I just finished this week’s WDW Radio podcast, which was all about the Animal Kingdom attraction, Dinosaur. On the podcast they pose the question of what you would change with the ride, and surprisingly they had nothing to say in this department. I have a whole lot to say. I’ll preface all of this with the statement that I do like the attraction, and I still ride it every time I go to Animal Kingdom. In fact it was my favorite attraction up until Everest opened.
First off, I never liked the name change. I doubt anybody did. Countdown to Extinction was far superior to the incredibly generic Dinosaur. The ride is not about dinosaurs. It’s about a race through time. It’s a Small World is about world peace. Imagine if they renamed it to Singing Dolls. What’s so bad about using such a simple name is that guests are given no idea of what lies beyond the turnstiles and have no primer for what to expect in regards to story.
The name change was an obvious quick and dirty attempt to tie the ride into the Dinosaur film that was released in 2000. I’ve never liked these blatant attempts at what the marketing department would call “leveraging synergies”. Building an attraction based on a film is one thing, but this is incredibly disingenuous and as a result cheapens the attraction as a whole.
When they made the name change, they also toned the attraction down a bit. That’s a bummer but honestly I don’t remember how intense the original was so I don’t really think of this as a big problem. On the plus side it did make the ride more accessible to children due to a lower height requirement. Kids love dinosaurs, so in the end I see this as a net positive.
But my real problem with Dinosaur is how Operations (or “Ops”) has totally screwed this ride. That happens a bit since they are no where near as idealistic as Imagineering, but in the case of Dinosaur it’s much worse. On this week’s WDW Radio they wonder how many guests really understand the story of the attraction, and they are correct in saying that the answer is unfortunately very few. I blame this on Ops.
Do you remember the last time you actually saw the ride’s entire pre-show? The answer is probably never or close to it. In their short-sighted attempts to improve the ride’s hourly capacity, Ops has done everything they can to remove the pre-show short of actually removing it. They start the video playing as the very first guests walk into the pre-show room. They keep the entrance doors open the whole time so all the light and noise of the big queue room spill in. They don’t fully turn the lights down. They let guests into the pre-show for its entire duration, so most of them come in half-way through and have no idea what is going on in the story. To cap it all off, the exit doors open before the pre-show even ends. How can you blame the average guest for not understanding the story of Dinosaur when Ops is making it impossible to take it all in?
The great irony of this awful situation is that these policies were put into place back when the ride was still very popular, I presume to reduce wait times. It’s almost understandable that they’d try to reduce wait times when they’re climbing above 100 minutes, but I say almost because even at 2+ hours you’d never see them doing this at Test Track or The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Imagine if they opened the secret door in the Haunted Mansion stretching room before the room was finished stretching! Only Dinosaur got this treatment, and I’m not sure why. Story is just as important there as it is anywhere else.
Nowadays, the wait times aren’t anywhere near that high. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wait time of more than 30 minutes posted*, and even then the actual wait is usually in the realm of 10-15, or maybe 20 minutes on a busy day. With wait times that low, why are they continuing to rush guests through the attraction at lightning speed? It makes no sense, and only further serves to cheapen an attraction that’s already had enough of that.
I can only conclude that Team Disney Orlando simply does not care about Dinosaur. It’s sad too, because it is a good attraction and with a little forward-thinking love and care it could be one of guests’ favorites. Of course, it’ll never be as good as its progenitor, Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye out in Disneyland, but that deserves its own post.
*To be fair I only go during non-peak seasons, but I only ever went in non-peak seasons back when waits were over an hour.
Photo Credit: jackskellington101
