The Disney theme parks that you know and love hide a secret behind closed doors. Someone somewhere is always planning the next big thing. This job demands that the person thinking about the future not feel beholden to the history of the park. Instead, the strategist must contemplate new and exciting ways to spice up a theme park visit. And if those changes require a bit of Disney sacrilege, so be it.
Perhaps the best recent example occurred in 2009. That’s when The Walt Disney Company announced that the most popular theme park in the world, Magic Kingdom, would undergo “the biggest overhaul in the theme park’s 38-year history.” Their proclamation at D23 had its intended effect. Many Disney fans quickly began to fantasize about the new and improved park that they already loved. Other, more cynical folks immediately began to wonder how many of the things that they revere about a trip to Magic Kingdom would be lost forever and how much Disney would fall short of its promises about historic updates.
What happened next is worthy of detailed examination. Disney debuted the expansion that they called New Fantasyland on December 6, 2012. It wasn’t quite like they’d originally described it, and a couple of historic attractions fell by the wayside. These choices angered some diehard Disney fans since one of them had ties all the way back to the grand opening of Disneyland, yet it had to go away in order for Magic Kingdom to progress into a new era. The evolution from Fantasyland to New Fantasyland was one of the critical turning points in Walt Disney World history. How did it turn out? Well, the results might surprise you…
What Disney was thinking aka What was Disney thinking???
In one way, the company’s choice to reboot Fantasyland was a case of history repeating itself. In 1983, 28 years after Disneyland’s debut, Imagineers constructed something they called New Fantasyland. The change at Magic Kingdom was announced 38 years after the park opened to the public. So, it wasn’t an unreasonable choice.
From the corporate perspective, former Walt Disney Parks and Resorts chairman Jay Rasulo had read an article in O Magazine during the 1990s. It had indicated that fans dreaded the congestion issues at Magic Kingdom, especially during the scorching summer months. Rasulo knew that the problem had only grown worse over time, and he also recognized that the back of the park had plenty of room for expansion.
Also, a new iteration of a themed land was a marketable way to sell the park. One of the recurring troubles for Disney’s advertising team was finding new ones to entice casual fans that they needed to come back to the park. The article from Oprah Winfrey’s magazine reflected that odd conundrum that no one wanted to go to Walt Disney World; it was too crowded. Doubling the size of Fantasyland could fit more people into the same general area.
The corporation chose to invest $425 million from 2009 until 2012 to repurpose the back part of Magic Kingdom. For Disney, it was a modest investment but one with a certain urgency. Park planners had watched in horror as a franchise they had passed on, Harry Potter, had solidified and improved public opinions toward Universal Orlando Resort. For the first time since its inception, Walt Disney World faced real competition. Park planners felt that a fresh coat of paint on one of the most storied elements of a Disney theme park vacation was the perfect counter to the growing threat at Universal. Whether they were correct or not is something we’ll discuss at the end of the piece.
All the single ladies…
The original plans that Disney announced for the repurposed Fantasyland were controversial. Guests wondered whether their favorite park would lose some of its storied attractions. They also wondered aloud whether some of the additions were good ideas, a somewhat rare criticism. Generally, theme park tourists give Disney the benefit of the doubt about new updates. The D23 version of New Fantasyland was a bit muddled, though.
For starters, Disney bet big on one of their strongest brands: princesses. The D23 announcement trumpeted a new Little Mermaid ride for fans of Ariel. They also announced a recreation of Beast’s Castle and yes, Belle would live there, too. It was the final choice that Disney fans found the most divisive. Little castles would populate the New Fantasyland area. These were intended as the homes for several Disney princesses, allowing park visitors to interact with their favorite characters.
What was the problem with banking on princesses? Boys visit Magic Kingdom, too. Park planners accounted for this, explicitly stating that they’d balance the various princess residences to make them more fun for dudes. Villains that opposed the princesses would hang around, and some of the attraction elements would emphasize fighting as much as, well, whatever a princess’ daily job is.
Opportunity cost
In order to increase the space of Fantasyland, the park counterintuitively had to shutter one ride and an entire section. Mickey’s Toontown Fair, which opened almost simultaneously with the release of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, was basically an interactive play area, almost a glorified version of a playground. It offered character meeting spots and a couple of mild attractions, Dumbo the Flying Elephant and The Barnstormer, both of which remain to this day. Frankly, the modifications Disney eventually made to this section that you now know as Storybook Circus were better across the board. So, the temporary inconvenience of closing Mickey’s Toontown Fair worked out for the best in the end.
The same isn’t true of Snow White’s Scary Adventure. No other ride from the opening day of Disneyland provoked a stronger reaction than this one, which confused guests with its point of view. It also scared children with its realism. Kids stressed over the frightening encounters with the Evil Queen, something Disney eventually addressed decades after the fact.
Like no other original Disneyland attraction, Snow White’s Scary Adventure evoked emotions. It was one of the first theme park triumphs of Imagineering. When Magic Kingdom opened in 1971, Disney understandably chose to duplicate it for the new park. For more than 40 years, it pleased multiple generations of theme park tourists. Little did anyone know when D23 2009 happened that Disney was quietly sounding the death knell for a ride built more than half a century ago. Then again, Disney didn’t realize this, either.
A change in plans
Disney strategists are sensitive to the critiques of their guests. By their metrics, the idea of Storybook adventures with Disney princesses at New Fantasyland automatically reduced public interest by 50 percent. After some internal debate, they chose to improvise.
When they originally plotted New Fantasyland, their blueprints included three new attractions and a restaurant. Disney pulled off all of these plans with aplomb. The E Ticket ride they intended was Under the Sea: Journey of the Little Mermaid, although E Ticket is a bit of a stretch for something so similar to The Seas with Nemo & Friends. Disney correctly banked on the popularity of Ariel as a beloved princess and created an instant classic omnimover ride that was fun for the whole family.
Park planners also Imagineered a sublime new interactive engagement called Enchanted Tales with Belle, which would quickly become an extremely popular way for parents to rest for a bit while entertaining their children. The Belle show is one of the most underrated attractions at Walt Disney World, a wonderful exhibition that changes each time since the guests provide the entertainment as often as the cast members. And the restaurant is one that every Disney guest knows well. Be Our Guest instantly became the hardest reservation onsite, and it’s also one of the best meals. Disney even got lucky with Gaston’s Tavern, a counter service that has become a viral sensation due to the extreme entertainment value of Gaston, the wildly charismatic narcissist
The other planned attraction was the series of character spots at the royal princess housing. You know it as Princess Fairytale Hall. That wasn’t the first idea, though. Once park strategists realized that New Fantasyland would have too many princesses, they recalculated on the fly. They chose to build the equivalent of Princess Central, the place where any old or new Disney blueblood could call home for a time. A centralized location was ideal in comparison to several cottages for a couple of reasons. First, the Princess Fairytale Hall would take up less space than many individual homes. Second, construction costs would go down a great deal.
Heigh hoooooooooooo!
By saving money and gaining back space, Disney opened up another option, one that would come to fruition. Before that could happen, however, they had to make some hard choices. One of those was to eliminate a staple of theme park lore. Snow White’s Scary Adventure’s wasn’t drawing guests the way that it once had, and park numbers crunchers believed that most of its traffic stemmed from overcrowding inasmuch as any lingering appeal for the ride. They felt virtually anything would at least match the throughput of Snow White’s Scary Adventure, possibly even dwarf it. And that thought process in combination with the newly available real estate and money led to a new addition.
You know the ride as Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. It’s the only new roller coaster at Magic Kingdom in the 21st century and really the first real (i.e. not made for children) one since the 1970s. And this ride’s creation was such a big deal that Disney predicated the entire 2014 marketing campaign on its arrival. They used some of the new space from the New Fantasyland expansion, a part of which came from Snow White’s Scary Adventure.
Judging by throughput, their choice was the right one. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train consistently has the longest wait-time of any Magic Kingdom attraction. Guests who don’t get a FastPass generally wait in excess of an hour. 100 minutes isn’t that unusual. It’s constantly packed, and its FastPass allotment generally sells out weeks in advance.
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train also hides a secret in plain sight. Many of the Audio-Animatronics are technologically improved versions of the models from Snow White’s Scary Adventure. While the attraction no longer exists, its spare parts continue on in a much more popular attraction. So, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train uses some of the same space and moving parts as its Fantasyland predecessor. In that way, the ride Disney hadn’t even planned when they announced the expansion at D23 2009 became the spiritual (and physical) successor to the 1955/1971 ride.
How did the plan to fight Harry Potter with an expanded new themed land work out for Disney? Analytically, $425 million isn’t a lot of money by Disney standards. The trifecta of Test Track, Ratatouille: The Adventure, and Pooh’s Hunny Hunt cost more than that. What did Disney get for their money? Well, the comparison isn’t apples to oranges, but Magic Kingdom’s 2009 attendance total was 17.233 million. In 2012, that number had flatlined at 17.536 million. That’s less than two percent growth over three years!
New Fantasyland didn’t open to the public until December of 2012. The following year, Magic Kingdom attendance increased by more than a million theme park tourists. From 2012 to 2015, that total was more than 3.2 million, an average of more than 800,000 new guests each year. Whether all of that growth is attributable to New Fantasyland is up for debate. What can’t be ignored is that Disney built the 2014 marketing campaign around the expansion. Since then, the park has experienced explosive growth. Even the most critical person would have a hard time (successfully) arguing that New Fantasyland has been anything but a huge positive for Magic Kingdom and Walt Disney World as a whole.
That’s important because we know that other parts of the Orlando campus are currently in transition. What we can take from the turning point of the Fantasyland reboot is that Disney fans oftentimes lament change when it happens. Casual vacationers, on the other hand, pay more attention to the park and visit more when it has new and exciting additions.
Yes, the losses of Snow White’s Scary Adventure and Mickey’s Toontown Fair are regrettable. One of the wonderful parts of Disney is that how you remember it from your childhood is how you want to think of it as an adult. Park planners take this into consideration when they contemplate huge changes. They don’t act impulsively, though.
We can see with New Fantasyland that they had a viable business strategy in place with a land of princesses. Even when they received pushback on that tactic and recognized the miscalculation with the premise, they still found a way to improve a 40-year-old themed land. They did so in a manner that has improved the overall perception of the most popular theme park in the world. New Fantasyland might not have the showy reputation of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, but it still boosted attendance, the only real goal of any new theme park construction. We should expect the same to be true of the upcoming Walt Disney World expansions. Change isn’t good per se at a timeless place like a Disney theme park, but it’s necessary to honor Walt Disney’s dream of a constantly improving family paradise.
