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The Disney Dish with Jim Hill
Disney Dish with Jim Hill Special Bonus Episode: What’s next for the Disney Parks
Welcome back to another edition of the Disney Dish podcast with Jim Hill. It's me, Lantesta, and this is a special D23 wrap-up show for Schmer's Day, August 12th, 2024 on the show today. Jim Hill and Jim Schull were in the audience for the D23 park announcements, and join us from Anaheim, California, to record the show. Let's get started by bringing in the men who disregard the phrase recipe for disaster because they're experienced enough at this point to just eyeball all the ingredients. It's Jim Hill and Jim Schull. How's it going, fellas? It is going great, Lant. Though, to be clear here, Mr. Schull and I didn't actually get into the Honda Center for the park's presentation. Security did their job? Oh, my God, that's amazing. Congratulations, folks. The grocery marks nose and the musset didn't work this time, Lant. I don't know what to do. Yeah, I would have gotten through, but no one mistakes Mr. Hill, you know, no matter what. I think you're your idea to go stacked one on top of each other in a trench cup. Maybe you're... I told you. I told you the next time. Do it my way next time. All right, so let's jump right into it. And let me just say as somebody who was watching this, man, what a great D23 this was. Tons of new projects announced, and I think some of it was even surprised to us. So we're going to go over all of this news, including what we know and, from a few guys' perspective, not only what we don't know, but let's talk about what it means in the long term. And to get started, just a quick reminder, all of these things are supposed to be open, in the next five years. That's what we were told, so we're going to go with that. And let's start with Walt Disney World. Okay, so I think the big news here, a car's land is coming to the Magic Kingdom, with two cars named attractions coming to Frontierland. It looks like from the concept art, Jim and Jim, one of these is similar to Radiator Springs in DCA, but through the American Frontier. Did I get that right? Well, sort of. I mean, what's intriguing about the cars thing that's coming to Florida is they're selling it as a rather than visiting Radiator Springs. It's a road rally, and you're out running through the wilderness out beyond Big Thunder. In fact, what's interesting about the concept art that they shared was that you can literally see Big Thunder in the distance. But the foreground is filled with a stylized wilderness that's very much in the car's aesthetic with things, butts, and that sort of abutes that look like car parts. Radio cap, Mesa, and all of the usual suspects are there in the renderings. And so do we think that this is going to be a similar ride to Radiator Springs? Because Jim Schull, as you pointed out, as we were texting yesterday, it rains in Florida, and it doesn't rain as much in California. So the same ride mechanism wouldn't make sense, right? Well, it can make sense, but it took, well, for example, test track is a grandfather of this ride system, which eventually became Radiator Springs Racers at DCA. Sure. But it took a long time for that ride system in Florida to be, I don't know, weatherized? Is that the right term? It's still one of the least reliable rides in Walt Disney World, which is why I don't think they're going to use that specific ride mechanism. Got it. Okay. So, and then the other thing is, what's the other ride supposed to be? Jim Schull, any ideas? Well, I don't know. They're a little bit vague on that, as far as, except for the fact they said, it's going to be something very much for children, a lower-tech family-friendly. So that leads us to probably a simpler ride system, like even a bus bar. I don't know exactly, again, it's surprising. And I was hoping today in the pavilion, maybe to see a little bit more than the artwork that was shared last night. But no, we're still waiting for models or any more information about exactly where, in Frontier Land, this version of Cars Land will land. Ah, okay. So since you brought it up, that's the thing I wanted to go to next. One of the things we don't know is the specific location of these rides. But there are really only two places you could go. One is, Jim Hill, to the north of Big Thunder Mountain. This is the beyond Big Thunder area. And that area is definitely big enough for something the size of their springs in DCA, which is 11 acres, right? Just because I have nothing to do with my life. I did a study last night after I got back. You were texting us via the overlay of the... Yeah, well, you know, sleep is overrated. What do you say? But DCA's version of Cars Land, the complete version, would fit back behind Big Thunder. Now, it would take up, essentially, the entire area. It doesn't leave you room for the other thing that was announced that we'll get too shortly. Right. So, Jim Hill, what's the other place that radiator springs could go? Well, that's the intriguing part of the piece of concept art that they shared, because they actually showed the road rally cars bouncing across a piece of water. So, that they get it. And what's on the other side of the roof is America. It's Tom Sawyer's Island, which, let's be honest, has been an underutilized piece of real estate at the Magic Kingdom for many, many years at this point. And more to the point, during the show at the Honda Center, they actually had Larry, the cable guy, had recorded chunks of dialogue as Mater, and Mater was talking about his favorite thing about the road rally and was bouncing through the water and getting stuck in mud holes. So, that paints a very interesting picture about where this thing could potentially go. Yeah, so the question it raises, though, is, you know, if they go and start to carve away or close, not Mater's Island, are they going to get the same reaction that the fans had when they announced Mr. Toad's Hall was going to be closed? I mean, do they still have pitchforks and flaming torches available? I don't think so for a couple of reasons. Number one, I think this car's land absolutely makes sense for Rivers of America for a couple of reasons. One is, Tom Sawyer Island and the Liberty Bell Riverboat are both low capacity, unpopular attractions. Replacing those two things with two very popular attractions is a win-win. But, Jim Schull, if I'm keeping my Disney business cap on, that also allows me to keep that big expansion area north of Big Thunder that 11 acres for another project for 2030 and beyond. Because, remember, we're going to eventually get an epic universe face too, and Disney will have to counter that. This allows them to expand even again. Well, this is true. Let me ask you this question. When I was listening to the live stream, it seemed like there was a, and I'll describe this charitably, a muted reaction in the audience to this announcement. How did it go over for you guys? You're not wrong. I think that people, and this is what's been interesting with the last two D23s, that they had gotten so much blue sky. And, you remember, these are the people who told, "Yeah, what did you're doing in Canto?" And they went down on the other side of that cocoa, and then on the other side of that villains. And the notion to subtly be thrown cars, but not cars land from California. An audience full of Disney fans were kind of like, "Hey, it's a liverwurst. You like cold cuts, right?" Exactly. Yeah, because you guys had heard before the show that cars was coming to the Magic Kingdom. And I said, "I swear to God, if we're getting radiator springs in the Magic Kingdom for Beyond Big Thunder, I'm done. I'm done with this company." But it's not that. And I really think it makes sense in Tom Sawyer Island there. So we'll see. But I get that the audience reaction was muted, because if this is really what we get for Beyond Big Thunder, I think that's going to be a little bit disappointing. But let me ask you the broader question here. So we've talked about what's coming. When Josh tomorrow announced this, he said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "But really, what is Frontierland but the frontiers that are in our mind?" Oh, yeah. Okay. So let me just say, Disney has now given up on the concept of Frontierland, right? We've talked about this over the last couple of shows. This pretty much makes it official. Frontierland as the original concept is gone, right? I mean, if you look at what we're now looking at, for example, Tiana's Bayou Adventure next to Big Thunder, which is just down the street from a country bears that sings the Disney song catalog. Contemporary songs, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes. This is not a celebration of the American West. But again, let's remember that when you came into the Magic Kingdom, you walked up a street from turn of the century America with a castle at the end of the street. I mean, you're making justifications or qualifications the whole time you're in the park. He's like, "Yeah, that worked. Shut up." All right, Jim, sure. Let me throw this idea at you to discuss. So if cars does go into rivers of America, it also means the end of Liberty Square because Haunted Mansion is going to be the gateway to Villainslands, which we'll talk about shortly. But then the only Liberty Square attraction left will be Hall of Presidents. And that itself is the lowest written attraction in Walt Disney World. So if they put this in Rivers of America, they can eventually reclaim the Hall of Presidents land and rethink it to something else. Thoughts? Well, they have moved a little bit, though, in the other direction of recently, didn't they add the Ichabod grain? If they did, to a legendary square, yeah, in Liberty Square. And there is some love for that restaurant. But at the same time, we always can play these games of if this happens and this happens. And there is a certain amount of love for Liberty Square. It's one of those things where the company goes to shut it down because no one goes until they announce they're going to shut it down then people say, "Don't you dare." And so this is the rabbit hole that we go down. And I don't think even Disney understands exactly or has all the ideas mapped out because, for example, the last two DCAs, they've said, "Here's blue sky." This DCA was anything but that. I mean, Josh DiMaro, who, and by the way, haven't talked about the fact that Mr. Hill driving almost ran Josh DiMaro over on the way to the Anaheim Convention Center. I can't believe you guys didn't get enough to that. But to his credit, Josh looked, made eye contact, and waved and smiled. So it's all good. But backing up, you have this blue sky, you have this concept of development, but that doesn't mean that you can line all the plans on the runway to take off at the same exact time. So when I look at the car's land, I think that's still an idea that is floating out there, but there's some ideas I've seen that look more like sure things, like, you know, book your trip now to come to DCA to see their e-ticket. Book your trip now for Door Coaster. But things that are further out there, I'm not sure that you can say, "Yep, that's all. I'll be there. I'll walk in the park in 2031 and I'll see cars land or the next thing on the list." Let me just go on the record as saying, "I'll be absolutely fine if they get rid of Liberty Square." That's fine. All right. And you mentioned... Well, I mean, the other thing is, and then I'll stop talking about this, is the hall of presidents is A, politically charged. B, no one goes there. C, they have to update it every four years anyway. So it's got a certain amount of maintenance for not a lot of return. It just makes sense to get rid of the land. We'll stop there. And what I think is going to happen, again, we just talked about this, but Haunted Mansion will become the gateway to a new villain's land, which was confirmed as coming to Walt Disney World. So we knew this was coming, the timing was a surprise. And we knew it was coming because Jim Hill, you and I had talked about a video that our own Christina Harrison had done on June 24th, showing the Disney executive standing in that area between the Rapunzel Bathroom and Haunted Mansion, which is the strangest place for a conference meeting I've ever seen. But that's basically going to be the entrance to Villain's Land, we think. Guys, here's the thing though, that one piece of concept art, and it was basically a Rorschach test for what you think should be in Villain's Land. Is there anything definitive that that concept art says? Well, no, Leonard, it is classic Disney concept art. I mean, mind you, I was standing there with, with Tim Grassy, and we were like, okay, now that looks like a piece of coaster track, or we're on the other hand, that looks like, all right, that that might be a street, that might be a store, but but the only thing that's missing from this image is the the hot air balloon that they typically throw into these things, yeah, clouds everywhere. I always like a rainbow myself, but you know, the thing that let me just say here, because I did see the the bit of coaster track as well, Disney has the opportunity here to do the funniest thing imaginable, making it a two-track coaster based on Maleficent and Challenge Universal to a dueling dueling dragons coaster. Oh, I'm so glad you said that, I mean, I was texting shortly earlier with, with, with, you know, lines that I was just throwing away from the show, and I'm like, I could, I could totally work for this company. Totally, totally. So here's a deal about that. Again, this is a Rorschach test, and that's why it's both great and a danger, but when I look at this piece of artwork, I do see a coaster, and I sort of put on my imaginary hat, you know, thinking, Oh, what if you had a thorn coaster? You know, what if you had something that looks like, you know, you go into the thorn forest of Maleficent, because you do see the dragon. You do the job dragon is in there. The usual suspects are there, plus as every good land needs, this one has an icon. It's a beautifully actually a very beautiful twisted castle. And what else is has, I have no idea. And I'm not sure the Imagineers completely have that project scope nailed down themselves. Yeah, I mean, it looks fantastic from a mood setting perspective, but beyond that, not a lot of, not a lot of specifics. But that's fine. You know what they said, we're going to get something. It's within five years. I'm willing to see what they come up with. And don't forget, they have another D23 in two years that we should probably get more announcements on. Yes, this is true. All right, let's continue on with the things that were surprised. Monstropolis, coming to Hollywood studios did not see that coming. Jim Hill, your reaction to this? Well, I adopted to pat myself on the back. But but in 2008, so what we've told the story in the show about the, yeah, oh, the cast member portal that, that for eight hours, a video promoting a monstropolis coaster that was originally supposed to be built at the studios in sound stage one, where as Mr. Schult pointed out, that's no longer available, because that's where the third track for Toy Story mid made mid-way mania opened up. But but again, I I've learned about this in 2008, but Disney pulled down the video after just eight hours and it was never built. So it was like, Hill's been in the tequila again. So 15 years later, finally, like, all right, I was right. I will try to be too obnoxious about it. I did note in the I couldn't find it in the show notes, but we did talk about this in the last year as a as a possible piece of piece of real estate for for the for the door coaster. And speaking of real estate, where is this going? So they said monstropolis land, not not just an attraction in the concept art, seems to show city facades. Yeah, yeah. Well, here's the deal on that. I had some good conversations in the show floor. And one of the things I talked to the person who's leading the monstropolis effort is he said it's a full monstropolis. It's a full it's a city of monstropolis. So looking at the model, it's an enormous building for the door coaster. But in front of that is this enormous complete city. And you really couldn't have the city without the sushi restaurant. You really have to have a character greeting. You know, I'm firstly, I'm waiting to see the toilets, but you know, that's that's something you can have fun with. And you're going to have a big draw, but to build something like that takes a lot of real estate. So the question, it does, you know, I have some information now I have the photographs. And you know, do diligence is going to lead me to try to figure out something that scale. Where can you put it? It's not a case of, you know, will you build it? But it's where could you build it? And really, if you look at the Google Maps for Hollywood Studios, there's really two prime locations that it could go into. One is the Star Wars launch bay area and the area behind that sort of adjacent to rock and rollercoaster. And so, Jim Schull, what are the pros and cons of that location? Well, the pros is there's a lot of land. Now, the con is don't tell the executives who park there, because that's right next to the admin building for that park. So that's a that's a maybe that town, but they do have that parking garage and there is available space. I understand in that parking garage, it's a bit of a schlep, but it's fine. You know, if it came down to a question of inconveniencing some executives for a bucket of money, I would say good luck parking at the line parking garage at Disney Springs and taking the shuttle over to your job at Hollywood Studios. Jim Hill? Yeah, another thing worth noting here is that this is an area that the company has invested money in recently. I mean, for example, we just heard about the revival, the reimagining of the voyage of the Little Mermaid show going into the theater. Likewise, upstairs at the old catwalk bar, this is where the company built one of four on property club 33s. And so my lawyer says, I don't know what you're talking about. There we go. But but the fact that you have those pieces that the company has spent money on, so you know, okay, not going to touch those. So it's like, right, where do you go with those two pieces being you can't use these? Where do you then go? That's that's what intrigues me about this whole bit of, where is there enough real estate to do this giant monstropolis, both the ride and a neighborhood that put you in the world of the monster sink movies? A land. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't think it's I don't think it's completely replacing animation courtyard for two reasons. Jim, the one that you mentioned about them already investing in voyage of the Little Mermaid. Number two, they have Disney Junior there and the park needs things for small children. So those aren't going away. They do. But think about it. Those are in a lot of ways between the Playhouse Disney show and the meet and greets there. I mean, that that's you could literally recreate that anywhere in the park. Well, you could. But let's back up the truck from where you're talking about is originally when it was open this stage restaurant. Oh, yeah. And then there's a kitchen for that restaurant and that kitchen actually backs up to the cast commissary, the old cast commissary. If you're looking Google Earth, you'll look straight down, you see a round, semi-round building. That was the cast commissary when that park opened. And of course, directly above is the D 20 or the club 33 that we just talked about a second ago. So that building and oh, not to not to mention leaving out the old brown derby. So that building is not going anywhere. No, if you touch anything in that building, you're touching all of that. No, yeah, no. Yeah. So I don't think that's changing. All right, the other area that it could go into, and I know I'm speaking of touching third rails here, Muppets courtyard, they could they could demolish Muppets and put Monstropolis there. And I'm going to go, I'm going to be the guy in the black hat here and say, I think they should demolish my Muppets courtyard, get rid of Muppets and put Monstropolis there. Okay, Len, I know where you live. I mean, you're housed tonight. So, you know, pitch, expect to fly any torches and pitch, pitch forks, you know. Yeah. I don't know. I, you know, so, so I mean, here's the thing. So replacing Star Wars launch bay with Monstropolis does allow Disney to consolidate all the Star Wars stuff into two areas instead of three, right? But replacing Muppets courtyard makes sense if Disney wants to build a land proper. And again, I told you guys during the show, the concept art shows city building facades, the only place in the park that already has existing city building facades and restaurants is Muppets courtyard. Well, except the M&F throw, you know, throw red blanket here. And it's not a city facade. It looks like Monstropolis. You know, it's amazing what you can do with the stucco these days. That's what I'm told. All right. And just, I know where you live. I think I know where you live. One other thing I just want to put out there. Now, remember, when they were building Galaxy's Edge, they actually took the, the hot air balloon. Oh, yeah. You're right. Yeah. That was replicated out of the great Muppet caper off of the top of the Muppet 3D theater, because it was going to visually intrude into the Star Wars Galaxy's Edge. And look at her. The monsters ink, the door hanger building. I mean, that's going to visually intrude on downtown Orlando, let alone, you know, the Galaxy's Edge. Wherever that goes. And I saw your point, right? But here's my thing. If it's going to visually intrude, right, does it, could you paint it to look more like sort of the brutalist architecture of Galaxy's Edge, or can you somehow paint that to look like Sunset Boulevard? And of the two, Jim, you can probably make it look more like Galaxy's Edge, which means Muppet's courtyard. All right. All right. All right. I see, I see your point. Okay. All right. Hang on a couple of weeks, folks. There'll be, there'll be a line for this in Vegas. We can all bet on it. Yeah. Exactly. Another thing we got to do, more details on tropical America's here, including the confirmation that we have the Indiana Jones ride, the carousel themed to, is it, is it in Kanto? Yeah, it's, and I'm blanking the, the, the, it's Mirabelle's young cousin who has the animal ability that I think once upon a time, this was supposed to feature all of the animals that he could charm and he could talk to from the, the in Kanto film. But what's interesting when you look at the concept art, it's actually celebrating Disney wild animals, like say, car from the Jungle Book and Timon and Dumbo from The Lion King. And even, these are characters like Nigel, the pelican from, from Finding Nemo, but you were mentioning. Oh, and Kevin. Kevin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I saw the, I saw Kevin as a ride vehicle. That's great. You wanted to point out that, that these are being done in a very specific folk art style. Well, yes. And it's one that's indigenous to tropical America, which is alahabri. Mm hmm. And I happen to have a collection of those at home. So I know where I speak, but they're a little softwood, tiny figures in their extractions or abstractions of native animals that you'd find in tropical America. Remember, you should be able to get these inside the Mexico pavilion and EPCOT for a long time, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, back in the day, but they're brightly painted. They're very friendly. They're lots of, yeah, lots of fun. So, they're, you know, an animal kingdom does not have a carousel. And actually, they would be the second coat, the second one, because only magic, magic kingdom has a carousel, but not the other two, EPCOT or the studio. So this would bring a carousel to the animal kingdom. So, so we knew that a dinosaur was becoming an Indiana Jones ride. We did hear that it's going to be a completely new story. Yeah. For the ride. So not a, not a clone from Adventureland in Disneyland. No, it's supposedly leaning into Mayan mythology and we're going to get an entirely different big bad that Indy's going to go up against. So it will be interesting to see what get the livers there. And the, the village itself, Dinerland is being re-themed to the village of Coco, is that correct? Well, no, this is the village of Encanto. This is the, oh, sorry, sorry. In fact, the icon that's going to draw you deeper into the land is the, the home of the, the Mitrigal family from again, in Encanto. And the interesting thing here, Jim, and I was texting Jim Hill during the D23 announcements for this. My big question was, was this the original concept art showed a boat ride. It did. But the concept art now does not show a boat. It shows people sitting on something, but the ride system itself is remarkably not defined. So what, what kind of a ride vehicle, what kind of a ride system are we looking at here? Well, actually, now, again, I hate to be the one who scoots out on the limb here. But what I have heard is that basically the Encanto experience is supposed to be trying to replicate for Disney's animal kingdom. What mystic manner is for Hong Kong Disneyland with the, with the idea that you make your way. I mean, in a weird way, if you've been on Remy, you understand this. Yeah. I mean, you, you go to a station, you board a vehicle for, for, for passenger vehicles that dispatch at the same time. Only in this case, you are going through the the Mitrigal family home. You, each of the, the daughters, you, you get to go to their rooms and see what their abilities are. And then it, at one point, supposedly, you then duck behind the walls, and you enter the space where Bruno has been hiding all of this time. And, and you, of course, get your big, we don't talk about Bruno musical moment. Oh, fantastic. So trackless ride system. There we go. So again, in fact, if you look at the concept art, you can see it's two sets of four passengers going into a, a, a Mitrigal theme of chosen. Yeah. And the model has not just the, the cost of the house that the Encanto family live in, but also the show building behind it. And you get a sense of scale. And notice that that's a three-story show building. Are we talking about multiple stories here for this experience? No, I think you were, you're looking at typically you'd have something where, you know, you'd have the big scenes that require high-based spaces, would have a high-based space. Yeah. I mean, the, the, there were, I mean, that was, again, remember the, the concept of the Encanto was that the, the Mitrigals lived in a magic house where I mean, sometimes you'd enter rooms where it's like, it's like director who is big around the inside. Got it. Got it. Yeah. And look at the model. Look at the model. One of the things that's jumped out of me, Len, was the queue is off to the left. So you approach the house, but you never actually entered the house proper. You go near the house and there's a queue and a garden and eventually you make your way inside and you'll board your vehicles and then explore the house. But in reality, that building is kind of like the Hunter Mansion at Magic Kingdom at Disney World. You never really go up those steps to go inside the house. Oh, that's interesting. So, yeah. Okay. So in this, so I've put the all of the concept art in the show notes, folks. In here, the thing that Jim is talking about to the left would be in sort of in the bottom center of the, of the image. That is the queue. I can see people in it now. All right. That, that's pretty interesting. But on the, on the cheerful note, Hector and the, the guys, what was the name of that there? Their shop. Oh, Chester and Hester. Yes. The Dynorama. Yeah, that building survived. Yeah. Under new management. There you go. Under new management here. That's fine. That's fine. All right. So that looks really, really good. And, and they said, a D23 that work on this is going to start immediately if not sooner, right? So, but then, but dinosaur is going to be open a little while longer than everything else. Yeah. I guess that's a capacity play. Yeah. They made a very big deal with this D23 about these are shovel ready projects. Right. But the animal kingdom, it's like, this is not a drill. This is happening like immediately. Right. Well, and which makes, wouldn't that make perfect sense because the area that they're talking about building the Incantoride, that's the old Dynorama area and the coasters are already gone. Yeah. So it's a lot easier to go out there when there's nothing there to start to dig it up. Exactly. And we know that they've already got construction trailers behind that area for, for project management ready to go. All right. Let's, let's finish up at Magic Kingdom, a couple of other things. New Millennium Falcon Smuggler's Run Mission. This one includes Grogu. That's Baby Yoda and the Mandalorian. So the big thing that I got out of this guys was as theme park nerds, this means Disney has officially ended the original timeline concept for Galaxy's Edge. And that means we can eventually see Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia on Batut, right? Yeah. I mean, it was a, it was a noble effort. I mean, look, Kathleen Kennedy, remember, when they originally designed Star Wars of Land for the studio, you were supposed to go to Tatooine. You know, you were supposed to eat the world of New Hope, but Kathleen basically went to the imaginers and said, look, we're after the next generation of Star Wars fans. And so the notion was, can we tie, can we build these or tie them to the new trilogy? And, and to watch little girls interact with Rey and that sort of thing. Oh, yeah, Rey's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. But, but there isn't just as much love for that trilogy as there is, for example, for the Mandalorian or the Ahsoka limited series or the Book of Boba Fett. And that's, that's what we're about to see go into this ride film. Right. Yeah. I mean, they may have just shot themselves because in the original concept is no blizzard wise, it limited the number of, well, and limited the number of characters they could have in their land and they have a rich catalog of characters that people want to see. Yeah. And this, you know, is a, is a big step to breaking that seal and crossing the streams where you could have a Kayla rendered one section of Darth and the other. I'm waiting for that smackdown, by the way. So it's coming. Okay. Let me, let me just say that now that the timeline is officially open to include the original three films of the original trilogy and we have a vacant galactic star cruiser sitting what a quarter of a mile away within walking distance of this land. It opens up the possibility of a Darth Vader character breakfast. And let me just say right now, guys, you must, we'll start clicking on Disney's website for reservations right now, because you're never going to get in. Darth Vader character meal. Tell me about it. Okay. I want to see us know, but now it's possible right now. Oh, no. Tell me it's not going to be buffet where I've stormtroopers and chefs hats and aprons serving me my scrambled eggs and French toast. We could, we could just, they could just line up the trucks full of money and just ship it in. Yeah. Okay. I find your lack of waffles. Some say it just writes itself. Guys, come on. It does. I'll give it. All right. Two other things, spaceship Earth corporate lounge got announced. This is, I guess, of the old Siemens lounge. Yeah, which I haven't been to in forever. Beautiful lounge, beautiful location. You can overlook all of the new gardens. And this joins the pirate theme lounge, which we got a little bit more concept art for. That's going to open in an adventure land. Both of these things are supposed to open in 2025. Fantastic. The, the last little bit for Walt Disney World, correct me if I'm wrong, was we got slightly more detail on the test track redo. We heard that the queue is going to have six areas. And each of the six areas is going to celebrate the vehicles and the people behind them that push the envelope and help give people to our next chapter in our emotion journey. And also, there are show scenes that show how our life and relationships are served through the ability to be mobile through cars. Okay. I'm not sure what that means. And I don't know that how we're going to reflect on spending quality time with family and friends as we go 60 miles an hour outside. Okay. You know what? That's why the Imagineers are paid the big bucks. There we go. There we go. This is true. All right. So let's move over to a to Disney California adventure where, which also got a lot of love at D23. First thing I wanted to note is we got more information about the Avatar ride that's coming to that park. So first question, Jim Schull, where in the park are we thinking about for this? Well, it could be going one or two places. You could take down something that's already there that's low performing. And by that, Hollywood back. You'll say, oh, yeah. Yeah. Other than that, you'd have to bike the bullet and cross Disneyland drive and, you know, go into one of the old parking lots and break ground there and take Disney DC across the street. Yeah. So of those two options, which one is, which one is more budget friendly to an imagine? Oh, yeah. Pull the bulldozers into Hollywood back a lot tomorrow. All right. And Jim Hill, what is the concept art that we got? What is that describing? Well, again, this is, you know, if, if, if Navi River journey, if I, I think it was Mr. Schull, or pre gaming pointed out, if Navi River journey from Animal Kingdom had a baby with Shanghai, Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean. I mean, it looks to be the exact same large capacity ride vehicle. But the other note that they put out there is that you were in the beautiful world of Pandora. But this is also a dangerous world. In fact, in this piece of concept art, you're, you're kind of in the night jungle and you're surrounded by these rather sinister B suit. I don't think everything looks hungry, everything looks hungry. You mentioned that it's a, it's a cross between Navi River journey and Pirates of the Caribbean. And I note that the, the, the boat itself is even looks like even larger capacity than Pirates of the Caribbean. It looks like it's for a cross in what six rows of 24 people? Oh, yeah. No, no, this is a, this is a people moving. Well, that starts the thing that if you've ever seen the ride vehicle for Shanghai, Disneyland's version of Pirates, this is similar capacity. And more to the point, it's a ride vehicle that can do some very interesting things. Yeah, it can spin, it can rotate, it can speed up, it can slow down. And that was all in service in Shanghai where they needed you to pivot like an omnivore toward a screen. So you could spend quality time in front of a screen or quality time with the animatronic of Jack Sparrow. Yes, this looks like a, I'm glad the, for two things, one, we're getting a boat ride in, in DCA, number two, it's not a direct clone of Navi River journey, which, you know, to give Disney credit here, nothing here is a clone. Yeah. So far. Yeah. I was, I was joking with you guys before the D23 announcements. And I said, if Madge, if Walt Disney World gets any clones, I'm going to find the intern who knows the password to the copier machine at Imagineering and take it away from them. But again, to their credit, this has been a really, really good D23, very solid stuff. No clones. The, the other thing that was announced was Avengers Infinity Defense, DCA Avenger Campus. And we were talking about this before the show. And we said it looked like the sum of all thrills had a baby with something, like, well, forbidden journey. Well, now what's interesting is that they actually announced, what is it that? Well, first of all, they confirmed the King Thanos ride that I want to say, wasn't it the D23 Expo four years ago when they first walked this out? Yeah. So now, I mean, we'd not only have, in fact, remember, Len, when we were in DCA back in March of last year. Yes, students in front of the building and explained that, for example, were we into where the actual entrance of the ride was? And Jim's like, no, that's a store that sort of laid out what was going on there. But, but there is this giant super deluxe e-ticket that's going in. But there is also two, to its credit, what you're mentioning, the, the thing that looks very much like some of all thrills, Kuka arm. But this is actually a secondary attraction to add capacity to the land. I want to say it's, it's called stark labs. I mean, in fact, what was kind of interesting, they had a photograph of Bob Eiger and Robert Downey Jr. actually writing or seated in this thing. Sure, as one does. Yeah, as one does. But but this will also be in the land again with the notion of we need some additional capacity. Which actually, you know, is brilliant in one way. This light stark lab, as shown in the artwork, sits outside in the land. It's it sits outside. So it has strong visual appeal that adds connect to the land in, you know, land that everything else is inside me. Think of it. The Spider-Man ride rewrote is inside of a show building. The new, the new infinity ride is going to be inside of a show building. You can't see what you're about to get into. There's not a lot of movement or action in Avengers campus. And so flight lab will give them that. And we'll just. Oh, interesting. Just think of it as a dumb bow that shakes your feelings out. Exactly. But there's no truth. Do they collect the money after? Whatever, whatever change they vacuum it up at night. Okay. That would be something that Tony Starks would do so that I get that. All right. And so let's finish up on our domestic stuff with the big announcement from Disney Cruise Line that nobody saw coming. And that's four new ships added to the fleet launching from 2027 to 2031. Did anyone see this coming? I have to admit, when that slide came up, it was like, what are they smoking over the Disney Cruise Line? Just in the, whatever it is, they're making money on it. Whatever. No doubt. No doubt. I mean, I mean, that's the thing when you actually drill down into the Cruise Line numbers and what they are doing capacity-wise and the guest approval rate, I mean, nothing in the Disney company is as beloved by more and has more repeat customers than the Cruise Line. But four more ships between now and 2031. Yeah. So let me point out two things. One is that two of those four ships might be replacements for the magic and wonder, which will be 30 years old by the end of the decade. And as Laurel points out, generally cruise ships don't last as long as a Leonardo DiCaprio girlfriend, which has the limit of 25 years old. Okay. So two of those might be replacements, but still two new cruise ships. And yeah, Jamil, to your point, where are these going? Where are they sailing? I don't know. It's fascinating to look at though, but I mean, the idea of four new cruise ships is a lot of fun. Again, with everything else that we talked about, there's a bunch of unknowns here. Is it going to be a new ship class? So the last couple have been wish clash ships. The next couple are wish class ships. Is this can be bigger? Are they gonna be smaller? Are they gonna be different? We don't know, but hopefully we'll know more soon. Okay. All right. Onto other parts around the world. Disney Adventure World in Paris looks like it's getting a Lion King ride in the smart aleck comment that I got when they revealed this concept art, which looks like a log flume ride was, oh yeah, a log flume ride, just like the one in the movie. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I remember that. That was my favorite sequence. But Jamishoul Jamishoul describe what's going on here. Well, it very much looks like the beloved splash mountain artwork when you know that was released for Disneyland decades ago. What's interesting about it, Len, is it's showing people in line seating. It's a great example. It's a it's three people in a row sort of like three people in a row space mountain. Yeah, exactly. And it's a great example of concept art and how things fall out of sequence, because if you turn to the model, which is in the show notes, you'll see they've designed a model of the actual ride vehicle. And there it's not in line. It's how many seats across it. It's it's four rows with three people in each row. So we're going from a ride vehicle with three people to a ride vehicle with 12 people. Yeah. So you're basically dropping a pirate's boat off the side of the flume instead. And the way that I look at it is this, you know, you're going through the the the savannah, right? There's all kinds of dangerous things there. The more people in that boat, the better your odds of survival, right? It's just it's it's it's herd instinct, right? In fact, if you could if you could wear a zebra pattern while you're on the boat, it will confuse the predators even more. So but but that's it. Another thing worth noting here is that if this concept art suggests that this ride is not based on the 1994 hand-drawn version, right? Right. But rather the the John Favreau photo realistic version from 2019, which by the way, that franchise gets extended this December with Barry Jenkins, Mufasa, the Lion King, the prequel, right? And here's here's my question, uh, and Jim show you've you've experienced the winters in France outdoor boat ride in France in the winter. What's what's going what's how's that going to be received? Well, they could be, you know, the drinks will be anti freeze instead of die coke. It's not, you know, it's not that pleasant to be out there because again, Margaravelli is in northern Europe. People don't think of it that way, but it it gets cold at four p.m. All the park lights are on at two o'clock. They turn them on and everyone walks around and they're full winter regalia. So do you really want to be on that ride four months a year? You know, one of the challenges I think they're going to have is how dry can you make a log flume or water ride? Yeah, you know, how we've seen with, uh, we've seen with China's bio adventure in Walt Disney World that they can turn off the water cannon. And, you know, we've seen with Kali River Rapids when it gets cold, you know, that'd be the time to do maintenance and stuff like that. So, you know, even if it's down a couple months of the year during the coldest time of the year, that would probably be fine during spring and summer. Yeah, and this is true, but, you know, again, going back to the model, we see the the icon is pride rock and the foreground element we have to look at is the background, because in the background behind pride rock is an enormous show building. And it was such a big building that in the model that's on the show floor, they don't show the entire model. There's just this weird cutoff where they just said, okay, we've got to display case this big and no bigger. So that is the show building hack it off. And I also the only one who thinks that, you know, as you're going up the load hill is, is that where they do the song be prepared? Are you prepared? Be prepared. But, you know, the reality is there's a, this is a great example of logic, theme park logic and Disney park logic and how the logic works in different places, because having lived in France, very common that people in France will go to Algeria, to go to Morocco, they go to the west coast of Africa to get out of the rain, the wet. So that has a lot of appeal, and that's why their adventure land in their magic kingdom is not tropical. It's Moroccan. It has, you know, mud, huts and stone and whatnot. So, you know, going that direction for the lanking pride lambs, which is the working title, absolutely makes sense. Fantastic. All right. So, and Jim Schold, did they give a timeline for this as well? Is this also within five years? Oh, well, reality is, you know, they've already announced and surprisingly that the opening of Adventure World is now, was 2025 was the working date? And now they've officially said, nope, nope, nothing of the sort is 2026. So, logically, you're not going to follow up lanking that close to the opening of Adventure World. When exactly. A couple years after that. I'd say you'd be looking at three, four years, so maybe even 31. Interesting. Okay, we'll see. The other big announcement was Shanghai is getting a Spiderman coaster, it looks like, right? Yes. Yeah, there are actually their plans on that and they released the official first artwork on that, several pieces in it. From the look of that, it looks like we're Shanghai's about to get a launched coaster. And is this similar in coaster design, Jim Schold, to say Tron? Like, what would be the thing that Americans would be most familiar with from this sort of... Well, and I think it's probably closer to the Volassa coaster, which is over in Jurassic World at Ireland's University's Islands of Adventure. And what do you say that? Well, looking at the track, looking at the launch mechanism, again, you know, the coaster nerd that I am, I look at artwork that shows me coaster backbone, and I look at... Give me a good backbone any day, and then, you know, that's a square as a B&M and round is an intimate and we can go on and on. But this smells like Intamin launch coaster. Okay, and you noticed before the show, we were talking about the fact that the concept art does not show shoulder restraints on the coaster. No, no, the artwork lens that's been released shows a pretty aggressive looking coaster, but the guests only are secured by a lap bar. And that would be like Volassa coaster, which we've talked about, Jim Hill on the show, the fact that there is no shoulder restraint and it's all lap bars and very snug, very secure ones. Like, that makes the experience, I think, better. And when you say better, you're terrifying. Yeah, that's what I'm going for, they're terrifying. Well, you know, your idea of thrilling is very different from my Mr. Test. But still, it looks really, really good. I know when I... So now when I go on my tour of the Asian parks, I'll be sure to catch this one. Besides this, I think I've hit all of the things that I wrote down. Is there anything here that we missed, Jim Hill, in terms of announcements or details? Okay, the one that I, and honestly, I am the most excited about, because the Tower of Terror that is going to be built on Hong Kong Disneyland as part of their Avengers campus, it is a Spiderman take on this material. And the notion is that you are in this version of, you know, when it comes to that plummeting moment, that you have been in between a battle between Spiderman and Doc Ock, and Doc Ock cuts the table. And so when you're plummeting, it's because, and then suddenly have that boring moment, it's because Spiderman has suddenly webbed your vehicle to present, prevent you from crashing at the bottom of the shaft. And it's like, it is such a smart, fun looking update of Tower. I mean, again, the hill, like I would book a plane to Hong Kong just to get to go on this ride when it goes live. And a smart move of, and then what's a smart move about this is that you're going to have a Spiderman coaster in Shanghai, but a Spiderman version of Tower of Terror in Hong Kong. So again, same properties, but very different rides based upon those same properties. Yeah, and it didn't make sense for them to export the Tower of Terror concept, because the Twilight Zone show itself doesn't have any meaning in the Asian parts, right? It's just not something that they grow up with. Spiderman makes sense. Yeah, in fact, I mean, about the tower that got built, it took you to Disney Seas, where we got the whole Harrison high tower backstory, because it's like, who is this Rod Serling man, and why does he keep smoking? And then Jim Schull, what else do you want to add to this before we close? Oh, I just think I've got to stay at the obvious after two D23s where they stood on the stage and said, we're thinking about this, and basically throwing out the chum into the audience about getting to a greater reaction. It's such a nice show to walk away with some real meat, some real proposals. And as Josh said, when he mounted the stage, he said, this is not blue sky. Everything you're seeing here, we want to build. Yeah. And one of the best D23s we've seen in a long, long time, they did everything they were supposed to do, and then threw in a bunch more surprises. Love to see stuff like this. Very excited to see how they developed this. And we still have a lot of open questions, which will provide us endless shows going forward. So I guess thanks very much for making yourselves available. I know you've worked every day for the last three days, and now we're recording late at night. But thanks for doing it again. Next time we got to get you out here for this. Yeah. Next time. Next time. All right. Yeah. So it'll give us a fighting chance against Josh tomorrow's jogging routine. Yeah, we know. We know. We know. We know. Sure. Stocking is not our lingo. All right, folks, that's going to do it for this special D23 wrap up show today. Thanks for subscribing and supporting the Disney dish over at patreon.com slash Jim Hill media. Don't forget on next Monday's show, come on and lift your glass. Even on your own free pass. It stories about Finnessy lands. Be our guest restaurant done in perfect taste. You can find more of Jim at Jim Hill media.com or of Jim Schul where Jim Schul. You can find me over my new YouTube channel, Disney journey with Jim Schul. And you can find more of me, Len at touring planes.com. We're produced spectacularly by Eric Cursi. He'll be selling his save Millard Fillmore Hall of Presidents T-shirts on Etsy any minute now. Well, Eric's doing that. Please go on to iTunes and Ritter Show and tell us what you'd like to hear next for Jim and Jim. This is Len, we'll see you on the next show. [BLANK_AUDIO]