The thing I wonder about is if it's wrong to expect a theme park to keep things as they were for decades as if it were a museum?
For a majority of guests, especially in the next year or so when the paint job is complete and has faded a little bit from UV exposure, will anyone mind the changes?
I think most people would understand that a theme park is in itself a caricature of the land it portrays, whether based on real or fictional locations... So therefore, is there any actual harm in this paint job or are we generally being entitled thoosies who will always try to compare today's operations to the AB years?
I get what you're saying, but I disagree with this take. I agree that BGW, and any other theme park, isn't a museum and that change is natural and necessary over time. I'm in no way against change.
That said, what put BGW on the map in the first place is the attention to detail with which it was designed to be accurate to the cultures it represents. BGW is special precisely
because it wasn't designed with the attitude that "a majority of guests" won't "mind." It's the little details and that attention to being accurate that make BGW immersive, that allow you to pretend you're really in a sleepy Scottish hamlet or a little German village.
Change as a whole is fine, but I think the saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" applies here. Was anyone who visited the park actually pressed by Rhinefeld's white and beige walls? As
@Zachary has said, Rhinefeld was probably the park's least broken, most thematically intact area. It was one of the park's few areas that truly continued to create that sense of authentic immersion and escape with which it was designed. The question isn't just whether or not the yellow is okay; the question is why they felt the original color even needed to be changed in the first place. Why wasn't this budget allocated to poor Pompeii's horribly faded facades? To repainting the decrepitly weathered gift shop in Festa that
@Mwe BGW pointed out the other day? Why "fix" what "ain't broke"?
So therefore, is there any actual harm in this paint job or are we generally being entitled thoosies who will always try to compare today's operations to the AB years?
Singling out this statement because I strongly disagree with this last point. Nobody should disagree that our expectations for BGW should be different from AB-era BGW
operationally, but this isn't an operational change. It's reasonable to understand that today's publicly-traded corporate-owned BGW is going to do more to cut costs and maximize profits than in the old days, with less focus on those attention to details. But the thing is, this repainting isn't an example of neglect or corporate cost-cutting. In fact, BGW is going out of their way to invest in this project that presumably doesn't even need to be happening in the first place. The frustration about this project has nothing to do with unrealistic expectations for a post-AB BGW. The frustration is this change is a deliberate, needless replacement. It has nothing to do with tighter budgets or shareholder expectations; it's just purely an example, in my opinion, of poor judgment by the park.