Universal's Epic Universe General News & Discussion

[Tbad556]

Every park is a grade D then. This whole discussion feels in bad faith.

I was directed through the backstage areas of Magic Kingdom just this week. D tier park it is!

When I say "I truly just don't care about the issue in general honestly", it's because I know what I'm getting. Universal and Disney address the "issue" in a manner that sufficiently appeases my suspension of disbelief. We're not looking at a Six Flags or something here. I don't care about the minor things that world class parks may not fully cover because they aren't even close to tetering on amusement park level gaffes.

 

[DrStarlander]

You are now my archnemesis.

I hope not! I'm only referring to sightlines of course. I'm actually fond of DCA...Buena Vista St. during the holidays is at the top of my theme park vibe list.

By the way, I heard an interview with the Imagineers who designed DCA and they said the no-berm, don't worry about the outside world intruding approach was intentional. But 10 years later when making Cars Land they went to great expense to block the transmission lines so that philosophy was abandoned.

Every park is a grade D then. This whole discussion feels in bad faith.

Sorry to hear you feel it's in bad faith.

For background, I kept seeing the same sightline complaints and concern-dismissals (and whataboutism) that re-occur every time the topic comes up. I thought having an objective way of articulating degrees of impact of sightline intrusions at varying scales would allow people to say what degree they are personally bothered by (respecting that some people are not bothered by any of it), and allow a shared nomenclature to compare sightline intrusions from this land or that land, or this section of walkway, or that queue or dining area, etc.

It all comes with an understanding that the bigger the scale (e.g., a whole park), the lower the grade that's realistically achievable. But the point is not to disparage (and certainly not to rate parks big-picture), but rather to facilitate discussion specifically of sightlines.

 

[UniversalRBLX]

don't worry about the outside world intruding approach was intentional.

*budget not intentional lol

 

[Neo]

Reasons I hate the yet-to-open themepark for ruining my promised immersive experience:

• Muggle helicopters, airplanes, and jets flying over Harry Potter land - needs to be a federally restricted no fly zone for any airspace visible from the land.
• Thousands of people not speaking with French or British Accents in Harry Potter - totally kills the experience!
• Not having it being pitch black with a full moon at noon when I go on the werewolf coaster - I mean, WTF?
• Being arrested when I stab a worker with a wooden stake in Monsters land - that's what heroes do in the movies, yet I'm a criminal in this land? BS!
• Having non 8-bit humans in Marioland - it's like that time they had Homer go into the real world on the Simpsons, a crime against humanity.
• Not being able to smash my head into bricks and maybe have a flower that allows me to throw fireballs at anybody/anything I want to - suing them if I get a concussion trying to do it!
• Not being allowed to run and jump onto Mt Beanpole at the end of my visit - They really need a ladder to climb up there so after exiting the Mario Cart ride, I need to seamlessly jump out of the cart, run towards the beanpole without losing a step, and leap onto the pole and have a flag rise as I slide down. Anything else is false advertising.
• Haven't watched any of the dragon movies, but sure that land will piss me off for not allowing me to truly live the movies.

All of these will wreck my experience at the park...almost as much as seeing a wall of a building.

 

[Michael S]

I care a lot about sightlines, I'm mostly interested in themed environments and immersion. I think of sightline issues in a theme park as varying in negative impact in terms of how much they take you out of the fantasy.

I get the premise of what you’re saying, but complete immersion of a place or a single story has never really been a thing for theme parks until relatively recently. I mean, at Disneyland (arguably the best theme park in the world), you can see a storybook castle and a Swiss mountain from a turn of the century midwestern Main Street. See a Bryce Canyon style mountain from New Orleans. I do think that outside intrusion really can take you out of the magic. But land to land, or theme to theme, or even necessary backstage elements that are hard to hide, don’t bother me that much. I just choose to suspend disbelief for those kinds of visual interruptions.

Edit: I know you mentioned the grading system, and let me clarify: a park like Disneyland without that full immersion you mentioned is still a Grade A theme park in my book. And you’re fully immersed in being in a magical place when you’re there. I don’t think you need to be immersed in one story or environment to be Grade A.

 

[EOxL]

I care about sightlines but personally I'm just as cool with Grade C as I am with Grade A, the caveat being that in my ideal world Grade C would be the absolute floor, applied everywhere, inside and outside the park. arbitrary smatterings of Grade As and Grades Bs are just then icing on the cake.

We can infer the park is 100% strategically prioritizing the inside ground level, focusing on the greatest common denominator, because by contrast the outside perimeter and back stages are open and viewable from the road with 0 thematic appeal and the worst sight lines in park are all from elevated locations within Celestial.

I think the only viewpoints to actually worry about right now are from the upper floors of Helios and and Stardust Racers in general with many visible back lots and un-covered roofs. It makes thematic sense Celestial would be able to peek more into the worlds and vice versa, and Helios and Stardust being the tallest guest accessible locations may have been designed so deliberately as such. However I wish they will eventually go back and cover the roofs in area relevant colors if only for Helios which guests will be particularly spending a lot of time and money on compared to Stardust. Vegetation Growth and an expansions should also help with the visible backstage buildings.

 

[Lucky Planet]

exactly what part of the new building is seen from the dark universe is what I'm wondering.

 

[Brian G.]

exactly what part of the new building is seen from the dark universe is what I'm wondering.

You can allegedly see Helios from a particular area of the Dark Universe. We don't know the extent, or if trees will be able to block it when they grow. It's all very premature among non-Epic goers ATM.

 

[Speed]

Trees are desperately needing to grow in many different areas of the park from a ground facing view, but i’m not too sure if trees will be able to block Helios from *that* angle

 

[Alicia]

I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Helios is visible from some parts of Dark Universe and I imagine Stardust Racers is partly visible from within Dragons—and those are the two in-house properties owned by Comcast.

Nintendo and Potter seemed to have gone through greater lengths to eliminate any evidence of the outside world. But the downside to that are things like flat corrugated jungle cut out flat walls around Donkey Kong. (Although that never bothered me at Dragon Challenge/Hagrid, so no big deal.) Potter thematically works out well cause they just build the city streets extra tall to block out the world, similar to Diagon.

I think the park has a good mix of styles so that not all areas are walled off gardens, because that would start to feel isolating/one note to me.

Personally, I like a *little* leakage between theme park lands, so I’m not one to complain unless it’s really taking me out.

At least we’ve moved on from visible show building talk.

 

[rhino4evr]

The only area of universal That has total immersion is Diagon Alley. All the other lands including hogsmede have sight line issues. Mostly due to how IOA is designed.

Either way I don’t care.

 

[Jones14]

I just can't get that bothered with it, especially when none of us have stepped foot inside the area, and it's based on one report where we aren't sure how sightlines matter to them.

I can add context as the poster in question; sightlines are definitely something that always stick out to me in a land, and my eyes are always drawn to where the seams/outside intrusions are, as it were. Unless there are more trees yet to be planted, I don’t think you’ll ever not see the hotel when coming from the coaster side.

With that said, it’s didn’t ruin the area for me, just had a moment of “huh, wish they had found a way to block that somehow”.

 

[mccgavin]

The only area of universal That has total immersion is Diagon Alley. All the other lands including hogsmede have sight line issues. Mostly due to how IOA is designed.

Either way I don’t care.

I feel like the way IOA's sightlines are designed was intentional. The central lagoon is visible from every area of the park, and offers a great view of all the other lands surrounding you in the distance.

 

[DrStarlander]

I get the premise of what you’re saying, but complete immersion of a place or a single story has never really been a thing for theme parks until relatively recently. I mean, at Disneyland (arguably the best theme park in the world), you can see a storybook castle and a Swiss mountain from a turn of the century midwestern Main Street. See a Bryce Canyon style mountain from New Orleans. I do think that outside intrusion really can take you out of the magic. But land to land, or theme to theme, or even necessary backstage elements that are hard to hide, don’t bother me that much. I just choose to suspend disbelief for those kinds of visual interruptions.

Edit: I know you mentioned the grading system, and let me clarify: a park like Disneyland without that full immersion you mentioned is still a Grade A theme park in my book. And you’re fully immersed in being in a magical place when you’re there. I don’t think you need to be immersed in one story or environment to be Grade A.

Oh yeah, sightlines are not at all deterministic of quality of theming and immersiveness alone. It's just one of many factors, along with architecture, building materials, music, signage, lighting, costumes, landscaping, walkway theming....and so many others.

From what I can tell, sightlines are not at all a significant factor for everyone. I happen to care lot about them but I don't expect others to care and every time the topic comes up, people are quick to announce they don't care, so yeah, probably midway down the list of factors on average.

This was just a post about sightline issues specifically and a scheme for considering their relative impacts.

 

[DarkMetroid567]

I’m also a fan of the mixed sightlines and I think the IoA skyline is so wonderful for this reason. But, again, if the worlds weren’t meant to be 100% immersed, what’s the point of the portals? Why can’t we have any other intra-land entrances or transitions?

Epic is looking beautiful but it’s just getting harder to see this concept’s justification beyond further devotion to IP. This is, again, HEAVILY conditioned on me actually visiting, but I can’t stop seeing Celestial Park as a steep downgrade from Port of Entry, both thematically and visually. The details are certainly there, but I feel like the soul isn’t.

 

[Brian G.]

I think a lot of this conversation is the downside of the aerials from Bio.

 

[rhino4evr]

I think a lot of people are discrediting how awesome that carousel looks. That’s very much an icon in itself

 

[DarkMetroid567]

I think a lot of this conversation is the downside of the aerials from Bio.

Absolutely. Seeing his posts of the existing parks makes it super clear how different things look from above.

 

[saint.piss]

I won't lie, it wasn't till SNW opened in Hollywood that I found out that people actually cared about sightlines. I've been going to theme parks my whole and I've never really cared lmao

 

[GAcoaster]

Looks like TMs are getting at least one more week of TM only previews and will be able to go multiple times.

Waiting for my chance as a family member...