Here's another great video on YouTube. It's a clip from an American TV Show called Engineering Thrills. This section is about Toy Story Mania at Disney's California Adventure. Some great ride shots and Imagineer interviews:
[youtube:1e0a8aed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQzoJBWBKoI&feature=channel_page[/youtube:1e0a8aed]
Great video, thanks for posting it :)
It's actually highlighted to me how easy it could be for Imagineering to make special levels for say Halloween or Christmas seasons, and then to put them in the ride... :)
That's true. It would be relatively easy for them to do that.
Ironically, though, the cost of creating different/alternative software could be as much as changing a ride physically. You'd think a video game style ride would be cheap to alter, as most of it is virtual. But the cost of creating the new software, and doing new Pixar quality animation, could actually be very high.
But it's a question of what's being created. They're not rewriting the way the game works, only plugging new levels into it. Provided that they've given themselves an easy enough language to create those levels in, It wouldn't be too costly to create, test, and input the levels in the attraction. Certainly it wouldn't cost as much as building a new attraction, just for a holiday, then taking it down.
Yes, it would probably be costly to produce Pixar-grade 3D animation for a new level, but I still think it would be better value.