The sound design in the "Hell" scene is wonderfully appropriate; you just wound up in a dark, fiery inferno with beings who will *not* be pleasant company.
This is awesome! I had been thinking of putting together a video like this with the photos corresponding with the sound recording. Thanks for making this.
I feel as if I’m the only one who doesn’t like this version as much as DL’s. I love DL’s art style way more than MK’s (the characters are especially what come to mind) and I feel like this one is just more noise? Like Disneyland’s is way smaller so you can almost hear the instrumental for most of the ride and it makes it feel less empty idk
The art style of the Disneyland version is definitely much more accurate to the film, and I also prefer California's Toad for that reason among other things. I think its art direction is simply more timeless than Rolly Crump's 1960s mod style. The WDW version was certainly more empty-sounding as well, as you pointed out. One thing about WDW's Toad that would make it slightly awkward by today's standards was its sparse population of unique sound effects. In the California version, you're constantly hearing crashes, people yelling at you, and ambient background noise; pretty much everything you "interact" with gives you some sort of audio feedback. In the Florida version, on the other hand, you would just sort of cruise through a lot of the scenes with very little acknowledgement from the ride's audio. Many sounds were played on a constant loop such that they weren't synced up with any specific action, and the ride's audio generally lacked the kind of chaos and clamor you hear in the Disneyland version (although you could argue that the sound effects from other scenes constantly bleeding through the walls sort of made up for that in a weird way). In fact, the prison scene on Track B had no sound effects at all, not counting the crossing bells and train whistle bleeding in from the next room. By modern standards I think Florida's Toad might come off as slightly unfinished in that category. However, I will 100% gawk over the WDW version's audio lasting from the crossing bells to the end of the ride on either track. The train whistle, oncoming engine, and collision are all excellent Foley work, and the way it's followed by the ominous warped Theremin tones fading into the cackling devils is just top-notch.
