Toy Story Mania: Disney's Revamped Attraction in Disney Land

While in class we mainly focused on analyzing the various Disney films, another pillar of Disney are their theme parks. As visitors, we can only see the final polished product, with little knowledge about how an attraction was created. Located adjacent to the famous Disneyland is Disney’s California Adventure. Built in 2001, critics bashed Disney for cutting corners and building the park on the cheap. More recently, however, Disney started to renovate certain parts of the new park in order to bring them in line with their lofty standards. One of these new attractions is called Toy Story Mania, where visitors can play virtual-reality versions of classic carnival games.

Disney began working on the new ride in the summer of 2005 when they sent a team of creative developers to the Los Angeles County Fair with the goal of researching how carnival games work. They came up with the idea to juxtapose the old-fashioned carnival games with new high-tech video game elements. The developers believed that Toy Story and Toy Story 2 would provide a good theme for this idea, but needed to better understand how the traditional carnival games worked before they could convert them to compelling virtual-reality versions. A couple developers conceived the premise that the attraction would run on: the classic toys in the movies staged a carnival under Andy’s bed while he was eating dinner. With the solid sense of the theme and the components that they wanted to include, the development team pitched the idea to Robert Iger, the head of Disney.

Iger was interested yet hesitant, so the plans moved on to the next step: building an elaborate model. Paying close attention to scale and sight lines, engineers build intricate models on large tables equipped with wheels. In what seems like Disneyphile’s dream come true, the company keeps entire room-sized models of entire parks so that engineers can wheel the models into place to see how it would look. While some designers continued to work on tweaking the various elements, others moved onto creating the blueprints for the computer program that would run along with ride. Since it is much cheaper to address issues before construction, developers carefully examined the simulations to make sure there were no issues.

Disney also began to test rudimentary versions of the ride with 400 people of varying ages and backgrounds. Obviously confined by stringent nondisclosure agreements, these subjects played basic versions of the games while Disney worker’s studied their reactions. They learned that attendees wanted to be able to compare their scores, and that certain controls were hard to reach for smaller riders (which is obviously makes up a large part of their customer base.) Disney also decided to increase the visual payoffs of completing various acts (like a gust of wind when you pop a virtual balloon), and wanted to make the last carnival game that riders play would be the easiest so that they would leave feeling like winners.

One of the more creepy additions was that of an animatronic Mr. Potato Head that would keep visitors entertained as they wait in line. Armed with a budget of $1 million, Disney went all out in creating an advanced figure. Developers were able to make him sing, dance, and appear to hold conversations with visitors. They brought in Don Rickles (the voice of Mr. Potato Head in the movies) to record various words and songs. There is a hidden ride operator, who uses hidden cameras and a computer to scan the crowd in order to see what pre-recorded phrases apply the appearances and actions of those standing in front of it.  

            Roughly three years and $80 million later, and Disney hopes to have created a new type of iconic ride, adapted to the new demands of today’s visitors. When I visited the theme park a couple years ago, I distinctly remember enjoying the Toy Story Mania ride (which I can only say about a handful of rides in the whole park.) While it was one of my favorite attractions then, I believe that I will appreciate it even more next time I go after taking a behind-the-scenes look at how it was created. While we cannot expect to learn the inside scoop of how each ride was created, especially considering the veiled nature of Disney, this knowledge certainly augments one’s appreciation for the ride after seeing all the effort that goes into the development.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/business/media/10ride.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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