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Indiana Jones Ride at Disney Hollywood Studios?

They described Disney MGM Studios as a half day park, add on ticket to a Disney vacation, when they were designing it. The Sunset Blvd and Muppet expansions would make it a full theme park.

Early maps even describe part of the area as “Theme Park” where the 2 (non tram) rides where the first couple years. But they knew they’d need more rides if people were going to be willing to see it as a full theme park. To start, they compensated by filling the entry streets with as many characters and “real” celebrities as they could. (I got lots of autographs from real celebrities as they would schedule radio press junkets, commercial filming, and other things right out in the open that first year.)

Essentially, the park wasn’t planned well, because it put a lot of stock in the whole “actual film studio” and not enough in rides. But they figured that out before it even opened, with expansions already planned. They just ran out of time to build them.

In other words, you’re both right lol. It was a half day park, but they called it a theme park.
As illustrated in the map below. Notice Star Tours isn't open yet. One of those late additions you were referring to.

mgmbeginning_map1989disney.gif
 
Gotta rush to open the year before the park you’re ripping off opens, no matter what!
And they could have saved time and money just partnering with Universal like Universal had proposed, and eliminated the competition before it existed. That's a decision they will regret more and more each year...
 
Gotta rush to open the year before the park you’re ripping off opens, no matter what!

The funny part about DHS to me is that, when Walt Disney mentioned having the luxury of space, they built Studios in a way that makes it difficult to actually expand or use space efficiently. I do remember when it opened and thinking that there wasn't a real reason to go there as they didn't have any attractions that appealed to me. I stayed at Magic Kingdom and Epcot (when it still had all the dark rides and more enjoyable for me).
 
I’m in the “could have been planned a little better” camp but the whole blessing of size thing is a bit misleading. Of the entire property, it’s basically evenly split between one-third buildable land, one-third questionable/have to offset wetlands, and one-third completely off limits. All of those intermingle so there really aren’t a lot of places to put a theme park.

Frankly I don’t think anyone gave a crap about being environmentally friendly when that was said - I’m skeptical something like Seven Seas Lagoon would get signed off on today (not that they would anyways).
 
Whenever Disney talks about Walt's "blessing of size" comment all I can think is how he would have HATED almost everything they've done since 1971. The fact that Disneyland is so much smaller than MK but has so many more attractions. The fact that with the two parks in CA that could both fit into the parking lot of MK they have as many attractions as all four parks on the east coast shows how they've squandered that blessing.

Back to the actual discussion of this thread about an Indiana Jones ride at DHS, still a no. I don't see them adding a ride that already exists in DAK. I still think they could and would just retheme Dinosaur if they really want to bring Indy east.
 
Back to the actual discussion of this thread about an Indiana Jones ride at DHS, still a no. I don't see them adding a ride that already exists in DAK. I still think they could and would just retheme Dinosaur if they really want to bring Indy east.

I agree that I don't think they'd clone the existing Indiana Jones Adventure or its variants for Hollywood Studios.

Ideally, they would come up with a different ride concept.
 
I always liked the below Imagineerland concept, not so much the show building as I prefer some kind of Temple ruins for IAJ but everything else about this concept I like. Would provide a much needed water ride and different ride system for the Studios.

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