That’s the thing with outliers, though…they statistically don’t belong in comparisons like this. The only thing Disney could’ve done to counter Epic is a park of their own, but that would effectively put them at nearly double the gates UO would have. It’s a tough comp to make.
That’s a popular narrative, but if you look at the additions each year for the last ~7 years, Disney has gone blow for blow with Universal and if one were to argue their additions were of higher overall quality, it wouldn’t be that outrageous.
I agree that if a bunch of this gets cancelled (tbh I haven’t even really fully dug into the extent of everything rumored or confirmed), then that’s a bad look. But, again, if we use Disney’s last big rumor dump as a reference point, then we have no reason to doubt (see again, the list of additions 2017 to present which, regardless of personal preference, is objectively significant), leading me to question where the skepticism is coming from. I get that maybe their announcement strategy makes things feel more spread out and sparse, which is why I outlined the year over year additions in my other post…because the facts don’t align with that narrative.
Nah, you’re my guy. I didn’t mean that toward any one particular person here…it’s more about the macro-level narrative that just objectively doesn’t make sense.
I think the main element founding my skepticism is that I haven't been convinced yet that they couldn't have finished a good chunk of the post-Pandora expansions much faster than they did. Epcot Hub, Moana, Tron, Guardians, even despite the pandemic I feel like these were dragged out way further than was reasonable. I can certainly hope that this was simply a result of the Mid-Late Iger era where Disney was on top in every department and didn't have to work especially hard, and the Chapek years where cuts were felt across the whole company, but I can't expect them to speed up that process in the future when I haven't seen them do that in ages.
If they had finished the Post-New Fantasyland projects at the same level of aggression that Universal has worked to finish theirs in the same timespan, might we have already seen a number of these newly rumored additions breaking ground by now?
Maybe they have been more aggressive than I've given them credit for, but with Universal only having two parks and WDW having four, every Universal update feels way more substantial and comes in much better time. Disney dug it's own pit when it built DAK. I personally think they have, or should have, the resources to keep all four parks feeling fresh and updated even despite 2x the parks to work on. I would love to see the clear #1 most successful theme park company in the world act like they're #1 and leading the industry for once, instead of just reacting when the #2 or #3 get a little too rowdy with their Potter's and Nintendo's and such.
For a park as popular as Disney World will forever be, "Too-little, Too late" is practically not a thing. These updates are purely a good thing longterm, and I'm glad there is seemingly any movement at all. In my view though, WDW
is playing catch-up to a number of their quiet periods, and that's why I say that even despite 10 years of upgrades the parks still don't feel satisfactory to me just yet. I just want them to be better sooner rather than much, much later.
To give credit where it's due, Splash Mountain has had a reasonable turnaround time and I'm happy to see the bump from October to July. That's a positive sign to me. And I wanna reiterate that Flight of Passage, Rise, M&MRR, Guardians, M:JoW, Epcot Hub have all blown my expectations way out of the water once I was finally able to experience them. Disney still has their groove, but they still fall victim to these long gap periods that make these additions feel few and far between personally.
I love these kinds of discussions, and I appreciate the kind sentiments. I hope my thoughts aren't too annoying or clogging things up for the larger community here, I am just rather passionate about these things and love writing about and discussing them. This'll probably end up being my last big post about the subject. My hope is that a good number of people here might at least understand my perspective, even if they don't agree. This is all in good fun in the end!
