Originally Posted By juicer Does anyone know what time the opening cerimonies for Monsters will be on Jan 23rd?
Originally Posted By DlandDug Karl-- I believe you are spot on with post #77. A while back someone said: >>FWIW, I don't believe DL itself had much of a to-do for its 5th anniversary - not till its 10th.<< Actually, there was something of a to do in the Summer of 1960. A big, live TV broadcast was included. Unfortunately, there is no trace of the kinescope of this event. If it were to ever appear, there would be some amazing footage of the one year old Matterhorn, Monorail and Subs, as well as the brand new Circle Vision 360 and Nature's Wonderland. It is true that the Tencennial celebration in 1965 was a very big deal. The new attractions that year? Mr. Lincoln and the Plaza Inn!
Originally Posted By DlandDug Back on topic... I believe there will be Pixar presence for the opening. John Lassiter loves Disneyland (he was a CM in the 70s), and shows up frequently for events. This is a nicely done attraction that very much captures the spirit of Monsters Inc. So I anticipate we will see the Pixar crowd at the opening.
Originally Posted By juicer Thank you DlandDug - Do you know what department John Lassiter worked when he was at DL?
Originally Posted By DlandDug Lassiter told me that he started out as a sweeper in front of the new Space Mountain, and worked his way up to Jungle Cruise Skipper. Just think-- one of today's sweepers could be tomorrow's studio head!
Originally Posted By disneywatcher The ride was shown on the DisCo's annual Christmas parade program, which I guess was almost required since 2005, after all, was the 50th anniversary of Disneyland and the company's affiliation with Anaheim. But the thing that stood out to me was a sense that time has passed their California properties by, not helped by all the TV advertising that makes the 50th seem like it's really the Magic Kingdom's birthday in Orlando, and certainly not offset by the fact that DCA has been such a clunker.
Originally Posted By ChurroMonster Rumor has it that Disney and Pixar will announce a new production deal at the official opening of the attraction. Don't know if it's true but I hope so.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <But the thing that stood out to me was a sense that time has passed their California properties by, not helped by all the TV advertising that makes the 50th seem like it's really the Magic Kingdom's birthday in Orlando, > You keep saying stuff like that, but that's kind of hard to square with all the 50th advertising that HAS been focused on DL (and I don't blame them for using it to try to drum up business for WDW too), the amount of money they put into the park to prepare for it, all the little things like the photo montages they didn't have to do and which cost money but they did anyway, the "placemaking" in DCA which is obviously focused more on long-term than short-term gain... Not to mention the huge attendance DL has had this year. From Fall crowds that seemed like summer to reaching capacity and barring new entrants. Oh yeah, time has passed DL by...
Originally Posted By disneywatcher >> but that's kind of hard to square with all the 50th advertising that HAS been focused on DL << I don't know where you've seen all that advertising, but pratically the only TV ads that I've watched for the past several months on the 50th anniversary are the ones that show Walt Disney superimposed on a backdrop of the castle at the Magic Kingdom in Orlando, making it look like he was in Florida in 1955.
Originally Posted By MisterToad ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Those are the national comercials for Disney theme parks. The local T.V. ads for So Cal are the snow falling on Main Street. Followed by, "Come and celebrate Disneyland's 50th aniversary at the Disneyland Resort".
Originally Posted By Dabob2 That's true. Plus there's radio advertising, print, outdoor (billboards), promo tie-ins with other businesses... heck, here in NY we even got a mail piece (undoubtedly because we've stayed at a DLR hotel) telling us to be sure to come for the 50th. There are many kinds of advertising besides TV. Plus all the other things I mentioned - it's clear DLR is very much in the long-term plans of Disney and time has hardly passed DL by.
Originally Posted By trekkeruss DL is only passed by in the sense that Disney needs to advertise WDW more. Remember, they have four theme parks and 30,000(?) rooms to fill. DL can get by with far less advertising, since it's an attraction of the greater LA area. WDW on the other hand *is* the attraction of central Florida.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< "What's ironic now is that, although the exterior gardens are indeed nice, my more recent experiences with TOT at WDW is that the queue did not extend that far." >>> Maybe they could move WDW's ToT queue to HKDL - I hear the guests there really like spending time in gardens.
Originally Posted By disneywatcher >> Those are the national comercials for Disney theme parks. The local T.V. ads for So Cal are the snow falling on Main Street. << The ads broadcast within the framework of a national audience are what I was referring to. I have seen the annual Christmas Disneyland ads for several years now, and in most (if not all) instances they're aimed solely at locals. The newest ad from the DisCo, the one that makes it look like Walt Disney was standing in Orlando in 1955 -- dedicating the park there, and not the one here -- appears to be getting the largest share of the DisCo's promotional dollars. So that and the fact the DisCo is glomming off Disneyland's 50th for their Orlando operation, and plugging something to the widest number of people possible indicates the company naturally sees Disney World as its most important asset, compared with something they promote mainly to people in just the LA area or parts of California. Therefore, I get a sense that time has passed the DisCo's West Coast properties by---although, to repeat, I really feel that way primarily because of the flops they've unloaded on Anaheim for several years now. >> WDW on the other hand *is* the attraction of central Florida. << It's much more of a big money machine than I'd have thought possible several years ago. I mean who would have believed parks as conceptually and creatively peripheral as Disney-MGM and Animal Kingdom would have a far easier time in attracting larger crowds than DCA, so far, has been able to do?---and that's buying into the claim that DCA is almost as good, if not better, than those two other DisCo parks are. DCA to me is the reason there's a far greater sense of time passing by the DisCo's properties here because the second park really was the last major chance that the DisCo had to finally bring large-scale attention and energy to their Anaheim properties. Now it looks like the local resort instead will be where a sequence of patch-up and do-over work occurs for the next several years.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Until DLR gets 4 parks and a couple of dozen hotels, and can get people to stay for an AVERAGE of a week, WDW will get the bulk of the national advertising dollars. And part of it is a function of how national advertising works: a company pays for air time to a network or cable station, and that ad airs at the same time all over the country. That's why you see WDW ads even in SoCal, but DLR ads only in the west (they buy less expensive B or C spot time for DLR). They don't advertise DLR in the east and midwest, because they'd rather have a family spend a week there than 3-4 days at DLR. But that doesn't mean that time has "passed DL by" or some such nonsense. The attendance this year alone tells you that. The fact that they're adding long-term infrastructure/placemaking plusses to DCA tells you that too. <I mean who would have believed parks as conceptually and creatively peripheral as Disney-MGM and Animal Kingdom would have a far easier time in attracting larger crowds than DCA, so far, has been able to do?---and that's buying into the claim that DCA is almost as good, if not better, than those two other DisCo parks are.> Easy to believe, because of the paradigm already established at WDW. MGM at opening was really light on attractions, and the first and only time I've felt vaugely "ripped off" by a Disney park (I only had one day after a meeting in Orl. and I bought a full-price one day ticket)... it did so well attendance-wise because WDW already had an average stay of a week, and already established the habit of park-hoppers, so naturally everybody who was already there just used their hoppers to check out the new park. DLR had not established that paradigm yet, and relies far more on locals - Disney misjudged the very different SoCal demographic fairly badly.
Originally Posted By disneywatcher >> DLR had not established that paradigm yet, and relies far more on locals - Disney misjudged the very different SoCal demographic fairly badly. << Whether the local demographics are one way or the other, it certainly hasn't helped that the centerpiece of the DisCo's expansion plans in Anaheim -- DCA -- turned out to be such a dud. If the second park instead had inspired a lot of acclaim and positive word-of-mouth, there likely would have been a bit more of the Disney World "paradigm" transferred to Anaheim, in that a larger number of non-locals probably would have arranged their travel plans to include a look-see at a great new Disney park in the west.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 But 850 million wouldn't buy EPCOT in 2001 (considering it cost a billion in 1982). Nor was there space for that. So they went with the MGM model. That was a mistake, but hey - from here on out it's "add and improve" time, which was obviously the long-term plan anyway. They misjudged how an MGM "start modest, add later" park would go over in SoCal, but it's rather too late now to change that. Not, apparently, too late to keep harping on it, though.
Originally Posted By disneywatcher >> But 850 million wouldn't buy EPCOT in 2001 (considering it cost a billion in 1982). Nor was there space for that. << You've reminded me why I have to keep saying the same thing over and over again. That's because -- in spite of my making this point endlessly -- someone like you still focuses on dollars and budget when concluding why DCA couldn't have been better or why it turned out the way it did. I bet if Eisner, Braverman and Pressler at least had better creative sense and judgment -- in other words, if they had shown enough sense to say "that's lousy!---come back with something better!!" when dealing with the ideas and plans that were coming out of the Aspen conference -- they could have taken the exact same amount of money allocated to DCA and squeezed out something somewhat better. Or something that at least today wouldn't require a few bulldozers to make up for its blunders.
Originally Posted By ChurroMonster Dear lord. I actually agree with Disneywatcher. Someone please call a doctor. ; )
Originally Posted By Dabob2 You missed my point. I've always agreed with you (go back and look if you've forgotten) that creativity trumps dollars in most creative endeavors - I often use the example of a big bloated megabudget "action flick" being boring as hell, while a little indie comedy with a great script is terrific. What I meant is that EPCOT was the ideal second gate. Quite different from the MK, and full-blown from the get-go. That established the WDW paradigm of spending a week there and park-hopping. DLR didn't have either the space or, yes, the budget to create another EPCOT. So they went with the MGM model. That worked as a THIRD gate, but it was going to have trouble working as a second gate, especially in Southern California. They opened it more complete than MGM at opening, but not complete enough to wow the SoCal demo. So it was always a "phase one" park that would grow and add and beautify later - their primary task was to get the thing open and start transforming DL from the one-day thing it had been for 45 years - and that's always informed my opinion. It opened as "phase one." Like MGM, it has changed and added quite a bit since it debuted, and it will change more over time.
