Norway Ride & Rivers Of Light (Disappointing Progress Updates)

[CounselorX]

I guess what I'm asking is.... When are they working on ROL ? If they are I assume they would need to do dress rehearsals. so do they work on it while the park is open?
Has anybody seen anybody working on it during the day?

I would think it's being worked on in a hidden area, not out in the open for everyone to see.

 

[rteetz]

Can anyone say for sure that they are working on ROL during this summer ?
My guess...when it didn't open in spring they had to have something "Jungle Book" to get thru the summer since they were having AK open at night for the busiest season.
Do they work on it after the park closes till it opens again in the morning?
Another guess...they might run the Jungle Book till end of summer and then fix or re-work ROL during the fall, of course that would mean no night hours for AK till it was ready.
I just don't see how they can get anything done in the middle of the night if the area is set up for the other show.

Yes they are working on things behind the scenes.

 

[rteetz]

I guess what I'm asking is.... When are they working on ROL ? If they are I assume they would need to do dress rehearsals. so do they work on it while the park is open?
Has anybody seen anybody working on it during the day?

They don't like to work on these types of things in areas guests can see. When they were testing during the day thats when they thought they had a slight chance at making the ROL opening. That soon changed of course.

 

[lockedoutlogic]

Rivers of light seems to be a "significant lack of success in the construction/planning phase" not seen since test track

 

[mikepizzo]

I apologize for the book, but I just got back from my June 20th - June 28th trip, and I think I have some information that some may find interesting.

I was able to participate in the Dining with an Imagineer event. Ate lunch at Brown Derby. The imagineer we ate with was David Rothman, a Show Design and Production Manager, who just so happened to work on Frozen Ever After.

I tried to prod as much as I could about the problems the ride faced, but keeping in mind that I still had to sit next to the guy for 2 hours, I wasn't trying to force any information, or ask him any questions that seemed "negative" or "confrontational". I still had other non-Frozen Ever After questions to ask him, so I wanted to make sure we had a decent raport, as to avoid "on the fence" answers for the other questions.

I also did not get the vibe that he was only giving "Disney" answers. They genuinely seemed to be his own opinion, but who knows...

Anyways, I did ask him what was the biggest challenge they (the Frozen Even After team) faced. His answer was time. The amount of time they were given was the least amount of time he was ever given for a project (he's work for the company for 30+ years). He said that he believes any project can get accomplished if three things are present. Money, time, and the will to get it done. They had the money because they gave them such little time. He said this project was so fast tracked that money really wasn't a problem. They all wanted to do the best that they could do.

After all that was said, I asked him specfically how the technology went throughout the process. He said that was surprisingly very smooth. I thought that was kind of odd, reading about things here. I was going to ask specfically about the ride vehicles getting stuck, wording my question like, "So with changing the track up, how does that affect the already exisiting vehicles, do they get stuck or something?" but unfortunately someone asked a different question that ended up changing the topic. I was never able to go back to asking about Frozen Ever After. He also spoke about the Marshmallow AA and just how big it is, and how they had to get it into the building. That was actually a really interesting story.

With all of that, I was able to get on the ride on the 27th. My fiancee and I had a fastpass for 7pm. When we arrived the ride was down due to mechanical problems. I think around 745ish the ride opened up again, so we got in the fast pass line. We waited about half an hour in the fast pass line.

When we boarded and took that first turn to see Olaf, it really was something else. The animatroic was extremely fluid...I mean, the way it moved combined with the projected eyes...it truly looked like a real Olaf.

After that it was a little lackluster for my taste. As others have said, there really was no story. It was more of a "highlight reel". The animatronics for Anna and Elas were fantastic; the movement was very life like...however, I'm not a fan of the projected faces. Not sure what it was, but it just seemed off to me. Also, when we went past the scene were Anna and Kristoff were singing Love is an Open Door, it seemed like their mouths were our of sync from the audio...nothing sever...maybe a couple hundred milliseconds, but it was enough for me to notice. To be fair, I'm the kind of person that can tell when a syndicated show has been sped up for broadcast (TBS does that a lot).

When we entered the Grand Pabbie scene, his face was flickering between the actual color of his face and this muted red color. That was really the only "bad show" piece I remember seeing.

The Let it Go scene was pretty good, but I felt that it was lacking. To me it was pretty much an empty room with an AA Elsa in the middle on a balcony. There was no reason why we went backwards either (again, a problem with the lack of story in my opinion).

So here's my conclusion...

I was impressed with the ride from an AA perspective. There were some set scenes that were really well done (first room) and some that was just so lazy (the projection of the snow while you go up the belt to the Let it Go scene).

The lack of story is what killed it for me. Just kind of boring. At least with other dark rides (like The Haunted Mansion) there is so much going on around you that you can re-ride multiple times and see something different. With this...there wasn't anything that I feel like I missed, and I'm constantly looking at the details of things. I'll get into a scene, look at the key animatronic of the room, and then start looking around for other things. If there were things there it didn't grab my interest.

That's my $0.02 deposit...

 

[closetmickey]

I apologize for the book, but I just got back from my June 20th - June 28th trip, and I think I have some information that some may find interesting.

I was able to participate in the Dining with an Imagineer event. Ate lunch at Brown Derby. The imagineer we ate with was David Rothman, a Show Design and Production Manager, who just so happened to work on Frozen Ever After.

I tried to prod as much as I could about the problems the ride faced, but keeping in mind that I still had to sit next to the guy for 2 hours, I wasn't trying to force any information, or ask him any questions that seemed "negative" or "confrontational". I still had other non-Frozen Ever After questions to ask him, so I wanted to make sure we had a decent raport, as to avoid "on the fence" answers for the other questions.

I also did not get the vibe that he was only giving "Disney" answers. They genuinely seemed to be his own opinion, but who knows...

Anyways, I did ask him what was the biggest challenge they (the Frozen Even After team) faced. His answer was time. The amount of time they were given was the least amount of time he was ever given for a project (he's work for the company for 30+ years). He said that he believes any project can get accomplished if three things are present. Money, time, and the will to get it done. They had the money because they gave them such little time. He said this project was so fast tracked that money really wasn't a problem. They all wanted to do the best that they could do.

After all that was said, I asked him specfically how the technology went throughout the process. He said that was surprisingly very smooth. I thought that was kind of odd, reading about things here. I was going to ask specfically about the ride vehicles getting stuck, wording my question like, "So with changing the track up, how does that affect the already exisiting vehicles, do they get stuck or something?" but unfortunately someone asked a different question that ended up changing the topic. I was never able to go back to asking about Frozen Ever After. He also spoke about the Marshmallow AA and just how big it is, and how they had to get it into the building. That was actually a really interesting story.

With all of that, I was able to get on the ride on the 27th. My fiancee and I had a fastpass for 7pm. When we arrived the ride was down due to mechanical problems. I think around 745ish the ride opened up again, so we got in the fast pass line. We waited about half an hour in the fast pass line.

When we boarded and took that first turn to see Olaf, it really was something else. The animatroic was extremely fluid...I mean, the way it moved combined with the projected eyes...it truly looked like a real Olaf.

After that it was a little lackluster for my taste. As others have said, there really was no story. It was more of a "highlight reel". The animatronics for Anna and Elas were fantastic; the movement was very life like...however, I'm not a fan of the projected faces. Not sure what it was, but it just seemed off to me. Also, when we went past the scene were Anna and Kristoff were singing Love is an Open Door, it seemed like their mouths were our of sync from the audio...nothing sever...maybe a couple hundred milliseconds, but it was enough for me to notice. To be fair, I'm the kind of person that can tell when a syndicated show has been sped up for broadcast (TBS does that a lot).

When we entered the Grand Pabbie scene, his face was flickering between the actual color of his face and this muted red color. That was really the only "bad show" piece I remember seeing.

The Let it Go scene was pretty good, but I felt that it was lacking. To me it was pretty much an empty room with an AA Elsa in the middle on a balcony. There was no reason why we went backwards either (again, a problem with the lack of story in my opinion).

So here's my conclusion...

I was impressed with the ride from an AA perspective. There were some set scenes that were really well done (first room) and some that was just so lazy (the projection of the snow while you go up the belt to the Let it Go scene).

The lack of story is what killed it for me. Just kind of boring. At least with other dark rides (like The Haunted Mansion) there is so much going on around you that you can re-ride multiple times and see something different. With this...there wasn't anything that I feel like I missed, and I'm constantly looking at the details of things. I'll get into a scene, look at the key animatronic of the room, and then start looking around for other things. If there were things there it didn't grab my interest.

That's my $0.02 deposit...

I've only watched videos but the rooms seemed a little empty to me as well. Hoping it comes across differently live!
Thanks for your report!

 

[lockedoutlogic]

I apologize for the book, but I just got back from my June 20th - June 28th trip, and I think I have some information that some may find interesting.

I was able to participate in the Dining with an Imagineer event. Ate lunch at Brown Derby. The imagineer we ate with was David Rothman, a Show Design and Production Manager, who just so happened to work on Frozen Ever After.

I tried to prod as much as I could about the problems the ride faced, but keeping in mind that I still had to sit next to the guy for 2 hours, I wasn't trying to force any information, or ask him any questions that seemed "negative" or "confrontational". I still had other non-Frozen Ever After questions to ask him, so I wanted to make sure we had a decent raport, as to avoid "on the fence" answers for the other questions.

I also did not get the vibe that he was only giving "Disney" answers. They genuinely seemed to be his own opinion, but who knows...

Anyways, I did ask him what was the biggest challenge they (the Frozen Even After team) faced. His answer was time. The amount of time they were given was the least amount of time he was ever given for a project (he's work for the company for 30+ years). He said that he believes any project can get accomplished if three things are present. Money, time, and the will to get it done. They had the money because they gave them such little time. He said this project was so fast tracked that money really wasn't a problem. They all wanted to do the best that they could do.

After all that was said, I asked him specfically how the technology went throughout the process. He said that was surprisingly very smooth. I thought that was kind of odd, reading about things here. I was going to ask specfically about the ride vehicles getting stuck, wording my question like, "So with changing the track up, how does that affect the already exisiting vehicles, do they get stuck or something?" but unfortunately someone asked a different question that ended up changing the topic. I was never able to go back to asking about Frozen Ever After. He also spoke about the Marshmallow AA and just how big it is, and how they had to get it into the building. That was actually a really interesting story.

With all of that, I was able to get on the ride on the 27th. My fiancee and I had a fastpass for 7pm. When we arrived the ride was down due to mechanical problems. I think around 745ish the ride opened up again, so we got in the fast pass line. We waited about half an hour in the fast pass line.

When we boarded and took that first turn to see Olaf, it really was something else. The animatroic was extremely fluid...I mean, the way it moved combined with the projected eyes...it truly looked like a real Olaf.

After that it was a little lackluster for my taste. As others have said, there really was no story. It was more of a "highlight reel". The animatronics for Anna and Elas were fantastic; the movement was very life like...however, I'm not a fan of the projected faces. Not sure what it was, but it just seemed off to me. Also, when we went past the scene were Anna and Kristoff were singing Love is an Open Door, it seemed like their mouths were our of sync from the audio...nothing sever...maybe a couple hundred milliseconds, but it was enough for me to notice. To be fair, I'm the kind of person that can tell when a syndicated show has been sped up for broadcast (TBS does that a lot).

When we entered the Grand Pabbie scene, his face was flickering between the actual color of his face and this muted red color. That was really the only "bad show" piece I remember seeing.

The Let it Go scene was pretty good, but I felt that it was lacking. To me it was pretty much an empty room with an AA Elsa in the middle on a balcony. There was no reason why we went backwards either (again, a problem with the lack of story in my opinion).

So here's my conclusion...

I was impressed with the ride from an AA perspective. There were some set scenes that were really well done (first room) and some that was just so lazy (the projection of the snow while you go up the belt to the Let it Go scene).

The lack of story is what killed it for me. Just kind of boring. At least with other dark rides (like The Haunted Mansion) there is so much going on around you that you can re-ride multiple times and see something different. With this...there wasn't anything that I feel like I missed, and I'm constantly looking at the details of things. I'll get into a scene, look at the key animatronic of the room, and then start looking around for other things. If there were things there it didn't grab my interest.

That's my $0.02 deposit...

Wow...excellent...thank you for your post.

Here's my problem: "we don't have enough time" is simply not good enough anymore.

They are way too spoiled/overfunded to complain and not produce. Such a bloated chunk of the budget seems to be devoted to research and concept that they skimp where the product is: the mechanics and the construction phases.

It reminds a lot of working with planners or civil engineers. Great at their craft...but at some
Point there has to be a hammer to step in and yell "alright! Just build the damn bridge"

 

[STLstone]

Wow...excellent...thank you for your post.

Here's my problem: "we don't have enough time" is simply not good enough anymore.

They are way too spoiled/overfunded to complain and not produce. Such a bloated chunk of the budget seems to be devoted to research and concept that they skimp where the product is: the mechanics and the construction phases.

It reminds a lot of working with planners or civil engineers. Great at their craft...but at some
Point there has to be a hammer to step in and yell "alright! Just build the damn bridge"

Agreed:

 

[CounselorX]

I apologize for the book, but I just got back from my June 20th - June 28th trip, and I think I have some information that some may find interesting.

I was able to participate in the Dining with an Imagineer event. Ate lunch at Brown Derby. The imagineer we ate with was David Rothman, a Show Design and Production Manager, who just so happened to work on Frozen Ever After.

I tried to prod as much as I could about the problems the ride faced, but keeping in mind that I still had to sit next to the guy for 2 hours, I wasn't trying to force any information, or ask him any questions that seemed "negative" or "confrontational". I still had other non-Frozen Ever After questions to ask him, so I wanted to make sure we had a decent raport, as to avoid "on the fence" answers for the other questions.

I also did not get the vibe that he was only giving "Disney" answers. They genuinely seemed to be his own opinion, but who knows...

Anyways, I did ask him what was the biggest challenge they (the Frozen Even After team) faced. His answer was time. The amount of time they were given was the least amount of time he was ever given for a project (he's work for the company for 30+ years). He said that he believes any project can get accomplished if three things are present. Money, time, and the will to get it done. They had the money because they gave them such little time. He said this project was so fast tracked that money really wasn't a problem. They all wanted to do the best that they could do.

After all that was said, I asked him specfically how the technology went throughout the process. He said that was surprisingly very smooth. I thought that was kind of odd, reading about things here. I was going to ask specfically about the ride vehicles getting stuck, wording my question like, "So with changing the track up, how does that affect the already exisiting vehicles, do they get stuck or something?" but unfortunately someone asked a different question that ended up changing the topic. I was never able to go back to asking about Frozen Ever After. He also spoke about the Marshmallow AA and just how big it is, and how they had to get it into the building. That was actually a really interesting story.

With all of that, I was able to get on the ride on the 27th. My fiancee and I had a fastpass for 7pm. When we arrived the ride was down due to mechanical problems. I think around 745ish the ride opened up again, so we got in the fast pass line. We waited about half an hour in the fast pass line.

When we boarded and took that first turn to see Olaf, it really was something else. The animatroic was extremely fluid...I mean, the way it moved combined with the projected eyes...it truly looked like a real Olaf.

After that it was a little lackluster for my taste. As others have said, there really was no story. It was more of a "highlight reel". The animatronics for Anna and Elas were fantastic; the movement was very life like...however, I'm not a fan of the projected faces. Not sure what it was, but it just seemed off to me. Also, when we went past the scene were Anna and Kristoff were singing Love is an Open Door, it seemed like their mouths were our of sync from the audio...nothing sever...maybe a couple hundred milliseconds, but it was enough for me to notice. To be fair, I'm the kind of person that can tell when a syndicated show has been sped up for broadcast (TBS does that a lot).

When we entered the Grand Pabbie scene, his face was flickering between the actual color of his face and this muted red color. That was really the only "bad show" piece I remember seeing.

The Let it Go scene was pretty good, but I felt that it was lacking. To me it was pretty much an empty room with an AA Elsa in the middle on a balcony. There was no reason why we went backwards either (again, a problem with the lack of story in my opinion).

So here's my conclusion...

I was impressed with the ride from an AA perspective. There were some set scenes that were really well done (first room) and some that was just so lazy (the projection of the snow while you go up the belt to the Let it Go scene).

The lack of story is what killed it for me. Just kind of boring. At least with other dark rides (like The Haunted Mansion) there is so much going on around you that you can re-ride multiple times and see something different. With this...there wasn't anything that I feel like I missed, and I'm constantly looking at the details of things. I'll get into a scene, look at the key animatronic of the room, and then start looking around for other things. If there were things there it didn't grab my interest.

That's my $0.02 deposit...

The "plainness" is also how I feel about 7DMT. You have the main animatronics but not much going on otherwise. When compared to classics like Pirates, Splash, Haunted Mansion, etc, it doesn't even compare.

 

[rteetz]

Wow...excellent...thank you for your post.

Here's my problem: "we don't have enough time" is simply not good enough anymore.

They are way too spoiled/overfunded to complain and not produce. Such a bloated chunk of the budget seems to be devoted to research and concept that they skimp where the product is: the mechanics and the construction phases.

It reminds a lot of working with planners or civil engineers. Great at their craft...but at some
Point there has to be a hammer to step in and yell "alright! Just build the damn bridge"

I'm going into civil engineering...

 

[lockedoutlogic]

I'm going into civil engineering...

Better choice than COMPUTER AIDED faux rock work design from wdi...

You'll get more done.