We’ve spent the last couple of weeks covering and adding commentary to everything that was announced for the Disney Parks at the D23 Expo. Now that I’m feeling like I caught up on the individual announcements, I wanted to share a few thoughts from the event. Some of these will have to do with what is coming to the parks while others will be from our experience. We’ll go with headings to separate the different thoughts, organization is key and all that.

About That Parks Presentation…

We’ll start the post off with some closing thoughts on all of the announcements made at the Horizons: D23 Disney Experiences Showcase. For the better part of the last year, it seemed clear that the expo would be filled with big reveals when it came to the parks. Taking essentially 5 years off from substantial changes announced for the parks (with a few exceptions) was reason enough to believe that Josh D’Amaro would give us plenty to talk about. In the weeks leading up to the presentation, those rumors only grew.

Once it was finally time to take the stage, the showcase did not disappoint. Disney brought out the stars and the scale of the show was bigger than any parks presentation I can remember. This was an event and had a buzz to it, whether in the building or following along at home. That, in and of itself, is good news. Disney has a renewed focus on investing in the parks after seeing the success there measured against the unpredictable box office and lagging streaming numbers.

As for the content that was talked about, I’m mostly excited. If I was going to give the presentation a letter grade, it’s in the B or B+ range. Personally, I thought there were a few puzzling announcements as well as a couple of not announced things that couldn’t bring it up to perfection. Let’s get the downside out of the way first.

The biggest frustration of the announcements is the Cars rides coming to Magic Kingdom’s Frontierland. I mentioned in the post that I don’t mind the new attractions, but am very frustrated by it replacing Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island. We won’t rehash all of that here outside of repeating that I think the park needs to add more character and charm as well as beauty. This move feels the opposite of that to me, but maybe it will surprise.

What was left unannounced included any Disneyland Tomorrowland or Fantasyland news. That plus the exclusion of anything new coming to Epcot were a little puzzling. On the other hand, the showcase lasted 2 and a half hours and is full of projects that will be completed in the next decade. Not announcing something this time around won’t stop it from being announced in the coming years. I know people are disappointed in those specific things, so am I, but it’s hard to be too upset considering the quantity of projects.

As a whole, I’m eager to see nearly all of these projects come to fruition. The ones I’m most anticipating are Villains Land at Magic Kingdom, Avatar and Coco at California Adventure and Tropical Americas in Animal Kingdom. Monsters, Inc. Land will join that list but I’m still worried about it replacing Muppet*Vision 3D. Even if it does, I’ll still be excited for the addition just sad about what it replaced.

Seeing some new ideas coming to the domestic theme parks is very exciting. It’s been a while since we had big projects to really sink our teeth into. On top of that, Disney was smart enough to announce a few nuggets for the next year including the Magic Kingdom nighttime parade and the Walt Disney show at Disneyland. While I’ll always advocate for more projects not being connected to an existing movie, that just isn’t going to happen under the current regime. With that specific filter, I think the parks announcements and showcase was a success and I’m eager to see almost all of it exist in the next decade.

Panels

My favorite part of any D23 Expo is the panels that guests can attend. While Melissa hunts the show floor for freebies, I like to stow myself away and listen to people talk for hours at a time. We only attended this year’s event for the Sunday, unfortunately, but I still managed to get into four different panels.

Of the four, the one that I’ll remember most happened almost by accident. We showed up to wait in a queue for an Imagineering Panel with Bob Weis earlier than we needed to. Before entering, one of the crowd control employees motioned us over and said that we should go into the room right now because Joe Rohde was speaking! That led us to catching most of the Disney Legends in Conversation which included Joe, Coleen Atwood, Martha Blanding and Mark Henn.

The conversation was really interesting and flowed from their time in Disney to how to be a good leader. Hearing some of Martha Blanding’s stories about being the first black tour guide at Disneyland were incredible, she’s an amazing woman. All of them brought a unique perspective, including Rohde. He spoke about how he came to have his wild earrings, which is a great story. More interesting to me was when he spoke of working on projects. I’m paraphrasing but he talked about how creations evolve from where they are in your mind and about how boring things would be if they came out exactly as we pictured them. It’s that mindset that’s made him such a good visionary for the Disney Parks.

My other favorite panel of the day was Disney Magic After Dark – Disney Nighttime Spectaculars which featured Steven Davison, Jennifer Magill, and Don Dorsey being interviewed by Graham Allan. Once these four got going, they rattled off iconic nighttime shows that they all worked on. It was a joy to hear about the creation of Illuminations and Wishes, along with several other nighttime spectaculars that Disney fans hold dear.

To me, those panels are the reason to go to the Expo. Yes, the big announcements are fun and exploring the show floor is cool. If that’s your reason to go then I get it! But sitting down to hear experts talk about the theme parks and what they’ve created is what keeps me coming back. My only negative here is that I missed the Muppets content!

Final Thoughts of These Final Thoughts

A few other highlights of our day there included roaming the show floor and looking through the Imagineering Pavilion. Seeing some of the models, droids and high tech stuff that I pretend to understand is interesting. Likewise, the Imagineers in there are always engaging and happy to talk to guests.

Elsewhere on the show floor, I especially liked the car show where you could see several vehicles from Muppet movies and shows. Along with that, there were some of Walt’s cars showcased. I also enjoyed the Avatar walkthrough, as it was well themed and had a heartfelt tribute to the late Jon Landau.

As always, the other highlight is the people in attendance. We were lucky enough to run into Chris from TDR Explorer, who puts out some of the best Disney content around. Getting to talk with him, others you stand in line with or just simply people watching is a major draw of the expo.

Whether it’s worth the money is still a fair question. D23 Expos are really fun, don’t get me wrong. But they also cost a lot and take up a ton of time while being inside the stale air of the convention center. Everyone has a different reason for going or favorite part. If you’re a big enough fan, then there will be something to grasp onto and love. We went for just 1 day and this time around that was enough, as doing a full 3 days of that seemed like overkill. Other years I’ve felt differently. Either way, we had a great time and the Expo has reinvigorated our excitement for the parks in the years to come!

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