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Entries in Concept (13)

Wednesday
Dec162009

HORIZONS MURAL, "The Prologue and the Promise" [ High Res ]

click to enlarge

Remember leaving Horizons and seeing this Robert McCall highly detailed masterpiece?  Boy, the future sure looks great.  I can't wait to wear tight-fitting jump suits with my wife and kids and our dog, standing on a grass hill overlooking our cool-looking city.

Click on the image below for a high resolution version of this image.  It may take a couple of minutes to fully load, for it is pretty large.  I have yet to see another image of this mural on the web at such high quality.  It's a scan from a print I once borrowed from a friend at WDI who has an amazing collection of EPCOT Center printed materials.


Here you see Robert McCall in action.  It appears he has some help.  I just noticed in the above high res image there are two signatures.  One from Robert T. McCall and one from Louise McCall (his wife).  Check out the smaller canvas of "The Prologue and the Promise" behind Louise- used for reference, no doubt.  Anyone know where that smaller one is today??

Related links:
http://www.mccallstudios.com/index.html  
http://mesaverdetimes.blogspot.com/ 
http://futureprobe.blogspot.com/2009/04/art-of-bob-mccall.html

Monday
Dec142009

"A Jolly Holiday" Attraction Concept

Concept by Lilly

Imagine. You are walking down the lane on the streets of England in EPCOTʼs World Showcase. As you pass where the British Invasion plays on your left, straight ahead is the beginning of a queue for A Jolly Holiday.

England continues as you walk inside a building where the queue continues, you turn a corner and realize you are on Cherry Tree Lane. You walk by Admiral Boomʼs house where an animatronic Admiral Boom and Mr. Binnacle are washing windows or getting ready for cannons on the hour. He shouts things like “Time Gun ready?” or shouts to guests in the queue things like “Good afternoon to you, young man. Where are you bound?” and “A word of advice, young man. Storm signals are up at number 17. Bit of heavy weather brewing there.”

And sure enough when as you walk by number 17 on Cherry Tree Lane, you can hear Ellen and Mrs. Brill shouting at each other at the top of their lungs.

Then on your right you notice some chalk drawings. They are Burtʼs drawings from the film. As you turn the corner into a new room you see the exact same chalk drawings now talking up an entire wall, except you can walk through the center one–the one of the English countryside.

As you walk into the next room you find yourself inside the chalk drawing. It is colorful and the walls have projections of flowers turning into butterflies. You walk over a white bridge that goes over a little stream. Then you come to a door. The door opens and a gentlemen or lady costumed as an attendant at the country fair, usher just the right amount of people into a loading room.

In the loading room is a carrousel of horses and benches (for wheelchair/people who donʼt want to ride a horse). Everyone loads and the carrousel begins to turn. All the horses go up and down.

A wall opens and there are animatronics of Burt and Mary Poppins on their carrousel horses. Bert says, “Very nice. Very nice, indeed, if you don't wanna go nowhere.” Mary replies “Who says we're not going anywhere? Oh, guard!”

At that moment a window on either side of the guard opens up and the guard says “Righto, Mary Poppins.”

Then another wall opens and reveals a passage way and the horses and benches leave the carrousel and travel through the scenes from the chalk drawing sequence in the film starting with a fox hunt, then the horserace, then Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Mary, Bert, Jane and Michael of course make appearances throughout the adventure. At the end of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, it begins to rain and the chalk begins to run and wash away. You turn a corner and find yourself back in England where you dismount your horses and exit the attraction. The exit would dump you right into the character meet and greet that already exists for Mary Poppins and you would be able to meet with Mary–who off course denies everything and doesnʼt know what youʼre talking about. (We would kick Pooh and friends out of the Mary Poppins room along with Alice, how did they get into Mary Poppinsʼ story anyway?)

The best part of the attraction will be that the carrousel horses continue to move up and down throughout the adventure. As a concept of how to make that happen, I shot this footage of a baggage claim.

[Footage coming soon]

You would create large floor pieces that look like this and each piece would have a horse or a bench. It would be similar to Ellen's Energy Adventure. Then a bar at the top that goes throughout the attraction would turn the top of the pole and help the horse go up and down just like a real carrousel.

The show building would be as shown in the above illustration. Where the World Show Place now sits. This building was originally built for the millennium as the Millennium Village. but now has turned into a building used for the Food and Wine Festival and other special events. I think A Jolly Holiday will be a much better use of space.

Saturday
Oct102009

Ride Vehicle Concept - Part One

Concept by Mitch

Who doesn’t love the feeling of slowly drifting through the cool air on the slow-moving waters of the Pirates of the Caribbean?  The old PeopleMover was a joy because it let you relax and look at Tomorrowland from above.  The feeling you get paddling down the Rivers of America, steering your own Autopia car, or zipping around every bend of Big Thunder Mountain.  Most ride systems offer sensations you feel nowhere else but at Disney.

There are dozens of types of ride vehicles and ride systems.  Some are connected to tracks, some move through water, some are connected to tracks in the water.  One particular ride system of note, the Matterhorn Bobsleds, featured the world's first tubular steel roller coaster track.  Epcot’s Universe of Energy transports up to 600 guests in a moving theatre which breaks up into six multi- passenger vehicles. WED-developed Omnimover systems maintain constant motion at a specific speed throughout the entire course of the attraction.  (Omni mover = a blend of the words OmniRange and PeopleMover- coined by Bob Gurr).

Ride systems serve many functions, not the least of these is helping advance an attraction’s story.  To enhance this story, vehicles offer a variety of sensations including speed, falling, quick movements, slow movements, etc.

“This concept“, Mitch says, “is a ride system that can be applied to any number of attractions with any number of storylines.  Attractions with a need for a variety of thrills can have them.  Rides that require a less intense journey will enjoy unparalleled sensations non the less.”

This concept seats eight riders per vehicle.  The track system resides far above it’s passengers- virtually out of sight, out of mind and never blocking the view.  “The inspiration behind this concept came from a thought I had about the lack of visibility on certain attractions.  Most rides offer a pretty good view of the surrounding scenery.  There are, however, people sometimes sitting in front of you or to the sides of you, blocking the view a little.  This design offers you a 180+ degree viewing range because the people closest to you are sitting to the side and slightly back from where you are sitting.”

“Attractions with tracks on the ground have story-telling scenery on either side of the track.  This concept allows for scenery to be placed throughout the show area, uninterrupted.  Adding to that, the scenic elements of the sets will be visible from more angles.  You’ll be able to see things from the front, sides, and back.  Almost always, sets are designed to be viewed from a single angle.”

Mitch says he has been riding the same rides for decades and never tires.  “However”, he says, “I  appreciate attractions that offer a slightly different experience each time you ride.  I loved the old Mr. Toad‘s Wild Ride at Walt Disney World because the two tracks showed you different things to look at.”  With this concept, people sitting on one side of the vehicle will see pieces of the ride that their friends sitting on the other side wont see.  This will encourage them to get right back on the ride to experience the same story from a different view.

Best of all, “this ride system will offer a range of motion unmatched by any other vehicle.  The forward motion with computer-programmed rotation back and forth offers a sensation like no other.”

Thank you, Mitch for sharing your concept.