When Michael Eisner and Frank Wells joined The Walt Disney Company, they had the Midas Touch. The two executives could seemingly do no wrong throughout the 1980s. When the 1990s approached, they boldly proclaimed the Disney Decade, a time when the company would achieve new heights. Now that this era is 20 years in the past, let’s look back at the Disney Decade to evaluate how the company did.
Beyond the parks
Michael Eisner and Robert Iger didn’t agree on a lot of things, but they have a shared opinion about what makes Disney great. Animated movies provide the backbone of the company. When those films aren’t good, the theme parks will struggle.
The term Disney Decade often gets interchanged synonymously with Disney Renaissance. The explanation involves the film studio, where classic movies like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King debuted during this decade. For this reason alone, the timeframe will always qualify as a staggering success.
Disney’s 1980s film releases mostly disappointed. The only two exceptions were Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Little Mermaid, the latter of which triggered the Disney Renaissance. Eisner needed the animated movies to stir interest at the parks, where character-themed attractions have always driven attendance.
Any evaluation of this timeframe must acknowledge that the 1990s stake a viable claim as the best years ever for Disney animation.
The Disney Vacation Club begins
The start of the Disney Decade featured one game-changing triumph and one eventual failure. 1991’s introduction of the Disney Vacation Club (DVC) clearly qualifies as the success, as the program’s entering its 30th year in operation now.
Guests who purchased DVC contracts at $51 per point in 1991 have been rewarded handsomely. The value of these real estate interests has tripled. At the same time, members have also exchanged DVC points for fabulous Disney resort stays many times over the years.
As recently as the fiscal 2019 earnings report, Iger stated that DVC positively impacts the company’s bottom line in a significant fashion. This program is also undeniably a significant achievement during the Disney Decade.
The WestCOT proposal
The eventual failure bums out many Disneyland/Epcot fans. I’m speaking of WestCOT, a proposed expansion of Disneyland. By 1991, the Happiest Place on Earth had already celebrated its 35th anniversary and reached attendance levels that caused discomfort among park officials.
The simplest way to boost revenue while controlling park traffic involved the construction of a second gate. Legendary Imagineer Tony Baxter pitched a West Coast version of Epcot, one that would add 10 years of technological innovation to that park’s guiding principles.
In The Imagineering Story, Baxter refers to WestCOT as the greatest disappointment of his Disney career. He knew that the 1991 park announcement could have led to something much better than the place that would arrive ten years later, Disney California Adventure (DCA).
Unfortunately, Disney cut some strange corners with WestCOT. Plans for the project included land that neither Disney nor the city of Anaheim owned. You can imagine how the owners of those properties felt about the news. By 1995, Eisner gave up entirely on this gate. In some alternate reality, this park exists in place of DCA. I’ll leave it to you to decide which one is better.
The failure of EuroDisney
The park that we know as Disneyland Paris opened to the public in April of 1992. In a way, the Disney Decade died that month. West Europeans, especially French nationalists, decried the arrival of this park, discrediting it before they ever walked through the front gate.
The oddity here is that Disneyland Paris has become the top paid attraction in Europe over the years. Had critics merely given it a chance at first, the park might have avoided a lot of heartaches. Okay, probably not.
France suffered through a financial recession soon after EuroDisney opened. Combined with the dislike of the park, the financials were never going to work here.
No matter what anyone thinks of Disneyland Paris, it was an economical lodestone on Disney from the beginning. The business suffered debt claims of $3 billion within two years of opening. And the company really couldn’t do anything about the continued financial struggles until Disney finally purchased the park outright in 2017.
Disney’s America, another canceled park
Here’s a strange question. Have you ever played Bioshock Infinite? One of the levels of this game actually pays homage to a Disney theme park that never came to be, fitting for a videogame based on alternate realities.
The park in question is Disney’s America, which Eisner’s team announced in 1995. This year was a troubling one for the company, as Frank Wells died suddenly in a plane crash. He and Eisner complemented each other perfectly. Without his friend, Eisner became a less competent executive, and this park is proof-positive of it.
Disney intended to construct a patriotic theme park in Haymarket, Virginia. It’s a location roughly 30 miles away from the Manassas battlefield from the Civil War. The company loved the location near Washington, D.C. Conversely, outside observers (understandably) expressed horror and outrage at the thought of a theme park near such a significant historical site.
From the time of the announcement, park officials believed that they could have Disney’s America operating in three years. Instead, Disney spent the body of a year fighting negative headlines from media sources around the country.
Eventually, a worn-out Eisner dropped the plans for a $650-million educational history lesson. This idea would have never worked and shouldn’t have gotten out of the blue sky phase.
Disney’s Animal Kingdom does the impossible
During the Disney Decade, Eisner could claim four real successes, one of which we still haven’t discussed yet. The film division is the first, while DVC is the second. The third is undeniably Disney’s Animal Kingdom, the theme park of Walt Disney’s dream.
Uncle Walt had loved the thought of live animals at Disneyland. More than 30 years later, Imagineers finally fulfilled that wish the creation of this park, which I maintain is the most impressive one in the history of the industry.
Take a trip through Animal Kingdom today, and you’ll discover a roller coaster with a mountainous yeti, a time-traveling dinosaur attraction, and an imaginary journey to another planet. As you walk to and from these rides, you’ll notice other attractions, ones with live animals in or near their natural habitats.
Other parks have mimicked this concept, but Animal Kingdom towers above the competition. Not coincidentally, this gate is the second-most popular one at Walt Disney World. It might qualify as the greatest achievement of Eisner’s tenure.
Hong Kong project begins
This theme park is somewhat difficult to quantify. It didn’t open until 2005, but Eisner negotiated the agreement with Hong Kong officials during the Disney Decade. In fact, both parties announced the project in 1998. It would take the body of seven years to finish the challenging construction.
Disney officials had to navigate political and social issues in addition to physical ones. And the company was broke throughout a lot of this timeframe. For this reason, the cultural significance of Hong Kong Disneyland gets somewhat counteracted by the disappointing nature of the park. It’s cheaply designed and wholly lacking in Disney standards.
Fifteen years after its debut, park officials are finally addressing its shortcomings. However, I still have to grade this one as a wash at best.
Disney claims the high seas
Disney Cruise Line represents the fourth and final lingering success of the Disney Decade. Back in the 1990s, Eisner saw how much other cruise lines earned per voyage, and he correctly deduced that families would prefer to travel with Disney.
The company commissioned the construction of the longest boat in the world. It was so large that Imagineers built it in two parts then welded them together at the end. The Disney Magic first set sail in 1998, followed the next year by the Disney Wonder.
Since then, the Disney Cruise Line has become arguably the most respected brand in the cruise industry. Disney regularly wins awards, usually in populist votes. Now, you may believe that critical opinions matter more, but customers vote with their wallets. The fact that so many people support Disney Cruise Line with write-in ballots causes jealousy amongst the competition.
For calendar 2018, Disney claimed 2.2 percent of the cruise industry’s market share. For a 20-year-old company, that’s a remarkable feat, especially in an industry with such large profit margins.
Final thoughts
I suppose that rides compose the last part of this evaluation. I previously ranked the best Disney attractions of the 1990s. I would describe six of them as instant classics, three of which are damn near perfect. So, that’s a lot of success across a decade.
Overall, I don’t think that the Disney Decade worked out as well as Eisner expected, but the death of Frank Wells is a substantial contributing factor in that. While the company suffered many lows during this decade, some of which were self-inflicted wounds, Disney still claimed enough successes to justify the endeavor.
