Boy, thank God for Pixar. We shudder to think where Disney might be today if Pixar hadn’t jumped into Bob Iger’s pleading, outstretched arms. It’s sometimes scary to contemplate. Remember, before Lucasfilm, before Marvel and all the other Disney purchases, there was Pixar. There was Lasseter and Catmull and Jobs, right when Disney needed them most. Before the January 2006 consummation, Disney was in a hell of a place. Michael Eisner had just recently left the company (cue the overwhelming chorus of boo’s and hisses upon his departure) months earlier, and Iger had inherited a company that was, to put it mildly, not at all impressive. The theme parks had just been injected with some semblance of a pulse for Disneyland’s 50th Anniversary celebration (which fans counted as an apology for the downright criminal way the parks had been treated the previous 6 years by Darth Paul and Der Fuhrer Eisner), however there was very little on the long-range drawing board on how to follow it up. Hong Kong Disneyland had opened to a…shall we say…tepid response. The animation division was in crisis: after traditional animation had been shut down completely, Disney vowed to only make computer-generated films, none of which promised to be the next Lion King. The television and film divisions had been running hot and cold ever since dominating their respective markets in the 1999-2000 time frame. And for some reason, ever since the year 2000, Michael Eisner had become completely allergic to spending money on new technology or anything that even sniffed like an R&D expense. You know what the world needed then?
This guy!
That’s right…a guy in a Hawaiian shirt! Pixar, by 2006, had
legitimately become the most successful film content company in Hollywood. By
that time, Pixar was an astounding 6 for 6 in producing hit movies. It seemed
like each movie they made grossed more money and was more successful than the
one that came before. Spielberg, Lucas, or Christopher Nolan can’t claim that.
Hell, technically, not even Walt Disney
himself was able to string together 6 straight animated movie hits at any
point in his career (and this is coming from a Walt diehard in yours truly, so
I am truly stunned by that fact). Pixar could literally do no wrong. It was
beating Disney at its own game, and frankly making them look like scrubs in the
process. And even worse, Disney was only getting half of Pixar’s revenues under
their distribution deal, which was set to expire less than a year after Michael
Eisner got kicked out of left the company for good. And Pixar’s chief,
Steve Jobs, made it very clear that Pixar would not be renewing its deal with
Disney. Which means all of Pixar’s artistic and technological geniuses, from
Steve Jobs to Ed Catmull to John Lasseter and on and on, would have nothing to
do with Disney after the release of Cars
in Summer 2006. And for everyone who appreciated what Pixar did, and still
could do, to Disney’s artistic heritage and bottom line, this was very, very
bad. It was “let’s not buy any Apple stock pre-iPod release” bad.
No thanks, we're doing just fine
Creative executives, lawyers, politicians, anyone who works
in a marketing department, and random celebrities featured on TMZ have this
idea that every major event or consequence has one cause. Just one. “Top Gun
was popular because Tom Cruise was in it.” “Apple became popular when they
decided to sell music.” “Amazon.com became popular because of One-Click.” “Kids
aren’t paying attention in school because of ADD (or vaccines, if you live on
the west coast).” “Obama lost the Oklahoma vote in 2012 because he made jokes
about cowboy hats.” There’s this sort of obsession among powerful people that
everything must must must have one
AND ONLY ONE solution, probably lest their heads explode or something.
Uh oh, HERE COME OKLAHOMA
This also leads said people to tell others of their breed
that their successes have one cause, and that this one cause came in a single
miraculous “moment of clarity” episode. “I got the idea for water-powered cars
when I was playing mini-golf with my nephew.” And so on. Now, to be fair, some
of this behavior is probably the result of these people having to constantly
speak to ADD-whacked audiences who are begging to turn the channel unless you
GET TO THE POINT RIGHT NOW OMG. So we can give some leeway here if they just
want to give us a marketing department’s corporate-approved view of the story.
I say this because, in fact, Walt Disney was just as guilty
of this “one cause to rule them all” phenomenon as anyone else. The most famous
example, easily, is Walt’s legendary Griffith Park story. As Walt would tell
it, it seemed as if the idea for Disneyland came to him like a lightning bolt
from on high as he was sitting on a Griffith Park bench one day watching his
daughters on the merry-go-round. We should be thankful there wasn’t a burning
bush or stone tablets involved (THOU SHALT HAVE A BERM). Even if we are to
assume he had these musings over several Griffith Park visits, we obsessive
Disney park historians (all twelve of us) know this was not his only impetus
for Disneyland, nor the only times he thought about it. Reading extensively and
exhaustively through Disney history books, you would conclude that the idea of
building a park where parents and kids could have fun together was not the only
driving impulse behind Walt’s “Kiddie Park” idea that would eventually lead to
the building of Disneyland. Among those ideas (some of which Walt was
contemplating before his frequent
visits to Griffith Park) were the following: 1) Building a place where kids
could meet Mickey Mouse; 2) Creating a fun area for Walt’s increasingly-tired
employees to unwind (the earliest ideas for the Riverside park suggest it might
have been intended as an employee-only area); 3) Having a place where Walt and
his visitors could ride full-scale railroads 4) Providing a place where kids
could have fun when they visited the Disney Studio and/or Hollywood in general.
All of these impulses were in the back of Walt’s mind as he was planning the
Riverside park across the street from the studio, which was frankly a little
small to hold Walt’s grand vision of “a place where the parents and the
children could have fun together.” Point is: there’s always more than one ball
in the air, no matter how much someone says something came to them like a
lightning bolt to the head.
Hey, you know what's popular...?
Which brings us to Bob Iger’s amusing little “revelation”
story that has been lapped up by the internet like Augustus Gloop taking to a
river of chocolate. Since reporters have the institutional memory of “things
that have happened since my last article,” and are either paid by Disney to
toss softballs to Iger during their interviews or legitimately do not know how
to use a search engine, one of the first and most prevalent questions DJ Bobby
Bob receives is “good golly gee, how did you ever come up with the idea to buy Pixar?” Bob then goes into
Griffith Park mode and fires up his #disneycommunicationsapproved story about
how Pixar was suddenly on his mind. I’m sure all of you are familiar with the
story by now. Bob was “watching a parade” at one of the castle parks (some
stories suggest MK in Florida, but most suggest it was Hong Kong) when he
noticed that most of the floats were populated by Pixar characters, and he
realized practically every popular animated character made (read: merchandised
by) Disney over the previous decade had been a Pixar character. This
“convinced” him that it would be a good idea for Disney to buy Pixar outright
and not risk losing them (for the record, let’s really hope it didn’t actually
take him that long to figure this
out). Bob was convinced that Pixar was worth whatever price Steve Jobs would
ask for due to the ancillary effects that Pixar’s character affiliation would
have on its animation and consumer products businesses. Okay, yeah it’s a
pretty innocent story, sure. But let’s remember our lesson for today kids:
there’s always more than one ball in the air. Two of these balls were called
“Good Lord we need John Lasseter” and “somebody please take DCA’s keys away
from her…she keeps boozing on free locals admission deals and it’s getting to
the point where we can’t let her drive.” Ah, DCA, that old chestnut. No
kiddies, Bob had a lot to think about
at the time…
Oh Lord, she's off the wagon again
DCA For the Block
Disney’s California Adventure, in its 2001 incarnation, was
one of the biggest flops in Disney’s history. It was made on a greatly reduced
budget, supervised by managers whose mission from Fuhrer Eisner was to build a
major expansion as cheaply as possible while still, somehow, trying to convince
the public to pay to see it. Not an enviable task, to be sure, but management
also did not put forth an A+ effort to make the park appealing in any way to
any of Disney’s target demographs. The expansion was built at a cost of $1.4
billion (slashed from an original DCA budget of $2.1 billion, which in itself
was slashed from a Westcot budget of $3.2 billion). Many people, and I mean
many people in the financial offices and not just John Hench, would wonder
whether it would have been better just to keep the area as a parking lot.
When DCA finally opened, it actually lost money for the
Disneyland Resort. Legitimately. It took the combined profits of Downtown
Disney, the hotels (including the very popular new Grand Californian Hotel),
and Disneyland Park just to keep the resort in the black. But Disney’s
California Adventure, in its first few years (yes, YEARS) did not make any
profit by itself. Had it been a standalone, privately owned park like Holiday
World, it would have lost money, and closed. This is what Disneyland management
was dealing with. And just as Parks and Resorts management was figuring this
out and trying to get all their ducks re-rowed, the horrible tragedy of
September 11th happened for all the world to see. The American
economy took a huge hit, most especially the tourism industry, since it took
quite awhile for folks to decide to fly on an airplane again. Thankfully for
Disneyland’s management, Disneyland’s profits (which mostly came from repeat
local visitors) were not as affected as Disney’s other resorts around the world
(which mostly came from out of town visitors). However, Disneyland did lose a
significant portion of its lucrative day visitor demograph, who, as we
Disneyphiles know, tend to spend much
more money on food, merchandise, hotels, etc. on a per capita/per visit basis
than the locals. In addition, since Disney World’s numbers were hit so hard,
they would not provide the necessary relief money to potentially rescue
Disneyland from its sinking profit margin. So, in short, Disney Parks and
Resorts, and Disneyland especially, were in a bad way from the September 11th
attacks until the economy (and the tourism economy specifically) started to
recover in 2003.
We’ve already covered some of the immediate fallout of DCA’s
initial tank job, and the park operations management’s reaction to it from a
creative perspective within our Superstar Limo entry on this list (you can view
it Here).
In an upcoming entry, we’ll also talk about some of the “creative” business
decisions Darth Paul and his minions made that put DCA in the shape it was upon
its opening in 2001. With that foundation, we’re going to skip to early 2003,
after Pressler had been kicked out left to spend more time with his
family (apparently for about five minutes before becoming the CEO of The GAP),
and Jay Rasulo had taken over as Parks and Resorts Chairman. Cynthia Harriss,
Pressler’s right hand girl, was still President of Disneyland, and Eisner was
still in charge of Disney. This is starting to sound like a grade-school
reading class re-enactment. Coming up next: “Frog and Toad are Friends.”
Not food
DCA was hemorrhaging money at this time, and there was no
relief to be found from the Parks and Resorts executive offices, since WDW was
getting hit hard by the post-9/11 recession and had to re-trench. So the
Disneyland park operations executives had to hope that DCA’s rushed “Phase II”
development (planned in the summer of 2001 after execs realized attendance
would be far below projections) would somehow be a windfall for the new park.
As we covered in the Superstar Limo article, Disney responded to the biggest,
ahem, “concerns” that guests had via an uncountable number of focus groups and
surveys (that DCA had very few Disney characters, had very few things for kids
to do, and did not have enough “Disney-esque” E-Tickets) by approving a
plethora of new offerings: the Aladdin musical at the Hyperion Theater, Disney
Junior Live, the Electrical Parade, A Bug’s Land, Ariel’s Grotto, and Tower of
Terror (ironically, many of these new offerings would ignore the park’s
California theme).
It was obvious to Disneyland execs that the new offerings,
while they would spark a couple months’ worth of increased attendance, were not
moving the needle for DCA in the long-term. So it was time for Plan B. Cynthia
and her crew started rolling out the cheap ticket offers. DCA was added onto
the Disneyland Annual Pass at no additional charge (making it an automatic
two-park pass). They experimented with “kids get in free” deals (if you buy an
adult admission). But the biggest, and most infamous, of the cheap ticket deals
was the “Two Parks, One Ticket” campaign. Southern California locals would come
to know it as the “2Fer” ticket. Disney completely carpet-bombed the Southern
California area with 2Fer commercials and billboards. The infamous commercials
depicted a family torn over which park they should visit (Warning: completely
unrealistic), and then discovering that, of course, they could visit both parks
for the same price. That’s right. For SoCal residents, if you bought a ticket
to Disneyland, you could get a free
upgrade to visit DCA. Free. This was
back before the One-Day Park Hopper existed, so the locals went absolutely
nuts. The 2Fer, combined with the still super-cheap Annual Passes, meant that
DCA attendance gained a solid 13% bump from 2002 to 2003. Unfortunately, since
management was practically giving the park away, the per-capita spending at DCA
plummeted. Not only that, but it actually cut into Disneyland’s per-caps across
the Esplanade, since guests who would buy a Disneyland ticket anyway were now
leaving Disneyland and walking into DCA for free, and spending much fewer
dollars there than they would at Disneyland. In fact, on the final Spring week
of the 2Fer promotion, it was estimated that only 25% of DCA’s attendance was
from guests with day tickets. That’s right, only 25% of visitors that week actually paid to get in. That’s not
going to bring home the bacon. The warning bells were starting to sound for
Disneyland management, and the elephant in the room was that DCA’s problems ran
far, far deeper than adding some kids rides and a Terror of Terror would fix. The
reality was, DCA was underwhelming for guests from the start, mostly due to the
combination of a lack of “Disney” themed experiences and an overall thematic
concept that was at best lacking in interest and at worst completely
unappealing to 70% of Disneyland’s target audience. Unfortunately, in the 2003
Eisnerian economic climate, the money would not be available to overhaul the
park, so the executives had to pin their hopes on two remaining upcoming
experiences: Tower of Terror and the XGames XPerience.
At this time, the Disneyland Entertainment department was
lead by a woman named Anne Hamburger, who had extensive theater credentials
(including Tony-nominated shows). Since Pressler and his minions were not,
shall we say, “besties” with Walt Disney Imagineering (for various reasons,
which will be detailed in a later article), Anne Hamburger’s Entertainment
department (as well as Steve Davison’s Creative Entertainment group) became the
darlings of the Pressler regime due to their experience at creating popular
shows and events (Small World Holiday, Mansion Holiday, Believe, etc.) on
budgets that were microscopic compared to WDI’s. Unfortunately for the Disney
fan community, Ms. Hamburger was also an avant-garde “urban diva” type, who
favored Broadway-esque, Brechtian-style theater to Disney’s tried and true
storytelling. Her team was notorious for completely
missing the mark with Disney’s built-in traditional family audience (look up
Club Buzz or Mickey’s Detective School if you’re looking for a reason to punish
your soul). During their reign, the Hamburger/Pressler/Harriss group was
entertaining (no pun intended) the possibility of continuing DCA’s attempt to
seize the young adult demograph that Disneyland did not get enough of. Pressler
and Company’s spreadsheets and extensive MBA schooling had told them that the
18-32 young adult demograph was very lucrative, due to the high amounts of
disposable income that teenagers and twenty-somethings have when they don’t
have a family to worry about (this is why Hollywood just can’t stop pandering to this group as well). While Disneyland certainly
does not completely miss this age group, it owns less of a market share of the
young adults than it does with family groups, since teens and young adults
would rather go to places like Six Flags, Universal, or the mall to have fun.
In a way, DCA was built to be a “contrarian” park to Disneyland. Like Universal
Studios parks in the mid-1990s (and again in the mid-2000s), DCA was meant to
be everything that Disneyland was not. It was aimed squarely for the young
adult/family-less market. This was a blatant market share grab. This is (part
of the reason) why DCA had large thrill rides with minimal theming (California
Screamin’, Grizzly River Run, Maliboomer), basic carnival-esque iron rides (Sun
Wheel, Mulholland Madness, the entirety of Paradise Pier), tons and tons of
fast food stops (most of which serve beer and alcohol), chic-designed mall
stores (many commented the Rushin’ River Outfitters store reminded them of an
Eddie Bauer), as well as very little in the way of traditional “lame” Disney
characters or “kid’s stuff.” Now do you see where the criticism that DCA felt
like “one big mall” came from? Because that’s how it was designed!
Anyway, Hamburger and Harriss felt that they had completed
their required “lip service” to the kids and family market to re-adjust their
survey numbers (notice how none of the new 2002-2003 attractions replaced any
thrill rides or mall-type stores), and so they felt it would be time for them
to re-grab the young adult market. Besides the 2Fer promotion that was perfect
for this market (teens and twenty-somethings are always looking for a
good…ahem…”bargain”), Hamburger and Harriss were going to create two major
summer promotions aimed at teens: Rockin’ the Bay in 2002 and the XGames
Xperience in 2003. These would be followed up with the addition of Tower of
Terror in 2004 (though it is certainly a highly themed ride to shut up those
pesky traditionalists who want a “Disney-style” experience, at its heart it is
still a thrill ride, and without the 5th Dimension room it is much
more nakedly a thrill ride than its Florida counterpart), and then, possibly, a
few years later, Rock n’ Rollercoaster. With these experiences in place,
Harriss and her TDA minions could cover Orange County with commercials of teens
having a great time at DCA: Tower of Terror, Rock n’ Rollercoaster, California
Screamin’, Grizzly River, Soarin Over California, Maliboomer, Mulholland
Madness, a bunch of flat rides, XGames shows, beer and wine, fast food, and
chic mall stores. What more could you want?
No. Bad Annual Passholder. Go see the XGames.
To an MBA or marketing executive with little Disney or theme
park experience, this is actually a solid plan. I mean, it kind of is, on
paper. Disney would steal market share from Knott’s Berry Farm, and Six Flags,
and Universal, and South Coast Plaza and all the other teen hangouts around
SoCal by positioning DCA as “Xtreme Disneyland.” After I’m done with my “Wish
Upon a Blue Sky” series, I’ll probably start a series where I discuss the
different kinds of theme parks around the world and their business plans, and
why they succeeded or failed. But for now, take my word for it, there are
several reasons why this plan didn’t quite work. But Harriss and her MBA
brigade thought that this business plan would save them from drowning in
negative earnings.
To start, the Rockin’ the Bay series (boy DCA loves taking
the “g” off the ends of words doesn’t it?), an “Eat to the Beat”-type music
series on a makeshift stage (located where the World of Color viewing terrace
is now) debuted in summer 2002. It had, shall we say, a tepid reaction. Of
course, DCA was smack in the middle of the economic recession, but Rockin’ the
Bay didn’t put the butts in the seats.
Next, Anne Hamburger made a licensing deal with ESPN to
bring the XGames to DCA for 2 years, for summer 2003 and 2004. The XGames
XPerience was an ESPN The Weekend type of event that would last from July 1st
through mid-August at DCA. There were skateboarding tracks, BMX demonstrations,
basically tons of shows, entertainment, and interview/autograph sessions throughout
the summer. Anne expected XGames to be a huge hit with teenagers, which would
propel a huge summer of 2004 season with the debut of Tower of Terror in May
AND the second year of XGames. Ms. Hamburger spent A LOT of money on this big
event (seriously, think of ESPN The Weekend or Star Wars Weekends being
featured EVERY DAY from July 1st through the middle of August)
hoping to bring in the teen market. They even had giveaway cards that you could
scratch off and win prizes (seriously folks, they really want you to come to their park).
Wait! Come back! Tomorrow's Chicken Patty Day!
But the XGames did not bring in an audience. In fact, one
could make an argument that it actually kept people away. DCA’s attendance for
the summer was a whopping 35% below projections (Disneyland management expected
approximately 20,000 visitors per day for DCA during the summer, but they ended
up with about 13,000 per day). Meanwhile, across the Esplanade Disneyland was
only about 2-3% below its estimates, despite Space Mountain being down for the
entire summer. There were several reasons why XGames didn’t work, but the top
two were: 1. Its PG-13 material had families with kids avoiding the park at all
costs (blaring Van Halen and AC/DC over the PA system didn’t help either), and
2. It stunk. No really, it might as well have been put together by Barney Fife
and Gomer Pyle. None of the shows had any shaded seating or standing areas.
Theming was non-existent. The exhibit areas were surrounded by chain link
fences straight from A Prairie Home Companion. Everything was covered in gaudy
sponsorship banners. Extra bathrooms were provided in the form of trailers and
outhouses. Some of the arenas were in backstage areas, giving guests great
views of the backs of buildings and power lines as half-dressed Cast Members
walked by on the way to the cafeteria. The merchandise stands literally look
like they were borrowed from a parking lot carnival. XGames flopped hard.
Yep
And...how much did we pay to get in here?
At this point, Jay Rasulo (Chairman of Parks and Resorts
after Pressler) was getting annoyed with Ms. Harriss. The Disneyland managers
kept saying to anyone who would listen that Tower of Terror would save the park
(let’s not mention that all the rest of the attractions/experiences generated
during DCA Phase II had only about 2-3 months of popularity apiece before all
the APs had their fill and then didn’t come back), but it was obvious that the
excuses were just about done for DCA. Unless they literally gave the park away
for free, no matter how many promotions or events they had, no one would visit
DCA. Disneyland management saw on their summer 2003 surveys that the needle
would not move on any of the scores compared to summer 2001 and 2002. A great
majority of DCA were park-hopping APs or guests with multi-day hoppers who
would walk into DCA to ride 3 or 4 of their favorite DCA attractions, and then
walk right back to Disneyland. Nothing they had done would move the needle. And
hardly anyone was visiting DCA for the XGames, except for some teenage boys
with APs who would spend some money on XGames merchandise and nothing else (not
exactly big spenders). For these and other reasons, Rasulo was done with Ms.
Harriss, and she was unceremoniously fired resigned in late 2003.
To replace Cynthia as the next President of Disneyland, Jay
Rasulo picked a man who, at first glance, has the makings of a perfect corporate
stooge, someone we Disney fans would roll our eyes at and dismiss. The man Jay
hired has an Accounting degree, spent a decade in the Finance department at the
Disney Development Company (at the time, the arm of Parks and Resorts that
built the hotels and developed real estate for non-park uses), and was in
executive positions at DDC and at the Disney Vacation Club before becoming
President of the Cruiseline, and then finally President of Disneyland. Lucky
for us, he wasn’t a stooge. He was a very surprising individual in that,
shockingly, he knew how to do his job. That was very, very rare at that time at
the Walt Disney Company. He was a man who, somehow in Disney’s risk-averse
corporate culture, knew how to get things done and motivate his team to do
better. He was one of the best presidents Disneyland ever had. His name was
Matt Ouimet, and from the moment he took over as Disneyland’s Big Cheese, the
resort would never be the same.
Matt Saves the Decade
When Matt took over, he was shocked at the state of the
resort, both financially and physically. With Disneyland’s 50th
Anniversary looming less than two years subsequent Matt’s first days, time was
of the essence to turn the resort around before all the national news coverage
started in summer 2005. From an image standpoint, it would be good if Good
Morning America could actually have good things to say about Disneyland
attractions that had opened in the prior ten years. In addition, around the
same time that Matt was reorganizing Cynthia’s bureaucracy, Roy Disney and
Stanley Gold resigned from the Disney Board of Directors and led a shareholder
revolt against Michael Eisner and his regime. Their campaign (which we all know
as SaveDisney), was especially critical of Eisner’s recent poor creative
decisions. Most especially, they heavily criticized Eisner’s mandate to cut
costs and spending down to the bone at the theme parks, as well as his tendency
to ignore or antagonize Disney’s creative partners. The most recent addition to
this long, long list of former allies turned enemies was Steve Jobs who, due to
Michael Eisner’s unfriendly negotiating, vowed that Pixar would not be signing
a new contract with Disney to distribute Pixar films when their current
contract would run out in 2006. This was very bad for Disney. Due to Eisner’s
neglect of Disney animation, Pixar was actually the only engine running
Disney’s animation profits since The Lion
King debuted in 1994. In fact, from 1994-2003 the top five most popular Disney-distributed animation movies were all
Pixar movies (going by number of tickets sold). This was bad for Disney since,
according to the Disney/Pixar contract at the time, Disney only received 50% of
Pixar’s revenues. So, Disney would naturally want to increase their percentage
in Pixar, which means they would probably have to give Pixar something valuable
in return. Nope. NOOOOOOOOOPE. Michael Eisner did what Michael Eisner does, and
instead of offering Pixar something valuable (like say, the sequel rights to
their own films) to coax a higher revenue share for Disney, Eisner instead
threatened Steve Jobs and John Lasseter that, since Disney owned the
merchandise and sequel rights for all Pixar characters and movies, Disney would
make an endless stream of crappy direct-to-video sequels and deliberately ruin the Pixar franchises
if Pixar decided to sign with another studio. And then demanded higher revenue percentages (according to Walter
Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs, these exchanges literally brought John
Lasseter to tears on multiple occasions). Steve, doing what Steve Jobs does,
informed Mr. Eisner exactly where he could shove his revenues, said he would
sign with whichever studio he would damn well like, and left, presumably as
thunder and lightning crashed in the sky above. Eisner was reportedly to have
muttered, “I’ll get you next time, Gadget,” or something to that effect.
Michael Eisner as seen in the 2003 Disney Annual Report
Anyway, the newly christened President of Disneyland (and
his bosses) now had a duel problem to solve: 1.) Roy Disney and his Merry Men
were up in arms about the lack of good new attractions at Disney theme parks,
and 2.) Should there be any new attractions, it would be a very very very good
idea if they featured certain animated characters belonging to a company who
might leave the scene with tires squealing unless they were very, very happy
with what Disney was doing with their product. Turn the calendar to 2004. Enter
stage left: Bob Iger. On January 2nd, 2004, Matt and Jay Rasulo had
a very blunt and candid “Come to Jesus” meeting with Bob Iger at the Disneyland
Resort. Reportedly, Matt and Jay showed Bob the deteriorating state of the
resort, and recommended that the funds be released both for a major tune-up in
preparation for the 50th and for new attractions that would add some
much-needed capacity and raise the coveted Ride Per-Cap statistic that was
literally in the toilet for much of 2003. Bob and the Imagineers had Pixar in
the back of their minds, and the ideas began to flow. In particular, Matt
wanted to focus on what Disneyland executives would begin calling “The DCA
Problem.”
The Real DCA Problem
Now, you have to understand, during the Pressler Era it was
practically illegal to mention or suggest that DCA had not lived up to
expectations (low as they were). Everyone was ordered to not say to anyone that
DCA was having any problems whatsoever. So when Matt and Jay and Bob began
using the phrase “The DCA Problem,” this was a BIG DEAL. It just demonstrates
the kind of 180-degree turn that Matt’s regime represented. However, at that
exact time, Bob told Matt that a long-term vision for the resort, and DCA in
particular, was not in the works, per Eisner’s mandate. However, Eisner was
willing to give Matt some additional funds for the short-term, centered around
the 50th campaign (again, he wanted to look good for the national
media and prove to Roy Disney that he was willing to spend money on the theme
parks). So, plans were immediately set in motion for some Pixar attractions:
besides the Buzz Lightyear attraction that was already greenlit for
Tomorrowland, Disneyland would bring the beloved Submarine Voyage back to
operation with a Finding Nemo theme. DCA would replace Superstar Limo with a
very neat Monsters, Inc. attraction where guests would ride on doors (hanging
from an overhead track) and be whisked through a roller coaster-esque tour
through the Monsters, Inc. Factory, and DCA would be adding a new daytime
parade that would feature almost exclusively Pixar characters (this parade at
the time was going to be called “Lights, Camera, Animation,” and would feature
Pixar characters making movies about…themselves. I guess. This idea would
eventually evolve into Block Party Bash). Later that year, Disneyland
management would also look to bring the popular Turtle Talk with Crush Epcot
exhibit to the animation building at DCA.
So Matt didn’t get his grand 10-year vision for DCA and the
resort, but he did get approval for a small handful of new attractions for
Disneyland based on Pixar characters, which was, to put it mildly, a step in
the right direction. Matt took and reorganized all the money he could to focus
on the next few years. Block Party Bash, Buzz Lightyear, and Turtle Talk would
open with the 50th Anniversary event in summer 2005, and Monsters,
Inc. and Finding Nemo would open 1-2 years after. Matt was hoping for a resort
vision that stretched further into the future, but it was not in the cards.
What he DID emphasize to his Disneyland team was that any preliminary plans for
the Third Gate (such as they were) would be immediately halted. Pressler’s
regime would continually quote to the media that there were future plans for a
third DLR park in order to convince investors that DCA was doing fine and there
was a solid resort vision.
But Matt stopped the pretending, and let everyone know that
adding new attractions to Disneyland and DCA would be the priority going
forward, and all resources would be allocated as such.
This now brings us to May 2004, the grand opening of Tower
of Terror. The old Pressler regime had hoped that Tower was going to be the
saving grace of the park, and much like the Florida Tower would provide a major
boost in attendance/revenue/etc. for the park. Matt and his team was hoping for
the best but were skeptical that Tower would be a magical silver bullet in the
long-term for DCA. What made them even more nervous was that Universal Studios
Hollywood would be debuting their Revenge of the Mummy attraction (an indoor
roller coaster/dark ride combination that is not exactly a PG experience) at
exactly the same time, and since it had a similar scope and scale as Tower (as
a scary dark ride/thrill ride thing) Mummy and Universal would be targeted
directly at the audience base that Tower was looking to attract in the first
place. Much to Matt and his team’s chagrin, they had to get involved in an ad
war with Universal that summer to prove that their new $100+ million scary
building was worth the E-Ticket expense. This was money that Matt would have
preferred to use for other things, but it had to be done.
Ultimately, Tower provided a 5% bump in attendance for DCA
that year, which was good, but not the miracle that some were expecting (some
reports say the Florida Tower bumped Disney-MGM Studios attendance by as much
as 30% in 1994-1995, and DCA’s 5.6 million visitors in 2004 were still far
below that original 7 million visitor estimates that the park was expected to
bring in upon its 2001 opening). So, Matt and his team took the opportunity to
strategize what exactly they were going to do with DCA going forward.
Attendance and revenues were far below levels of acceptability, and Cynthia’s
team had not planned for any new attraction openings after Tower of Terror,
since Tower was supposed to add the “critical mass” for DCA to reach its
capacity targets. Since Tower only moved the needle slightly, Matt’s team knew
that they had to come up with something
for DCA’s future or risk years and years of little to no profits. Disney’s
research suggested that only guests with park hoppers would actually visit DCA,
and would only do so for a few hours to ride their favorite attractions and
then run back to Disneyland. No one wanted to pay full price to go to DCA. This
research blatantly suggested that DCA was not going to meet its attendance or
financial goals without a major facelift. So they studied what made Disneyland
so successful in the first place (lo and behold, many of these approaches were
exactly the opposite of what DCA was doing). You could fill a book with all the
mistakes made while designing and implementing DCA, but in terms of thematic
material, guests wanted to be transported to exotic or fantasy locations,
populated by their favorite characters. From an attractions perspective, the
best Disney attractions from both a Guest and operator’s standpoint were
high-capacity attractions that the whole family could ride together, preferably
highly themed with Disney characters and/or Audio-Animatronics. And so, Matt’s
team started to construct a modest Five-Year plan based on these tenants. In
addition to the Monsters, Inc. attraction, they wanted to add a high-profile
E-Ticket and a major D-Ticket to the park between 2005-2009. They had to meet
the following criteria: 1.) No height requirement, 2.) Must be very unique,
highly themed, and preferably include Disney characters, and 3.) Entertaining
for the entire family. What was most telling was that ancient attractions like
Pirates, Mansion, and Small World were still bringing home the bacon (visitors
would go home and tell their families about them) while newer attractions like
Winnie the Pooh were not even close (no one remembered the attraction when they
were surveyed, and didn’t even budge the “intent to return” statistics). Lesson
learned.
The Long-Term Plans
Plans for DCA’s long-range strategy were convened behind
closed doors throughout 2004 and the first half of 2005, and there were many
planning and Blue Sky sessions with the Imagineers, however much of this time
was given to planning/finishing/implementing the 50th celebration,
as well as the opening of several new (Buzz) and renovated (Space Mountain)
attractions in the same period.
In early 2005, after the 2004 Christmas holiday season
ended, the decision was made to scale back the Monsters, Inc. door coaster
attraction. As it turns out, whatever ride system the Imagineers would design
was just not enough to handle the expected capacity demands. In addition, since
this was going to be an overhanging, roller coaster-type ride, they would
require some major restraints, which would mean the attraction would need a
height requirement. Due to Matt’s new “rules of new attractions,” these were
two strikes too many. So, Monsters, Inc. was scaled back to be re-designed into
the Superstar Limo replacement “Mike and Sully to the Rescue” that we see
today. So the bad news is, DCA lost a potential E- or D-Ticket. The good news
is, since the attraction was scaled down to C-Ticket status, it would mean
there was money in the budget (hopefully) for another E- or D-Ticket for DCA.
Matt’s team would waste no time with the DCA plans once the
50th celebration officially launched. Before the summer of 2005 was
even over, plans were being finalized for DCA’s new Five-Year Plan. After
almost two years of constant communication with executives that DCA needed more
than just one or two attractions to start making its profit goals,
Eisner/Iger/Rasulo decided to open up the Parks and Resorts budget to provide a
modest facelift for DCA. As of post-summer 2005, Matt’s Five-Year DCA budget
would consist of:
1.
The beautification of most of DCA’s major themed
areas. In WDI’s parlance, this would be called “Placemaking.”
2.
The already-approved Monsters, Inc. C-Ticket
3.
The Major D-Ticket
4.
The High Profile E-Ticket
Let’s take each item one by one. The Monsters, Inc.
attraction we’ve already covered. The Placemaking initiative was actually
championed by some Imagineers and Matt’s Senior Vice President of Operations,
Greg Emmer. Being a Disney old-schooler, Greg was absolutely furious at the
sorry state of Disneyland and DCA’s operations, not to mention the drab and
boring thematic choices found throughout DCA. Matt readily agreed.
Unfortunately, there was not enough money in the budget to do a complete
renovation of each of DCA’s themed areas. However, there would at least be
enough to make the areas more pleasant to soak in, by adding trees, new paint,
new architecture, new fountains, etc. The first targeted Placemaking area would
be Hollywood Pictures Backlot, in preparation for the Monsters, Inc.
attraction. New Disney-centric background music would be played on the
Backlot’s speakers. New Disney-MGM Studios-style soundstage signs would be
added throughout the area as directional posts. A new Mickey fountain was added
between MuppetVision and Monsters, Inc. MuppetVision and the Animation building
received new facades, and the Animation building received two new entertainment
offerings: the “Learn to Draw” Animation Academy and a major Disney character
meet-and-greet.
The next area to be…uh…”Placemade”…would be the entrance
area through to the Sunshine Plaza. The entire entrance plaza would be
re-themed to the California Craftsman style similar to the Grand Californian
Hotel. In addition, the Golden Dreams show would have been moved from the back
of the park to the central hub, and the hub would be re-themed to a major train
depot circa the California Craftsman period. Condor Flats would then be
re-themed to better reflect the Craftsman theme of the surrounding entrance
plaza and Redwood Creek areas (this re-theme was actually recently executed
almost exactly like the original plans circa-2005, with Taste Pilot’s Grill
being turned into Smokejumpers and everything). Finally, Paradise Pier would
have replaced its cheap stucco architecture with more pleasing and permanent
materials, and thematic touches would have been added throughout the area, such
as a collection of surfboards, fins, and paddleboards in the queue for
California Screamin’.
The tricky part here is the D-Ticket. Most people I’ve
talked to (sources close to the President) agree there was a D-Ticket earmarked
for the Placemaking expansion, but no one can agree on what exactly it was.
Some suggest it was Toy Story Mania, others say it was an early version of
Ariel’s Adventure, others say it was a major attraction to replace Mulholland
Madness with a San Francisco and/or Route 66 theme, and still others say it was
a slightly watered-down version of Rock n’ Rollercoaster. In fact, still others
suggest that the D-Ticket was pulled by Matt at this point in the process to
give a bigger budget to Disneyland attraction plans that may have not been in
motion at the time (an attraction or two in Tomorrowland, including the rumored
return of the PeopleMover, or the addition of a Toy Story Land, similar to Hong
Kong’s, in the former Festival Arena area between Big Thunder and Fantasyland).
Which brings us to the E-Ticket. Matt wanted to make sure
the E-Ticket would hit all the right notes: family-friendly, unique (aka high
profile), preferably with Disney characters, preferably with Disney characters
belonging to a certain other animation studio. Many ideas were discussed,
debated, conversed. Eventually, the choice was whittled down to two finalists.
The first was an attraction based on Cars.
Housed in a mammoth show building, the attraction itself would have two tracks
of vehicles, with a ride system similar to Epcot’s Test Track. In addition,
there would be a smaller, Autopia-style attraction within the same building for
kids and families who might not like the bigger thrills of the Racers ride. As
you can probably imagine, the Autopia-style Cars
ride was abandoned pretty quickly due to budgets. It’s actually a law at Disney
that when there is a proposed x > 1 number of distinct rides in a single
show building, that all additional rides should be eliminated until x = 1. You
will see this happen quite a few times during this series. The second of the
two E-Ticket finalists was…
The Incredibles!
That’s right! You forgot this article is supposed to be
about an unbuilt Disney Blue Sky attraction! Admit it, you did!
Hey, Welcome Back!
Disney Imagineering had long had a history of testing and
developing breakthrough theme park technologies for years before actually
having a story concept to attach to them. For example, in the mid-1980s, Disney
had for years been developing a way to bring military flight simulator
technology to a theme park setting. They had designed working models and a
simulator cabin, the problem was they had no story concept to apply it to, and
it languished in WDI’s R&D department. It took several years before George
Lucas saw what WDI was doing with the technology and thought it would make a
great foundation for a Star Wars
attraction.
Fast forward to the early 2000s, along with new exciting
technologies like the trackless dark ride and the CAVE environment, Disney had
been working on a way to have guests be held by a large robotic arm extension,
where they would be subject to a full range of motion and be whisked through
either a series of show scenes or film screens, or both. The earliest idea for
this concept was for Epcot’s original Space Pavilion. In the post-show, Seabase
Alpha in space environment, there was to be an experience wherein individual
guests were held aloft as an extension of a robotic arm and go through a
simulated “space walk.” The arm itself would help simulate a zero-gravity
environment for guests, who would feel like they were floating in space (this
idea will be covered in more detail in a subsequent article). However, the idea for the technology was
still too primitive to be applied to a major E-Ticket experience like Indiana
Jones or Tower of Terror. In the 1990s, Disney instead developed a
simulator/robot arm blended technology, where guests would be placed in a
simulator pod at the end of a (very primitive) arm extension, which would
provide an extended range of motion from what a normal simulator would have. The
concept would actually come to fruition in the form of the Cyberspace Mountain
attraction at DisneyQuest, where guests were able to design their own roller
coaster and then ride them in the arm/simulator pod. Cyberspace Mountain was a
big hit with guests, and arguably the most popular attraction at DisneyQuest,
so Disney continued to develop the technology.
Technology around the time of the N64
Eventually, Disney partnered with the German company KUKA AG,
one of the world’s leading robotics companies. KUKA had developed highly
sophisticated intelligent robot arms for work in manufacturing plants and
assembly lines, where the intelligent arms would construct automobiles and
other heavy machinery. With this new generation of robotic arm, Disney could
now research and develop all the big things they wanted to do with the
technology. While Disney was planning their big E-Ticket experience, the KUKA
technology began to manifest itself in the parks in small ways as a sort of
prelude or beta test to the massive scale attraction the Imagineers were
developing. WDI was especially interested in seeing how the technology would
hold up to constant day-to-day use and wear and tear. As WDI was working with
KUKA, KUKA’s robotic arm technology won the “Best New Product” IAAPA award in
2003. Suddenly, everyone wanted in on this technology, and Disney started to
roll out KUKA in the parks.
The first major showcase of the technology was for the
Rockin’ Robots exhibit at Innoventions at Epcot (with the lack of the “g” you’d
think this was a DCA attraction). The exhibit was literally just a showcase for
the technology, as the giant KUKA arms played various types of instruments like
a REALLY sophisticated Chuck E. Cheese show (there’s a joke in their somewhere
about Rockin’ Robots being the first “metal band,” but you people have suffered
enough so far I think).
It's SO EXCITING
Next, WDI watched with interest as Legoland California
opened a KUKA-inspired attraction called “Knights Tournament.” This attraction
was a Cyberspace Mountain-type of attraction but without the simulator pod.
Before boarding, riders would choose how intense they wanted their ride to be,
on a scale of 1-5. They would then be strapped in to a KUKA arm and get tossed
around like a rag doll (it really conjures up the image of some sort of
disaster simulator from The Simpsons
or South Park). The Legoland
attraction proved that the KUKA technology could survive the daily wear and
tear demanded of a major theme park attraction. Even better was the fact that
Knights Tournament was an outdoor attraction, and survived the hot sun and
occasional rain.
Yeah Buddy
Disney followed up Rockin’ Robots by designing a KUKA cameo
in the then-upcoming Living Seas and Submarine Voyage Finding Nemo re-themes.
To duplicate the fast, predatory movements of the movie’s resident “DEAR GOD WHAT
IS THAT THING” monster moment of the angler fish, the Imagineers attached a
KUKA arm to the animatronic angler fish. The effect itself was quite stunning
(some say it’s the best part of the attraction).
Starting at 1:25
Later, and unrelated to the KUKA E-Ticket extravaganza,
Disney would finally reach the pinnacle of the Cyberspace Mountain concept by
attaching a now fully-motioned KUKA arm with a simulator to produce the Sum of
all Thrills exhibit at Innoventions at Epcot.
But as you can imagine, the KUKA arm could be used for
practically any type of attraction environment. And the Imagineers were
designing attractions for a wide variety of in-your-face out-of-your-mind
experiences. Picture these very realistic scenarios:
1.
Should Parks management want to go cheap, they
could develop a simulator pod technology similar to Sum of All Thrills, where
guests could design their own experience and then live the adventure through a
full range of 360-degree motion.
2.
If Parks management wanted an Indiana
Jones-style big budget E-Ticket experience, the KUKA arm could easily be a
substitute for the EMV, and would act like Peter Pan’s Flight in comparison to
Indiana Jones’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. The KUKA arm would hang riders from an
overhead track, and traverse a full thematic three dimensional space and show
scenes, dark ride like. But unlike an EMV-style Jeep, the KUKA technology could
also fling the guests right into the middle of a simulator screen,
Soarin’-like, as they went from physical sets to simulator screens similar to Universal’s
Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man attraction.
3.
If Disney did not want to build a full
mega-attraction, there was the option of actually having an array of KUKA arms
attached to a giant central turntable. Picture a Mission: Space-type set up
where the KUKA arms rotate around a central platform. Guests would load into
one specific pod, and then be whisked around the giant turntable in front of a
vast array of simulator screens.
4.
Or, if Disney wanted to go even cheaper, there
was the option of not having the KUKA arm in motion, ie not on a track or
turntable, similar to Knights Tournament where it stays in place. However,
since the KUKA arms are HUGE and can stretch out 20-30 feet in any direction, Disney could surround
each arm with multiple simulator screens and/or themed scenery, so it actually
feels like guests are being whisked through an environment without actually
going anywhere. A primitive version of this idea could be seen with the old
Tombraider ride at the former Paramount’s Kings Island. Kings Island combined a
Giant Top Spin off-the-shelf ride with a fully-immersed themed environment.
Since the Top Spin could provide up to 70 feet of motion in any direction, multiple
show scenes were placed around the Top Spin platform, even on the ceiling. The
Top Spin would then extend out and be enveloped in the different show scenes.
An old Travel Channel Special (those were the days)
On-ride POV
5.
And then, there was the big idea that KUKA was most excited about. It was called the
Robo-coaster. The Robo-coaster. You
don’t have to use much imagination to figure out what that would have been like...
Oh...JUST SOMETHING LIKE THIS
Average Reaction
And as a bigger bonus, at this time Disney was updating the
3-D technology that Universal developed for the Amazing Adventures of
Spider-Man that allowed guests to view 3-D screens as they were physically moving through a physical space (if you
know anything about optics technology, this is really, really hard to do). The
new technology was being developed by Tony Baxter, who otherwise would be
sitting on his hands during the Pressler regime, so this was something for Tony
to do. Tony and the Imagineers were going to take the Spider-Man technology one
step further. Instead of providing a static screen that the ride vehicle would
pass by (if you’ve ever ridden Spider-Man, this causes the slight distortion of
the 3-D effects you get when you enter the scene), Tony and his crew were
working on a series of mobile screens
that would actually be synced up to
your ride vehicle and move in tandem with
you. The screens, for example, would be programmed with the exact movements
of the KUKA arm so the screen would actually move with the KUKA arm as you entered and exited a scene. Dang.
TWO Many Options (Yuk, Yuk)
Armed with an army of KUKA options, the Imagineers
eventually molded the KUKA base into two attraction ideas. The first was for an
E-Ticket mega-ride based on the Harry Potter franchise. Back in the early 2000s
as the Harry Potter movies were released to huge box office receipt, Disney was
in talks with J.K. Rowling to bring Harry Potter to the Disney theme parks.
Disney came up with several ride and themed area concepts for J.K.’s characters
to woo her into Disney’s outstretched arms. However, obviously, talks stalled
and eventually broke down. Disney cited that the reason was that J.K. was
asking for far too many creative concessions, and insisted that every facet of
the design be done her way and with her explicit approval. While Disney was
willing to give her creative control to an extent, they demanded that Rowling
still had to stay within Disney’s strict budget restrictions. This, of course,
was not possible given Rowling’s obsession with detail. Disney also felt
Rowling would not defer to Disney’s more experienced park operators when it
came to questions of capacity requirement and crowd flow (as it turns out,
Universal had the same problem when they built Hogsmeade at Islands of
Adventure. To maintain the feel of the Harry Potter world, Rowling insisted
that guests walk through cramped shops and exhibits that were way to small to
house the growing crowds, forcing Universal operators to close Hogsmeade down
on busy days and start a line outside the area just to walk down the street).
Of course, since Disney was no picnic to deal with either during this time, I’m
sure Rowling had her own list of complaints as to why she would not work with
Disney. Anyway, one of the rides proposed for the Harry Potter expansion was an
Indiana Jones-style E-Ticket where the KUKA arm would physically ride through
the show scenes on a dark ride track, weaving and dipping in and out of both
physical sets and movie screens.
The other KUKA attraction WDI was working on was for Pixar’s
then-upcoming superhero movie. We all know it as The Incredibles. The
Incredibles would have been an awesome subject for this new technology. By
using the KUKA arm and various screens and physical sets, guest could
experience tons of fanboy sensations straight from the movie. They could run
with Dash. They could fly with Frozone. They could fight the Omnidroid and
Syndrome with Bob and Helen. They could ride on top of that PeopleMover pod
thing while battling...I dunno…ninja monkeys. As you can imagine, the sky’s the
limit.
You Are Here
Funny enough, the Imagineers had tons of ideas for an Incredibles-based KUKA attraction, but
no clear idea as to which one would be best. The Imagineers were leaning toward
the giant turntable idea as the best bet, to provide the best experience and to
keep costs reasonable. The KUKA people said screw that, and lobbied hard for
the Robo-coaster. I’m going to put that in italics again, for effect. The Robo-coaster.
Could you imagine a KUKA arm on a coaster track as you
whizzed past screens of the Incredibles battling giant robot monsters? GIGGITY
GIGGITY GOO. Theme park fans would drool over ideas like this. And I’m sure
they did.
And actually, this idea was the one favored by Matt Ouimet
and company (welcome back to this article, Matt!). Since Eisner, Iger, and
Rasulo still insisted that DCA’s beautification project be kept at a reasonable
budget, Matt had to make a choice between either the Cars or the Incredibles
concepts. Since Cars would be based in a massive show building with uncountable
animatronics and advanced effects with a notoriously expensive and glitchy ride
system (actually, two of them, since the ride would have two tracks), the
Incredibles E-Ticket had the lead in late 2005. As big as it was, since the
Incredibles did not need so many physical sets (film screens cost way less than
physical sets and animatronics) and was based on an already-proven technology,
the budget for the Incredibles would have been much less, while still
delivering an E-Ticket experience. And so, Matt and the Imagineers put plans in
motion to remove DCA’s Pacific Wharf area and/or redesign it to serve as an
entrance area for DCA’s new Incredibles ride, which would debut as the main
entrée of the DCA Placemaking expansion, right around the 2008-2009 time
period.
But then, of course, lots of things changed. Bob Iger had
his It’s a Wonderful Life vision from
God during the three o’clock parade, and in January 2006 it was announced that
Disney would buy Pixar from Steve Jobs outright. As part of the deal, Steve
Jobs would be named to the Disney Board of Directors and become Disney’s
largest shareholder. Pixar’s Executive team would effectively be put in charge
of the entire Disney Animation unit. And John Lasseter would be named as
Disney’s new Chief Creative Officer, responsible for everything creative at the
company, including the theme parks.
When John and the Pixar crew arrived, they thought that the
scale of the DCA expansion were simply too small. Even Matt’s carefully thought
out Placemaking plans would probably only serve to get DCA back up to its
original attendance and profits estimates, which were not where Pixar wanted
them to be. John envisioned a total reset of DCA, a complete re-imagining that
would make DCA a worthy companion to Disneyland, like Epcot or Tokyo DisneySea,
both of which had literally double DCA’s attendance year-to-year. John wanted
to boost DCA’s attendance through the 10 million-per-year ceiling that
DisneySea and Epcot regularly achieved. The park operators, led by Matt, were
thrilled with this new excitement, and wanted to prove that with the new
expansion DCA would be able to stand on its own and not just be a 3 hour tour
in between Disneyland visits for visitors. All the requisite metrics would go
up with a slew of new attractions: attendance, Ride Per Cap, satisfaction
ratings, intent to return, spending per caps, and the added excitement (and big
rides) would be something that Marketing would use to lure in those
big-spending out of town visitors from Seattle and Phoenix and Denver who spent
oodles and oodles of money over a Disneyland vacation weekend. In all, the new
plans were designed to bump the Disneyland Resort’s overall attendance from 19
million to 25 million by the year after the expansion was completed. With all
the new big-spending day guests, Disney would be rolling in money.
The rest, as they say, is history. John and his team took
Matt’s Placemaking plans and cranked it up to 11. Since Hollywood Pictures
Backlot’s Placemaking was already completed by the time plans were completed,
any HPB facelift would be pushed back to Phase II. The main entrance area would
be turned to a fully-blown Main Street-style experience called Buena Vista
Street, complete with a plethora of new shops and restaurants, a new hub and
park icon with a top-notch dining experience inside, and even a fully-working
Red Car Trolley transportation to and from Tower of Terror, similar to the
plans of the original Disney-MGM Studios Sunset Boulevard expansion. The
Paradise Pier re-imagining would include Disney character-inspired facelifts
for almost every flat ride, as well as a new restaurant/garden area, two major
D (or E) Ticket experiences themed to Toy Story and The Little Mermaid, and a
knock-your-socks-off next generation nighttime spectacular in Paradise Bay. And
the piece de résistance of the whole thing would be a brand new land. Instead
of the single Incredibles E-Ticket, John decided to expand the Cars concept to an entire themed area,
with multiple attractions and experiences, the big magilla of course being the Cars-themed Test Track E-Ticket zooming
around the former Timon parking lot. DCA would be shaping up to become a
marvelous Lasseterland.
And so, the Incredibles attraction would pass into history.
But, that’s not entirely the end of the story. Even when the Imagineers lost
the Incredibles DCA attraction, there was still hope to put the attraction
either as part of a Disneyland Tomorrowland expansion, or an addition to the
Pixar Place/Backlot area of Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Imagineers continued to
work on the concept. However, in a mind-boggling turn of events, Universal
ended up snatching the KUKA technology away from Disney. Around the same time
that Universal bought the theme park rights to the Harry Potter franchise,
Universal signed an exclusive agreement with KUKA that they would be granted a
10-year exclusive on the KUKA technology, stripping Disney away from any
potential major theme park uses. The loss of the KUKA technology was actually a
bigger blow to Disney than you’d think. It didn’t just signal the end of their
Incredibles attraction. The signing of KUKA by Universal actually represented a
fundamental, seismic shift in the theme park industry, which Universal is just
beginning to exploit. Up until that time, all of Universal’s major advancements
were evolutions of pre-existing Disney technologies. Universal may have come up
with the IMAX-based simulator (Back to the Future), the 3-D/stunt show combo
(T2), the programmed platform vehicle with a full 360-degrees of motion
(Spider-Man), etc., but Disney had introduced these revolutionary concepts (the
simulator, the 3-D movie, the programmed platform vehicle) to the theme park
world in the first place, with no precedent. By grabbing the KUKA technology,
Universal was able to do what it had not been able to do before: introduce to
the theme park world a truly revolutionary
technology, not just an evolutionary
technology. This was one of the very few times up to that point that Disney had
literally dropped the ball and let another team pick it up and score. This
didn’t used to happen at Disney. In an industry that is sustain by advancing
technology just as much (if not more so) than other major considerations
(story/marketing, characters, etc.), this was a major leak on Disney’s part,
and a major windfall for Universal.
We all know what happened, and what’s still happening.
Universal was finally able to fully capture lightning in a bottle by combining
a compelling themed environment and story with a revolutionary technology. This
is a big reason why theme park fans are so enamored with Universal’s Harry
Potter offerings. It’s certifiably the first time that Universal beat Disney at
its own game, and won clean. Not only that, it gave Universal the extra profits
needed to carry that momentum onto even bigger and better offerings, should it
so choose (so far, the answer is yes). The Disney/Universal Coke/Pepsi rivalry
has never been bigger, or more intense, or had higher stakes. And Disney has
never, from a competition standpoint, been in so much trouble since Freedomland
and Magic Mountain opened to challenge Disneyland’s market share at a more
affordable price curve in the late 1950s. And the major fatality on the way was
the would-have-been-so-awesome Incredibles ride that we never got to see. But with
Universal continually expanding with Potter and Nintendo and Disney countering
with Star Wars and Avatar, World War III between Disney and Universal has only
just begun. I’ll bet Disney really wishes it could have had the Incredibles in
its corner.
Other "Wish Upon a Blue Sky" Articles
**Send Jeff a line at HamGamgee@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter @Parkscopejeff.
