I mean, yeah, I am.
I'm talking guest in the park experience, not hindsight. Rocket Rods was a more fun attraction. The queue of people who lined up for it bolsters that fact. It was obviously impacted by budget cuts. The set dressing in the tunnels wasn't great. But it wasn't great before either. That's my point. The track remained the same. The unthemed passages remained mostly the same or slightly dressed up. The speed and seating arrangement are all that changed for the rider. The speed made the ride more fun to experience. The seating arrangement was more thrilling as well. Especially when the cars would pop a wheelie.
If we're using wait times as a metric of success, seems important to include the hourly capacity.
We have to look at the whole picture though not through the lens and vacuum of nostalgia you have for it. It sucked in reality BECAUSE it was budget cut. This lead to the stop/start jerky experience of the attraction which was never intended, which lead to guest dissatisfaction due to not having the actual “thrill”, which also lead to the overall attraction becoming unsafe because of the columns taking on too much stress which lead to its closure.
If only TL had that much color and design. Instead, we got these malls...
Again, these are awesome. I wish I had lived in this America. All I got was the dying end of this era.
And yet drew queues that were well more than 4 times the wait PM received. It was a more attractive attraction to the general public. It's simply a fact.
You can go to the mall in Riverside. Or Glenora. Or Moreno Valley. They all have the same sad old TL vibe. Still look like this, just nobody in them. Like 90's TL.
I don't think you understood my comment at all.
Do you think malls are no longer visited because they're aesthetically dated? Malls are dead primarily due to online shopping, not because of there's an excess of neon and palm trees.
I'm just speaking as a guest paying to visit the park. And TL 98 was certainly better than what it updated from a guest perspective. Freshly updated building facades that felt more dynamic. New lighting packages. Updated thrill version of old classic PM. FAR more modern 3D Film Theatre without problematic individuals. An OPEN Carousel Theatre rotating and featuring a new Animatronic that looked amazing. Autopia saw an improved queue and themed elements as well as car upgrades and a longer track. We also got some edutainment spaces about NASA, which now are empty vacant holes by Buzz Lightyear as well as the path to bypass the Buzz Giftshop.
I mean, yes, but it seems disingenuous to note this without pointing out that the hourly capacity of Rocket Rods was, based on Distorian's numbers, 1/4 of the capacity for Peoplemover, in addition to Rocket Rods being much less reliable.
I never said the aesthetic of an old, dated mall led to them falling out of fashion, simply that theming an optimistic future to look like an old outdated currently existing aesthetic might not be the best way to go with theme.
True. But the ride was also more popular. PM wouldn't get a queue over 3 minutes. RR would draw queues that lasted up to 2 hours. You can't tell me that if they only sat 1/4 PM cars, the queue would ever be more than 15 minutes.
This is fine, and I agree, but Tomorrowland '98 did not do that.
Another factor: we also didn't get to see the decline of Rocket Rods from a popularity perspective. The lines being long for the two-ish years it was around when it was the most heavily hyped new attraction aren't really an accomplishment; the same would be true of pretty much ANY new ride.
TL entry plaza with all of the rockwork and metalwork. The mosaics which harbored back to a less 70's aesthetic. The facade for Inoventions was a thing of tangible beauty compared to how it looked prior. Autopia's queue also featured more metalwork and detailed architecture.
