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The New “New Fantasyland”

Lots of news from the Mouse today. Star Tours: The Adventures Continue (new, too long name) is going to open on May 20. That’s awesome news for me. I love Star Tours. But the real big news is that the Fantasyland expansion plans have drastically changed. Here’s the short and sweet of it.

The original plans (not including the Storybook Circus area — which is still on track) called for an Little Mermaid ride, a “Be Our Guest” restaurant, and a myriad of Princess “cottages” where you could meet and greet the Princesses in some pretty fantastic sounding scenarios. There were also plans for a “Pixie Hollow” area for Tinkerbell and her recently-manufactured fairy friends.

The new plans call for the same Little Mermaid ride and “Be Our Guest” restaurant, but the rest has changed significantly. The “cottages” are gone (except for Belle’s). So is Pixie Hollow. The new concept art shows that the circus will be taking over what was to be Pixie Hollow (what attractions will go there is anybody’s guess right now). The Princesses are still in, but without the cottages their meet-and-greets won’t be quite as fantastic as originally planned. The other big news is that in order to make room for the now evicted princesses, Snow White’s Scary Adventure will close and become “Princess Fairytale Hall” where you can line-up and meet the girls in the traditional Disney manner. In the places of the cottages is a brand new Seven Dwarfs Mine Coaster that sounds like it will be part dark-ride, part coaster. It’ll have music and animatronics, but with a coaster train instead of an omnimover.

Lots of people are upset that Snow White’s Scary Adventure (SWSA) is closing and being replaced with a lame sounding meet-and-greet building. Let me explain why you shouldn’t be upset over this change. While losing SWSA is a bummer (it’s always sad to see an old attraction go), it isn’t simply being replaced by a stupid meet-and-greet. Instead, Fantasyland is doing a bit of a shuffle.

The original expansion plans called for way too much space to be devoted to these meet-and-greets. These plans were also too girly, which is something the Disney brass were apparently scared about. The new plans ax the cottages, freeing up space for a much more ambitious attraction in the Mine Coaster. This solves the “too girly” problem by putting in a coaster, which is at least gender-neutral. At-best, since it is based on dwarfs and mining, it should have a decent amount of pull with the boys.

Regarding the loss of Snow White’s Scary Adventure: it was a fine ride, but it had one big problem. It was an extremely tame ride that was thematically too scary for little kids. So the youngins won’t ride it because it is too scary. The older kids, 8-12 years-old, can handle the fear-factor but might skip it because it is too tame. It’s targeted at two different age groups, and isn’t wholly appropriate for either of them.

So really, everybody wins here. This new coaster is a new Snow White ride, so she’s not going away. She’s actually getting a better ride. SWSA was always the worst of the Fantasyland dark-rides (Pan, Pooh, and the former Toad rides were all superior). This coaster will be a huge step-up. Since it won’t be a full-scale coaster, I’m guessing it will be just thrilling enough for that 8-12 demographic. That will make it appropriate for them in both theme and thrill.

I’m really glad the Mouse House took a step back and looked at these plans, and changed them for the better. The Fantasyland expansion was already looking good, but now it’s looking great.

(Source: disneyparks.disney.go.com)