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The big fix
Speaking of World of Color, the construction in DCA
for the new viewing amphitheater will be getting underway within a few weeks.
Walls will need to go up around that space while they rip out the current
amphitheater (added at the last minute in 2000 as filler) and build a custom
designed, Victorian inspired civic park amphitheater designed to hold 9,000
viewers.
The amphitheater
last Sunday (above) and as shown in the preview center (below).
Across the way,
the construction walls will be going up around Golden Dreams in early April as
heavy construction gets underway for the massive new Little Mermaid attraction
there. It's about that time this spring that the next phase of the Blue Sky
Cellar preview center exhibits will be added, and they will focus
more on the Little Mermaid ride and continuing Paradise Pier work.
Golden Dreams theater.
Work in the DCA lagoon this winter should offer a good opportunity to see the machines
behind the magic to be used in the huge new World of Color show. A hundred foot Chernabog rising from the water twice per night isn't exactly an easy thing to
pull off, you know.
A lenticular sign teases the new
show.
The Imagineers assigned to these multiple DCA projects
can't believe the luck they had in getting all of this work approved and fully
funded when they did in ‘07, as the economic crisis of ‘08 has literally put a
stop to nearly everything once planned for Walt Disney World, and put up smaller
roadblocks for Hong Kong and Paris. If the DCA plans had been just one year
later in the pipeline, they too would have likely been halted or dramatically
scaled back as has happened to all current proposals for Florida. Parks Chief
Jay Rasulo, who is infamous for not being interested with anything to do with
the parks, has left the DCA project firmly in the hands of top Imagineer Bob
Weis and top Disneyland fan John Lassetter.
When it comes to the plans for the
other Disney Parks properties, the Imagineering leaders there have less stature
than those currently involved with Anaheim, and with money now very tight it's
been a struggle to get their plans on to Jay's radar screen. Not a day goes by
that the Imagineers working on DCA don't thank their lucky stars that it all
worked out at least for them.
With the few refurbishment projects slated for Walt
Disney World repeatedly slashed,
yet continuing to gain approval by the skin of their teeth, the executive
planners in Orlando have to now be content with a drastically scaled down rehab
to Space Mountain and some more DVC units as their main recession-era offerings
for the next few years. Even the plan for Walt Disney World to take Disneyland's
old Parade of Dreams has fallen through, due to a lack of funding and political
will from Florida.
Hurry up and wait
While changes are afoot onstage throughout the Anaheim
property, things have been changing dramatically backstage in Anaheim as well.
After years and years of a runaway turnover rate that exceeded 100% in many
departments, the tide began to change quickly in Anaheim late this past summer.
By fall nearly every department was fully staffed for the first time in years,
and some key departments like Attractions and Stores were even over staffed. The
Disneyland Resort Casting Center, who had spent the last five years continually
struggling to keep their head above water and seemingly hired anyone with a
pulse if only to create a personnel number that might last a month or two,
suddenly found itself with a lobby full of decent applicants and no where to put
them. By September, waiting lists had actually begun to develop for the popular
roles like Attractions or Guest Relations, and the waiting lists grew longer
through the fall.
As it stands now, if a top notch applicant goes in to
the Casting Center today and passes all their interviews with flying colors,
they can be put on a waiting list up to six months long before a Casting
representative can call them back and actually offer them a job. Even less
desirable departments like Third Shift Custodial have no current need for new
hires, and applicants are turned away in increasing numbers. The situation has
become so alarming that the TDA executive team decided to shut down Casting
entirely for the two weeks around Christmas and New Years, something that had
never been done before. While the Casting Center quietly reopened yesterday
after their long winters nap, the situation hasn't changed much and the waiting
lists for a job at Disneyland continue to grow longer.
Many of the CM's who once
worked in Casting have now been reassigned this winter to other departments in
the sprawling Human Resources team, and Casting is now working with a skeleton
crew just big enough to maintain the waiting lists and tell most applicants
there is nothing available. The work environment for those hourly folks is still
just as unimpressive as it used to be, with decrepit break rooms, inedible slop
in the hourly cafeterias, and out of touch TDA leaders reading their lines via
PowerPoint to a glassy-eyed audience that tuned them out years ago, but the
rising local unemployment rate has very suddenly turned the tide on the runaway
turnover rate.
That bodes well for the Disneyland visitor experience, as the
average new hire who makes it to the top of the waiting list is generally a cut
above their counterparts from recent years.
GardenWalk
continued...
2009 is shaping up to be an interesting year for
Anaheim. The economic crisis is adding some plot twists to the script that was
already written for Disneyland and DCA through 2012, but most of that is
confined to things going on outside of the parks themselves. The ongoing saga of
GardenWalk and the two hotels that Jay Rasulo is still trying to get built there
is throwing a monkey wrench into the original plans to mothball each Disneyland
Hotel tower for a massive overhaul, as well as expand Downtown Disney out into
the surface parking lots north of the ESPNZone.
GardenWalk last August; not much
has changed since then.
The GardenWalk plans were
originally scheduled to be revealed back in November, but now they are in limbo.
TDA knows it is in their best interest to get the struggling GardenWalk off the
ground, and it does not want to move forward with the planned Downtown Disney
expansion until it is more confident GardenWalk will actually make it on its
own. An abandoned GardenWalk with a few struggling restaurants isn't good for
anyone in the Resort District, and TDA doesn't want to undermine what little
business the mall currently has.
At the same time, Downtown Disney has had two
tenants suddenly announce they are closing up shop, victims of the larger
financial problems across the nation, with the parent companies of Club Libby Lu
and Department 56 giving up prime Downtown Disney real estate. TDA is aware a
few of the other small tenants may also bow out later in '09 as their sales
falter.
Add in the gimmicky Celebrate campaign and the free birthday admission
driving ever higher AP sales, and the upcoming year is full of confusing signals
and uncharted waters for TDA. But at least the new Cast Members are getting
better. There's something positive to add to the next PowerPoint show!
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