Sneaky previews
Disney gets tough on soft openings
“Soft openings,” once random, unscheduled, unadvertised sneak peeks at almost-finished attractions, are evolving into calculated marketing tools for Disney theme parks.
Last month, with the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, Disneyland limited its week of previews to a special lottery for annual passholders. The few thousand lucky winners were given an exact day and hour to ride, and—except for the fortunate few who wandered up when invitees were a no-show—no special invitation, no ride. Similarly, in the spring of 2003, as Animal Kingdom was putting the finishing touches on Expedition Everest, management tried to give the parks an attendance boost by, four months in advance, publicly announcing the exact date that soft openings of the coaster would begin.
The logical next step would, of course, be for Disney to begin charging for the privilege, by rolling out new attractions with hard ticket previews. It’s a course of action Disney flirted with 10 years ago, but quickly abandoned. Disneyland charged for an after-hours pre-premiere of Light Magic in 1997 and for a series of pre-opening previews of Disney’s California Adventure in 2001. In both cases, the products were underwhelming and disappointed guests stormed City Hall for refunds. Worse, word of mouth spread like wildfire, effectively dooming Light Magic to an early grave, saddling DCA with a poor image and years of attendance troubles, and souring management on hard-ticket premieres.
Now, a decade later, new management is moving back in that direction, as evidenced by its decision to open the in-park movie premiere of Pirates III to the public for a hefty fee. Disney knows it can get away with charging for a sneak peek at a new, untested product—as long as they’re positive they have a hit on their hands.
In addition to ride quality, another factor in determining if a new attraction will justify a hard-ticket premiere will be, is there enough time. The more complicated the ride system, the more likely there will be problems; remember the problematic construction and soft-delayed openings of Epcot’s Test Track and Mission: Space? Disneyland’s revamped Submarine Voyage undoubtedly went to previews by appointment due to the short amount of time available between the time the ride was ready and safe to ride and an official opening date that had already been chiseled in stone.
You see, these days, the marketing department strategically schedules opening dates a year or more in advance, timing them for maximum publicity. In the old days, Disneyland would advertise an attraction as “coming soon,” “coming next year,” or—if planners were really feeling confident—”coming next spring.”
Walt and his immediate successors never viewed a soft opening as a marketing opportunity. As soon as an attraction was built, they’d open it. To drum up some publicity, Walt might invite some VIP along to share the first ride and work especially noteworthy additions into an episode of his Sunday evening television show.
It wasn’t until the opening of Disney World in Florida in 1971 that the company realized it had to do a little bit more than plug the resort on the Wonderful World of Disney. Within months of breaking ground, Disney discovered that while everyone seemed to have heard of Disneyland, most East Coasters had never been there and had some pretty funny ideas of what it was. They figured there were already plenty of opportunities to ride a Ferris Wheel or pet a goat. Disney had to provide a clearer, three-dimensional picture of what it was up to.
So, in January 1970, Disney World opened its own Preview Center in a white, square, one-story building in the midst of what would become its Motor Inn Plaza Drive.
The building was filled with concept art and pretty hostesses who could hand out information and answer questions, even take reservations for the two hotels then under construction. Most importantly, in the center of the building was a theater where visitors would gather around a gigantic scale model of what the resort was supposed to look like one day.
Bill Hoelscher, who ran the Preview Center for its 22 months of operation, related, “There were lights in the ceiling above the model, and a hostess would say, “This is what we are going to do. This is going to be the Magic Kingdom, this is going to be EPCOT, on the lake will be the Contemporary Hotel,’ and each of them will be spotlighted automatically. Then guests could walk around the outside of this building and on the inside walls were pictures and renderings of what was going to happen.”
As soon as the park opened, the Preview Center closed. But much of the preliminary materials began to be moved inside the park to the Gulf Hospitality House (today the Town Square Exposition Center), to eventually create a mini-preview center as the post-show to the Walt Disney Story. Beginning in 1973, the area showcased concept art and information on possibly-coming-attractions, including a display of Thunder Mesa’s never-built dark ride, Western River Expedition. (Ironically, management began heavily promoting the project about the same time they’d basically given up hope of ever building it.)
At the same time, Disneyland set up its own preview center of sorts as the post-show to the Walt Disney Story at the suddenly Lincoln-less Opera House. After the Abe returned, the preview center was moved to the southeast corner of Main Street, promising such future attractions as Space Mountain. I remember as a young teen staring, transfixed at a large model of the never-realized Discovery Bay, not fully grasping the nature of this strange cross between Island at the Top of the World and Dumbo’s Circus, but nonetheless my appetite whetted that something new and impressive was on the way. I also felt special, like I was in on some big secret, as I would feel a few years later riding the Skyway over the New Fantasyland construction site and the monorail through the not-yet-completed DCA.
Disneyland later had a preview center for DCA (first backstage, then in the esplanade next to the construction fence, and finally as the Mr. Lincoln post-show). And in 1981, the Magic Kingdom’s Walt Disney Story post-show became the Epcot Center Preview Center and, seven years later, the Disney-MGM Studios Preview Center. And in 2005, Epcot even opened a Hong Kong Disneyland Preview Center at its China Pavilion.
As far as previewing the parks themselves, the Magic Kingdom held a series of no-cost previews during the last weekends of September 1971 for construction workers and their families. And, EPCOT Center not only invited construction families to previews during the weekends of September 1982, but would also have cast members tell small numbers of guests at the Magic Kingdom, Contemporary and Polynesian hotels that they could also jump on the monorail and sample the park for free.
Soft openings of individual attractions were, initially, an afterthought. In the early days of the parks, when the parks desperately needed more ride capacity, an attraction might be opened as soon as it was ready. The Magic Kingdom originally scheduled to open Space Mountain in June 1974, but—plagued by an energy crisis and resultant business downturn—slowed construction and pushed the grand opening back to January 15, 1975. Then, when business began picking after Thanksgiving, Disney quietly opened the attraction to help soak up the holiday crowds.
The practice expanded as Disney realized that soft openings provided new attractions and their crews with real-guest experience before the news cameras were rolling and expectations got too high. Hopefully, management will remember the goodwill, publicity and excitement that can be bought with a few weeks of free previews.
Now, here’s your invitation to an exclusive preview. On Sunday July 15 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., you’ll have the chance to get your hands on my forthcoming book Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World. Although the book doesn’t arrive in bookstores until October 1, I’ll be signing advance copies at the NFFC Show & Sale at the Crowne Plaza Resort in Garden Grove, California, five minutes south of Disneyland on Harbor Boulevard. More details on the book can be found at Bonaventure Press (link) and in a brief “making of” piece (reprinted below) that I wrote for Didier Ghez’s blog (link). More details on the show are at the NFFC Web site (link). See you there!
Realityland, a new book by David Koenig, is expected to be released October 2007.
The making of Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World has been a long, arduous journey that began not long after the release of my first book, Mouse Tales, in 1994. The collection of wacky and outrageous anecdotes about Disneyland was so well received, that the public demanded a sequel, and my first thought was to produce a similar book about Disney World.
Visitors to the Preview Center viewed a motion picture of “What will be found at Walt Disney World when it opens to the public” while standing around a giant scale model of the resort’s Phase I. Far off projects pictured included Space Mountain, Blackbeards Island, and the never-built Asian, Venetian, Persian, and main pyramid building for the Polynesian hotel.
After a few trips to Central Florida, I quickly realized that this was going to take a lot longer than first imagined. For one thing, Disney had built Disney World over 2,000 miles away from my home in Southern California. Quite inconsiderate. At most, I’d be in Florida a couple of weeks each year. Second, Disney World isn’t just a theme park; it’s basically a city, with a story behind every element. And, third, never before had anyone written an in-depth history of the resort. As I began receiving access to higher- and higher-level insiders, I knew that I had the opportunity to do something special, and I committed to letting the project take as much time as it needed.
Along the way, I met up with the man personally charged with going undercover and secretly buying the land in Florida… The lawyer required to lived in a shack on property before real construction began, when it was truly a wilderness… The Imagineers who decided which rides to put in the theme parks and proposed dozens of ideas that didn’t make the cut… The people who ran the original Preview Center… The on-site executive who oversaw the chaotic construction of Disney’s first hotels… Security guards recruited to try to control the bedlam… The outsiders brought in to operate the hotels with “industry practices” in direct violation of the “Disney way”… Marketing folks who had to sell the amusements, participant affairs staffers who had to get someone else to pay for them, and the operations team who had to run them on a daily basis… Members of the “Wednesday Morning Club,” enlisted by a desperate Card Walker to turn Walt Disney’s City of Tomorrow into something lucrative and practical that they could pass off as an “EPCOT”… And Card Walker himself.
The Walt Disney World Preview Center handed out free copies of this snazzy 24-page souvenir booklet to visitors, its cover a full-color close-up of the Preview Center model.
So here we are a dozen years after my first, fateful trip to Disney World. That’s 20-some flights to Florida. More than 100 interviews. Easily 200 hours digging for details in research libraries, universities, and courthouses. And a few extended interruptions, including two other books and two children.
Like my earlier works, there are plenty of crazy cast member stories, backstage secrets, details on attraction mishaps, and all of the other thrills that “Mouse Tales” lovers have been clamoring for. But, even more, it’s all woven together into a fascinating history of the resort, the company itself, and a group of unforgettable characters. The tales don’t just subscribe to a theme; they tell a story. And, best of all, I’ve finally written a book that doesn’t have the word “Mouse” in the title.
“Realityland” arrives in bookstores (both physical and electronic) on October 1, the 25th anniversary of Epcot, but advance copies will be available at the NFFC shows July 15 in Southern California and September 29 at Disney World.
