DCA, Future Expansion
Topic: New LA Times official Editoral re - DCA

#	Author	Message
21	Darkbeer Sun 4/6/2008 12:45a	And let's look at other Major Media comments.... Maybe the LA Times from January, 2001... >>The Most Jam-Packed Theme Park on Earth? The most innovative attraction at Walt Disney Co.'s new California Adventure may be the simulated hang-glider ride over the natural and man-made wonders of the Golden State. Soarin' Over California is estimated to handle 1,250 riders an hour--but on busy days that means as many as half of the park's visitors won't be able to get on. It's just one example of what is looming as a major issue for the new park: overcrowding. California Adventure park, set to open Feb. 8, will allow only about 30,000 people within its gates at one time--almost half the number at adjacent Disneyland. One complication is the popular Fastpass program, which allows patrons to avoid lines at major rides by reserving ride times. The problem, park managers and employees say, is that all those people no longer standing in line for hours make parks seem even more crowded on busy days--a factor that contributed to Disneyland's shutting down its turnstiles at midday several times during the holidays. Senior Disney officials acknowledge that there will be days when California Adventure will have to turn patrons away, particularly in the first weeks after the park opens, during spring break and again in the summer. Disney hopes those denied entry will stay at the resort and visit Disneyland and the new Downtown Disney's shops and restaurants. The risks are that people may flee the resort and those who do get inside California Adventure on crowded days will feel cheated out of experiencing a full range of attractions. When that happens at Disneyland, "complaints go way up at City Hall," said a ride supervisor at the park. "People want their money back. And spending goes down on Main Street at the end of the day because people are walking out unhappy and not buying souvenirs." Ride capacity is an issue because Disney succeeds so well in packing its parks. Disneyland patrons can experience 12 or 13 attractions on slow weekdays, and even on a day when 50,000 people crowd the park, they can fit in as many as nine rides, a number considered acceptable by park officials. But California Adventure, part of a $1.4-billion Disney expansion in Anaheim, has 23 attractions, counting minor exhibits such as farming and tortilla-making--just a third as many as Disneyland. "Come early in the day or come later, after the park clears out again," said George Kalogridis, senior vice president of Disney operations in Anaheim. "Hopefully, with Disneyland right across the esplanade and Downtown Disney right there, we won't have to turn people away from the resort." Indeed, elaborate stage shows, "edgy" street entertainment, fancy dining and wine bars are designed to take up the slack while Disney positions the new park as an alternative to the Magic Kingdom in hopes of extending visitor stays beyond one day. Company projections show Magic Kingdom attendance falling by 500,000 per year, to about 13.3 million, and California Adventure visits rising to 7 million. Thousands more visitors each week are expected to stop by Downtown Disney, which has no admission fee. Separate admission is needed for Disneyland and California Adventure; each one charges $43 for general admission and $33 for children 3 to 9. Although Disney prides itself on anticipating and satisfying customers' wishes, executives acknowledge that no one will really know how many people the new park can handle until operations begin. Some insiders worry the company may have overestimated the capacity of the new park's rides. Certainly, no California Adventure attraction can handle as many visitors as Disneyland favorite Pirates of the Caribbean, a workhorse that on smooth-running days can handle nearly 2,800 riders an hour--more than 40,000 a day. In designing California Adventure, Disney Imagineers worked backward from the projected attendance level of 7 million a year, said Barry Braverman, Disney's chief creative supervisor on the project. Disney designers used industrial engineering models to determine how many rides, shows, restaurants, parades and restrooms would be needed to accommodate the expected crowds. But because the park has fewer attractions than Disneyland, there's a smaller margin of error. If a couple of major rides malfunction on a busy day, Braverman said, "We'll just have to count on the [live] entertainment being good." Kalogridis and others who went on Soarin' Over California during staff previews last week said it sometimes took as long as 12 minutes to unload one set of riders and load the next group. The target time is 2 1/2 minutes. If pessimistic predictions are correct, about 16,000 people a day can experience Soarin' Over California if it operates without a hitch from 8 a.m. to midnight. If the official forecast is correct, it still means just 20,000 maximum. Kalogridis said the hang-glider ride turned out better than expected. Had Disney realized how popular it could be, it could have increased its capacity, he said. Improvements are being made to software that indicates when seat belts are properly fastened, which should bring Soarin' Over California's loading cycle close to the target 2 1/2 minutes, he said. Another projection that has raised eyebrows is that the Sun Wheel, a scary Ferris wheel with moving cabins, will accommodate 900 riders an hour. That can be achieved only if every cabin is completely filled with six riders. So workers have been told to aggressively combine parties--a policy that often draws objections from patrons. "If you're in a party of four, you'll be hearing: 'Party of four, meet your new friends, party of two,' whether you like it or not," an employee predicted. Executives say the preview days allow them to work out bugs on many attractions, such as a stalled train on the California Screamin' roller coaster last week that forced closure of the high- capacity attraction for the day. A separate capacity issue has to do with parking. California Adventure and Downtown Disney occupy what once was Disneyland's main parking lot. Even with the addition of a $100-million parking structure that holds more than 10,000 cars--said to be the nation's largest--the net gain in spaces is just 4,500 cars. Kalogridis said that will be enough to handle the expected new throngs, even if 30,000 more park-goers show up on a busy day. Noting that the departure of an army of construction workers will free up thousands of parking spaces, he said the company believes its original parking projections will prove adequate. Then there is Fastpass, the system that lets patrons avoid lines by reserving ride times on major attractions. California Adventure, which has six rides with Fastpass, may feel more crowded on busy days because of the system--and some say Disney staff may have to close the gates even before 30,000 people are in the park. Park employees, who have been given "countdown" watches showing the days to California Adventure's opening, are bracing for big crowds, at least until initial curiosity over California Adventure is satisfied. "History has taught us that attendance the first year will be heavy," said Kalogridis, a veteran of Walt Disney World in Florida, where Disney has four parks. "Certainly, there will be huge interest in Southern California, where it's been 45 years since a new Disney park opened."<< Sounds like a "Fluff Piece" to me, but fun to read the past stuff... ;)
22	Darkbeer Sun 4/6/2008 12:49a	UGH, I know there is an issue with some coding from the original article that places the LP mention and photo in the middle of it, let's try just that one paragraph again... >>Disney designers used industrial engineering models to determine how many rides, shows, restaurants, parades and restrooms would be needed to accommodate the expected crowds. But because the park has fewer attractions than Disneyland, there's a smaller margin of error. If a couple of major rides malfunction on a busy day, Braverman said, "We'll just have to count on the entertainment being good." Sorry for the format issue...
23	Darkbeer Sun 4/6/2008 12:50a	Maybe the OC Register is biased, from October of 2002... >>Try to turn California Adventure into something more than an oft-vacant sideshow for Disneyland..... Look at California Adventure, the signature of Pressler's reign as theme-park king. The ailing park surely suffers from a lack of amusements - an obvious result of its relatively low-budget construction, if you can say that about a $1.4 billion park. Pressler's bet that a quirky mix of rides, eateries and retailing would make the new park a draw was a flop. For Disney, California Adventure is not the sole Disney ailment. Keonig(sic) said Pressler does deserve a good share of the blame for the alleged lack of creative ambition at the Disney theme parks. He said California Adventure, in which Pressler played a central role, suffers from a much deeper problem than temporary economic woes. It's a conceptual problem, he said: The mostly local people who attend Disneyland simply don't want to attend a theme park about California.<<
24	Darkbeer Sun 4/6/2008 12:52a	Or maybe CBS Marketwatch.com, also from 2002... >>California Adventure, completed for $1.4 billion in early 2001, never quite caught on, as low attendance has forced Disney to constantly revamp the park. The price tag is considered low for a theme park, since new parks in eastern Asia are costing $4 billion to $5 billion but are financed and designed by other companies that take out licenses with Disney. California Adventure -- developed solely by Disney -- was seen as being long on retail outlets, such as a Wolfgang Puck restaurant, a sourdough bread bakery, a winery and a series of restaurants and shops made to look like a Hollywood studio. And half the $1.4 billion spent went toward construction of the Grand Californian Hotel. Conversely, it was considered short on attractions, especially for young children. California Adventure is revamping a sizable portion of the park and putting in a new attraction called A Bug's Land, based on the movie "A Bug's Life." It's due to open early next month. Al Lutz, a longtime Disney parks observer and creator of the Web site MousePlanet.com, regularly monitors park activity to gauge attendance and park improvements. He says Disneyland continues to draw the same numbers of crowds it always has, in the 25,000 range, but California Adventure lags at 4,000 on weekdays and 10,000 to 15,000 on weekends. Lutz said it showed that the decisions made on California Adventure, primarily under Pressler's purview, were not the most sound. "I think he approached them as retail operations and didn't look at them for what they are," Lutz said. Each theme park needs strong elements of showmanship to interest attendees, he added.<<
25	Darkbeer Sun 4/6/2008 12:53a	Another CBS Marketwatch.com article, from late 2002... >>Walt Disney Co. is betting small insects and a big building will help its troubled California Adventure theme park find a following nearly two years after it opened at a cost of $650 million. California Adventure, the adjacent Grand Californian hotel and the Downtown Disney shopping district cost a total $1.4 billion. The park itself cost an estimated $650 million. By contrast, the new DisneySea park in Tokyo -- paid for by licensees -- went for roughly $3 billion. To get California Adventure numbers up, Disney will have to acknowledge the theme needs to be reworked. Much of its business is local, and there are few park visitors who want an education on their own state, analysts say. "In order to turn this around, they have to turn their back on the concept," said Jim Hill, a longtime Disney observer who operates a Web site devoted to company news. He says there are a number of proposals under consideration to add new attractions at the park, all of which will result in the California theme getting shunted aside. "Everything that's on the table is stuff that's fun to ride. It has nothing to do with the California theme," Hill said. To be sure, California Adventure has gone through the growing pains associated with many of Disney's parks. But some observers say it's worse this time. One of them is John Cora, Disney's former vice president in charge of resort development, who was responsible for putting in many of the attractions at the new park. He left the company shortly after it opened in February 2001, and now is a theme park consultant based in Oceanside, Calif. Cora says he had an amicable parting with Disney. Cora says Disney's highest priority in developing the park was to keep costs down. "That was the bottom line," he said, adding he differed with management over how much and where to spend money on the park. California Adventure, the adjacent Grand Californian hotel and the Downtown Disney shopping district cost a total $1.4 billion. The park itself cost an estimated $650 million. By contrast, the new DisneySea park in Tokyo -- paid for by licensees -- went for roughly $3 billion. Cora says that the underlying problem is that to round out the park, California Adventure had to put in an inordinately large number of high-end restaurants, stores, and other retail outlets. Patrons balked at the prospect of spending $45 to get in, and then spend more on goods and food. That was the influence of former Disney parks chief Paul Pressler coming through, Cora says. Pressler had extensive training in the retail sector and left Disney to become chief executive of Gap Inc. in September. "Part of the problem is Paul came from retail. He thought retail and still thinks retail," Cora said. "We spent enough money overbuilding retail and food (operations) to add three or four more major attractions to the park." Some of those facilities are closed or have been replaced. Along with the Soap Opera Bistro and Mondavi winery, Wolfgang Puck operated a restaurant in the heart of the park for a time but eventually left. Disney is operating another restaurant there now.<<
26	WilliamK99 Sun 4/6/2008 12:54a	Wow, I never knew DCA sucked...Thanks Darkbeer....This is the first time I have ever seen any of this or heard that DCA sucked.
27	Darkbeer Sun 4/6/2008 12:55a	Or since some folks are holding Marty Sklar in high regard from the open letter he sent Friday.... From JimHillMedia.com. What Marty Sklar said in November of 2003... >>EISNER UPDATE: I am just amazed to see how the support for Michael Eisner within the entertainment community has begun to erode. It seems like -- these days -- nobody has a kind word to say about the guy. Take -- for example -- this quote from Harvey Weinstein, the co-chairman of Miramax Pictures. When asked to describe what it's like to work with the Walt Disney Company in general (and Michael Eisner in particular) these days, Harvey had this to say: "All the great executives have been driven from the company. I think there is no camaraderie anymore, no great esprit de corps that I found earlier. I think there was more risk-taking, a more fun company. I don't know why, and it's sad that it is." And even formerly loyal lieutenants like Marty Sklar, Vice Chairman and Principal Creative Executive of Walt Disney Imagineering, have begun openly carping about how terrible it is to work at the Walt Disney Company during the waning days of the Michael Eisner era. Want proof? Take a gander at this Marty quote that an unnamed someone sent from an IAAPA seminar Sklar spoke at last month. When asked about what his thoughts were about Disney's California Adventure. Marty replied: "I think that you're nuts to build a park next to Disneyland that's half the size and charge the same amount of money."<<
28	dennis-in-ct Sun 4/6/2008 10:05a	Do we know what the E ticket for DLP will be? and WOW ... Darkbeer ... I have never seen a photo show up in one of LP's discussion board postings ... does this mean we will now be like MiceChat and everyone can have photo essays and jumping smile faces? How did you post a photo?
29	Spirit of 74 Sun 4/6/2008 10:31a	Darkbeer, with all due respect and trying very hard to not make this sound like a shot but your own DCA animus is showing. We all get you don't like the park. It was better when it was a parking lot. It didn't save DL either ... a plush stand would have had the same economic impact ;-) But dredging up all those old stories at the drop of a hat doesn't make your case that the LA Times isn't biased. It just shows you don't like DCA. I think even Osama knows that at this point. Now ... I do love seeing that LA Times story that makes George Kalogridis look like a pompous, arrogant and completely clueless exec ... and give pause to Jay Rasulo as to why he's the No. 2 exec in Paris now. But that's just because it is damn funny to hear those words and to remember that was the 'tude prevalent in TDA during the 1999-2001 time frame. BUT ... The LA Times is made up of individuals. Individuals have agendas. Some of the individuals in power at the Times have major Disney 'issues' (maybe mommy and daddy thought DL was too lowbrow for them when they were kids and sent them to poetry camps instead!) ... But I do know for a FACT that there has been a lot of shots and volleys going back and forth between the company and the paper this week and anyone with an idea of how people in power tend to abuse it would understand this this editorial was done as an easy cheapshot. There is no other purpose for it. No other reason. It certainly isn't newsworthy. It isn't timely. It it isn't pertinent to most readers. But you can bet it's got Zenia and Leslie on the phone with Jay and Bob's offices, which was the whole point.
30	Spirit of 74 Sun 4/6/2008 10:34a	And no Dennis, honestly no idea what the DLP E-Ticket will wind up being. It would just be pure speculation. I'll throw out two thoughts though: it will be characted-based (shocking, I know) and it will not be Splash Mountain.

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