Friday, January 21, 2011

An inside look at DCA's Little Mermaid attraction



Disney Parks released yesterday a very interesting video showing WDI Imagineers at work on the highly awaited Little Mermaid attraction opening in four months at Disney's California Adventure. As usual the editing is quite fast as they want to show Disney fans more about the ride but not too much! So, we're going to "stop the time" a little bit and have a closer look at all this in detail with these screen captures - click on each to see them in bigger size.

Imagineer Lisa Girolami takes us behind the curtain (or under the waves) to give us a first look at Ariel's world. It begins at WDI with Imagineers at the drawing board.



The video also disclose never seen before WDI artwork of different scenes of the ride like this one which might show a scene at the very beginning...



...or this one, in fact a closer shot of the "Under the Sea" sequence artwork...



...or this other one, very interesting, as it shows how the guests will have the feeling to be "under the sea" for real, thanks to WDI "dry for wet" special effects.



The video provides also a new shot of the ride's model...



...as well as rare shots of Imagineers at work on the ride's characters...







...and even the first shot of one of the Audio-Animatronics being programmed by WDI programmers.



But of course what we are all waiting for is pictures of the inside decor of the ride that Imagineers have almost finished to build. On this first picture showing a sunken galleon you can clearly see the track for the ride vehicle. But what Lisa Girolami is not telling you in the video is that this scene (if my memory is right) will be the ride's opening, i.e that the ride vehicle will enter and go through this galleon before going down under the sea - if i'm wrong, at least it will be the case for sure in the WDW version.



Always from the video this other scene decor showing, too, the ride track - currently WDI Imagineers are working on it.



These next shots are showing the huge decor for the "Under the Sea" sequence as well as some of the characters, already in place.







As you can see all of this looks pretty exciting and my only hope is that, after DCA and WDW, the Little Mermaid attraction will come soon at DLP. In the meantime as i'm sure you're dying to see the whole video, here it is below.




Pictures and video: copyright Disney

7 comments:

James said...

Love your blog, check it every day.

The ride looks fun, but in regards to the animated figures, WDI is not fabricating animatronic figures anymore. All Disney figures are now built at Garner and Holt.

Demi said...

J'adore Disney!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

jones said...

On some pitures I have seen, the figures had a very shiny surface, maybe to make them look "wet" - I hope that was just the flash used for taking the pictures, since it did not look very good.

Anonymous said...

"All Disney figures are now built at Garner and Holt" - did not know that, is it official?

one tow said...

nice

James said...

Regarding Garner and Holt, yes this is true, Disney announced this when Toy Story Mania was being done. Do a google search and you'll see the press release. People keep brushing this one under the rug by saying Disney is still doing certain figures but that is not quite the case.

greenhurst said...

Not all of Disney's creatures are being built by Garner Holt. A lot of them, including some many from Little Mermaid are being built by Advanced Animations in Vermont.