Yes, That *Was* The Sound of My Jaw Dropping...

In the "I'm way behind the times" category, last night I watched for the first time a video file of an Epcot attraction that I've got to see: "Food Rocks". (Yes, it *has* been 15 years since I've been to WDW.) And my immediate impression: Oh. My. God.

"The Peach Boys"? "Pita Gabriel" singing "I wanna be - your high fiber!" What were they thinking (or smoking) when they came up with this? And it looked and sounded like they spent serious bucks on music licensing, etc. Yikes. I mean, the kids in the audience won't get who the parodies are (The Police? Peter Gabriel? Chubby Checker? Does anyone under 40 know who they are?), adults will be bored / insulted by the nutrition sermon, and any fans of the original music will feel nauseous and/or angry. So, who exactly was supposed to like this thing?

What it really reminds me of is the cheesy show in the Produce department at our local supermarket. They have a low-budget animatronic grocer in a barnyard surrounded by robot fruits and vegetables, and they sing kid's songs like "Old McDonald". (One of my friend's child is scared crapless by all this, and it's now known to us as "The Scary Vegetables".) Anyway, with "Food Rocks", it's like Disney was trying to do the same kind of show, but decided to do it with great production values and sparing no expense putting the thing together. Underneath all the animatronics, flashly lighting and fully-orchestrated high-fidelity stereo score, it's a lame little elementary school play. (At least when the school children miss their lines it's amusing.)

This actually brings me to Steinberg's First Law of Disney Attraction Longevity: These days, if a Disney attraction can't even last 15 years, it's got to be pretty bad. I mean, "Mission to Mars" lasted 18 years at Disney World until 1993 (and 17 years at Disneyland), and it was outdated by 1980. The first "Journey into Your Imagination" redo in 1999 was universally hated, and yet it still took 2 years for them to close and slightly fix that one. And the creaky "Carousel of Progress" is on its last legs (and ninth life) and yet it's still running after 40 years! I mean, for Disney to close an attraction in the Eisner era, its has to be either too expensive to maintain or driving-away-business, paying-customers-demanding-refunds-at-City-Hall bad (cases in point: "Light Magic" or "Superstar Limo", some really odorific attractions). So much for Walt's philosophy of improving things just because you can create better or more entertaining experience for the guests...

How to Save DCA - If It's Worth Saving, That Is

(Just to refresh your memory, a month or two ago I wrote that the big problem with Disney's California is that they built the wrong park for the right customers - read it here. Now the question is how - or if - to fix it?)

So how can Disney fix the mess that is Disney's California Adventure (DCA)? I'm of half a mind to say they should just level the place and start all over. I think I feel this way partly for artistic reasons, dreaming what they could have done - and really still could do - with that real estate. But even from a business side, I could very easily argue that DCA has such a bad reputation that it might be cheaper to eliminate all traces of the thing. It just might be cheaper and more successful to start from scratch than to spend a lot of time and money on marketing to the public in an attempt to convince them that DCA is now somehow "new and improved".

I originally began this post as a lengthier analysis on whether DCA should be closed completely. But let's face it: that will never, ever happen. Why? Because that would require Disney's PR flacks to eat crow and admit that this supposedly great and magical new park they've been touting was actually more a pile of manure. And it would also mean that the executives who planned and approved the DCA project (at least those who are still at Disney) would have to admit to the public - and the shareholders - that they made a huge mistake, and a very costly mistake at that. There's absolutely no way I can possibly imagine Michael Eisner publicly pronouncing that DCA was a wasteful, money-losing, unpopular failure, and that he was mistaken to have approved it.

So we don't have to bother even debating whether DCA will be closed. Instead, we can just go straight to figuring out how to fix the thing.

(I wonder, though, if Disney could get away with not changing the park at all - but instead simply reprice the single day's pass to around $25, which is half of Disneyland's 1-day admission price, and comparable to regional theme parks like Paramount's Great America. Because, frankly, that's about the level of experience you're getting with DCA right now. But I'm not sure that even this would be successful, given DCA's less-than-stellar reputation - plus it would also open the door to Florida visitors asking why Animal Kingdom and Disney Studios cost the same per day as the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. So maybe this isn't such a good idea after all.)

Now on the plus side of fixing DCA, the Imagineers have a lot of flexibility and room to work with. Because, basically, you could level everything in the park except Soarin' Over California, Grizzly River Run, the Tower of Terror, and California Screamin', and you really wouldn't lose much. On the minus side, turning DCA into a Disneyland-quality theme park experience will take truckloads of time and money.

So let's start on the tactical side of things and later move up to the Big Picture. Tactically, the changes needed are actually pretty easy to see: There just aren't enough "E-ticket" attractions at DCA, nor are there enough family-friendly "dark rides". (Personally, I wish DCA would get some combinations of the two - family-friendly dark rides like Pirates of the Caribbean - but why Disney hasn't been able to make a decent one of those since Epcot opened is a topic for another day.) Today, there are maybe 3 to 4 E-tickets at DCA at most. In fact, I could even argue that there isn't even one: California Screamin' has no theming and is not thrilling enough, Soarin' is good but way too short, Grizzly River Run also has nice theming but no story to it, and Tower of Terror (which I'm yet to ride, so this is just based on what I've heard) has had too much story stripped out of it and has become mostly just a really nicely themed drop ride.

On other hand, Disneyland itself has at least 6 E-tickets (Pirates, Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Materhorn, and Indiana Jones) and maybe even a few more depending on how you count Big Thunder, It's a Small World, Star Tours, Roger Rabbit, etc. Walt's first park has a good dozen D- and E-ticket attractions compared to DCA's paltry 4. Even Tokyo's successful DisneySeas park has about 6 D- and E-rides, and frankly, even that feels a little light. So Disney's California Adventure will need at least 2 to 4 new big E-ticket attractions and probably a couple of new C-level dark rides as well. And at roughly $100 to $150 million for an E-ticket and around $25 million for a C-ticket, Team Disney will need to invest somewhere between an additional $300 million and $600 million in new attractions to make DCA competitive.

(And if it does take another $600 million, and then adding in the cost of the Tower of Terror and A Bug's Land means the additional investment into DCA after it opened is nearly equal to the original Opening Day cost for the place. So for those of you who said that DCA was only half a park when it opened, you may have been exactly right.)

Immediately above the tactical level is the theming and immersiveness of DCA. This isn't too much of a problem in most places, since a lot of the usual WDI details are already present. So in many places throughout the park, it will just be a matter of walls (facades, perhaps?), trees and other scenery to block out the views of the real-world motels surrounding the park. However, in other places, this is going to be very difficult - hiding the real world from riders on the Tower of Terror, California Screamin' and the Maliboomer (assuming it stays) would be pretty much impossible. And then there is that huge hotel looming over the Grizzly River Rapids area. That's another tough one, since the people staying in the Grand Californian are paying big bucks to look out on DCA. But why do the DCA visitors have to look back at it? Perhaps the wizards at WDI can modify the hotel's facade using false perspective or something to make it less obtrusive - and thus stop it from breaking our suspension of disbelief. Only then can DCA guests feel like we do in Disneyland, with the feeling of being in a spot far, far away from the real world.

And finally, we need to address the Big Picture: Can DCA's "California" theme fit all the changes and additions needed to make this a Disneyland-level experience? Probably not. As I've argued many times before, the real-life California theme is just too limiting. So either WDI will get creatively strangled attempting to make new attractions that fit within DCA's theme, or they will end up stretching the theme so much to fit good attractions into DCA that the California theme really isn't much of a theme anymore. It becomes just a collection of attractions, which is no fun. And the third alternative - radically changing DCA's overall theme - would likely add even more additional expense by causing a lot of rework effort to the areas of the park that might otherwise not need to change.

Is there perhaps another way around the themeing problem, particularly one that won't cost a fortune? Yes, there is: Disney can change the theme of Disney's California Adventure to something much more flexible and, more importantly, much more fun. And the kicker is that they don't even have to change the name of the park! Simply make Disney's California Adventure to truly be "Disney's" California Adventure - that is, California as seen through the eyes of the Disney characters. Sort of a Toontown version of California. This would allow "realistic" attractions like Grizzly River Run to fit in right next to cartoony flights of fantasy. Plus, it would be easy to have lots of Disney characters all over the park - which would definitely make DCA much more fun!

And the nice part is that this "conversion" could begin right away: change some of the names of things (and good riddance to the way-too-numerous bad puns like "Award Wieners" and the like - replace them with character or film-based names!), some new signage, and a bunch more characters out and about in the park . This just could be the way to get DCA back on track - as long as Disney realizes this is a just a good start and not an entire solution. They'll still need to back these minor changes up with the additional new attractions.

So as underwhelming and unsuccessful as Disney's California Adventure is right now, this patient is not necessarily terminal. And just as in medicine, the key to solving business disasters is also a quick and accurate diagnosis of the problem followed by timely and aggressive treatment. Since we now know DCA's problem, not moving to aggressively fix it would be - from a shareholder's point of view - gross and deliberate malpractice on Disney's part.

My New Business Is Up!

This means two things: 1) I'll now have some time to write new Blog posts, and 2) you now have a place to go to buy some really cool, super-detailed, full-color, poster-sized aerial photos of Disney theme parks! The company is called "Sky Magic", and the web site is www.sky-magic.com. Check it out! Please!

(Seriously, this is one of those businesses that started because I thought it was a really cool idea and I wanted to one for myself. Then I realized that other Disneyland and Walt Disney World fans would probably want them too. So there you have it!)

So anyway, have a great Thanksgiving weekend, and I absolutely promise to have the 2nd half of my DCA article up sometime next week.

Please Remain Seated. Your Journey Will Continue Shortly.

I just wanted to pop in and let you know I haven't abandoned you all!  I know I promised the second half of my Disney's California Adventure piece, but I've been working full-bore on getting a new business started (and, yes, it's theme park-related, so stay tuned!).  The business's site should go live next week, so after that I should be able to devote a few hours to this Blog again.

Thanks for your patience, everyone.  I promise I'll make it worth the wait!

Disney Pays to Give Away the Stores

Yesterday it was announced that Disney finally got rid of its' Disney Stores retail chain, with The Children's Place Retail Stores Inc. taking over the remaining 313 Disney Stores in North America.  This deal deserves immediate comment, because there is much more (less?) than meets the eye here.  You've heard the old saying, "Giving away the store"?  Well, Disney didn't just give away the store here - they paid somebody to take the Disney Stores off their hands.  Let's recap some of the details of this deal, as provided by The Wall Street Journal and CBS.MarketWatch.com (details here):

For their part of the agreement, The Children's Place will take over the stores, put $100 million into remodeling them, pay Disney an unspecified amount for "inventory and other working capital", and give Disney royalty payments on its sales.  Thus, The Children's Place is paying only for tangible, physical things it gets to keep, like the stores' inventory or the physical improvements it makes to the stores.  And while they will be paying a royalty on future sales (which sounds to me like a licensing fee for use of the Disney name and characters), they are paying Disney absolutely nothing else:  nothing for the physical stores themselves or the improvements Disney out into them, nothing for locations and leases, nothing for intellectual property, nothing the brand name or reputation of the business, and nothing for the existing customer base.

In other words, the global economic marketplace has decided that The Disney Stores are worth nothing - only their remaining physical inventory has any value.  Thus, Disney took a once-promising - and profitable - concept, and by overextending it and then mismanaging the turn-around attempts - drove it into the ground.

Admittedly, in the short-run, Disney is probably better off without the Stores.  Under Disney's recent management they were losing more than $100 million a year, and now that drain has been stopped.  Still, Disney's shareholders end up with nothing from this deal, except an estimated $30 million a year in royalty payments - barely noticeable in the company's $1+ billion annual profit.

But it gets even better:  not only is The Children's Place paying nothing to buy the Disney Stores' business, Disney is giving them a two-year grace period on those royalty payments.  Effectively, Disney is giving them $60 million over the next two years to take the Stores off their hands!

(Personally, I'd love to know how much Disney would pay me to take some of their other money-losers like California Adventure or Disneyland Paris.)

As a Disney fan - and as a shareholder - I find this to be disgusting.  The Walt Disney Company took a promising concept, then overexploited it until the wheels came off and it was worth nothing.  If the Disney Stores were the only time they did this, it would be upsetting.  But since the same pattern has now happened over and over again with this management team (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire immediately comes to mind), this failure is inexcusable.

And So How Many Monkeys To Write A Country-Western Hit?

I know I promised the next post would be about whether DCA could be fixed or not, but there's something I saw in Friday's news that I just had to comment on:  Disney's much maligned Buena Vista Music Group won the top two spots on this week's Billboard album charts.  Rascal Flatts, a country group on the Lyric label, was the #1 album in the U.S., followed by Hillary Duff's latest release at #2.

I know I'm supposed to be impressed by this - things are improving in Disney's music group.  I mean, even the Hollywood Records label - there's bunch of "labels", basically brands, that are part of Buena Vista Music, by the way - is doing better, with groups like Breaking Benjamin and others.  Yeah, I haven't heard of them either, but, hey, I'm old.  And Hollywood Records has even made a profit (albeit a small one) in the last two years after many years of losing money.  So things are getting better there.

On the other hand, Buena Vista Music is a small player in the U.S. music industry.  The Wall Street Journal says that B.V. has a 2.43% unit share of the U.S. market so far this year.  That means they're still an awfully small player.  So is Buena Vista Music Group doing better than it has been?  Absolutely.  Is having the #1 and #2 albums a good thing?  Of course.

But I guess I still see Disney having the top 2 albums as being like the concept of putting a million monkeys with typewriters in room and just out of sheer randomness one of them will write the works of Shakespeare.  If it happens once, it's a fluke.  If it happens again and again, well, then you know they're on to something.  Same thing here:  if Disney and Buena Vista Music can do it again in the near future, then I'll really be impressed that they are making progress.

The Single Huge Mistake That Doomed DCA

Have you ever had an idea or insight but had no one to tell it to?  Well, that's one of the nice things about having a Blog - it gives me a way to share some of the things that have been floating around in my head for a while.  And here's a thought that's been stuck in my brain for about three years now, since shortly after Disney's California Adventure (DCA) opened to poor reviews and underwhelming crowds.  And it's a big one:  it's the single mistake that doomed DCA to failure.

It's pretty easy to create a large list of things that Disney did wrong in designing and building DCA:  there's not enough things for small kids to do, there's not enough shade, there are too many movies, not enough traditional "dark rides", not enough brand-new attractions, just not enough rides and attractions period.  While these are valid criticisms, they're mostly small, tactical mistakes.  Yet there is one big strategic blunder that allowed all the bad small decisions to happen:  They built the wrong park for the right customers.

I'm going digress a moment here, and call this a "Marketing Strategy" mistake - because that's what it is.  "Marketing Strategy" means figuring out who your customers are and dividing them into groups called "segments" (that's the "Marketing" part) and then figuring out which of those segments you want to serve and how best to serve them (that's the "Strategy" part).  And I think Disney did most of this exercise correctly with the Anaheim second gate expansion:  they chose to try to get existing visitors - especially those coming from out of the area - to stay an extra day at The Disneyland Resort.  That would mean an extra day's admission, an extra day of meals and souvenirs, and maybe even an extra night's stay in a Disney-owned hotel.  Just like what has been so successful in Florida.

So far so good.  And then, as happens in way too many recent Disney theme park rides, something went terribly wrong.  When they started designing the new park, they should have built it to appeal to the target customer segment - in this case, people who are already visiting Disneyland for a day or two.  Thus, DCA's designers, planners and managers should have figured out what these people like and want - and then gave it to them.

Now I’m sure that Disney’s managers and marketers did a lot of studies, surveys, focus groups and analyses to figure this out in excruciating detail.  I’m sure they looked at demographics like age groups, income, family size and where the people are visiting from, and probably a heck of a lot more too.  All of which are fine things to know.  But even without doing a single survey, there is one extraordinarily simple thing that we know about all of these targeted customers:  They all like Disneyland.  After all, they're already spending a lot of time and money to visit Walt's original park.  Pretty simple, huh?

And yet DCA was built to be very unlike Disneyland.  Sure, it has a few of the expected Disney touches - the cleanliness and the attention to detail - but that's about it.  It doesn't have the other things that make a theme park a Disney theme park:  the large detailed dark rides that Disney is famous for with lots of animatronics and gee-whiz special effects (like Pirates of the Caribbean or Indiana Jones), the highly-themed thrill rides like Space Mountain or the Matterhorn, the C-ticket family-friendly dark rides and shows like Peter Pan or the Country Bears, and of course the Disney characters, which were almost non-existent at DCA's opening.  And worst of all, no berm around the park or any separation from the real world.  I've always said that one of the keys behind the success of Disney theme parks is that immersive experience that lets you escape from the real world for a while - and DCA misses that entirely (although having a theme of real-world California doesn't help matters).  And finally, in terms of the value that the customers expect from Disney, DCA had - and still has - way too few attractions compared to Disneyland even though admission price is the same.

Now, part of this I can understand.  Building a brand-new theme park of Disneyland's size, style, and detail with Disneyland's mix of big animatronic E-ticket rides, multiple smaller dark rides, and highly-themed coasters would be incredibly expensive.  For example, Tokyo's DisneySea expansion cost 2.5 times DCA's $1.2 billion price tag, and while DisneySea is a great park (and yes, I have been there), it could still use more C- and D-ticket attractions to go along with its mostly E-ticket line-up.  I have no way of knowing if financial targets drove the design decisions, but if so, that's pretty shortsighted.  Still, I have to wonder whether the losses Disney has taken on DCA's underperformance added to the ultimate costs to fix the park will be greater than what they "saved" by doing this on a Wal-Mart budget.

Now the reasoning (rationalization?) I kept hearing as DCA was being built was, "We’re not trying to build another Disneyland; we’re building a different kind of park here."   Disney was certainly successful at that goal:  DCA is not like Disneyland.  It's more like a lightly themed regional amusement park - say, Marriott's (now Paramount's) Great America in Northern California when it opened in the mid-1970s.  And while DCA probably would make a good (although pricey) regional park, it's not what was needed across the Esplanade from The Happiest Place on Earth.

My point here is that what was needed in terms of Marketing Strategy should have been pretty obvious:  if you're building a park right next door to Disneyland and you want the people going to Disneyland to visit it, then you should make it appeal to the people who already like Disneyland.  I can't imagine that anyone in their focus groups said, "I like Disneyland, but there aren't enough movies there", or "What Disneyland is really missing is a tortilla factory", or "Disneyland has too many rides!"  Whoever made the decision to the make DCA different from Disneyland made a gigantic error, and once made, all the brilliant Imagineering design details or all the advertising campaigns in the world could not save it.  By deciding to build the wrong park for the right customers, Disney set themselves up for DCA's failure, and they could have - and should have - easily avoided that mistake.

Next time:  Can DCA be saved?  And if so, how?  Not surprisingly, I have an idea or two on that, too.

A Little Help, Please

While you're waiting for my next post, could you please help me a little?  I've come up with a cool new poster that I think Disney theme park fans would love to have - I know I want one!  I just need to get a few more opinions so it will be perfect.  So if you can spare 5 to 10 minutes, could you please take my survey?  It's located here.  Oh, and one of the people filling out the survey (selected randomly) will win a free poster.  Thanks in advance for your help!

Some Quick Updates

Just a few quick updates to some prior Blog posts today.  I promise I'll have a new rant, er, posting soon.

First, as for Michael Eisner's 2006 resignation, he has now stated in the current issue Fortune magazine interview that, "I have not asked the board to stay on the board or be chairman after the end of my contract.  My assumption is that I would not continue on the board or as chairman.  Clearly I'm not the type to retire, particularly after I've heard all those lectures from medical experts about how an active mind is good for the body.  But as far as continuing on the board or as chairman, it's just not in my mind at this time."

Does that mean he's not going to be Chairman of the Board after retiring as CEO?   His statement is certainly isn't a flat-out "No".  And he conspicuously does not say that he'd turn down a board seat if asked. Michael apparently plans to continue working - but where and as what?  I mean, where would you go after being CEO of Disney?  Boards of other companies, I would guess.  But if so, then why not on the Disney board as well?

So I guess I'm still skeptical.  Michael's statement leaves a lot of wiggle room for him to decide later that he wants a seat on the board or for the board to ask him to stay on. I still doubt that Michael Eisner intends to end his career at Disney in 2006.


Second, on the "Essence" of Attractions and "core values" of each land, it occurs to me that this is the reason why Disney's California Adventure feels so dead - there's no "core value" to the so-called "lands" in DCA.

Think about it: does any land in DCA evoke a theme, feeling, or emotion that you can sum up in a word or two?  Something simple yet powerful that ties together everything in that land?  Not for me.

(And, no, "tacky", "cheesy", or "cheap" for Paradise Pier doesn't come count.  Sorry.)

DCA's "lands" look nice, but theming-wise or emotion-wise they stir up nothing for me.  It's kind of like a movie backlot version of a city:  it looks like a city - and maybe even cleaner and shinier - but it's also hollow, empty and soulless.  Which pretty much sums up my feelings about DCA.

The End of Eisner's Ride? Don't Bet on It.

I woke up and saw on this morning's front page of The Wall Street Journal:  "Disney's Eisner Will Quit in 2006 After Surviving Bruising Battles".  No, I wasn't dreaming.  Michael Eisner has announced his intention to step down as Disney's CEO when his current employment contract ends in 2006.

Are you letting out a cheer?  Popping those champagne corks?  Not so fast, Bub!  Do you really think this will be the last we hear of Michael Eisner?

Note that Michael's letter to the Board says very specifically that he will "retire from my role as Chief Executive Officer" on September 30, 2006.  It doesn't say he intends to retire completely or that he intends to have no role in The Walt Disney Company going forward.  Here's what I think:  Michael will step down as CEO, but he instead will take over as the Chairman of the Board, where he will still exert a great deal of power over the company and will be able to pull the puppet strings on his hand-picked successor, Robert Iger.

Be honest:  Did you really think Michael Eisner would go this easily?  I doubt we've seen the last of him yet.

Michael Eisner Gets Lucky (Or: Every Hurricane Has a Silver Lining)

It seems highly likely that Disney's theme park attendance will be down for this quarter (which lasts from July 1st through the end of September).  MiceAge has been reporting that Disney's California Adventure has gotten little if any attendance bounce from their new Tower of Terror Lite, while Disneyland itself appears to have had its lowest summer attendance in years.  Meanwhile, on the other coast Walt Disney World had to offer some pretty deep discounts on hotel packages:  special deals for Florida residents and a 7-days-for-the-price-of-5 deal for non-residents.

But most investors and casual observers won't get to hear some of the big reasons for this soft attendance, reasons like the fact while very little new gets added to the Disney theme parks, the prices at Disneyland and Walt Disney World reach ever higher.  Heck, Disneyland hasn't had a new "E-ticket" ride since Indiana Jones opened nine years ago, and WDW's Magic Kingdom hasn't had one since Splash Mountain in 1992!!  Meanwhile, the daily admission price for Disneyland has gone up from $33 a day to a hair under $50 - just over 50% and double the rate of inflation since then.

So why won't the general public hear it this way?  Because the quarterly earnings release will say something like "Walt Disney World's attendance was negatively impacted by hurricanes Charley and Frances."  Which is, of course, true - but overly simplistic.  Mind you, it doesn't explain why attendance was soft for two months before that, but the news media will report Disney's explanation without further digging and that will be that.

Once again, Michael Eisner will have dodged a bullet and not have to explain why the theme parks aren't doing as well as they should be.  Of course, he won't able to count on a once-every-50-years natural disaster as the reason next time things fall short at the parks, but I'm sure he'll come up with something that deflects the blame from his management team, and his strategy, and himself.  He always does.

Tony Baxter is Wrong - Sort of.

Senior Imagineer Tony Baxter has been in the Internet Disney news a lot lately.  MousePlanet's David Koenig recently had an interesting quote from Tony about replacing older attractions with new ones: “What you try to do is understand what was special about the attraction.  Sometimes there's not much, like the Motor Boats, other than a place where you go to make out or to be away from your parents.  But you try to capture that in what you replace it with, and make sure the new attraction has all that.” So, the rather trippy journey of Adventure Through Inner Space is replaced by the slightly surreal journey of Star Tours.  Or, as Baxter said, “Star Tours is an adventure through outer space that takes people somewhere they dreamed they'd never get to go.  Monsanto did that in a psychedelic way that was perfect for my generation, growing up in the '60s.”

Not that Star Tours is a bad attraction, but this concept of Tony's strikes me as being horribly wrong.  If you're stuck trying to keep the essence of what came before when you create a new attraction, you're limiting yourself - and the park.  Stick with this principle, and Disneyland won't be able to grow and change, and it will stifle the ability to make big new innovations.  Sure, you might be able to make small improvements - for example, changing the PeopleMover into the Rocket Rods - but being stuck with having to put some kind of transit-ride in that spot limits what you can come up with.  Perhaps there's a better, more innovative non-transit ride that could go there instead.  But sticking to this “essence” principle rules it out.

(Also, of course, the budget limitations that WDI has been forced to swallow haven't helped innovation much lately either.)

This “essence” philosophy might explain why Tony Baxter seems to be losing influence at Disney (see Al Lutz's recent update on MiceAge for a recent example of this).  I'm sure there are senior executives at WDI, at the Resorts and in the Disney Corporate HQ who don't get this “essence” thing - that is, assuming in the first place that they even get why Disney theme parks are different from everything else out there.  These execs probably see Tony as being stubborn towards “synergistic” changes (like putting Pooh in Critter Country or Dumbo-like Flying Carpets in WDW's Adventureland -yuck!) or just plain uncooperative.  And, politically, that's very bad - and perhaps why less imaginative but more cooperative people are moved up the corporate ladder past him.

(And, personally, I'm bothered by all the homages to the past and other in-jokes that Tony and his teams have added - especially in the Disneyland's “New Tomorrowland”.  For example, the new Moonliner, the references to Horizons and Carousel of Progress in Innoventions, and especially the “Inner Space” parody telephones on Innoventions upper outside balcony.  Granted, these are mostly small things cost-wise, but what a waste! A select few people get the reference, but millions don't.  I'm certain they could have instead created small things that everyone - not just Disneyland geeks - could enjoy.)

Yet through all this I think I can see the appeal of keeping the essence of old attractions when creating the new ones:  if Disneyland “works” as whole before a change - in that it has the right feel and appeal to the millions of paying visitors - then keeping the essence of one attraction location the same should keep the essence and feel of the entire park the same as well.  In other words, the idea is that you're not risking breaking the entire system by substituting one piece with a new but highly compatible replacement.  Unfortunately, times, technology and most importantly attitudes change, and you have to keep up with those changes.  I mean, if you took a 1950's Chevrolet sedan and keep upgrading the engine, the seats, the fenders, etc.  for 50 years but tried to keep the “feel” of a 50's sedan, you wouldn't have a modern car that could compete with the today's new vehicles.  And the same goes for a theme park.

So while I think his “essence philosophy” is wrong, Tony is actually pretty close to being right.  I think that both Tony and I (and millions of Disneyland fans, for that matter) would agree that we'd like to keep the feel and appeal of Disneyland the same as it has always been.  But rather than replacing older rides with similar new ones, what really is needed is to create new attractions that fit the current “flavor” of the land - that is, attractions that fit today's visitors' interpretation of a land's “theme”.  In my definition, “theming” is more than just emphasis on the small details, but making the entire land create a mood, an atmosphere, even an emotion.

Or to put this in an academic way, it's how the excellent book Built to Last explains why some companies (including Disney, by the way) have managed to stay great for decades.  You figure out what the “core values” are for the company, and then be prepared to change everything else as times and business conditions change.  In this way, you stay current and competitive, but still stand for the same key things that made you a success in the past.  And I think the same can go for theme parks too.  If you keep within the “core values” for a land (for example, “technology” and “the promise of a better tomorrow” for Tomorrowland, “Patriotism” and “Nostaglia” for Main Street, “Exploration”, “Adventure” and “Exoticness” for Adventureland), you can change or add just about anything and still successfully keep the feel of that land.

And thus old attractions can be replaced by great new attractions without having to be “pin-compatible” - it just takes some imagination, a decent budget, and above all, a real understanding of the “core value” theme of that land.

Welcome!

Welcome to Dan's Disney Blog!  My name is Dan Steinberg, and I've been around the Disney theme park fan community for many years.  You might remember me from my many posts on alt.disney.disneyland and rec.arts.disney.parks back in the late 1990's, or from my "Business of Magic" column on MousePlanet (www.mouseplanet.com).  You may have even seen one of my old MousePlanet articles on Roy Disney's SaveDisney site (www.savedisney.com).  Anyway, let's just say I'm a firm believer that Walt's Vision and sane business practices can co-exist - mainly because they did for 40-some-odd years.

Well, now I have my own Weblog.  Why?  Because I haven't publicly commented on the wonderful world of The Walt Disney Company and her theme parks in several years, and an awful lot has happened since then (unfortunately with the emphasis generally on "awful").  And with my own Blog, I'm not tied into any particular topic, format, schedule or length.  Some days I'll have a lot to say, others may only a one-liner.  And sometimes I'll have a big essay that I'll publish as a separate article (I have a few of those brewing in my head).

There's a lot of Disney stuff that I'm itching to talk about.  Are you ready to get started?  I am!  And so the adventure begins....