Tag: Diseny

The Great Work of Disney Imagineers at Disney Springs: Every zoning board in America should pay attention to the good work there

One of the things I was most curious about, regarding the Disney Springs renovation from what used to be called Downtown Disney, to its present form, was why the Imagineers felt they had to create a fictional back-story about what is essentially a shopping and entertainment destination. I have always loved Downtown Disney and when Disney bought Lucasfilm back in 2012 I had a strong feeling they would do good things with the Indiana Jones property and was excited to see what it might be. I was a little surprised that the creation of Jock Lindsey’s Hanger Bar was one of their first projects so upon landing in Florida during a recent vacation it was the very first place I went. I couldn’t wait to get there as I had been watching the re-construction of Downtown Disney into Disney Springs for much of the last decade and I had to see, smell and touch everything.

My point of reference for these kinds of places is Atlantis from the great book Atlas Shrugged, the kind of world that if human creativity was left alone to do its thing, what kind of great things could we make. The closest I can think of anywhere in the world is the Disney managed properties of Disney World, for which Disney Springs is a part. I don’t care that things are so enormously expensive there, because like the book Atlas Shrugged, the value for money and any other currency is in the product themselves. Disney sells happiness, and if you have enough money, you can buy some. Their Imagineers are happy to give you happiness, so if you can afford it, you can purchase for yourself. But its not free. So using that as my guide, I was delighted to visit the place and compare it to other places around the country that I admire, particularly a shopping complex in my hometown called Liberty Center which I love quite a lot.

But what mystified me, even as a person who understands the importance of mythology in everything, is that Disney created this fake backstory about Disney Springs and even Jock Lindsey’s Hanger Bar and that as guests we were supposed to accept it in the same way we might accept some reality from the theme parks they are so known for. In fact, just about every new hotel and construction experience on the Disney property in Florida these days has some kind of made-up backstory which I found perplexing until I visited the place for myself. Even watching the construction updates from a distance for several years really couldn’t bring context to the effort until you physically visited a place like that.

Upon seeing the creation of the springs at Disney Springs I understood immediately what the Imagineers were going for, its what I would call a “conceptual faculty,” the ability to see an abstract concept in your mind so that you can bring it forth into a reality. By creating all these back stories for stores and restaurants at Disney Springs the designers were able to use mythology to elevate the construction and its psychological impact on the consumers. Normally it would be up to the companies who become tenants at such a place to set the tone of a project, but in this case the backstory of the concept allowed all participants to align the scope of the project to a unified vision, and it was pulled off brilliantly. For me it was quite a magical moment to spend the afternoon in Jock Lindsey’s looking at all the relics from his past in chasing Indiana Jones all over the world and to stroll a few short steps from that front door to the fantastic springs of Disney Springs with all the commercial activity situated around it.

The thing that struck me most about Disney Springs is that in no way in the world would any zoning board trained at today’s colleges approve such a plan and allow an entertainment district like Disney Springs to be built along the many natural springs that are found all over Florida. The political bureaucracy would be mind bending dull and laborious. It just wouldn’t happen. So to sidestep that little problem, Disney Imagineers just created their own lakes and springs so that commercial development could take place around it, and the result would be spectacularly beautiful. The result as I could see it was essentially John Galt’s Atlantis where great creations from great people were on full display without the imprint of local and state governments regulating fun beyond recognition. That is largely because Disney controls what happens on their property to the most extent that any modern company could. I don’t think it would be possible to build something like a Disney Springs off the Disney controlled property due to local regulations picking it apart until there was nothing left.

Even at Galaxy’s Edge, the new Star Wars land which I will be talking about alot, the backstory that was created for it as a project gave the Imagineers something to build to, a way to conceptualize the project and overcome whatever problems came before it. Such a method of approaching a construction project had really improved Disney Springs since my last visit and the overall approach of the entire network of theme parks. This point hit me hard while traveling on the new Skyliner system of gondolas that are now connecting Hollywood Studios with the Epcot Center. Many of the hotel complexes that had been created recently along that gondola path all had similar backstories as were used to create Disney Springs and the elevated mythology had propelled the scope of the projects to a much higher level than would have otherwise been achieved using traditional building methods at the development stage. This ability Disney has been using with its Imagineering department to help guide all their construction departments had yielded results in the final presentation they wouldn’t have achieved any other way.

To that effect I was greatly impressed by the work at Disney Springs. I would say that the complex alone would deserve its own vacation destination, but for me it was only one very small part of my trip experience into enjoying the fantastic work of the Disney Imagineers. Locals obviously were taking the place for granted, but it was clear to me that what was happening there was very unique. It would be great to see other places utilize the same methods to push up their own projects to such bold levels. Like John Galt’s Atlantis the mind of mankind has shown time and time again that it can do better than nature, and if nature is in the way, that we can simply build over it and do a much better job. As a company I’m sure Disney wants to appease the climate activists, but clearly as an organization their ability to put story before sentiment has helped their creative people in the Imagineering department do things they otherwise wouldn’t be able to do. The results are obvious and very exciting. Even if I was a little skeptical, it quickly became clear that this approach was something everyone should be doing, and it was a wave of the future that was not so obvious except in seeing the results firsthand.

Rich Hoffman

Angry White Males are Sinking Disney: A bad decision to go to war with half the population over politically progressive ideas

Even if it doesn’t impact you directly dear reader, the civil war at the middle of the Star Wars debate is at the center of the most important aspects of all our lives. As everyone knows by now, the latest Star Wars movie did dreadfully bad at the box office. Solo: A Star Wars Story I thought was one of the best Star Wars movies, if not the very best one, but the fan base was and remains impossibly split on the topic and the brand has taken a hit that I don’t think it will ever recover from. That is very sad, because of all the good potential that there has been over Star Wars. I of course still enjoy it, likely for me that is mostly because of my grandchildren. I have been willing to overlook a lot of the progressive stuff that are now in the films because I wanted to be able to share those stories with my grandchildren. But with Solo: A Star Wars Story being out in the theaters for almost a month now, and its global box office hasn’t even hit $400 million yet, it’s quite obvious that the battle lines have been drawn and the brand of Star Wars has lost its power and that is really bad for retailers like Target, Wal-Mart and Hasbro who have invested heavily in the franchise, but it’s ultimately a killer for Disney who bought Lucasfilm in 2012 only to do what many fans feared would happen, and that was to ruin it for everyone.

Long time readers here might recall the radio broadcasts I did back in 2015 where all this was predicted. Star Wars was never supposed to be a vehicle of progressive ideas, it was always a hot rod version of the space cowboy values of Flash Gordon. There were a lot of white male characters in the story because those were the types of actors who were easy to get on a shoe string budget and everyone made the most of it. While the original films were about ultimately the tyranny of government over individuals which is something all political sides could agree on, the scope of the entertainment enterprise was haughty enough to avoid getting too complicated with details. The target audience was young males 6-12 years of age and the formula worked. It was popular because dads could share the experience with sons and there was enough fun there for the girls if they wanted to come along and make the whole thing a good family event. But Disney and Lucasfilm together sought from the very beginning to change Star Wars into the very toxic realm of identity politics where girls took over the role of males and people of color were purposely inserted into the storylines with an activist intention directed to Star Wars fans that they would accept those types of things or they simply wouldn’t get anymore Star Wars, almost like a parental figure bribing a kid to be quiet or they wouldn’t get any chicken nuggets from a McDonald’s Happy Meal.

The big mistake Star Wars made under the Disney ownership was that they joined in the progressive attack against angry white males and specifically the value that males bring to the world. We are living in an age where boys and men are literally attacked all the time over everything, and many of them are sick of it. The election of Donald Trump has been a boomerang effect that many never counted on, but guess what, men make up half of the global population. Attacking them is probably going to have an impact on the bottom line of any business because once men get the idea that they are being punished for something, they are going to take it personally, and that is exactly what has happened to Star Wars. Girls are girls, they really don’t care about fighting and wars, they have concerns about procreation and being nurturing figures. They aren’t the people who supported Star Wars, they often went along because they were interested in the boys who were interested in Star Wars. Disney’s biggest mistake was in thinking that if they centered the Star Wars films on women that the boys would stick around for the space ships, and that is not what happened at all. The boys and men have just rejected it all together, and by the time that Lucasfilm realized the error and tried to correct it with Solo: A Star Wars Story, it was too late.

I feel bad for Kelly Marie Tran who played the most divisive role in any Star Wars film with Rose in The Last Jedi. (See my article titled, Blame Fat Asian Chicks) for my take on her role in killing Star Wars. It’s not her fault personally, she was put into that role by the producers and the effect was just explosively negative. This past week she has had to remove herself from social media because of all the harassment she is getting which has then led to many of the Star Wars alums defending her which really has only made the situation worse because it keeps feeding the narrative. And now that Solo: A Star Wars Story has lost so much money, there is even more anger at those “angry white men” who simply didn’t go to the theater to see the Disney product—the potential loses here are in the billions of dollars, which is exactly where I warned Disney they didn’t want to be if they stayed on their progressive path as indicated way back in 2012 and 2013. People would not support Star Wars if it went from a story of hope for anyone no matter what sex or color and turned into an “anybody but white males” extravaganza of pointless resistance. The metaphor for The Last Jedi couldn’t be more girlish—all the great men are dead, Han Solo and Luke specifically, and the whole movie is about women in charge running out of gas only to turn the ship around at the end and kill themselves with a big human sacrifice. At least three of the main female characters in the movie sacrificed themselves in the movie for really no other reason than they were being outmatched and dominated by their male counterparts and that was not an exciting message to inspire audiences to spend vast amounts of money on the experience. The Rose character was dropped into the Star Wars story to obviously appeal to people who weren’t Barbie doll beautiful, which is always a concern with square hipped middle-aged women on their last few eggs who feel like their best years of attracting the pollen of a hungry young bee are behind them, so they become angry political activists who start hating men not for what they are, but because those men are no longer interested in them sexually. This progressive radicalism starts to become all they see in everything, and that’s why The Last Jedi happened, and completely divided up the fan base. It’s one thing to allow those emotions to govern your life, it’s quite another when they get mixed up in a multibillion dollar franchise that has the lives of lots of people attached to it. People like Kelly Marie Tran get caught in the crossfire which really wasn’t fair to them, but it is what it is.

This is important because it’s the most obvious sign of things to come in the war between progressivism and traditional white men—and males in general. The desire to turn men into something other than what they are has backfired in the worst way for Disney and they’ve taken something that could have been really wonderful and turned it into a mess. While Bob Iger did a great job setting the table for his company of Disney and the shareholders assumed that he and everyone else knew what they were doing, they made a fatal mistake—they assumed that Star Wars could hold all these progressive messages and that the franchise would still make a billion dollars a picture. Instead they have put themselves on the front end of the down turning progressive movement, and I say down turning because the Donald Trump presidency is changing the nature of politics and the Disney Company is on the outside of that change. Disney instead of truly being an all-inclusive company has chosen to go after the Starbucks type of crowd believing they were the future and they did so at the expense of the Chick-fil-A crowd who are filled with those crazy religious angry white males. But those are also the same people who grow up and have families with expendable income who will spend $10,000 on a Disney vacation in one of their theme parks. And now that doesn’t look to be the case. The Starbucks people are bums, people who loaf around and want things for free, they won’t be dropping millions of dollars on the new Star Wars Land at Disney World. And now because of their actions at putting progressive activism into the new Star Wars movies, the angry white guys who do like to eat at Chick-fil-A, who voted for Donald Trump, and who are typically the type of people who get and hold jobs won’t be participating, and that is bad, bad news for Disney. A terrible miscalculation on their part, which I tried to warn them against. But they didn’t listen, until it was too late.

Rich Hoffman
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