They shined it up something nice, and if you're willing to forgive and forget, it is a tremendous amount of fun.

I think I first checked out the new Gummi Ship Editor waaaay back when I opened up the first world path... and I was rather meh about it. The in-game help is imposing. There's no way you're going to read through it all; you're already set to blow it off. But I'll tell you whut: they cleaned up the interface and made it much easier to use. Even though I had barely skimmed all the documentation, I had little problem using colored blocks to assemble a starship in three-dimensional space.

I had a very specific reason why I decided to try out the Gummi editor. I was staring at the editor screen, thinking "Maybe it would be neat to make my own ship. There was no point last time, since the Gummi stuff sucked, but it looks kinda cool this time. And the actual flying/shooting parts are much, much nicer. What kind of cool aircraft could I make, that would look neat and sort of make sense inside the admittedly scattershot and seam-bursting world(s) of Kingdom Hearts?" The answer hit me like a lightning bolt.

The Sea Duck.

Here she is, Baloo's pride, at the conclusion of one of the levels. I even made a pair of little airfoils to fly alongside.

The airfoils are pretty weak though, so I'm working on an Air Pirate biplane model, as seen here from rear view. Even though it's not as pretty as the Duck, I always fly with two pirates as wingmen now. Kit's airfoil just isn't an efficient use of Gummi resources.

The flanking mini-ships are restricted to a pretty severe point total (you only have so many points to spend on blocks and weapons per ship) so my biplane design is awfully sparse. I had something far more accurate in mind, but I didn't have a big enough budget to have it look awesome AND have weapons. I'm hoping there's an upgrade coming soon that lets me expand it to version 2.

She's a little abbreviated, as you can tell. Not quite up to TaleSpin specs, but, again, you only have so much quota to spend. I wish you could make your ships wider, so I could give her a proper wingspan. Still, freaking hell awesome, eh?

Here's the stats:
654 out of 700 construction points
Abilities: cannon upgrade, 2 heal upgrades, auto-regen and formation change (because I dig being able to make the Air Pirates change formation in mid-battle)
Flat Helm
2 Neon Bars (for overall power increase, they're mounted just under each wing)
2 Screw Propellers (they cost a little power but add to speed)
2 Cyclone wing Gummis (for mobility, they're the two halves of the tail wing)
2 Blizzard weapon Gummis (dual shot, the guns mounted on top of the wings)
1 Blizzara weapon Gummi (dual shot / tri-directional, peeking out at the bottom of the red nose piece)
2 Fira weapon Gummis (dual shot / heavy rounds, buried in the pylon arms coming down out of each wing)
1 Comet weapon Gummi (autolock laser, hidden in the main body just behind the helm)

Building the Sea Duck probably only took an hour, initially. The reason why I've burned so much additional time running Gummi battles is to unlock more new pieces so I can go back into the editor and tinker with her! I'm really looking forward to more space-shooter levels, because I can't wait to see what other cool features and upgrades I can find.

It's probably a lost cause, because the anti-hype surrounding the first game's Gummi Ship was so pervasive... but they really fixed it. The Gummi Ship no longer sucks, people.