Originally Posted By bean "Tired of the "fix DCA" talk. When I see rehab walls then I'll believe it. Too many years of false starts and false hope." To many years? the park opened in 2001, last time i looked it was still 2007. I wouldn't consider that many years the park is still quite young. But expect to see many more walls around the beginning of the year
Originally Posted By Roger55 >>But expect to see many more walls around the beginning of the year<< And they all better be themed to absolute perfection or there will be h#$% to pay!
Originally Posted By WorldDisney ^^Just stick more interactive Mr. Potatoe heads in them. That seems to do the trick .
Originally Posted By bean Hans you won't have to eat your computer within five years. I doubt any announcement on a third gate would be made that soon. It is still in early blue sky but i think it would happen sooner than later if they stick with the plans. Everyone is anxious to do something with that large property. Things change also as Disney continues to approach land owners about selling. It sure would be perfect if Suncal just gave up and sold that 26.5 acres to Disney. then it could connect that with what it has in that area
Originally Posted By bean "And they all better be themed to absolute perfection or there will be h#$% to pay!" so you want part of the construction budget to be wasted on temporary themed construction walls. Those walls that could just be painted and re-used on the next construction area. Whats wrong with just some nice paint. Even the large printed decals cost hundreds and or thousands to make I better run now
Originally Posted By Hans Reinhardt "so you want part of the construction budget to be wasted on temporary themed construction walls." bean, I think the poster was being sarcastic.
Originally Posted By Indigo This thread is rehashing arguments that have been had a hundred times since the theme for Disneyland's second gate was announced. In order to understand why the second gate has been such a failure you have to understand what its purpose was in the first place. Disney Management wanted to expand Disneyland from a 1-2 experience to a 3-4 day experience for out of town visitors. They also wanted to recapture a market they had been slowly losing to Las Vegas... the Asian market. These money laden customers used to stop at Disneyland as part of their trip to Las Vegas, but when Las Vegas launched their huge themed hotel expansion, Disneyland lost a little of its uniqueness and became an option instead of a destination. Disney management failed in their analysis of why they were losing foreign tourists to Las Vegas. They totally expected their on-the-cheap version of Disney's America upgraded with fine dining and lots of shopping and the chance to experience all of California in one stop to bring back those Asian dollars. Those foreign tourists never materialized. First, Tokyo Disneyland opened (on my birthday, the nerve) the marvelous Tokyo Disney Sea just a few months earlier than Disneyland's second gate, there was no reason to travel to California when a better product could be had nearby. Second, except for China, the economy in that portion of the world suffered quite a bit between 2001 and 2005. Third, after 9/11/2001 any travel to the US became problematic for a lot of reasons. Fourth, the theme and design of the second gate never had that 'wow' factor that Disney parks are known for and it failed to impress even Disney's biggest fans. When word got out, the decision to continue to fly over California and go instead to Las Vegas was easy. Because they weren't the intended audience for the second gate, there was no concern for how the park would be received by the vast majority of Disneyland's typical customers. As was mentioned they didn't even offer an AP when the park opened. On some days upto 60% of guests are from within a 200 mile radius of the park. Disney management failed to take into account that a California resident would be very unlikely to pay to visit a park themed to California, the state where they lived, with less than half the attractions of the world's original theme park located less than 500 ft away. About the only area that Disney Management got right was that the second gate would turn the resort into a 3-4 day stay. This has resulted in very full hotels and a very popular Downtown Disney. But since every ticket is a park hopper, guests tend to hit just a few attractions in the second gate then head over to the main attraction for the rest of the day. The super close location of both entrances contributed to this behavior. (aside: frankly, a realigned main entrance over to Katella (reached by monorail) would have solved many of these problems and attracted overflow traffic from the convention center as well. It also would have solved a lot of line of site issues.) Finally, the decision to try and build a theme park on the cheap (in their minds "with minimal risk") turned out to be a crucial error. They deliberately limited building and area theming. They used off-the-shelf attractions with light or no overlays as much as possible. They asked the city of Anaheim to pay for the parking garage and, as such, lost control of a crucial part of the guest experience (the first exposure to the resort and the last feeling they get when they leave). They totally forgot to include attractions for the 'families with toddlers' set. They abandoned the idea of 'the birm'. This list could go on.... and with an example of excellence just 500 feet away, the short-cuts and cost cutting moves were painfully evident. Interestingly, they continued with their 'build it cheap so you don't lose too much money' theory with Hong Kong Disneyland and Disney Studios Paris. Neither of those have worked out very well either (for reasons unique to each). HKDL, at least, was built with the concept of a birm and with good theming throughout (based on the photo essays I've seen). Disney Studios Paris is experiencing a surge of spending to add some quality theming to that park. DSP appears to be the most likely of the two to recover first. So for Disney it is three strikes and you're out. They've finally decided to spend the money they should have spent in the first place when building a second gate next to Walt Disney's crown jewel theme park. I hope they're willing to go all the way and correct the mistakes the original team made based on bad assumptions of who the exact audience for a second gate at Disneyland would be. Here's a big hint, they won't spend money on a 'California' theme because they already live there.
Originally Posted By danyoung Indigo, that was a really interesting analysis. Most of it I agree with, although I still think the California theme has a lot to attract the average SoCal visitor who's never been up into the San Bernardino mountains or spent much time in San Francisco. One quibble - it's berm, not birm. Otherwise, great post!
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <Just stick more interactive Mr. Potatoe heads in them.> Must..... resist..... Dan..... Quayle..... joke......
Originally Posted By fkurucz <<I promise to eat my computer if a third theme park is announced within the next 5 years.>> A agree. If they have a 5-10 year plan to upgrade DCA I really doubt that the third them park is even being thought about. Now, if they were to accelerate the DCA redo to say 2-3 years (as discussed, it would be nearly impossible to do this without closing the park), then who knows? If the new and improved DCA turned out to be a Grand Slam, drawing comparable numbers to DL, who knows what they might be tempted to do.
Originally Posted By fkurucz <<They built it small to keep the finances from running out to control. Because of the insane cost overruns of EDL, they clamped down very tightly here.>> I agree with this somewhat. However I think that DL being an established icon in SoCal minimized any risk of a top quality park not producing the ROI needed. This lesson was not lost on OLC when they planned for DisneySea.
Originally Posted By WorldDisney I think the third park idea will come around like the FIRST time it came around when DCA was opening and everyone thought it was going to be a huge sucess. It obviously didn't do that and I think a lot of people probably just thought it wasn't feasible and DCA was going to need work to get it where they planned originally. Now that they seem to think their latest 'exit strategy' will work and might finally deliver in a few years people are getting excited again. But yeah, I guess it will all just depend how well DCA actually does when all the new stuff is put in. If its still having major problems drawing the crowds, expect it never to be heard from again .
Originally Posted By Darkbeer >>DCA is not a failure.<< MANY folks would disagree with you, and to me, Failure is not delivering what the Disney execs expected when they built the park, both in crowds, and in ticket revenue. <a href="http://www.dansdiz.com/" target="_blank">http://www.dansdiz.com/</a> >>So how can Disney fix the mess that is Disney's California Adventure (DCA)? I'm of half a mind to say they should just level the place and start all over. I think I feel this way partly for artistic reasons, dreaming what they could have done - and really still could do - with that real estate. But even from a business side, I could very easily argue that DCA has such a bad reputation that it might be cheaper to eliminate all traces of the thing. It just might be cheaper and more successful to start from scratch than to spend a lot of time and money on marketing to the public in an attempt to convince them that DCA is now somehow "new and improved". I originally began this post as a lengthier analysis on whether DCA should be closed completely. But let's face it: that will never, ever happen. Why? Because that would require Disney's PR flacks to eat crow and admit that this supposedly great and magical new park they've been touting was actually more a pile of manure. And it would also mean that the executives who planned and approved the DCA project (at least those who are still at Disney) would have to admit to the public - and the shareholders - that they made a huge mistake, and a very costly mistake at that. There's absolutely no way I can possibly imagine Michael Eisner publicly pronouncing that DCA was a wasteful, money-losing, unpopular failure, and that he was mistaken to have approved it.<< DlandDug posted this comment recently hear at LP in a different thread... >>I seldom engage in hyperbole, but I will say without hesitation that DCA by any measure was and is a failure.<<
Originally Posted By Darkbeer <a href="http://www.davelandweb.com/californiaadventure/" target="_blank">http://www.davelandweb.com/cal iforniaadventure/</a> >>DCA occupies the site of the former 5000 space parking lot; parking is now provided in the multi-level “Mickey & Friends†parking structure, with space for 10,000+ vehicles. It is often joked that the parking lot was more profitable than DCA. The park was challenged from day one, when the state was experiencing horrible brown-outs. Much of the failure of DCA is due to last-minute cost cutting, too-few attractions, and in comparison to Disneyland, poor design/layout of the park. According to Bob Iger, the company is committed to turning DCA around and is already in the process of adding more attractions and redesigning troublesome areas in the park. Attendance has slowly been increasing over the last few years.<<
Originally Posted By Darkbeer Here is something I wrote back in 2004.... Why is Disney's California Adventure a failure? We can talk about the original attractions, the attractions that were added or removed..... But really, if you talk to Disney Managment, why do they feel that it is a failure, and not just for DCA, but also for Disneyland Park..... And the answer is tickets sold, but not the number of tickets sold...... Let's go back to December 2000, when DCA was still under construction, and Disneyland tickets cost $43 (adults)... they were $41 in early 2000, but were raised in November... Also in November 2000, they started to sell the new 2-park Annual Passes, mainly to those who already had a Disneyland Annual Pass, allowing the upgrading.... a Premium 2 park AP was $100 more than a Disneyland Park only AP... But in January 2001 they stopped selling Annual Passes to anyone, due to the expected crowds that would should up at DCA's door. The ONLY people who could parkhop were guests staying at one of the 3 owned Disney hotels. Almost everybody was expected to buy a Full Price ticket, or a slightly discounted multi-day ticket, but you would have to decide prior to use which park you would visit that day... The Execs talking about how they would have to send the DCA overflow over to Disneyland. Go back and find the January 14th, 2001 Los Angeles Times article titled "The Most Jam-Packed Theme Park on Earth?; Attracting visitors won't be a problem for Disney's soon-to-open California Adventure. But coping with the expected hordes may be another matter" written by E. Scott Reckard. The article states that senior Disney officials that there will be days that DCA will have to turn patrons away. George Kalogridis, then senior vice president of Disney operations in Anaheim is quoted in the article as saying ""Come early in the day or come later, after the park clears out again, hopefully, with Disneyland right across the esplanade and Downtown Disney right there, we won't have to turn people away from the resort." This is also the news article that talked about company projections showing that DCA would get about 7 million visitors a year. Barry Braverman stated that "Disney Imagineers worked backward from the projected attendance level of 7 million a year" DCA was supposed to draw full price admission, and get up to 30,000, if not a bit more than that daily in the summer and weekends.... While not the capacity of Disneyland, it was still supposed to bring in a lot of admission dollars.... What happened, first they started to sell ParkHoppers to the Good Neighbor Hotels, then to anyone, brought back the AP's.... offered a MAJOR discount just 4 months after opening (One Adult and One Kid for just $33, instead of the $76 they wanted when the park opened, that was less than 1/2 the price...) Then in the fall, they dropped the price of the 2 park AP's to the DL only price, and eliminated the DL only AP, basically giving DCA for free to AP holders..... Yesterday, a 2-park Premium was still cheaper than what it cost when they went on sell in November of 2000 ($279 vs $299), now with the price increase the Premium AP is $329, or just a $30 increase in about 4 years. Then we had all the 2 for one promotions, heck for a 16 month period from January 2003 thru April of 2004, 13 months offered the "Pay for Disneyland, get DCA for free" to Southern California and Baja California residents... Now we have the 5 days for the price of 3 (plus 6 for 4, etc.) ParkHoppers on sale for the last 2 years straight (plus previous times).... While a few more folks have come to the DLR, and some have bought an additional day or two in a hotel (one of 3 Disney owned, or at a Good Neighbor location...) BUT... If you look at the statistic of... "Amount paid per person, per day to enter the park", that dollar amount has gone DOWN, which has hurt BOTH parks..... And that is probably the biggest failure of DCA in the eyes of TDA....
