPs, and Avatar lead designer Joe Rohde is one of the senior VPs (along with Tony Baxter, to drop another name). It's a huge team, with heaven only knows how many projects going at once. So at this point, all I'll read into the announcement is that Disney is very, very happy with the money that Mangum's latest project is making for the company and would very much like new projects at Walt Disney World to make gobs of money for Disney just like Cars Land is doing, thank you.
The easiest way to make that happen might seem to bring in Mangum to build a Cars Land at Walt Disney World, perhaps at the Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park - the proto-California Adventure. But let's not forget that the two coasts don't always embrace identical new attractions with the same fervor. Toy Story Midway Mania draws better in Florida than it does in Anaheim, while Star Tours 2 hit bigger in Disneyland than at WDW. There's no guarantee that Cars Land would be as big a hit in Florida as it has been at the Disneyland Resort.
Still, it's generally good news for theme park fans when Imagineers get promotions within the Walt Disney Company, instead of accountants. Let's hope some fat design and construction budgets, bathed in green lights, are following Mangum to Central Florida, too.
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Would be nice for Tony Baxter to work on Epcot, but rumors are he will be working on Dinseyland's huge Big Thunder Mountain makeover....
"No, the RED zone is for immediate loading and unloading of strollers only...."
Star Wars isn't in the picture.
So having unique attrations in parks around the world doesn't play into Disney's marketing plan nor it's capital budgets plan (duplicate attractions save money on design, engineering, etc).
With that said, I also understand the need to replicate attractions. Not everyone will have a chance to travel & experience those other attractions, so I see both sides of it.
As long as new attractions are going up, no matter what or where they are, I'm happy :-)
This would be cool..... be I will say what Hollywood Studios needs to me is probably something that is family friendly since it is already home to the two most thrill focused rides at WDW..... and really if you were going to be a adrenelene junkie you might choose Universal IOA first anyway.
Here is my big thing I'd like WDW Resort to fix (since people keep mentioning Robert's article about fixing things)...... Kali River Rapids. Please make it more of a rapid ride and less of just a trip up and down a hill and then you float a long a little big under some water shooting until you get back to the station. I'm much more impressed by Grizzle River Run in DCA. It has both the drops that Disney seemed to want to incoporate AND rapids. Kali is hardly a real rapid ride because it lacks rapids.
I'm glad that someone who did such high caliber work at DCA is headed to our side of the US to do work! I hope she impresses us!
The Monster Inc. Door themed coaster concept I have heard thrown around sounds interesting for a Family-friendly e-ticket.
I think Bolt would be a great fit to be utilized at DHS since the dog was suppose to be an actor. It may not get it's own land, but a show or dark ride.... or even a way to incorporate it into a car chase type situation.... like if they recreated a Bolt action scene like what was being filmed at the beginning of the movie.
Up would be awesome if they could utilize the floating house into a ride somehow.
The Incredibles also seems like something that would fit in at DHS since it is an Action Hero type theme to the movie and that probably fits best into this park out of the four at WDW resort.
Of course, they could always just do Radiator Springs and tweak it a little to make it slightly different for the West Coast. I'd be happy to see Radiator Springs Racers in DHS!
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