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View Full Version : LATimes: DCA bullseye!



merlinjones
09-01-2002, 10:10 AM
A bullseye review of DCA in letter to LATimes by Pete Howard:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-letters1.5sep01.story

Quick quote:

>>"Disneyland was founded in innocent times by a creative genius with a magical vision for something totally new, innovative and spectacularly fun, that would also make money and keep Mickey Mouse in the public eye. <<

>>California Adventure was founded in the
1990s by a board of directors looking for new revenue streams, market share and a way to grow the value of Disney's stock."<<

snip

>>But the public knows or senses this, which is why they aren't returning."<<

Laffite
09-01-2002, 10:21 AM
I couldn't have said it better than your "bullseye". They're right on. DCA is now like a little park for AP holders, since it's mostly the APs that goes there because they have nothing to lose.

Brad
09-01-2002, 04:30 PM
Oh-you've got it ALL wrong.

DCA will do better......it is the downturn in the economy, 9/11, the lack of marketing(over at LP this has become the latest new catchcry of the deluded and non-illuminated), the fact that people aren't travelling, the weather.......

Oh and once FFF and ToT go in, the crowds will come POURING through the gates and Eisner will have to suspend AP sales and start diverting people to the "tired and underperforming DL" across the esplanade.


You get the idea.

SpamSpamSpam
09-01-2002, 05:31 PM
the latest indicates that that when built in DCA this attraction will not resemble the WDW ride at all. They already have the mallboomer..a great ride by the way..but the ToT will not be quite the terror, or the theme.

Brad
09-01-2002, 05:35 PM
Yes-I know.

No fourth dimension room.

It is basically just Maliboomer with a show building.


But......what did we expect from "quick fix" DCA?

Laffite
09-01-2002, 07:48 PM
Well that's the problem. DCA was a "quick fix" thing. DL came from a dream of a man we all love and dear. DCA came from greed of a man's hunger for money. Or something like that :confused:

Iceman
09-01-2002, 08:00 PM
It kind of surprises me to hear everyone dogging the new Tower of Terror before it's even built. People with credibility (like Marty Sklar) have said that this ToT will have really impressive new effects. It's true, it won't be exactly like the Florida version, but then I see people here complaining all the time about all the hand-me-down attractions from WDW.

For crying out loud, give it a chance, people!

Laffite
09-01-2002, 08:16 PM
I never bashed ToT because I've never seen the WDW ToT so I can't complain about the "4th dimension" . But rather, I'm looking forward to it.

MonorailMan
09-01-2002, 08:36 PM
Originally posted by Laffite
"4th dimension"

BTW, it's the "5th dimension". :)

Laffite
09-01-2002, 08:37 PM
See? Told ya' I've never been on it ;)

priyanka59
09-01-2002, 09:00 PM
Hey what's FFF by the way? Sorry im sort of tired and I forgot what it stood for. lol

HBTiggerFan
09-02-2002, 12:17 AM
Originally posted by priyanka59
Hey what's FFF by the way? Sorry im sort of tired and I forgot what it stood for. lol

FFF - Flicks Fun Fair

Brad
09-02-2002, 04:54 AM
Iceman-in the past, I would have respected Sklar's opinion........until I saw him on the news here at DOA's opening espousing how he thought Walt would be SO happy with the new park.


I almost threw something at the tv, I was SO angry.


This man KNEW Walt and knew what he wanted and expected.


I see this as a VERY public betrayal of Walt's legacy and the gate attendance seems to be bearing this out too.

Laffite
09-02-2002, 08:42 AM
You know, every inventions get abused eventually.

Look at airplanes. If the Wrights brothers can watch the triple 7 land and watch it unload 233 angry passengers, and the ground crew throwing baggages around, they'd be saying "We created monsters!"

Disneyland was Walt's invention. When somebody else that doesn't have Walt's vision take over, they're going to abuse it.

Sometime I look at Walt-and-Mickey statue in front of the castle and I thought he would be saying to Mickey as Eiser walks about Disneyland "Look Mickey, we created a monster!"

:(

Andrew
09-02-2002, 10:11 AM
Originally posted by Brad
Iceman-in the past, I would have respected Sklar's opinion........until I saw him on the news here at DOA's opening espousing how he thought Walt would be SO happy with the new park.
I almost threw something at the tv, I was SO angry.
This man KNEW Walt and knew what he wanted and expected.
I see this as a VERY public betrayal of Walt's legacy and the gate attendance seems to be bearing this out too.

Of note, Marty Sklar is the one who publicly said he'd "lie in the middle of Harbor Blvd to stop the bulldozers" from dismantling the Submarine Voyage.

When I look at the Lagoon, I see a closed attraction, but when I look at Sklar I don't see any (metaphorical) tire treads.

He won a lot of respect with that brazen public split with Eisner/Pressler--and lost it all when he failed to come through.

Kevin Yee
09-02-2002, 11:33 AM
That very comment about the subs is almost certainly what inspired him to be pro-DCA at the opening ceremony.

Don't think for one second that his Harbor Blvd comment won him any friends among his bosses... and he contritely did the "corporately wise" thing when DCA opened. Bottom line: it's now to the point where you can't trust anything said publically.

Klutch
09-02-2002, 03:00 PM
I think we may be missing some long term strategy when it comes to DCA. Eisner probably doesn't worry about critics of the park because every step of the Anaheim project has been criticized. When you look at DCA by itself, it certainly does fail to impress just about everyone. Hey, when I first read about the plans I wrote Disney and expressed my outrage that they were installing a midway and a ferris wheel. Believe it or not, I got a personal reply, not a form letter, explaining the park (I was still outraged, but surprised they replied).

As someone who grew up next to Disneyland, I too am disappointed with the Walt Disney Company here at the beginning of the 21st century. In spite of all these problems, I'm wondering if the media and stockholders might be guilty of the "What have you done for me latelys?" when it comes to Eisner. I own a couple-hundred shares of Disney myself and I'm certainly not happy about its recent value.

To Credit Eisner, I recall before he took over Disney had only 3 parks, limited hotels and nothing overseas. The company stock was viewed by many greedy corporations as undervalued and ripe for hostile takeover. I remember hearing it was quite possible the entire Walt Disney Company would be taken over, broken up, and auctioned off. Do you think whomever bought Disney would have carried Walt's torch?

So, in addition to keeping the company from hostile takeover, under "Herr Eisner" Disney has built:

- MGM Studios, Animal Kingdom and Downtown Disney in Florida
- Numerous hotels in Florida (previously, Contemporary Resort was the flagship hotel)
- 1 Park in Paris, 2 near Tokyo, and now 1 in Hong Kong (under construction)
- Last (and least) DCA in Anaheim

If the Anaheim site had a lot of space, I'm sure they could have budgeted much more for a much nicer park. However, before they could even begin another park, Disney had to buy up a lot of seedy propery around Disneyland. (This move was criticized because many low-income people were living in those seedy hotels. Locals criticized them because they were ripping up the entire area and turning it into a very long term construction zone.) Then they had to completely rebuild the parking and entry structure. Of course, they had to put in some hotels. What good is another park if almost everybody is still a "Day-tripper"?

After spending so much on infrastructure, Anaheim likely couldn't justify spending a billion more on the park. So, I think they went cheap and installed some nicely painted midway rides: with plans to improve things later.

Now that the infrastructure in place, like a chess player sacrificing a few pieces to gain an advantage, I expect Mike is holding off on spending big bucks on DCA until after Disneyland Hong Kong is finished. He has overwhelming evidence that people weren't suckered in by a low-cost park and can then look at stock holders and justify investing in flagship attractions for DCA.

Feel free to question my facts or opinion. I'm really no Eisner fan (nothing justifies cutting back on park staff) but I wanted to present another side to the DCA debacle.

thekirk
09-02-2002, 04:21 PM
Klutch...

You have very good explinations. DCA just needs some time....and maybe it will get more attention.

Morrigoon
09-02-2002, 04:42 PM
I'd like to give him that credit, but since the death of Frank Wells, I really haven't seen much wonderful come out of Eisner. And frankly, the company's reputation for blatant lying doesn't engender my respect much either.

Laffite
09-02-2002, 05:24 PM
How old is DCA exactly? Under 5-10 years is still new. It still needs some time to "break-in". Did you notice how big their walk-paths are? :eek: They're still expecting to expand and add more attractions for more people obviously.

Also, the reason DCA has small crowd is because their paths are huge.

Morrigoon
09-02-2002, 05:34 PM
Dca has a small crowd because so few people pass through the turnstiles. Ever noticed the size of the walkways in DL?

Laffite
09-02-2002, 05:44 PM
Exactly. Walt was a genius. The paths always curve around something so the guest can't see what's ahead of them for more than about 100feet. It keeps the guests' interest in the park up because there's always "something around the corner", and it makes the park look bigger as well.

DCA is all wrong in that department. I can see CA Screamin' almost from the front. People run through to the back of the park and skip everything else. It's poorly designed, by Disney standard (if there is such a thing anymore :( )

JeffG
09-02-2002, 05:52 PM
Originally posted by Kevin Yee
That very comment about the subs is almost certainly what inspired him to be pro-DCA at the opening ceremony.

Don't think for one second that his Harbor Blvd comment won him any friends among his bosses... and he contritely did the "corporately wise" thing when DCA opened. Bottom line: it's now to the point where you can't trust anything said publically.

So we aren't even considering the possibility that Sklar simply was happy with and proud of the park?

-Jeff

merlinjones
09-02-2002, 07:07 PM
>>So we aren't even considering the possibility that Sklar simply was happy with and proud of the park? <<

Nah - - I think being a human speed bump for Eisner and Pressler's U-Haul, left treads under his sport shirt.

wtg2000
09-03-2002, 12:07 PM
Eisner's overall tenure is hard to judge. True, he took a struggling brand name and turned it into the second biggest entertainment company in the world, but it was a heady time of rapid growth and technological expansion on the planet, and he had a lot of help. (Wells, Nunis, Katz - all of whom are gone).

I remember Wells saying that when they first took over the company, every time they would open a door they would see another $100 million dollars.

Video was in its inception and releasing the Disney catalogue was a major cash cow. Most of WDW's 27,000 acres was just sitting there waiting to be built on. The plans for hotels and water parks were in the works when Eisner came on board. He made sure that they were themed and not generic like was planned. He was Walt-like in that way.

Touchstone and the Disney Channel were already going. I'm not sure about the history of the Disney Stores. Tokyo Disneyland had already opened as well.

The idea for a network came from his days at Paramount when he and Diller had planned to start UPN - way before its time.

Eisner certainly took the Disney name and made it ubiquitous, but as they say, familarity can breed contempt, and Disney is now seen, not as a quaint family-run company and home of Mickey Mouse, but as Sid Shienberg once said, "a ravenous rat" by many in the media. Mention Disney to a lot of people I know and they just scoff. They are the epitome of the corporate ogre.

If there ever is a downfall of Disney I will credit it to two things (I'm sort of saying this in jest here) - bricks and McDonalds.

I remember when Disney sold bricks around WDW-MK for $99 - and people snapped them up in a frenzy. I said at the time that if Disney knows that people will pay $100 for a chunk of rock then they'll accept anything Disney throws at them. Did the decline in quality start there?

As for McDonalds - the fact that the world's blandest and most accessible food is flourishing at Disney (they recently put a french fry place in Animal Kingdom as well as the sit down place) shows Disney execs that people don't care about unique-ness or quality. So why are they going to try?