I think that it was two years ago that I stumbled on a test run for dino rama, at least for the boardwalk style games. We came off ctx, and they had put up some stands with pay as you go games, like hoop tosses and basketball shoots. This was before they built dca and paradise pier, so I've always thought that they were testing this new approach of boardwalk games for both dinorama and paradise pier. They had themed it a little - there was a "Chester and Hester's" banner that gave the impression that this was the road side carnival of C & H. There was a CM there with a tablet pc - I think one of those older apple models that are about the size of a notebook. He asked me if I had played any of the games and if I wanted to comment. Well, I wanted to comment, and I gave him an earful about my understanding of why Walt Disney wanted
Disneyland to be different from carnivals and that this sort of huckster games was what he was trying to avoid, in my opinion. I talked with him for a while, but he wouldn't record my opinions because I hadn't played any of the games, and he only had questions relating to the games on his database. But he did say that he had heard some similar opinions. He just wanted ratings of the games themselves. I think that this was the genisis of dinorama.
I also probably had a bad hand in helping some mba figure out the 6 attraction idea. When we left animal kingdom we were stopped by the pollster. We had only came over a couple of hours before, and we really only came to do two things - the safaria and ctx. We had done both in a couple of hours and were quite content, that is all we had planned to do, and we were hopping over to the studio to ride tot and rnr before hopping to epcot for illuminations. The pollster asked Melissa and I how many attractions we had experienced, and we said "two." We were then asked how satisfied were we with the attractions we had experienced. Since we had only planned on seeing the two, we took the question to mean how much did we like the two that we had seen, not to mean "how satisfied are you that there were only two attractions in this park that were intersting enough for you to plan to see them today." We had both really enjoyed the safari and ctx, and told her that we were very satisfied, because we were. But then our agenda for that day wasn't typical for most people or even us - we had made a lot of visits around that time and that is all we were interested in that day. Anyway, I think I made a bad data point in someone's statistics. We were pretty clear to the pollster that we didn't think that this was a completed park, and I told her I hated the idea of the carnival games, but I am not sure that got recorded.
Anyway, I saw dinorama in January, the spin was going but not the whirl, and the booths were open. Honestly, it is a hunk of crap. The dinosaur area used to be pretty cool, but the colors and obnoxiousness of dinorama really took away from it. We rode ctx but not the spin. When you are right at CTX the theming wasn't distrubed by dinorama. But the entry into the dinosaur area was pretty bad. I didn't really like mulhulland madness, but I'm planning on riding the whirl with an open mind in May, in the hope that the spinning makes it better. I saw the video of it and it looks pretty horrible, in terms of the decorations. IMHO, it does come across as cheap, and just saying "the theme is that it is cheap" doesn't make it OK for dinorama or paradise pier. They are both pretty tacky (to be honest though, there are some things about paradise pier that aren't that bad; I thought that the zypher and stinger were pretty neat looking, even if they are pretty lame rides). Standard disclaimers about opinions and taste go here and everything.
And I agree, paradise pier, pop century, dinorama, jiyi, pop century, the cheapquels and even the 100 years parades all go together to me in terms of tacky and cheap and slapped together. I don't think that rnr coaster, ak lodge, cereal and juice, feature animation, the california downtown disney and grand californian, soarin', recent live action films, cirque, beach club villas, and hopefully mission: space fit with that, though. I'd keep everyone of the things in the second list, and drop all in the first. And he were are back to opinion and taste and all that, and I continue to wish that kali river was as cool as grizzly river.
DR