If you’ve seen Disney publicity blitz for their new “attraction” then you know Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom officially opens on February 22nd. For the unaware, it’s a game where you run around the park going to “portals” (read: TVs) in the windows of buildings and wave a card at it to cast “spells” against villains.
Most folks who have had a chance to test the experience have passed it off a as relatively mundane but mostly harmless addition to the Magic Kingdom. You just waggle a card at a screen and the story otherwise plays out without any challenge or much reaction to what you do. Yet another thing for the hardcore pin collectors to get into once they’re bored with Duffy outfits and Vinylmation it seems.
Though this tidbit hidden in a recent press release makes one wonder where all the time and money went:
Imagineers spent more than four years creating and perfecting this unique experience, which can be played in 15- to 20-minute segments throughout guests’ visits to the Magic kingdom, or continuously for up to three to four hours. More than 95 minutes of original animation was created for Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom – the equivalent of a full-length animated film.
We’ll point out that the animation is choppy and the gameplay, as lauded in the same press release as being the brainchild of trading card game experts, is at best almost non-existent. There’s no challenge and just stand at a screen holding a card.Even a brain-dead Venus flytrap could finish this game on “Hard” mode with ease. That is, assuming someone was willing to carry it from portal to portal and put a card in it’s jaw.
You don’t even have to try to find the screens – you’re given a map with their exact locations. So it’s not a scavenger hunt and it’s not really a card game with strategy. Four years kids, and this is what WDI cranked out. At least you can collect the 70 cards. 5 per day – 14 visits.. yeah, can you see yourself doing it 14 times? Not to mention it’s supposed to take 15-20 minutes each time and there’s only 95 minutes of animation – you’ll be seeing a lot of the same exact scenes over and over and over again.
Here’s a Woozle for your trouble..
And this is the part where we point out that Heffalumps and Woozles are two different creatures – a detail the folks working on this “attractions” for four years obviously missed. Sadly its one of many such oversights. On a positive note: finding the mistakes is actually more entertaining than the game itself. 4 out of 5 brain-dead Venus flytraps agree.