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View Full Version : Think Long Beach Might Be Interested in DisneySea Now?



coronamouseman
11-20-2001, 10:49 AM
Remember how Disney pitched the DisneySea concept to Long Beach before they decided to build California Adventure?

What if they pitched DisneySea to Long Beach again?

Things that have changed:

1. Disney now as a full-scale model of the park to show to potential investors (namely, the City of Long Beach and/or the County of Los Angeles)
2. Disney now has the blueprints for the park and could probably come up with a decent estimate as to timeframe to build and costs
3. Long Beach has not exactly been experiencing boom times with the Queen Mary Resort complex (this I know for a fact since my wife and I were married there September 2000 in the Grand Ballroom for a very reasonable cost compared to Orange County hotels and/or country clubs)
4. Disney might do well to go on the lookout for some new partnering rather than putting all of their eggs in one basket with Anaheim
5. The "Strawberry Farm" site on Harbor Blvd has same major space and zoning limitations (it's right next to a large amount of residences and thus vertical construction may be severely limited),
a big problem if they are interested in bringing in the "Captain Nemo" rides from TDS

It wouldn't be that big of a limo ride from Long Beach to the DLR complex and vice versa .........

Anybody else have a take on this?

Nigel2
11-20-2001, 01:01 PM
Unless they can provide constant transport to and from Long Beach it will never happen. Think about it this way, WDW is really spread out with basically nothing arround except scattered hotels for the most part. Disney also provides the transportation for guests of the hotels so they dont have to rent a car (or leave to spend their money elsewhere). LB is a good distance away from DLR so it wouldn't be able to get the PP, GC, DLH guests there and back as easily. Plus odds are it would be a cheap rip off of TDS anyway.

coronamouseman
11-20-2001, 03:59 PM
Nigel2:

But if you have an onsite, in-the-park hotel like the one in TDS, you won't neccessarily need to run constant shuttles back and forth between the parks.

Don't forget that many DLR packages include "flex" features such as side trips to San Diego Zoo, Hollywood and Long Beach already .........

Also could be potential for Disney Cruise Ship to dock next to the park if they were planning on adding a boat in the Pacific (Hawaii maybe?)

cemeinke
11-20-2001, 04:24 PM
Being a Long Beach resident I'm probably way to biased and possessed of too much wishful thinking to respond to this--but I can't resist.

I really think Long Beach blew it the first time around, on the one hand they're looking at ways to revitalize the city by building new attractions like the aquarium and yet I think the big fear about Disney was that it would be too popular bringing in traffic that they couldn't handle. I think the popularity of the Queen Mary peeked with Titanic so the whole area may follow the Pike before too long.

Granted a Long Beach park couldn't really be part of a resort like WDW, but I like the idea of a distributed Disney throughout So Cal. You'd have Disneyland & DCA, the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood, a DisneySeas Long Beach, and I do like the idea of a Disney cruise terminal going out of Long Beach. I think it could work well with the existing attractions.

Unfortunately though, I doubt Disney will revisit this one. Walt was smart to buy up all that land in Florida before he had to spend more time politicking than imagineering.

Not Afraid
11-20-2001, 05:01 PM
Let's pretend its 1991 and Disney is just thinking about expansion ideas. The link below will take you to an OC Register article from 1991. It talks about the possible Long Beach plan vs the Anaheim Westcot plan. Read the description of Westcot. How did they get from there to DCA? Its all very interesting!

http://www.disneyphenom.com/site/California/Westcot/battle.html

coronamouseman
11-21-2001, 12:15 AM
Not Afraid:

Great article!

Once again one sees how the creative minds of Disney USED TO work .............

Or at least how those creative folks used to think about Southern California attractions before they became "exports" to first Tokyo and now to Hong Kong.

But, once again, is the situation so different now that parties in Los Angeles County or Long Beach might now be interested when before they were not? Is it possible that Disney may now be more interested in offering up "franchises" rather than building anything themselves now? Is it not possible that LA County and/or Long Beach could put together a group of investors that might want a serviceable copy of the DisneySea park from Tokyo on the Long Beach waterfront? And with the demise of the shipbuilding industry and Navy operations in Long Beach would that city not want a chance at a business which could bring in 30,000+ jobs?

More importantly, where before Disney was offering up drawings and sketches now they can provide blueprints and photos of a finished product .........

Nigel2
11-21-2001, 09:54 PM
Originally posted by coronamouseman
Nigel2:

But if you have an onsite, in-the-park hotel like the one in TDS, you won't neccessarily need to run constant shuttles back and forth between the parks.

Don't forget that many DLR packages include "flex" features such as side trips to San Diego Zoo, Hollywood and Long Beach already .........

Also could be potential for Disney Cruise Ship to dock next to the park if they were planning on adding a boat in the Pacific (Hawaii maybe?)

Yes but the problem would still be the lack of spontinaiety when it comes to choices, at WDW you can basically just drive arround thinking about which park you want to go to without having to go on major freeways, plus if hotel guests bought park hoppers it would be a long trip back and forth each time especailly if you want to just drop stuff off at your room, if long beach were like 10 minutes away then it could be viable but distance is the major factor here.

Not Afraid
11-21-2001, 10:00 PM
Long Beach is about 20 minutes away (without traffic, of course).

Nigel2
11-21-2001, 10:32 PM
That is really far, especially with traffic from 3-5 pm, and morning rush hour. But I think the furtherst park from EPCOT area resorts (that is where we were at) was like a 20 minute dirve there since there were a ton of stops but a 5 minute drive back, grrrrrr darn bus routes. Unless they can get a special train that can take them back and forth it probably would be a 1 visit deal for people at the DLR hotels.