Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster transformation to SHIELD

[hakjie11]

Today I got to ride the Ant-Man Ride :

The queuing area : Standby time was 30min for me of which 70% of the queuing happens outside the building. I was surprised there were only 2 very small rooms (entrance-reception and the weapon room) inside before you board the omnimover. Both rooms don't look very impressive, don't expect it to look anything close to Iron Mans Expo. I did like the on-screen communication between the 3 heroes.
The weapon room has probably like 20 of the same EMP blasters (which u use during the ride) and just a few other weapons ( I expected more variety and movie props from the Ant-Man movies).

The omnimover pods : they looked quite good. However you can't control its 360 degree movement with the joystick now. The pods moved faster compared to Buzz. The ride therefore seemed much shorter compared to Buzz.
The EMP blasters weighs probably 20% less compared to Buzz lightyears blasters, so much better for kids.
The blasters were far more accurate and they had a little bit of recoil after pulling the trigger, nice touch.
The on screen display in the pod for your score looked sharp with a back lit screen.

My general impressions of the ride experience itself :

Well...to start...the issue that the bots don't move wasn't such a big deal to be honest. This is the main issue that most, including myself complained after watching the youtube ride video's. The truth is if you were really trying to shoot hundreds of them you won't spend time studying their mobility.
Details are nice and the background music and effects are good. There is really a Marvel vibe to it.
Although it looks much better in real life then on the youtube video's it was still a very flat experience to me. I didn't experience any visual or shooting wow moments when seeing the set pieces in real life ( perhaps because I watched the youtube ride video's too many times before I rode it ?).

Not including a single physical animatronic in the ride was very disappointing to me. The existence of Ant-Man/Wasp/Zola all happens on screen but this is "physical" ride not a motion 3D ride so where are the physical heroes and villains? The screens in the background during ride are not the sharpest I have seen, in fact they looked a bit blurry.

The fact that the omnimovers moved faster made the ride seemed shorter, it seemed like they didn't have time and lacked space to tell a "complete" story. I think most of the riders didn't even notice the parts where they were shrunken and "un-shrunken".
At the finale you need to shoot Zola-screens and then immediately comes a screen with Ant-man and the wasp crediting your great shooting?...It seemed like it lacked an ending. Did we actually succeeded in defeating Zola or not?

After this I went on Mystic Manor... I must have been on this ride for 30 times or more. It never failed to impress me every time and it made me really wonder what Ant-Man ride could have been if it was just half as good as Mystic Manor.

[Asa]

https://hkmsg.blogspot.com/2019/04/blog-post.html#more

A very good description of the entire ride by HK Main Street Gazette.



I have to say I really like this shot. HKDL's world exclusive Marvel area. The only problem is that the rides are not so great.

[hakjie11]

As a Disney fan I have been really disappointed so far with the new expansions.
Moana Homecoming celebrations and Nano Battle both had me excited for a while but when the concept arts remained "concepts arts" and we got a sub-par version of what should have been a world exclusive ride/show, that's where my support painfully dies.
There might be one positive thing about Nano Battle, it will probably remain an exclusive for HK Disneyland for quite some time (not in a good way) because based on the online comments of the ride videos, most of them don't want this ride in their park.

[Tomorrowland_1967]

My reaction to this ride:



The sets are lifeless ... just a bunch of static walls with blinky lights ... and a few projection screens.

So .. they got rid of a ride that was only 14 years old for this garbage?

Beware of cloning for other parks!


it seems the current trend with Disney involves more guns to blast at things. More 3d glasses .... more projection screens.

WOW!!
I can hardly wait to see what Tomorrowland's future will be at Disneyland.

Big wuff!

[Gelatoni97]

Reserving judgement until I have actually been on the ride.

I read all kinds of gripes online about Shanghai’s Buzz Lightyear ride. Then I went and experienced it, and loved it. Now my favorite Buzz ride.

Online videos are a horrible way to build an informed opinion about an attraction.

[hakjie11]

Reserving judgement until I have actually been on the ride.

I read all kinds of gripes online about Shanghai’s Buzz Lightyear ride. Then I went and experienced it, and loved it. Now my favorite Buzz ride.

Online videos are a horrible way to build an informed opinion about an attraction.

I think you posted in the wrong Discussion Forum. It's about the Hong Kong (not Shanghai) Buzz attraction being redone into Marvel's Ant Man ride. Generally there are more people hating it and would rather want the original Buzz attraction back in Hong Kong.

[Tomorrowland_1967]

The comments on the YouTube video are overwhelmingly negative. One bad review after another.... after another. Who approved this?? I got a pretty good idea who! Someone who loves slashing budgets and think the general public are not going to get a clue this person has no idea how to run the theme park division. It won’t take too long this is shuttered. I’m predicting another Journey Into Imagination fiasco where multiple retoolings to the ride commence. But never quite get there to something that resembles something worthy of the Disney name. I’m looking at Shanghai, France, Florida, and Anaheim for the next underwhelming project to open on this particular person’s watch! The only reason Tokyo Disney Resort won’t be affected... is because it is fully owned by the Oriental Land Co. They won’t put up with clueless execs willing to cut into Walt’s gold standards.

[hakjie11]

I think HK Disney / US Imagineering deserves the bad reviews.The last 2 attractions are clearly on a budget and not worth the 50% which HK government agreed to pay for the expansions. In fact it feels like as if only the 50% part of HK government has been used for these attractions and HK Disney didn't spend any of their own money on it.

I hope they step up their game and make something great out of the other expansions. (anything less then great won't be enough)
The castle remake won't make such a difference, it's just correcting something that has been wrong from the beginning. Let's be honest, it's still going to be the 2nd smallest Disney castle even after the remake and it won't feature anything which other castles don't have at this moment.

If Frozen Land is going to be less impressive then the Tokyo's version then we might as well forget about the rest incl. the 2nd gate expansion.
As for the 2023 Marvel ride, after the Ant Man ride my expectations are greatly reduced. Prob some ride with lots of screens and 1 single piece of animatronic.
The reimagined 2021 ride : probably nothing major, a remake of the Lion King show based on the soon-to-be-launched movie most likely. (They have been gradually improving that specific part of the park for a year now)

Besides what I recently experienced is that many of my HK friends/family have not gone to HK Disney as much as they use to. The reason is that their kids are simply bored of it after having 2-4 years of Annual Pass and the park lacking any worthy new experiences and on top of that HK Disney hiking their prices again. In fact some did not renew their AP or some are considering not to renew it until Frozen Land is launched. Since HK locals make up 40% of the attendance they are clearly not taking care of them enough and the US-China trade war will impact the Chinese sentiment to visit an US park so I don't think there would be any Chinese attendance surprises.

[Gelatoni97]

I think you posted in the wrong Discussion Forum. It's about the Hong Kong (not Shanghai) Buzz attraction being redone into Marvel's Ant Man ride. Generally there are more people hating it and would rather want the original Buzz attraction back in Hong Kong.

I know exactly what this topic is about. I’m making a comparison. Shanghai’s Buzz ride was said by many online to be “awful”, based on a few YouTube videos. I went there in person and found it to be fantastic. Similarly, I suspect a lot of the negativity around the Ant Man ride is coming from people who have not ridden it, but have only formed their opinion based on a YouTube video. I think that’s a foolish way to form an opinion about a ride. I’m waiting until I ride it before jumping to any conclusions.

[Jspider]

I know exactly what this topic is about. I’m making a comparison. Shanghai’s Buzz ride was said by many online to be “awful”, based on a few YouTube videos. I went there in person and found it to be fantastic. Similarly, I suspect a lot of the negativity around the Ant Man ride is coming from people who have not ridden it, but have only formed their opinion based on a YouTube video. I think that’s a foolish way to form an opinion about a ride. I’m waiting until I ride it before jumping to any conclusions.

Probably coming to this thread way too late to get much conversation. I've been very curious about everyones thoughts after seeing a few videos.

I tend to agree quite a bit with the idea that you really can't know for sure until you've seen it in person but I'll admit I do tend to lean to the dissapointed side.



I guess I'm just curious what has you impressed with the Shanghai version of Buzz over the others and what in your book constitutes a good shooter?



Now what I can say from the general written reviews that I like is that it sounds like the weight of the guns in this new version and the kickback all sound like nice improvements. The Buzz guns in the Disneyland iteration have always been awkward to handle and trickey to aim. I liked the feedback of the Disneyland version over the origional WDW version of course but it is interesting to see this continue to get tweaked in new iterations rather than just stagnating.


What I feel from videos of Shanghai's Buzz are that while the art design looks a bit samey for some of the targets, the overall movement and dynamism of the attraction look somewhat improved. The projections in the backgorund seemed to give it a better sense of depth and all the extra movement and targets probably make for the difference you're describing in video/experience. Especially with interactive rides I think your arguements hold fairly well.


In video this Antman/Wasp deal looks really bleh. Even more than Shanghai's Buzz the art design suffers when put into video format as the targets look very samey which can make it read as bland on video. There appears to be more projection but less overall movement or response which doesn't help. To me I'm kinda curious how well the effects and videoscreens look in person. On video they don't quite appear to have the movie level polish to them and Iron Man's CG looks off in spots. The general movement just feels awkward.

I think the biggest issue I see at least in video is that the ride doesn't seem to fully separate itself from the flats/cartoony nature of Buzz which makes it jarring when you see a live action movie version of Antman/Wasp running around. To me the art direction seems stretched. It doesn't have the cartoony vibrant playfullness that Buzz had but they clearly weren't going for realistic looking circuit boards and robots either.

I get that going for a more animated stylized Avengers would probably conflict with the out of the movies angle they were going for. But I guess to me that leaves the alternative of going a bit more inner space with the shrinking effects and set design. Something that rings just a bit more realistic while fixing with the movie's stylings would've been a more expensive choice but I dunno.


It does look like there are more targets so it could be that the ride still feels more dynamic when you're in the moment firing at things rather than trying to admire it as a ride through artpiece.


I think there is something of a conflict going on with some of the old purists looking at everything through a traditional darkride lens and those who are either younger or more open minded.

Personally I'm probably something of a half breed and I miss being part of the younger cohort on these forums but I guess I'll be honest with where I am currently in life lol.