D23 Expo 2019 - News & Speculation

[Happytycho]

While I understand some of the disappointment about the lack of new announcements at this year's D23, it feels worth acknowledging that Disney still has a ton of new rides coming soon.

Within the next few years, WDW will open:
- Rise of the Resistance
- Runaway Railway
- Tron
- Ratatouille
- GotG: Cosmic Rewind
- Cherry Tree Lane & Poppins ride
- Play Pavilion
- Major Epcot spine changes, including SSE update

Comparatively, UOR will open:
- T2 Replacement
- JW Coaster

Disney World is fine.

 

[SailwiththeTide]

View attachment 10721

You get a (empty) card and you get an (empty) card .....Oprah

 

[UNIrd]

Did anyone else think it was weird that Chapek probably reiterated that an attraction was going to be family friendly at least 4 times during the presentation? Like are we really needing that clarification when we're talking about Disney park attractions?

 

[sonoma15]

While I understand some of the disappointment about the lack of new announcements at this year's D23, it feels worth acknowledging that Disney still has a ton of new rides coming soon.

Within the next few years, WDW will open:
- Rise of the Resistance
- Runaway Railway
- Tron
- Ratatouille
- GotG: Cosmic Rewind
- Cherry Tree Lane & Poppins ride
- Play Pavilion
- Major Epcot spine changes, including SSE update

Comparatively, UOR will open:
- T2 Replacement
- JW Coaster

Disney World is fine.

I think you forgot about the whole new theme park.

 

[Nick]

Not posted here in awhile! Must admit, I was pretty underwhelmed by this years parks panel. I think I echo what many are saying in that there really wasn’t much revealed - even confirmation opening dates or years for major additions such as GotG: Cosmic Rewind and TRON. Did we even get a more solid timeframe for Runaway Railway?

That being said, I’d argue that “underwhelming” could be a word used to describe the entire event this time around. Somewhat of a shame as I would say that out of the last few events, this year really showed that Disney’s use of D23 is really just as a marketing opportunity rather than a ‘fan event’, with there being what feels like a large imbalance between Disney+ and, well... everything else!

Agreed.

The Disney+ Panel on Friday was a great panel... and then the film and Parks panels happened. There was some good stuff in both, but nothing that we didn't really know about. Disney actually ruined their own Movie panel by having Marvel go to SDCC last month. Imagine the hype if everyone went into that room and Phase 4 STILL hadn't been announced. Then after two solid D23's, this was easily the worst, parks panel since 2013 when pretty much nothing was announced.

IMO, Disney is doing this event wrong. They're only doing one major panel per day, but to me it should be like this:
- Marvel Studios
- Animation Panel
- Disney Live Action/Lucasfilm/20th Century FOX
- Disney+/Hulu
- Parks

I would say FOX and LucasFilm should get their own panels, but with FOX making half of their stuff for streaming now that's not much of a panel and LucasFilm is mostly just Star Wars at this point. I did find it interesting that there was no Hulu presentation or any sign of Hulu at D23, just like there was no sign of FOX outside of The Simpsons. Now, that could be because the merger wasn't complete until March and Disney didn't gain full control of Hulu until just a few months ago.

Either way, they aren't taking advantage of this event like they truly could.

 

[frank_1991_]

Agreed.

The Disney+ Panel on Friday was a great panel... and then the film and Parks panels happened. There was some good stuff in both, but nothing that we didn't really know about. Disney actually ruined their own Movie panel by having Marvel go to SDCC last month. Imagine the hype if everyone went into that room and Phase 4 STILL hadn't been announced. Then after two solid D23's, this was easily the worst, parks panel since 2013 when pretty much nothing was announced.

IMO, Disney is doing this event wrong. They're only doing one major panel per day, but to me it should be like this:
- Marvel Studios
- Animation Panel
- Disney Live Action/Lucasfilm/20th Century FOX
- Disney+/Hulu
- Parks

I would say FOX and LucasFilm should get their own panels, but with FOX making half of their stuff for streaming now that's not much of a panel and LucasFilm is mostly just Star Wars at this point. I did find it interesting that there was no Hulu presentation or any sign of Hulu at D23, just like there was no sign of FOX outside of The Simpsons. Now, that could be because the merger wasn't complete until March and Disney didn't gain full control of Hulu until just a few months ago.

Either way, they aren't taking advantage of this event like they truly could.

I believe I saw the costumes from Handmaidens Tale as part of the hero villains exhibit.

 

[Happytycho]

I think you forgot about the whole new theme park.

That's not in the next few years though. Epic Universe is probably coming in 2023 or 2024, and Disney will still have plenty of time to announce new attractions for 2023/24 at the next D23 in 2021, which is around when those projects would be starting construction.

 

[GadgetGuru]

I think all of D23’s issues would be fixed if they made this an annual event.

SDCC is yearly. The studios know this and have figured out how to factor it into their yearly PR cycles. The media and fans have figured out those PR cues and can respond to them.

D23 still feels like one-off events. Everybody collectively forgets about it and then it suddenly appears.

That shows. I don’t think the many tentacles of Disney have figured out how to best present at the event because it’s not built into the normal press cycles. The fans and the media aren’t cued into remembering the event because it doesn’t have the regularity SDCC does.

If Disney did the event yearly, there would be less pressure on the parks panel to be huge. Disney Parks would figure out how to properly use the panel instead of the feast/famine we go through now. We wouldn’t get any panels like 2017 (the fifty bajillion announcement year) but we wouldn’t feel so disappointed in bad years.

Disney is now two full studios. They have enough content to stage a SDCC sized event annually.

 

[Nick]

I think all of D23’s issues would be fixed if they made this an annual event.

SDCC is yearly. The studios know this and have figured out how to factor it into their yearly PR cycles. The media and fans have figured out those PR cues and can respond to them.

D23 still feels like one-off events. Everybody collectively forgets about it and then it suddenly appears.

That shows. I don’t think the many tentacles of Disney have figured out how to best present at the event because it’s not built into the normal press cycles. The fans and the media aren’t cued into remembering the event because it doesn’t have the regularity SDCC does.

If Disney did the event yearly, there would be less pressure on the parks panel to be huge. Disney Parks would figure out how to properly use the panel instead of the feast/famine we go through now.

Yeah, but think, we barely got anything in a two hour presentation today after two years... what exactly would a yearly presentation look like? I guess as they adjusted, you would hopefully get at least one or two big things per year worldwide and a bunch of smaller scale stuff. Disney could decide to announce ALL of their stuff at D23 if it was yearly and leave the DPB out to dry.

I agree the Expo being every 2 years hurts it big time, but I don't think they have any desire to do this year in and year out. I also wonder how this convention does financially. Because it's obviously worth doing every two years because of the marketing push it gets them, but is it doing well enough financially to where it would even make sense for it to be yearly? I feel like if the answer to that was a resounding yes, they would've done it by now.

Also: ADD THURSDAYS. Do Media night on Wednesday and make Thursdays a part of the convention. Many other conventions do it that way, yet Disney still does the exp not only biannually, but shorter than most other big conventions as well.

 

[GadgetGuru]

Yeah, but think, we barely got anything in a two hour presentation today after two years... what exactly would a yearly presentation look like? I guess as they adjusted, you would hopefully get at least one or two big things per year world wide and a bunch of smaller scale stuff. Disney could decide to announce ALL of their stuff at D23 if it was yearly and leave the DPB out to dry.

I agree the Expo being every 2 years hurts it big time, but I don't think they have any desire to do this year in and year out. I also wonder how this convention does financially. Because it's obviously worth doing every two years because of the marketing push it gets them, but is. it doing well enough financially to where it would even make sense for it to be yearly? I feel like if the answer to that was a resounding yes, they would've done it by now.

Also: ADD THURSDAYS. Do Media night on Wednesday and make Thursdays a part of the convention. Many other conventions do it that way, yet Disney still does the exp not only biannually, but shorter than most other big conventions as well.

Couldn’t agree more on adding the extra days.

I’m not convinced that Disney gets a particularly big media push from D23. All of these announcements were on the weekend. Social media goes crazy, but Monday’s news cycle gets to consolidate all of D23’s press.

If they did more weekdays, they could get coverage every single weekday

 

[Nick]

Couldn’t agree more on adding the extra days.

I’m not convinced that Disney gets a particularly big media push from D23. All of these announcements were on the weekend. Social media goes crazy, but Monday’s news cycle gets to consolidate all of D23’s press.

If they did more weekdays, they could get coverage every single weekday

Every single media outlet I pay attention to or anyone I watch on Youtube is at D23 and doing updates etc, etc. There's been twitter moments everyday about the big panels. Hell, CNN ran a story about the lackluster parks presentation at about 9PM last night that basically threw together the greatest hits from 2017, Moana, Poppins, Epcot and SW Hotel in order to make it sound amazing.

 

[Ryan]

So that was a huge wet fart for the most part.

I'm amazed at how tone deaf Chapek is to do 10 minutes on Target and Cirque each. He really does not get that there is a time and a place for this: it's called a shareholders meeting. Nobody is here for you to talk about a Target partnership. The pacing was off-kilter, and rushed through the good stuff and slowed down to hawk... what a shock! Things that the 1% will mostly enjoy: DCL, Lighthouse Point, Reflections, Galactic Starcruiser.

Epcot, for the huge enormous push it got, seemed like Chapek wanted to just get it over with. Here's some music, go away. I'm stunned that two years prior they manage to at least get it right in utterly stacking the announcements and fantastic pacing but utterly failed here.

Completely bewildered. I agree, this event desperately needs to expand to four days.

 

[Nick]

So that was a huge wet fart for the most part.

I'm amazed at how tone deaf Chapek is to do 10 minutes on Target and Cirque each. He really does not get that there is a time and a place for this: it's called a shareholders meeting. Nobody is here for you to talk about a Target partnership. The pacing was off-kilter, and rushed through the good stuff and slowed down to hawk... what a shock! Things that the 1% will mostly enjoy: DCL, Lighthouse Point, Reflections, Galactic Starcruiser.

Epcot, for the huge enormous push it got, seemed like Chapek wanted to just get it over with. Here's some music, go away. I'm stunned that two years prior they manage to at least get it right in utterly stacking the announcements and fantastic pacing but utterly failed here.

Completely bewildered. I agree, this event desperately needs to expand to four days.

I think it's possible that this was the Plan B prompter that Chapek was reading from. If so, it may have been his first time reading from it, which could've attributed to the pacing being thrown off. I can't imagine that spending about 30 minutes of the presentation on Target, Cirque and Make-A-Wish was their ideal plan for the presentation. And Epcot did get 30 minutes... but the problem is there was really nothing new for announced projects except the spine project, SSE and Poppins (and we knew about all of those). It just felt like even he was bored with it and wanted to move on.

And wow did he wind up that Poppins announcement good. This is sort of how it went for me as I watched it:

Chapek: "Ive got one big project left to tell you guys"
Me: Here it comes
Chapek: "It's SO BIG i'm gonna need a little help"
Me: IT'S REALLY HAPPENING
*Poppins music starts playing*
Me:

 

[Owen]

While I understand some of the disappointment about the lack of new announcements at this year's D23, it feels worth acknowledging that Disney still has a ton of new rides coming soon.

Within the next few years, WDW will open:
- Rise of the Resistance
- Runaway Railway
- Tron
- Ratatouille
- GotG: Cosmic Rewind
- Cherry Tree Lane & Poppins ride
- Play Pavilion
- Major Epcot spine changes, including SSE update

Comparatively, UOR will open:
- T2 Replacement
- JW Coaster

Disney World is fine.

For me, It’s not really about the difference between what Disney and Universal are doing. The issue I had was, as usual, there was a lot of Disney fluff and promises but we never got any solid dates (to me the rough season isn’t hopeful). Not to mention there were major attractions that were completely glossed over (Tron) and I feel as though we pretty much have the same amount of questions now as we did going into it. Oh, besides we now know that EPCOT will have an amazing new attraction... a splash pad.

That being said, personally my main problem was with the other major panels. Being a big movie nerd I thought the movie panel was extremely lacklustre, and whilst Disney+ looks cool, I don’t think it was the best thing to put all the energy of D23 into. As said, adding more days and spreading the announcements between studios would work more effectively, but then I suppose they would have to choose which product is more value to said studio as the ‘big’ announcements. I don’t see Disney admitting that people would prefer a big Pixar movie over ‘Forky Asks a Question’ on their beloved Disney+!

That's not in the next few years though. Epic Universe is probably coming in 2023 or 2024, and Disney will still have plenty of time to announce new attractions for 2023/24 at the next D23 in 2021, which is around when those projects would be starting construction.

In all fairness, are we expecting everything announced today to be built by 2023? The entire way that Poppins was presented makes me question if we will see that within the next decade haha!

In fact, the majority of the major stuff announced was arguably for EPCOT, which we’ve heard may be finished by 2023, so I’d argue it’s perfectly reasonable to factor in Epic Universe if comparing the announcements. Plus, the fact we know more about Epic Universe from one piece of concept art than we know about GotG: Cosmic Rewind (an attraction we have known about officially for 2 years already) is somewhat concerning.

 

[faceleg]

That's not in the next few years though. Epic Universe is probably coming in 2023 or 2024, and Disney will still have plenty of time to announce new attractions for 2023/24 at the next D23 in 2021, which is around when those projects would be starting construction.

They've also opened a new attraction every year while Disney is just now starting to catch up.

 

[Parkscope Joe]

While I understand some of the disappointment about the lack of new announcements at this year's D23, it feels worth acknowledging that Disney still has a ton of new rides coming soon.

Within the next few years, WDW will open:
- Rise of the Resistance
- Runaway Railway
- Tron
- Ratatouille
- GotG: Cosmic Rewind
- Cherry Tree Lane & Poppins ride
- Play Pavilion
- Major Epcot spine changes, including SSE update

Comparatively, UOR will open:
- T2 Replacement
- JW Coaster

Disney World is fine.

Yeah there’s a ton coming to WDW, I don’t think people are worried about that a as much as the presentation was a let down.

As for your UOR comparison, well we both know Universal plays things closer to the chest and I would bet good money we have several new attractions opening before the last one on the Disney list opens (let alone the whole new park thing).

 

[OrlLover]

I think people were they thinking Disney was gonna respond to Uni’s third gate. They have invested/investing billion of dollars into the parks worldwide so to expect all these huge grand announcements would be setting yourself for disappointment.

 

[Happytycho]

For me, It’s not really about the difference between what Disney and Universal are doing. The issue I had was, as usual, there was a lot of Disney fluff and promises but we never got any solid dates (to me the rough season isn’t hopeful). Not to mention there were major attractions that were completely glossed over (Tron) and I feel as though we pretty much have the same amount of questions now as we did going into it. Oh, besides we now know that EPCOT will have an amazing new attraction... a splash pad.

That being said, personally my main problem was with the other major panels. Being a big movie nerd I thought the movie panel was extremely lacklustre, and whilst Disney+ looks cool, I don’t think it was the best thing to put all the energy of D23 into. As said, adding more days and spreading the announcements between studios would work more effectively, but then I suppose they would have to choose which product is more value to said studio as the ‘big’ announcements. I don’t see Disney admitting that people would prefer a big Pixar movie over ‘Forky Asks a Question’ on their beloved Disney+!



In all fairness, are we expecting everything announced today to be built by 2023? The entire way that Poppins was presented makes me question if we will see that within the next decade haha!

In fact, the majority of the major stuff announced was arguably for EPCOT, which we’ve heard may be finished by 2023, so I’d argue it’s perfectly reasonable to factor in Epic Universe if comparing the announcements. Plus, the fact we know more about Epic Universe from one piece of concept art than we know about GotG: Cosmic Rewind (an attraction we have known about officially for 2 years already) is somewhat concerning.

I agree that there were a lot of problems with many of the D23 panels, and I certainly didn't find the parks panel to be very compelling. The point I was trying to raise though, is that those are strictly D23 problems, and not problems with the actual direction of the company. While the parks D23 panel was a total dub, the actions being taken in the parks are not.

It may not happen, but I'm under the impression that everything on my list is intended to be open by Epcot's 40th in 2022.

They've also opened a new attraction every year while Disney is just now starting to catch up.

Both resorts have opened a new attraction in each of the past 4 years, with WDW having opened multiple attractions in most of those years.

Yeah there’s a ton coming to WDW, I don’t think people are worried about that a as much as the presentation was a let down.

As for your UOR comparison, well we both know Universal plays things closer to the chest and I would bet good money we have several new attractions opening before the last one on the Disney list opens (let alone the whole new park thing).

The point about Universal playing closer to the chest is fair, but I did still put unannounced projects on the UOR list.

About your bet, are you expecting that Universal has more unknown projects for 2021 and 2022, or that some on the Disney list will open much later than that?

I think people were they thinking Disney was gonna respond to Uni’s third gate. They have invested/investing billion of dollars into the parks worldwide so to expect all these huge grand announcements would be setting yourself for disappointment.

Regardless of how much they will be investing at that time, why would Disney give any details about their response now when Universal hasn't actually shared any details about their third gate?

 

[Owen]

I agree that there were a lot of problems with many of the D23 panels, and I certainly didn't find the parks panel to be very compelling. The point I was trying to raise though, is that those are strictly D23 problems, and not problems with the actual direction of the company. While the parks D23 panel was a total dub, the actions being taken in the parks are not.

It may not happen, but I'm under the impression that everything on my list is intended to be open by Epcot's 40th in 2022.

Ah I see what you’re saying now. I’m not sure anybody was questioning the direction of the company in this topic specifically, I know I certainly wasn’t. As far as I’m concerned the fact they’re finally properly investing is a great thing and the direction the parks (not necessarily the company as a whole) is going is quite exciting, just that the D23 presentations this year were lacklustre and it was made more apparent through the major push on Disney+ that D23 is merely a blatant marketing ploy for the company. That’s fine, we knew this, just it was a shame it was made so obvious this go around.

I think that’s where the confusion has come from haha, at least on my end!

 

[GadgetGuru]

So that was a huge wet fart for the most part.

I'm amazed at how tone deaf Chapek is to do 10 minutes on Target and Cirque each. He really does not get that there is a time and a place for this: it's called a shareholders meeting. Nobody is here for you to talk about a Target partnership. The pacing was off-kilter, and rushed through the good stuff and slowed down to hawk... what a shock! Things that the 1% will mostly enjoy: DCL, Lighthouse Point, Reflections, Galactic Starcruiser.

Epcot, for the huge enormous push it got, seemed like Chapek wanted to just get it over with. Here's some music, go away. I'm stunned that two years prior they manage to at least get it right in utterly stacking the announcements and fantastic pacing but utterly failed here.

Completely bewildered. I agree, this event desperately needs to expand to four days.

The Target part made total sense to me. Consumer Products was part of the presentation and the Target announcement was the only consumer products thing they talked about. Everything else was Parks.

I personally don't think Consumer Products should've been shoved into the panel, but they needed to highlight some consumer products thing for the panel to make sense.