The Big Fix
Winners and losers in Disney’s bet it can fix DCA
After six years of increasingly expensive Band-Aids, a lesser Mouse might have given up on the still-struggling Disney’s California Adventure.
Although it now boasts several excellent individual attractions, the park as a whole continues to lack that emotional magic the public expects in a Disney theme park. The absence of heart is so acute that Disney seriously considered knocking down the theme park’s gates, merging it into Downtown Disney, and charging by the attraction.
[Fans have long argued that DCA should instead be merged into Disneyland, which has never been an option. Managers and accountants prefer to operate parks that have about 30 to 40 attractions—enough to occupy the guests without becoming too expensive to operate and maintain. Disneyland already has 50-some attractions and to add another 30 would be preposterous.]
So DCA could have soldiered on, adding one $100 million attraction each year until it ran out of room. DCA would have been bigger, but its core problem would have remained. As the Tower of Terror proved, it could add the most marketable attraction from the Walt Disney Imagineering catalog and there still would be no lasting improvement in attendance. The average visitor (or rather potential visitor) still had no respect for the place.
Instead, Disney has announced plans to do something huge—and unprecedented. It will spend more than $1 billion over the next five years to “fix” DCA. That’s roughly twice what it spent to build the entire park in the first place.
The strategy is to flood the place with Disney images and characters (Mickey, Woody, Walt) so no longer can anyone complain it’s “not Disney enough.” Hopefully the designers will remember that what makes a great Disney attraction are how exotic the theme and how immersive the environment—not how big it makes Mickey’s head.
The changes begin next summer with the opening of Toy Story Midway Mania at the far end of Paradise Pier, and then wind roughly eastward. There will also be a Preview Center and Pixar parade (2008), World of Color water show (2009), Little Mermaid dark ride (estimated 2010), reconfigured entrance for DCA’s 10th anniversary (2011), with a trolley car ride that drops you off in front of Cars Land (2012). Under-performers will be replaced (Mickey’s Philharmagic in place of Muppetvision). Popular yet ill-fitting rides will be rethemed (Mickey on the Sun Wheel, Goofy on Mulholland Madness). And the hopelessly carnivalesque (Maliboomer, Orange Stinger) could be torn out all together.
Just as remarkable as Disney’s decision to fix DCA is the company finally admitting that the park needs fixing. Equally surprising, after more than a decade of holding its cards ever-closer to its vest, the company is disclosing five years worth of plans all at once.
This wasn’t always unusual. Up until the early 1990s, Disney regularly boasted about its long-range plans. Remember the Disney Decade? Or the dueling Port Disney vs. Westcot projects? Such announcements generated plenty of buzz and press coverage, but did have a dark side. Plans do change, especially at Disney, where, as they say, “nothing’s concrete—except Splash Mountain.” And the bigger the proposals, the more embarrassment when they had to be downsized or discarded. Worse, Disney discovered that if it promoted coming attractions too far in advance, tourists might postpone their next vacation to Disneyland or Walt Disney World.
So, nowadays, projects are confirmed after they’re well under way, typically just as construction permits are being filed. This way the company knows the project will in fact happen and can set a grand opening date with better assurance. In Florida, for instance, Disney has been preparing the site for a Disney Vacation Club adjunct to the Contemporary Hotel for most of the year, but might take another two years before acknowledging the project exists.
But the DCA situation is different. The announcement of its extreme makeover had to be big—and orchestrated to reverberate far beyond the snug boundaries of DCA.
A primary segment of the target audience were Disney’s combative neighbors in Anaheim. Twelve years ago, the company promised to expand in Anaheim if the city cleaned up the neighborhood and restricted all new developments to resort uses. The city council has since gone back on its word and approved home builder SunCal’s plan to replace a mobile home park in the resort area with high-density housing.
The arguments by SunCal and its backers fall into three categories. First, there’s the cry for “affordable housing”—buzzwords designed to sway the emotions of the council and the community. The resort area does employ tens of thousands of low-paid workers who need someplace to live. SunCal’s development would include 225 subsidized rental units. But the project would displace about 260 mobile homes, resulting in a net loss of affordable housing. And certainly few local housekeepers and dishwashers will qualify for one of SunCal’s $300,000 condominiums.
The fact is, with the traffic and lights and noise, next door to a theme park is a rotten place to live. Disney knows you won’t like it, and is trying to save you—and, of course, themselves—the trouble.
SunCal also argues that Disney secured the zoning protections under false pretenses. It promised the expansive Westcot and instead delivered a second-rate second gate. True, the original plans showed Westcot filling not only Disneyland’s parking lot where DCA now sits, but also the length of today’s Grand Californian Hotel, Downtown Disney, and the massive parking lot behind the Paradise Pier Hotel. But Disney first started having second thoughts about the project’s size to alleviate fears of increased noise and traffic. Disney thought the locals wanted something smaller.
Finally, SunCal contends that Disney isn’t as important to the city’s tax coffers as it pretends to be.
DCA’s big announcement was planned to change all that. Disney is acknowledging that DCA has fallen short, unintentionally, and that it’s ready to fix everything. They’ve instantly defused SunCal’s biggest arguments.
One day later, SunCal withdrew its request to have the council place an anti-Disney initiative on the ballot. SunCal can read the polling on the wall. Consider this step one in what could be an uncharacteristically quiet exit.
Up the freeway, they’re also feeling the heat of Disney’s announcement. Unlike Knott’s Berry Farm, which has always fancied itself as more of a park for locals, Universal Studios Hollywood has traditionally marketed itself as a tourist attraction. One insider estimated that historically three-quarters of USH visitors are in Hollywood for one day of their otherwise Disneyland vacation.
So USH executives have been trembling in their boots ever since they first heard about Disney planning a second gate—and desperately trying to remake themselves as a locals park. For the last five years, USH has been giving away an annual pass for basically the same price as a one-day ticket, helping to disguise the fact that the five million admissions they claim to sell each year are actually half that number.
USH should get a boost in the spring with its opening of a Simpsons simulator ride. And, since the ride reuses the facilities and equipment from Back to the Future, it will come in on time and cheap for an E-ticket (or, at minimum, a D+). After the summer, however, USH will find itself with the Simpsons push growing old, no prospects for Harry Potter additions (Universal holds the rights only in Florida), and a progressively stronger DCA.
But there is one park that has even more riding on DCA’s improvements—the proposed third gate in Anaheim. If a billion dollars doesn’t significantly improve DCA’s image and attendance (to a base of eight million a year instead of five), expect Disney to convert its strawberry fields into low-risk hotels with attached DVC timeshare units, and possibly a water park.
If DCA 2.0 proves a hit, however, Disney will think it’s rediscovered the secret for theme park success. Envision, on a revitalized DCA’s tenth anniversary in 2011, a big announcement that work has resumed on a third theme park, filled with magic and ideally connected to the first two parks by monorail. Just save everyone some headaches and build it right the first time.
