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MissKim
10-14-2005, 05:11 PM
At WDW, it's one of the most popular rides, but from everything I've read, the DL faithful don't like Pooh. Is it really that bad, or is it more a "I can't believe they tore out Country Bears for this!" reaction. Is it significantly different from the WDW version?

twist1980
10-14-2005, 05:21 PM
I fit in the I can't believe they tore out Country Bears for this category! Even though it was an aging show, to me it was a classic and brought back memories of childhood! And it was cute! I just think if they were going to tear that out, they could have put something better in!

lauramaynot
10-14-2005, 05:23 PM
At WDW, it's one of the most popular rides, but from everything I've read, the DL faithful don't like Pooh. Is it really that bad, or is it more a "I can't believe they tore out Country Bears for this!" reaction. Is it significantly different from the WDW version?

I personally like Pooh. Not as much as country bears but I think it is good. The new technology in the ride vehicle is nice. I think that what they were going for with the FL darkrides is accomplished with the vehicle without any modifications to the track. But I do think that the 2D of many of the figures in the ride make it feel cheap. I can't speak for others but I think it is just so far out of the way people who would most want to ride it (the ones with young kids) don't know it is back there. My 9 year old doesn't like to ride it - you should have seen his face when the ride operator couldn't get the door open and we had to go again...it was classic!!

3894
10-14-2005, 05:25 PM
We - me, my two teen daughters - liked Pooh.

And Country Bears always used to play to many empty seats, à la Mr. Lincoln.

disneyperson
10-14-2005, 05:32 PM
The line for Pooh's Hallucingenic Journey is rarely more than five minutes, usually even less. The Country Bears was a superior attraction on all counts.

notlemc
10-14-2005, 05:47 PM
the thing about the pooh ride her in CA is that older individuals cannot get past the reality of the ride. For youngsters the ride is fun as it a dark-ride the vividly uses colors and their favorite character. However, for us older folk the ride is aparently fake and a bit strange. Honestly look at the ride, or at least the 'dream' part of the ride. That part of the ride features Pooh going through a world of bright vibrant neon colors while a pink and multi colored Tigger appears and disappears again and honey is dripping everywhere. But it is not until the main part of the dream that it all makes sense; the part where pooh's torso is coming out of a wall of dripping honey and he is eating the honey with BOTH hands, shoving it into his mouth as fast as possible while he has a big grin on his face. Does this portion of the ride bring the words 'acid trip' to anyone else's mind? Granted, that I have not experienced one of these trips...but going through the ride makes me feel like I'm going through one. I think this is the problem with the ride. Adults see a different version of the ride then the kids do. And ultimately for the length of the line for the ride, let's face it, adults choose which rides to go on, not the kids. Though I have never been on the WDW ride, I am certain that the WDW ride is better than the Disneyland ride. I would almost rather go on it's a small world than on Pooh in Disneyland...that is unless I want to experience one of Pooh's 'trips'

I even asked a CM about who designed the ride and if they were under some sort of influence when they designed it. The CM agreed with me. But then again, we may just be two people who have different opinions than the rest of the world.

b-dof
10-14-2005, 05:55 PM
i was never really big on CB, so i can say, Pooh isnt that bad.
it has some pretty good effect.
the down side is the lack of a story, a begining, middle and end.

Clotho
10-14-2005, 06:13 PM
The WDW one is better. I have been on both, enjoyed the WDW one, and was really disappointed with the DLR one.

potzbie
10-14-2005, 06:59 PM
However, for us older folk the ride is aparently fake and a bit strange. [...] Does this portion of the ride bring the words 'acid trip' to anyone else's mind? [...] I even asked a CM about who designed the ride and if they were under some sort of influence when they designed it.

I agree.
The day-glo colors and black-light colors are just a jumble of characters and scenes.
It is closer to a 1960s LSD acid trip than a ride with a theme.

(Theme? "Bear eats honey"? "Bear has birthday"? C'mon. Weak.)

Compare.
Peter Pan flys you over London.
Snow White's Scary Adventures takes you through The Woods of The Enchanted Forest.
Roger Rabbit taxis you (spins you) thru ToonTown's city streets.
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride drives you thru countryside England, in courtrooms and to hell.
Pinocchio's Daring Adventures retraces Pinocchio's steps toward Pleasure Island.

Where does POOH's honey-car drive you?
Underground?
Hundred-Acre Wood?
What visuals strike you about Hundred Acre Wood? I don't know. It's a plain countryside.
But you don't spend you time in the Hundred Acre Wood, but inside the homes of the characters.
Okay. But is there an adventure?
No. Just images of "Hunny" pots.
Hmmmmmm...
And the reason I would want to ride POOH a second time is ... what?

charpaul
10-14-2005, 07:27 PM
Here is my own take on the DL Pooh ride.

I think that the location of the ride has a lot to do with the popularity. The WDW version is located in Fantasyland. The DL version is located in Critter Country and does not get as much foot traffic as the WDW version.

The DL version is in my opinion a sad copy of the WDW one. The added motion in the DL version (that does not exsist in the WDW version) just does not make up for the lack of story or the extensive use of two dimensional cut-outs that are in the DL version.

The DL version also replaced a much loved (if not always popular) attraction.
The Counrty Bears are missed by many at DL (include me in this group).

So in my opinion the WDW version is superior and they took out a classic attraction to replace it with a 2nd rate copy. That in a nutshell is why I think many people are less than happy with Pooh at DL.

I know that many young children seem to love Pooh at DL, but it does not draw them to that area of the park - or so the numbers and wait times seem to indicate. It is cute and fun but overall disappointing to me.

Pirate Princess
10-14-2005, 09:03 PM
Pooh's Hallucingenic Journey
LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!
I couldn't have phrased it better myself... I am just waiting for Gerry Garcia to jump out from behind one of those cardboard cutouts.

MommyTo3Boys1Girl
10-14-2005, 09:30 PM
As a parent, I think Pooh is great for the kids. If you look at it from an adult perspective, then it lacks many things. But there are many other rides that fit in this category as well. My opinion, if it had not replaced CB, it would get a much warmer welcome.

Pirate Princess
10-14-2005, 10:02 PM
LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!
I couldn't have phrased it better myself... I am just waiting for Gerry Garcia to jump out from behind one of those cardboard cutouts.
Yes.. I am quoting myself.. I MEANT JERRY (w/out the G add a J) WOW bad typo..

TowerofTerror
10-14-2005, 10:11 PM
I think it cute the ride.The ride is very nice for the little kids.

hbquikcomjamesl
10-14-2005, 10:53 PM
Given that the unspeakably horrible "Vacation Hoedown" (which the folks at WDW tried, and DUMPED) had long-since replaced the timeless original at DL (at WDW, they WENT BACK TO the original CBJ), Pooh was, as I've said many times (anybody care to give me a count?) simply replacing a more malodorous sort of "pooh."

There are three reasons why WDW's Bears are still packing 'em in, while ours werent' worth keeping open.
1. Building on the assumption that the show's popularity in WDW would not only translate into popularity in DL (which it did), but that its popularity in DL would continue indefinitely (which it didn't), they built our CBJ theatre with two complete houses (WDW's only has one, and therefore has to shut down for several days to redress before and after the Christmas show season). Which made our CBJ one of a tiny handful of attractions common to both Magic Kingdoms that are actually bigger in DL than in WDW. So we were tying up almost twice as much real estate and equipment as WDW's CBJ, in a park where space is very much at a premium, and usually not getting enough business to bother running both houses (or even have a capacity crowd in one).

2. As was already mentioned, it's not exactly in a high-traffic area, and much of the traffic is looking for Splash Mountain. WDW's, on the other hand, is right in the heart of Frontierland.

3. MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, where the original CBJ was a timeless classic that was as much about vaudeville as about country-western music, with lots of homage to entertainers of a bygone era, "Vacation Hoedown" was already dated before anybody sat down at an Anicon to program the motion. Too dated to be current, yet too recent to be timeless, or to provoke feelings of nostalgia. WDW management realized it; I wish I knew why DL management didn't.

Probably the biggest reason why WDW's Pooh seems so much more popular than ours is that theirs is so much smaller. Theirs was built to run in the same show building, on the same track, as their Mr. Toad did. That forced them to build everything that much smaller. Smaller capacity and a high-traffic location added up to a big, heavily-bottlenecked, crowd in the queue. Ours, on the other hand, had a two-house theatre building to fill, and it was (like the CBJ before it) riding on the popularity of a proven WDW attraction (and thus, it, too, is bigger in DL than its counterpart is in WDW). High-capacity in a low-traffic area adds up to practically walking on.

But mourning the Bears because Pooh replaced them is pointless. It's like mourning the loss of KFAC on the day, now close to two decades ago, when 92.3 FM became "The Beat," even though the KFAC I listened to all through college, that had stood for classical radio since some decades before I was born, the KFAC of Fred Crane, Tom Dixon, Thomas Cassidy, Martin Workman, and Carl Princi, had died at least a year before then, when the new owners fired all the experienced jocks (one of them, reportedly, ON THE AIR!), and replaced them with snobbish, pedantic, snot-nosed kids and out-of-work music appreciation teachers straight out of the Columbia School of Broadcasting. Our Bears didn't die when replaced by Pooh. They died when DL management failed to recognize what the WDW management did, and failed to toss out "Vacation Hoedown" like the miserable hack it was.

Clotho
10-15-2005, 02:06 AM
"?But mourning the Bears because Pooh replaced them is pointless. It's like mourning the loss of KFAC on the day, now close to two decades ago, when 92.3 FM became "The Beat," even though the KFAC I listened to all through college, that had stood for classical radio since some decades before I was born, the KFAC of Fred Crane, Tom Dixon, Thomas Cassidy, Martin Workman, and Carl Princi, had died at least a year before then, when the new owners fired all the experienced jocks (one of them, reportedly, ON THE AIR!), and replaced them with snobbish, pedantic, snot-nosed kids and out-of-work music appreciation teachers straight out of the Columbia School of Broadcasting. "


Um....huh?! try using a more universal comparison. Seems people all over the country dislike this ride. Comparing it to a local radio station loses some of the impact of your otherwise very well-worded assessment of this abysmal ride.

Vegitabeta
10-15-2005, 02:44 AM
The WDW one is much better. In DL, the story is all in the wrong order!

MissKim
10-15-2005, 04:39 AM
It will be interesting to see it for myself. My last DL trip they were building it. My kids love the Country Bears and are sad they won't get to see them this trip. We'll have to see if Pooh impresses them.

TDBearGrrl
10-15-2005, 04:44 AM
Here is my own take on the DL Pooh ride.

...it does not draw them to that area of the park - or so the numbers and wait times seem to indicate. It is cute and fun but overall disappointing to me.

I agree! ;)

I attend every month with a group of about 20 or so, the only time we do Pooh anymore is when a portion of the group does not want to do Splash and we have to wait. Pooh gives us a short diversion before we go into the candy store.

When I take my 7 & 8 year old neighbors we just don't go back there - at all.


I am a huge fan of Pooh, the character, but the ride isn't that great and the honey cars are not that comfortable...

5hr drive
10-15-2005, 04:51 AM
There are 3 major problems with the DL version of Pooh

1) There is absoultely NO STORY AT ALL! The imagineers always say that story comes first when designing a new attraction. Well they skipped that step here.

2) There are no neat effects. The Tokyo version has the "trackless" vehicles and the WDW version has the "letters flying off the storybook pages" that I think is so neat. Here, we got none of that, the ride was done so cheaply. We can blame Paul Pressler and Cynthia Harriss for this.

3) There is no drama or tension. Part of the fun of the rides at Disneyland is there is always that little threat, that tingle down you spine, that little apprehensive voice that says "Maybe Monstro will eat me this time" on Pinocchio, or "Maybe the Queen of Hearts will catch me and then, 'OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!'" on Alice. There's the witch on Snow White, the train wreck on Mr.Toad, and of course the Abominible Snowman on the Matterhorn and multiple threats on Indy. Walt never played down to kids, instead he played to the kid in all of us. Well they played down to kids this time and in a big way.

I always thought they needed a Pooh ride at DL, I'm just sorry we ended up with this one. And I'm not someone who misses CBJ at all, either, I felt it needed to be replaced and Pooh's location is fine as well, right by the store and the meet and greet.

Pirate Princess
10-15-2005, 08:55 AM
Since we are listing complaints... if you have a small child (under 6???) it is very hard for them to see in the back seat since a lot of the action is forward facing and you miss some of the effect if you don't get to see it until it is passing you.

sdfilmcritic
10-15-2005, 09:03 AM
What's so bad about Pooh? Well... Pooh in a Box (http://www.old-fashioned-values.com/item_images/pooh_FULL.jpg) is just wrong. :|

nursemelis374
10-15-2005, 09:08 AM
SD- You kind of dissapointed me, I was hoping for a picture of actual pooh in a box to make as my new avatar.

sdfilmcritic
10-15-2005, 09:33 AM
SD- You kind of dissapointed me, I was hoping for a picture of actual pooh in a box to make as my new avatar.I found a picture even better than Pooh in a Box... Here ya go. Click Here (http://declutterdivas.com/forums/images/avatars/Pooh.gif)

nursemelis374
10-15-2005, 09:39 AM
That is the gayest picture of Pooh I have ver seen.