Question: What is the biggest mistake Disney has ever made in adding a ride or a park?
Answer: While there are a great many answers from long-time passholders that go straight to the easy-to-mock RocketRods, I’m going to go with:
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh located in “Critter Country” at Disneyland. This unimaginative ride features dismal 2D painted sets that even high schools wouldn’t put up on stage for theatrical presentations. The animatronics are abysmal and only showcase that Disney “Imagineers” should be stripped of the “Imagine” part of their titles. That someone at Disney replaced the Country Bear Jamboree with this schlock only proves that ride creation should be left up people who have imaginations and understand the importance of presentation.
Pirates of the Caribbean located in New Orleans Square. This used to be a nostalgic ride that parents remembered fondly riding on as children. It was a tribute to the imagination of Walt Disney, and the last ride Mr. Disney personally oversaw during construction. It stood the test of time. Then morons decided to bow to “PC” pressure and changed the pirates from being women-chasing booze hounds to being food chasing future diabetes patients. Disney replaced the Woman in Red, they replaced skullduggery with food binge idiocy, and then – to add frosting to the ‘fuck it up’ cake – they decided that adding Captain Jack Sparrow in completely random spots would thrill those who couldn’t, apparently, follow the plot of the immersive ride.
Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout! located – for no apparent reason – in California Adventure. This ride replaced Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. While not a terrible ride, it’s not all that great, either. All of the bumps are telegraphed, all of the darkness of the TZ Tower is replaced with ‘meh’ animatronics and a quick slap-on of paint. More importantly, though: Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t appear on any California map, so what the hell is it doing in California Adventure?
Soarin’ Around the World located in California Adventure. What the hell is this fresh bit of crap? There was always a queue for Soarin’ over California – a ride that showcased the deep aviation roots of California as well as showing off some of the great places in the Golden State. Now it’s a badly spliced bit of dreck that doesn’t showcase anything well.
Incredicoaster located on Paradise Pier in California Adventure. Good lord. This is a largely – nay, HUGELY – unnecessary revamp of California Screaming. In what idiotic world did “hey, let’s put some tubes on a great roller coaster and put some neon nonsense inside them!” ever seem like a good idea? Who gets paid to come up with this stupidity? And – more importantly – why are they still employed?
There was nothing at all wrong with California Adventure when it opened; it was a new park, and it had growing pains to go through. It had some awesome anchor rides, and plenty of places to expand. Now it has very little to do with California. It looks like Disney decided to stop being Disney and now it’s just a wannabe Universal Studios.