Theme Park Rangers Radar: Tiana ride tease, Skyliner down days, Orlando’s Berlin Wall
Bits of history guide Theme Park Rangers Radar this week. We look for clues about Tiana’s Bayou Adventure ride at Magic Kingdom in an ABC special, then find a slab of European history just standing there at Universal Orlando.
Radar is a weekly gathering of theme park lessons and lulus. It appears on OrlandoSentinel.com on Wednesdays.
Primetime Tiana
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure got some love and television viewers got a glimpse of the interior of the upcoming attraction during “Disney 100: A Century of Dreams,” a television special that recently aired on ABC.
What we saw: two Imagineers in hard hats, a small cabin, tall grasses, trees, leaves and blossoms. Shoot, we’re not even sure if that was at Magic Kingdom or at Disneyland, both of which are in the midst of Splash Mountain makeovers that are scheduled to be completed next year.
Beyond that, the visuals centered on previously released concept art, and details came from Carmen Smith, senior vice president for creative development, who recapped other known facts. She mentioned the new ride’s storyline (which is a year after 2009’s “The Princess and the Frog”) and the creators’ field trips to New Orleans for exposure to its food, music, history and culture. She said that took about three years.
At Magic Kingdom, folks now can see exterior progress in the form of scaffolding and rock work plus the crown-topped water tower. They’re turning a mountain into a salt mine.
The televised look lasted about five seconds, but to be fair, the show was covering a ton of territory that was spread across a century.
The Tiana talk was in a “what’s next” segment for Walt Disney Co. It included Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Walt Disney Parks & Resorts, talking about “Zootopia”- and “Frozen”-based products coming to parks elsewhere in the world.
“For 100 years now, Disney has been creating the unexpected, and we’re to continue to do that in some ways that I think will completely surprise our guests,” D’Amaro said, while viewers watched shots of children activating effects at Epcot’s new Journey of Water, Inspired by Moana attraction.
There was also talk in the show about the possibility of an “Encanto” house, a project that has been obliquely, if officially, floated as a possibility for a DinoLand USA renovation at Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
“I want to go inside that casita, don’t you?” commented Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote eight songs for 2021’s “Encanto,” including “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.”
“I don’t even know what that would look like but some genius Disney Imagineer does,” Miranda said during the program.
Up in the sky
Disney World has been warning folks about a disruption of service of the Disney Skyliner coming up next month. The aerial gondolas will be closed from Jan. 16 through Jan. 21, and the segment running between Disney’s Riviera Resort and Epcot’s International Gateway station will be closed through Jan. 27 in addition.
The free transportation service also connects with the Caribbean Beach, Art of Animation and Pop Century resorts plus Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme parks. The last few days of downtime will keep those stations from reaching all the way to Epcot via the air.
Disney is providing bus transportation as an alternative.
Wandering wall
I read something on the internet that turned out to be true. There’s a substantial piece of the Berlin Wall standing behind the Hard Rock Cafe at Universal CityWalk.
The online item also said it was in a “garden,” although I would call it more of a planter/median. But sure enough, by the back door and sort of facing the former Blue Man Group building, is a piece of history.
There’s a plaque with its history (built in 1961, taken down in 1989), a mention of Checkpoint Charlie and a reference to it being a “piece of history that symbolizes the wall of oppression.”
The wall itself, about 10 feet tall, has what appears to be paint or graffiti on it. I’m not sure it has “hidden gem” status, but it goes with the Hard Rock vibe of collecting history.
Yet it’s not the only place you can see a Berlin Wall segment in Orlando. There’s a 10 foot by 10 foot panel in the Ripley Odditorium attraction on International Drive. Ripley Entertainment purchased 16 panels of the wall in the days after it came down for $48,000 (plus shipping).
Getting them from Europe to Orlando took almost a year. Their journey was Berlin to Hamburg by barge, then a freighter over the Atlantic Ocean to New Orleans, then trucked to Florida.
What’s on your radar? Email me at dbevil@orlandosentinel.com.
