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Vacation Club / Grand Californian Expansion Meanwhile, back in Anaheim, there are additional projects about to get underway that don't involve clown fish or pirates. In a press event scheduled for January 24th, Disneyland will finally announce several things regular readers already know about, and a few things you don't know yet. The Toy Story Midway Mania attraction opening in Paradise Pier in June, 2008 will finally be fessed up to at this event, as well as the Pirates Lair at Tom Sawyer Island project. Also to be announced this month is the first of a series of Disney Vacation Club properties slated for Anaheim. The DVC units are planned to be part of an extension of the Grand Californian's west wing over what is now the wedding garden and a valet parking lot. This new addition will add almost 300 new rooms and suites to the hotel, as well as 50 DVC units for members to use. That's a modest beginning, to be sure, but you don't think Disney installed a DVC cart every 50 yards in Anaheim for just 50 units do you? Of course they didn't, but they are going to start slow and build from there. Just the fact that they are finally building dedicated DVC units in Anaheim is enough, and there will be more to follow as the DCA expansion project takes hold later this decade. The look of the new wing of the Grand Californian should blend fairly seamlessly into the original hotel, although there will be plenty of construction noise and inconvenience for hotel guests for the next few years.
The other big announcement to be made is that the Disney Cruise Line will be returning to the West Coast for the summer of 2008. A third ship in the Disney fleet has been contracted out of an Italian shipyard, but it won't be here in '08. They'll borrow one of the existing boats from Florida for that summer while they wait for the new boat that is purpose built for West Coast waters to arrive at the end of the decade. TDA would like to run cruises to the Mexican Riviera in winter, and up to British Columbia and Alaska in summer. But those types of itineraries require a different type of ship with different types of weather protection and amenities than the fair weather Disney Magic and Wonder are equipped with. While the DCA expansion plan has been humming along, and they are down to nitty gritty decisions like what kind of gold nuggets to offer in Grizzly Peaks new Pan-For-Gold attraction, it's likely that big DCA news won't make the cut for this event. (And boy will the folks at Knott's be upset to learn Disney is muscling in on their traditional western themed turf.) Year of a Million __(fill in the blank)__ This press announcement will of course be a chance for Jay Rasulo to tout his faltering Year Of A Million Dreams, although that marketing campaign continues to elicit chirping crickets from the audience. The Dreams campaign just can't get off the launching pad. It certainly didn't help that major offerings like the Castle suite in Disney World and the Mickey Mouse Penthouse in Disneyland were months late to the party. Even the napkins and drink cups used in the parks just last week began to be changed over to the Dreams logo. Jay Rasulo is simply way out of his league here trying to manage the theme park business, as he has no operational experience there and until just recently would avoid visiting any theme park property for a year or more. Jay Rasulo was simply unseen and unheard around the parks, particularly Disneyland, until the huge numbers started rolling in during the 50th. Actually, it was probably better that way. When he does show up anyone who talks to him for more than 60 seconds realizes this is a man who knows very, very little about his core business of theme parks. That he comes off as pompous and arrogant on top of his ignorance of the basics doesn't help matters with the management of the parks. He's recently done an end run around that problem by appointing lower level executives like Ed Grier and Meg Crofton to top President positions, thus creating rubber stamp executive teams away from Burbank who wouldn't dare challenge him on anything of any significance. Meanwhile, bewildered visitors are wandering around Disneyland trying to figure out why some perky Cast Member just gave them free mouse ears with an odd Year Of A Million Dreams logo on it. They simply haven't heard or seen a thing about what is going on. The big attendance numbers Disneyland saw this past October were due largely to the 700,000 local Annual Passholders checking out the new HalloweenTime offerings, and then flooding back to the Park for the Christmas season. The HalloweenTime events will be beefed up and expanded even more next year. As for Christmas, even though Disneyland outdoes just about any park except Tokyo Disneyland during the Holidays, the park décor will be infused with even more capital spending next year. Disneyland's entertainment department is crafting a proposal to douse the Castle in snow and icicles next year. During the day the Castle would look frosty and crisp with snow piled on the turrets and rooftops, and at night the lights and high definition projections would come on and the ice would twinkle and the snow would glimmer in shades of blue and white. If they can get it to work as well as the sketches look, it should make the Castle a new icon for Disneyland's spectacular Christmas offerings. But this winter attendance was to be bolstered by the annual 2Fer1 ticket offer for locals, and the new Rockin' Both Parks campaign for the "Rockin" overlays added to Space Mountain and California Screamin'. Since the Year Of A Million Dreams is having a hard time getting any traction with either locals or domestic tourists, the Rockin' campaign really needed to be a hit. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like TDA has a hit on its hands here.
Last Wednesday John Lasseter rode both Space Mountain and California Screamin' back to back with Ed Grier in tow. Space Mountain got a barely passing grade from the executives, but California Screamin' didn't fare as well. After a valiant attempt to get the Screamin' audio equipment working on all the trains after years of spotty service, the scratchy sound track and complete lack of any special effects really lets California Screamin' down. The fact that Screamin' was even involved is simply an outgrowth of the original Rockit Mountain concept that WDI installed on Space Mountain during it's long rebuilding in 2003-05. The folks in Marketing took that idea and turned into a way to shill their annual 2Fer1 tickets and insisted that WDI do something to California Screamin' as well. They shouldn't have bothered. Both are disappointing - mostly because the music just doesn't synch at all with the rides - but the DCA coaster suffers the most. Disneyland always fails when it tries to be hip, and it succeeds when it remains true to what it is. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are simply not the answer here.
Park aficionados will want to hit these two coasters in their Rockin' versions while they have the chance, because if the initial ride response this past week is any indication, the Rockin' gimmick may go the way of Light Magic for 2008. Where's a confetti blast when you need it? ;) Buh Bye 50th (Finally!) And while all of that is going on, this winter will also see the usual refurbishments and upkeep schedule that has become the hallmark of Senior Vice President Greg Emmer. The last bit of 50th gold is being removed from the Main Street lamp posts as you read this, and work begins on repainting the Castle next week with paint tarps covering it in sections through February.
It might be good to remind folks that just a couple short years ago out in Florida, Greg Emmer was a standard Vice President with a reputation for traditional Disney standards and Ed Grier was one of his underlings at the Director level. Greg got a promotion to Senior Vice President and a move out to Disneyland to be Matt Ouimet’s operations expert, and in the meantime Ed Grier was plucked from lower executive obscurity to be a figurehead in Tokyo and then got a big promotion to the President of Disneyland. Ed hasn’t made any executive changes inside TDA, primarily because until just recently he himself was reporting up to the Vice President level himself and in Jay Rasulo’s new "global" structure the spider web of executive responsibility is so confusing now between Orlando and Anaheim that no one can really keep it straight anyway. In the last two weeks Ed has been making a concerted effort to get out and walk the parks, with a few hours spent wandering around on Christmas Eve and on New Years Eve. It was a nice thought, but came only after his Human Resources handlers heard the grumblings about the invisible Ed loud and clear. It’s going to take a whole lot more shoe leather to approach the level of face time Matt Ouimet established with the Cast Members in just his first 90 days. Ed now has a lot on his administrative plate, and not much of it is appetizing. He can rubber stamp Jay Rasulo’s plans for Anaheim for eternity, but he still has to deal with turnover rates for hourly Cast Members that have spiraled out of control, and a worsening morale problem for those CMs that have stuck around for more than a year. In addition to the hourly woes, Ed watches over downtrodden and overworked management that get e-mailed endless press releases from Jay Rasulo about the hundreds of millions of dollars in profit the theme parks make each year while they get the same measly 3.5% annual pay raise they’ve been getting for the last five years. That’s yet another example of how out-of-touch and pompous Rasulo comes across to most folks in the parks, as he touts record profits quarter after quarter but hasn’t done anything of any real substance to thank the front line management and their troops who made it all possible.
What worries senior managers who have worked at Disneyland for 20 years or more is that the office of the presidency at Disneyland now looks to be an increasingly meaningless position that will be occupied by the latest corporate climber for a year or two before being replaced by the next suit in line. While you’ve got a facility like Disneyland that has been in business for over 50 years and has to plan for the very long term if it is to succeed, the very nature of this new corporate structure Jay Rasulo has created only lends itself to executive leaders who think in the here and now. Ed arrived this past fall, just as the new fiscal year had started and inherited an agenda set by his predecessor. It will be a year before Ed can craft his own fiscal priorities, after he figures them out of course, and by the time those priorities show up in the parks he may have moved on to Disney Consumer Products, Procter & Gamble or General Electric and his successor may have no interest in shepherding them to reality. Couple that with a soulless new division called "Disney Parks" that tries to snuff out any local charm or individuality at each property, and you have a recipe for some very interesting times ahead. The one wild card in all of this, of course, is John Lasseter. His incessant drive for traditional Disney quality and his deep passion for Disneyland specifically is the one light at the end of this corporate tunnel. Lasseter has been crawling around the submarine ride more and more lately, and his recent field trip dragging along Ed to go ride Space Mountain and California Screamin’ with him is typical of his boyish charm. That both he and Ed share a distaste for most of the current offerings inside DCA is also a good sign, and it at least bodes well that Ed Grier feels DCA in its current form is simply not up to modern Disney standards. (He’s of course looking at DCA through a Tokyo DisneySea prism, but that can only be good for DCA’s future.) For now though, Ed remains largely the photogenic executive ready to stand off to the side at the next Jay Rasulo media event. You’ll see him doing just that in a few weeks as Rasulo blusteringly announces rides and projects any Disneyland fan with an Internet connection already knows about.
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© 2007 Al Lutz |
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