Originally Posted By ChiMike >>>>No. That was all Card Walker's doing.<< I actually think it was a smart move to put POTC in Disney. They wouldn't have had the blockbuster movies today if it had only stayed at DL. Mutiple thousands of more guests have been exposed to the WDW version. I share Marc Davis' view that the WDW gets a bad shake. I think the negativity is overblown and I think Card was smart in getting it in. Should it not have been rushed? Absolutely, but like so many excuses Disney uses today when it comes to timing, I can understand the need to get it running. The WRE story is not that black and white. The two were not always completely mutually exclusive. I lament the loss of opportunity with WRE like the next fanboy, but putting POTC in MK was not the worst thing Card ever did. >>But you can blame Eisner and Pressler for no Pirates in Hong Kong!<< Don't stop there. A park that pretty shouldn't have to worry about giving bad first impressions because there's little substance out of the gate. It is so frustrating to see that Disney has a hard time finding a middle-ground. Paris is one extreme, and HK is the other. They weren't building in Cambodia. I just don't buy the financial justification nor the intellecutual property rights one. To echo Nikki's comment on the other unrelated thread, "They put so little effort into it! Why did they even bother" I think it was good that they choose HK, but by doing that they had to, IMO, jump a little deeper into the pool. You can't go to China and be completely risk averse.
