The construction of Disney theme parks rarely goes smoothly. The recent behind-the-scenes rumors and facts about Shanghai Disneyland reinforce this fact. Since the opening of the original Disneyland in 1955, life has gotten in the way of the best laid plans of Imagineers. Whether it was a mob of fake ticket holders cheating their way into the Happiest Place on Earth or the death of a visionary causing tumult and indecision, even the most storied Disney gates suffer through their share of construction struggles.
The same is true of Disney park expansions. Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disney’s Animal Kingdom are two of the eight most trafficked theme parks in the world, yet they’ve struggled in the face of public criticism throughout their existences. One of the problems Disney faces as the worldwide leader in theme park entertainment is unreasonable expectations. The company has raised the bar in their industry so many times over the past 60+ years that consumers expect it of them. Disney isn’t merely battling the other companies in the vacation oligopoly. They’re also fighting against their own track record.
At times, this task proves overwhelming. Guests are at their most critical the first time they enter a new park, see a themed land for the first time, or enjoy an attraction they’ve never ridden before. Anything that has the Disney stamp on it comes with lofty public expectations. So what happens when a Disney expansion is evolutionary rather than revolutionary? Park fanatics quickly proclaim that it lacks magic, that it’s unworthy of the Disney name. Oddly, they still show up anyway, which is a testament to the loyalty customers feel toward the Disney brand. They complain, though. Boy, do they ever. Fans feel such a connection to Disney’s Parks and Resorts division that they consider themselves a part of it. When something isn’t right, they, the customers, express their opinions loudly.
To the company’s credit, Disney regularly listens. That’s why they constantly upgrade and expand. Walt Disney believed in the concept of plussing, constantly dedicating resources to perfecting what many considered already perfect. It’s also what gets them into trouble. At times, their grand ambitions exceed their ability to bring the big ideas to fruition. Even Disney park planners fall victim to that odd part of human nature that entitles us to dream big but never quite achieve our true goals. Something wonderful in theory can fail in execution, sometimes through no fault of its own.
Image: Disney
A perfect demonstration of this scenario occurred at Disneyland roughly four decades after its launch. Disney execs finally committed to expanding to their smallest theme park. They acquired new land and renovated a parking lot, all the while plotting unprecedented attractions, a few of which even went directly against the wishes of the company’s founder. By this point, Disney park planners had grown so confident in their abilities that they felt they understood Uncle Walt’s legacy enough to ignore his stipulations, at least the ones they considered outdated.
You know the expansion as Disney California Adventure. You also know that its traffic has increased dramatically in recent years. In this article, I’ll chronicle what Disney needed from the second gate at Disneyland and how they got it despite absorbing a beating in the early days. I’ll also show why some of its struggles grew overstated due to national news that tragically affected most industries. And I’ll discuss how it overcame those flaws, evolving into a lauded theme park full of the type of theming that would make Uncle Walt proud. I’m of the opinion that Disney California Adventure gets a bad rap, and if you read along, I’ll try to show you why.
Why visit real mountains when you can see artificial ones at Disney?
Image:Disney
Even though I’ve already stated that I think Disney California Adventure gets a bad rap, I can’t defend much of what Eisner did here. A noted egomaniac, one of his primary goals was to leave an imprint on Disney history. He wanted his name linked forever with that of Walt Disney, the founder of the company. As you well know, fate had other plans.
Eisner’s tenure ended with a whimper rather than a bang. During a fated 2004 shareholders’ meeting, almost half of stock owners at the company refused to extend his contract. By this point, he’d lost the faith of many Disney loyalists. They frequently mentioned Disney California Adventure as one of his failed endeavors. Nearly a decade after his decision to make a mark on Disney history, Eisner found himself hoisted by his own petard.
What went wrong? A cynic might say everything. I find such responses glib. Disney’s staff of devoted employees has stood as the finest in the world for generations now. They didn’t suddenly take leave of their senses during the planning phase of what was then known as Disney’s California Adventure. Instead, they worked diligently to make magic out of the concepts authorized by their superiors. What I’m saying here is that it’s all Michael Eisner’s fault.
Image: Disney
During the genesis of Disney’s California Adventure, the doomed CEO and his trusted lieutenants engaged in a brainstorming session. They established a checklist of items they wanted to accomplish with a Disneyland expansion. One of oddest aspects of this list was the inclusion of California itself. The company’s power players lamented the fact that Disney didn’t dominate the state tourism market to the degree they desired. In Eisner’s estimation, Disney should own California as a kind of paid tribute to Uncle Walt. He sought to increase the value of the world’s original theme park by adding elements from other popular California landmarks. In the process, the second gate at Disneyland would restore the balance on the company balance sheet, siphoning business away from local competitors.
Who were the enemies who threatened Eisner’s beloved balance sheet? No, I don’t mean Universal Studios Hollywood or even Knott’s Berry Farm. Disney never viewed other theme parks as viable threats to its bottom line. The competitors who caused Eisner to see shadows included Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park, Joshua Tree National Park, Newport Beach, and Napa Valley wine country.
As crazy as this sounds, Eisner resented that theme park tourists might choose to get in touch with nature rather than spend every waking moment at Disneyland. This unusual thought process is the underlying mechanism that explains why Eisner led Disney down a bad path. Rather than conceiving of original theming concepts that would attract guests to Disney, Eisner tasked his inner circle with an unusual goal. Their job requirement became luring tourists away from national parks. He didn’t want potential customers becoming at one with nature. Eisner’s behavior is not that far removed from supervillainy, really.
The wrong motivations
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In addition to trying to lessen humanity’s appreciation of nature, Eisner had two other goals with Disney California Adventure. He wanted to boost attendance at Disneyland. In tandem with this, he also wanted to expand the revenue guests spent during the average vacation to the most popular theme park in Los Angeles. Roughly 40 years after its debut, Disneyland had rightfully taken its place as one of the iconic tourist attractions on the West Coast.
The “problem” Disney faced, if it’s fair to describe the issue as such, is that everyone had a comfort level with Disneyland. During years when they added no major attractions or events, potential guests felt little incentive to visit. Disneyland was a part of the heritage and culture of most California residents, but it lacked urgency. Due to the space limitations of the park, it also featured a finite number of attractions.
With so many guide books offering suggestions on how to maximize one’s time at Disneyland, most tourists approached a theme park visit with hit-and-run tactics. They had plans on how to do everything in the shortest number of days, with the introduction of FastPass in 1999 only magnifying their ability to do so. Eisner couldn’t anticipate that in the mid-‘90s, of course, but he was aware of how little of a family’s vacation budget Disney captured per visit.
At its core, Disney California Adventure represented the most cynical of theme park endeavors. If Disneyland operated like Walt Disney World, attracting and keeping guests for the body of a week, Disney California Adventure wouldn’t exist. It was a purely capitalist endeavor. That’s on Eisner, who shared many of the same business skills as Walt Disney but few of the people skills. He failed to anticipate how much Disney zealots needed to feel respected during the vacation planning process. All he cared about was emptying their pockets once they arrived.
Disney California Adventure’s early days were the logical conclusion of such a simplistic business decision. Every decision came tethered to an unspoken expectation. Anything that didn’t cause guests to stay longer and spend more money was a Bad Idea, which is the polar opposite of how Walt Disney ran the company. Commerce ruled the planning phase of the second gate at Disneyland.
The right results
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Don’t misunderstand me, though. Even though Eisner obsessed on the bottom line to the detriment of early attractions at Disney California Adventure, his logic was sound. In 1994, Disneyland attracted 10.3 million guests. A large percentage of them were California residents, and any theme park operator can tell you that locals visit more often while spending less.
To breathe new life into the Happiest Place on Earth, Eisner needed to shake things up. He needed to boost the revenue stream at Disney before some shady corporate liquidator acquired the company and then stripped it for parts. This danger existed every day throughout the first half of Eisner’s tenure as Disney CEO. No matter what you think of him as a person, I can say that in my time as a financial journalist, I’ve come across multiple market analysts who believe that Eisner saved the company. Roy E. Disney might roll over in his grave at the thought of that, but here’s a stat that reinforces the belief. In 1984, the year he took over the company, Disney claimed revenue of $1.5 billion. During 2004, the last full year he served as company chief, it was $30.8 billion. He also boosted Disney’s market value from $1.9 billion to $57.4 billion. Michael Eisner boosted the bottom line by a factor of 30 during his Disney tenure. It’s the incongruity of his business acumen and marketing savvy that function as the parents of Disney California Adventure.
When you think of those shaky early days of the park, you should always consider these confluent pressure points as the explanation. Eisner wanted more money, and he didn’t really care how beyond the broad strokes of “Bigger Disneyland.” The dutiful cast members who worked under him did a wonderful job in handling such surface-level ambitions to the best of their ability. It’s why a lot of what they crafted during the planning phase exists today, just not the stuff you’d expect.
Hey Californians, check out…California
Image: Disney
The construction phase of Disney California Adventure prioritized theme park features that were unlike anything Disney had offered before. I don’t mean that in a good way. For reasons discussed later, Eisner and his team ignored the accepted precepts for Disney park design. The explanation for their strategy is that the budget for a park expansion wasn’t large.
During the mid-90s, Eisner had signed off on a different plan. He intended to construct a West Coast version of Epcot, fittingly named WestCOT. That project looked much larger in scale, at least on paper. The blueprints Disney accepted as the prototype came with a financial outlay of $3 billion. Disney couldn’t afford that since they were currently hemorrhaging money at Disneyland Paris at the time.
Once the company dropped its more ambitious plans, Eisner resolved that they would expand their Disneyland footprint. The company just couldn’t break the bank on such a project. That’s why they viewed Disney California Adventure as a logical supplement to the Disney theme park brand. Building a California tribute park brimming with homages to the Golden State looked much better on a spreadsheet. Disney had long since mastered the craft of landscaping, enabling them to build natural wonders within the confines of a themed land. They’d have no problem adapting the wonders of California parks into a centralized location. How much Californians and other potential theme park tourists wanted to visit such a park was a subject they pushed off for another day.
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From the start, Eisner emphasized the money aspect of the new venture. He understood Disney’s precarious position better than anyone else in the company. He needed to change Disneyland’s revenue stream in a way that assured its long term viability. When critics lament the disappointments of the Disneyland Resort expansion, that’s the aspect they either miss or ignore. Disney as a company needed more money from their franchise theme park, and they needed it to recur to the point that they’d modernize Disneyland as a brand. It was a business decision accompanied by creative decisions. While the material aspect was spot-on, some of the creative ideas were a bit questionable.
Think about this situation from the perspective of where you live. You almost assuredly reside close to some sort of landmark that appeals to tourists from other parts of your country as well as foreigners. How often do you visit that landmark? After you’ve seen it a couple of times, it likely lost some appeal, right? We tend to take for granted what we’ve known all our lives.
Extrapolate that premise to California residents and other West Coast fans of Disneyland. How do you think they received the news that the theme of the new Disney theme park would be…California? Tourists from all walks of life expressed frustration and even some fury at the decision. Still, Disney fans are loyal to a fault. They wanted to give Disney’s California Adventure the benefit of the doubt if possible. Alas, questionable choices and historical events prevented the possibility.
A shaky start made worse by historical events
Image: Disney
Theming for a California-based theme park was assuredly a strange series of conversations for Imagineers. So much of the landscape of the state is beautiful and mountainous. Disney park builders had proven time and again that they can achieve both the former and the latter if given enough time and resources. The catch with Disney’s California Adventure involved the tight purse strings. Imagineers faced unique restraints since $600 million wasn’t much for an entire theme park campus. As a point of comparison, that’s about 10 percent of what Disney recently spent for Shanghai Disneyland. Imagineers ARE miracle workers, but as Miracle Max says, when you rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
The opening day attractions for Disney California Adventure run the gamut from amazing to breathtakingly terrible. Unquestionably the best combination of California theme and novel attraction was Soarin’ Over California, a sublime simulation of several hallmarks from the Golden State. That one ride, later duplicated in other Disney theme parks across the world, basically justified the entire expansion from my perspective. It’s one of the greatest triumphs Disney’s experienced since the death of its founder.
Several other attractions from opening day still operate now. Those include California Screamin’ (the best pure roller coaster at any Disney theme park), Grizzly River Run, the Sun Wheel (now known as Mickey’s Fun Wheel), Jumpin’ Jellyfish, King Triton’s Carousel, and Golden Zephyr. Five of those rides exemplify why the public turned on the Disneyland expansion.
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Word leaked that Disney didn’t bother constructing their own attractions. Instead, they had ordered prefabricated rides from other companies, modifying them at the end to “plus” them up to Disney standards. Customers didn’t view this as the proper interpretation of Disney standards. Instead, they saw a company cutting costs by stamping the Disney logo on someone else’s work. Even worse, many of the rides they’d acquired reeked of carnivals and amusement parks. They specifically went against the grain of Disney’s corporate heritage. Fanatics expressed outrage that Disney had chosen to diminish its own culture.
On February 8, 2001, Disneyland California Adventure opened its gates for the first time. Disney insiders were ambitious with their attendance projections. In point of fact, they were laughably high. When Disneyland itself opened in 1955, guests swarmed the park by hook or by crook. Park planners anticipating 7,000 guests felt overwhelmed when 27,000 stormed the gates. Disney California Adventure was the polar opposite of that.
Disney projected attendance at least matching Disneyland’s on opening day in 1955. They allowed for 35,000 guests if it proved especially popular. They were off by a factor of five. This is the theme park equivalent of inviting 250 people to your party, only to have your best friend attend. At a time when 12.3 million guests visited Disneyland, only 5 million entered Disney California Adventure. And it was LITERALLY ACROSS THE STREET. Few guests bothered to give the second gate a chance, and those who did walked away dissatisfied. Park surveys, frantically thrown together after months of an empty park, revealed that only one out of every five guests attending Disney California Adventure felt it was a good value.
Image: Disney
That’s only part of the story, though. A second unpredictable event destroyed any hope the Disneyland Resort expansion had of succeeding early on. While the park’s first six months were already shaky, the seventh month was when a black swan event devastated all of America, damaging its economic strength in the process. On September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. In the wake of their horrific actions, the New York Stock Exchange experienced its worst single day loss in history to that point, and travel ground to a halt. Disney California Adventure was already facing negative buzz for the quality of its attractions. It certainly couldn’t overcome the combination of its pure reception and an economic recession. 9/11 undeniably prolonged the struggles of the second gate at Disneyland, but Disney had already done enough harm on its own due to its cost-cutting measures.
Low cost versus high expectations
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By way of explanation for the negative reception, analysts noted that Disney cut corners as much as possible to keep down the construction costs on their new theme park. The financial outlay was only $600 million. Putting this in perspective, Disney would later spend $200 million on Radiator Springs Racers alone, and more than a billion on the entire Cars Land expansion. The second Disneyland gate was made on the cheap. With the frugality came sacrifices. When Walt Disney built Disneyland, one of his priorities was crafting themed attractions guests couldn’t find at carnivals and standard amusement parks. The sibling his company built 46 years later featured many such attractions, “plussed” only slightly to differentiate them from original concepts.
Jumpin’ Jellyfish and the now defunct Maliboomer stand as perfect examples of this miscalculation. You can find variations of the parachute bounce and seated launch attractions at countless theme parks across the world. Disney’s brand represents originality and creativity rather than derivation. During the pointed attempt to cut costs everywhere possible, Eisner forced his team to cede a part of their collective identity. He deemed it a short-term measure rather than a permanent change. The CEO knew that as soon as the new Disneyland Resort revenue became a reliable income stream, he could add bigger and better things. And it’s here that the story turns to plaid.
Eisner was only vaguely familiar with the ascending popularity of the internet. What he failed to appreciate then, something that still surprises some corporate leaders today is that the opinions of the people matter. Loyal Disney fanatics are the harshest critics of everything Disney, and I say that as a proud member of the group. We expect the most out of Disney, and we consider it our duty to protect the brand even though we’re technically unaffiliated with it. That’s the power of what Walt Disney achieved with his creation(s). Complete strangers grew to love his works as much as he did, perhaps even more.
The idea that The Walt Disney Company might build a potentially inferior Disney theme park bothered many loyalists. The fact that Eisner forced his troops to do so at Disneyland itself, the Happiest Place on Earth since 1955, actively offended many potential customers. These folks had already built a cottage industry of web sites that meticulously monitored all the happenings at the various Disney resorts. Sites like the one you’re reading now have cultivated their craft through several iterations of coverage. In the Wild West days of internet coverage of all things Disney, zealots ceded no quarters to infidels.
These critics viewed Eisner as a traitor to the brand, with Disney California Adventure standing as a monument to all his egomaniacal mistakes. Word got out that his park wasn’t faithful to the brand, and the national media, a much more powerful voice than the internet at the time, picked up on the story. They loudly proclaimed that the early buzz on Disneyland’s new twin was terrible. The impact on the park was immediate, harsh, and indefinitely devastating.
Making the best of a bad situation
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So, we’ve come back to the concept that Disney California Adventure was a train wreck at the start, right? Not so fast. Disney did a lot right in the construction of the second Disneyland gate. It just wasn’t in the field of theme park attractions. Don’t get me wrong. Soarin’ and California Screamin’ were instant classics. It’s more that Disney employees prioritized the aspects of the new and improved Disneyland that their boss, Eisner, requested.
Let’s examine Disney’s primary purpose. In building an expansion area, the company wasn’t merely adding a second theme park. That was simply the bait. What they wanted was more money from consumers. The way to get empty the pockets of people didn’t involve rides and attractions inasmuch as new hotels, restaurants, and shopping facilities. You see where I’m going with this.
Image: Disney
Whenever critics deride the launch of Disney California Adventure, they have a tendency to miss the forest for the trees. All that anyone wants to do is mock the failure of Superstar Limo and other attractions that suffered from low attendance. This behavior ignores the lasting aspects of the expansion that have stood the test of time. Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa quickly became an iconic part of the Disneyland experience, adding more than 1,000 rooms, some of them quite decadent and unconscionably expensive. The hotel also features several restaurants and lounges, including the award-winning Napa Rose.
The seminal addition to the Disneyland Resort expansion, however, is neither a theme park nor lodging. It’s Downtown Disney, the shopping and restaurant mecca that adjoins Disneyland and Disney California Adventure. It’s this series of businesses that elevated Disneyland from a single theme park suffering from lack of enthusiasm due to its age to a multi-day vacation destination area.
With two theme parks and a designated outdoor shopping area, Disney accomplished its primary task, the expansion of a Disneyland vacation for tourists outside the area. Downtown Disney also doubled as a wonderful nightly option for locals and other Californians visiting for the evening. In other words, elevating Disneyland into the Disneyland Resort turned it into more of designation location. It had always stood as the Happiest Place on Earth. The changes simply breathed new life into a decades old theme park.
Making the best of an awkward situation
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For several years, Disney California Adventure languished as a wounded animal Disney stubbornly refused to bandage. Disneyland did slightly better, though. They increased in traffic by a million, improving from 12.3 million to 13.3 million during the same timeframe. Part of the explanation for this WAS Disney California Adventure, although it’s hard to demonstrate this through numbers. The second gate started with 5 million in attendance before edging up to 5.6 million. The key was in the multiple day, multiple park tickets Disney sold. They performed exactly as projected, convincing vacationers to spend more time at Disneyland than ever before.
Over time, Disney’s financials improved to the degree that they felt comfortable reinvesting in the Disneyland Resort. That’s how the attractions you know and love today came into being. In 2007, the company committed to a multi-year rebranding of the second gate at Disneyland. They directed $1.1 billion to the reinvention, almost double the initial investment in the park.
The following year, Disney California Adventure added Toy Story Midway Mania!, one of its best and most popular attractions to date. Their signature nighttime show, World of Color, followed in 2010. The prize of the “plussing”, however, wouldn’t arrive until 2012. During that year, Cars Land and its e-ticket attraction, Radiator Springs Racers, debuted.
How effective have these changes worked in luring theme park tourists to Disney California Adventure? In 2007, park traffic amounted to almost 5.7 million visits. The year after Cars Land opened, that number surged to 8.5 million. In 2015, the second gate received roughly 9.4 million visits, almost double what it managed during its shaky first year.
The root of all evil AKA it’s money that matters
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While most critics note that these changes reflect a desperate need to improve something that was broken, I hold a different perspective. I believe that this was always Michael Eisner’s intention. He knowingly took the hit by adding cheap, un-Disney attractions in 2001 in order to expand the Disneyland brand. His plan all along was to spend as little as possible in the short term to build something from nothing.
In the process, Eisner repurposed parking lot space into a viable theme park. He committed little capital to the project in order to protect the short term interests of the company, preventing a corporate vulture from performing a hostile takeover. What he understood was that his company needed to start somewhere. Once they had Disney California Adventure up and running, they could follow the Disney mandate of “plussing” their way to a better tomorrow.
Think of the situation from the business side of Disney. In January of 2000, the price of admission for Disneyland increased from $39 to $41. When Disney California Adventure opened 13 months later, it cost $48 for single-day admission. What Disney was really pushing, however, is what I’ve mentioned above. They wanted to sell a multi-day park hopper ticket, encouraging theme park tourists to stay longer. Today, that ticket costs more than $250 for three days of park hopping at Disneyland Resort. A single day of admission is roughly $100. If the company had simply increased at the same inflationary rate for 15 years, a Disneyland ticket would cost $55.62. That extra money is possible due to the existence of an expanded Disneyland campus.
Over the course of 15 years, Disney effectively persuaded guests to pay $250 during a multi-day stay at their campus rather than $41 for a single-day at Disneyland. Now consider the accompanying numbers. Disneyland itself claimed 12.3 million visits in 2001. In 2015, the two parks enjoyed 27.7 million worth of traffic. Expanding the Disneyland campus more than doubled overall park attendance as guests paid a factor somewhere between 2.5 and 6 more for tickets. And that’s not including the increased shopping, meal, and resort revenue. What Eisner did stabilized The Walt Disney Company during a time of dramatic corporate upheaval. The company went from being ripe for hostile takeover to its current status as the most powerful brand in the world.
Think of Disney California Adventure like a child. It struggled in learning to walk, but it’s now evolved into a talented teenager with an extremely bright future. Its early days get a bad rap since they’re judged against the entire history of Disney theme parks. If you evaluate the expansion as a business venture, however, it’s proven extremely lucrative.
