Disneyland's Summer Nightastic has begun, but
opening weekend was definitely not a success. In this update we'll
fill you in on why the Resort wasn't as ready as they should have
been for the huge crowds, why the crowds are there in the first
place for a rather modest summer promotion, and why you'll likely
hear the Nightastic name for years to come. Got that gourmet pear
sliced yet? Have that Oxygen infused water
poured now? Well then let's get going shall we? - Al
Dumbo & Dumber
The plans for Summer Nightastic began innocently enough, as a way
to boost the local visitation to both parks at a time of year that
has recently seen the traditional summer day at Disneyland shift
from locals to primarily tourists. Nightastic was also a way to
capitalize on all of the investment that has gone into Anaheim's
most popular nighttime entertainment in recent years, and has seen
the dramatic freshening of aging older shows like Fantasmic and the
Electrical Parade.
We'd told you last year of the initial plans to
create a summer campaign built around nighttime entertainment, and
how the original draft was given the working title "Tinker
bell's Summer Nights." Fearing that Anaheim would overexpose the
iconic fairy just as the big boys in Burbank were launching their
new Disney Fairies franchise through the Studios and Consumer
Products, Tink was eventually removed from the spotlight and her
original role as the official summertime hostess at Disneyland was
downplayed.
Lovely? Yes, but it's a Cadillac
Escalade leading a parade of Honda Accords.
But the concept of a modest promotion to boost summertime
attendance from locals by playing up the freshened entertainment
options kept moving ahead, and the end result was Summer Nightastic.
And on paper it looked great, especially the plans to spruce up the
aging Fantasmic show and the comparatively ancient Electrical
Parade. Of course Steve Davison worked his pyrotechnic magic and
created an all new fireworks show in the form of Magical, with the
flying Dumbo character becoming the sleeper hit of the entire
promotion. A lineup of trendy bands and DJ's at the nightly
Tomorrowland Terrace dance party, complete with free Coca-Cola and
shimmying go-go girls, amped up an old summertime standby for the
teen scene. And the nicely produced lighting overlay for Pixie
Hollow now allows that unique setting to operate past sundown.
So
what could bring the whole thing to its knees and derail the opening
weekend? A few unforeseen technical glitches and huge crowds of
Annual Passholders who were only there to see the new stuff and have
very high standards when it comes to their Disneyland experience.
On Friday, the opening night for Nightastic, the overall
attendance estimates and actual numbers for both parks were nothing
to worry about. Disneyland had just over 50,000 total visitors click
through the turnstiles for the day, and DCA had just over 20,000.
Those are healthy numbers to be sure, but nothing compared to the
70,000 that Disneyland can receive daily on big holiday weekends or
around Christmas. Even the total number of people in the park at
9:00PM on Friday night wasn't anything alarming, with just over
35,000 inside Disneyland at that time, which pales considerably to
the 45,000 that have to be in the park at Christmastime before they
consider closing the front gates to new entries.
But the problem was
that those seemingly manageable crowds weren't there to ride Space
Mountain or eat at the Plaza Inn, they were made up largely of
Annual Passholders and were there primarily to see the two new
entertainment offerings; Magical and Fantasmic. The management suits
in the park this weekend pulled out every trick in their arsenal;
opening up the gritty backstage areas as walkways, purposely
delaying the start of the Electrical Parade by 20 minutes, and
triggering the PA systems to play parkwide announcements declaring
all viewing areas full. But it was no use, as the crowds inside the
park just kept surging towards the Nightastic offerings and some
bewildered tourists left thinking Disneyland had devolved into a
crowd control nightmare.
Even the preview shows were
crowded.
The first indication that the opening weekend wasn't going to be
normal came in the early afternoon on Friday, when people began
setting down blankets along the Rivers of America and in front of
Sleeping Beauty Castle six hours earlier than normal. By 7:00PM on
Friday, even though the number of people inside the park was still
rather modest, the Central Plaza and the entire Fantasmic viewing
area were already full. And once that area was full, there was
simply no option for the masses of Annual Passholders still flooding
in the main gate after work who also wanted to see both shows.
Main Street USA and the Central Plaza suffered its usual
congestion and gridlock this past weekend, with verbal CM squabbles
and random acts of Stroller Rage breaking out amongst the harried
crowds. But it was the Fantasmic viewing area that was surprisingly
overcrowded and frenzied this weekend. It
holds 9,000 people at full capacity, but even with both shows that's
still just 18,000 from the over 35,000 who were
there to see if the new dragon really was broken.
The second showing
of Fantasmic on Friday night was hampered even more by the fact that
over a thousand people who camped out on blankets in the prime
viewing areas along the riverbank didn't get up and leave after the
first show as they normally do, but instead stayed in the same place
and used up that viewing area again for the second show, denying the
exasperated crowd control CM's the ability to move a new audience
into the area for the next showing.
As bad as opening night was with 52,000 visitors for the day,
yesterday was and today should be, even worse. At least on Friday
there were several hundred thousand of the cheaper Annual Passes
blocked out that day, but those two levels of passes have their last
two days of admission this week before being blocked out for the
rest of the summer on Wednesday. That created the perfect storm with 68,000
people flooding Disneyland on Monday June 15th, many of them Annual Passholders who primarily wanted to see the new Nightastic
entertainment.
Team Disney Anaheim, TDA
It's almost as if the TDA planners in charge of these
things, a collection of executive leaders from Marketing,
Entertainment, Industrial Engineering and Operations, never learn
from the lessons of the past when it comes to the reach of the
Internet and the ease with which Annual Passholders can flood the
park when there's something new opening. At least TDA added a third Fantasmic for Monday and Tuesday, but since they
waited until the very last minute that show time isn't listed on any
of the printed materials or standard information outlets and the
11:30PM show is overlooked by many people planning their day.
If you're worried your Disneyland visit later this summer will
be subject to the same type of crowds, don't ... once a
few hundred thousand Annual Passholders become blocked out for the
summer starting tomorrow, the daily attendance estimates drop by
huge numbers.
For example, Tuesday has an estimate of 63,000
visitors at Disneyland (and likely to go even higher) with 32,000 of
them forecast to be Annual Passholders, and a few thousand more
being Disney employees getting their friends and family in for free.
But on Wednesday, the first day of AP blockouts, the attendance
estimate drops to 45,000 with only 6,000 of them projected to be
Annual Passholders.
And when the Cast Member blockouts kick in from
mid July through the end of August, denying tens of thousands of
Disney Company employees in Southern California the ability to get
people in for free, the average attendance estimates for Disneyland
drop again and range from a comparatively measly 38,000 to 45,000
each day, even on weekends in July and August. But once the
blockouts are lifted in late August, and Disneyland ramps up it's
Halloweentime promotion again in the fall, you can bet attendance on
Fridays and weekends in October will swell to a total of 55,000 and
above each day for Disneyland.
...or just a nightmare?
Now you can see why TDA would want to boost the local attendance
a bit with a summer promotion and a 99 dollar three day pass aimed
at Southern Californians who aren't Annual Passholders yet. Those
hundreds of thousands of Annual Passholders have turned decades-old
theme park attendance patterns on their head, with Saturdays in July
having fewer people visiting than a Friday in October or a Tuesday
in June. And the sooner TDA planners finally learn to do better at
planning around these patterns their own programs have created, the
better for all involved.
But first Anaheim has to get through one more ridiculously
crowded day on Tuesday, with punishing crowds of Annual Passholders
herding through both parks mostly ignoring the attractions and
focusing on the new Nightastic entertainment offerings. If Monday
was
any indication, with over 68,000 total visitors for the day and
around 45,000 people inside the park at 9:00PM for the first Fantasmic and Magical fireworks show, Tuesday will create more
headaches than smiles. Hopefully when the maddening crowds go away
later this month and Entertainment gets the new dragon finally
working, Marketing can try to rebuild some of the brand equity they were
hoping to pump into the Nightastic name.
What hopefully happens here after these first few disastrous days
is that the same TDA brain trust that plotted out the schedules and
plans for Nightastic's opening weekend will have a meeting later
this week and begin thinking exactly how they are going to get the
700,000 Annual Passholders in to see the massive new World of Color
show next spring. If they're smart, the messy opening of Nightastic
will be viewed by TDA as the warning shot across the bow.
Paradise Pier at night...
Just like Fantasmic, DCA's new custom made amphitheater for World of Color
will hold 9,000 viewers in primarily standing-only sections. But
unless they push DCA's closing time out to 11:00PM or later, there
won't be an opportunity to do more than one show per night,
especially in spring and summer when it doesn't get dark until after
8:30PM. They would need to have 75 shows just to have each Annual
Passholder view World of Color once, and that's not including the
park-hopping tourists who will also be interested in it.
Remember, the crush of humanity that swamped Disneyland this weekend
was just from a minor local media campaign hyping some updates to
existing shows that are decades old. Next spring the Disney PR
machine will go into overdrive on a much larger scale to tout the
radically new World of Color spectacular. Oh, and just for fun, next
spring the DCA main entrance will be under heavy construction and
major walkways will be closed and rerouted down narrow alleyways
lined with construction walls.
...and
Paradise Bay at night
The TDA planners had better order in
some lunch and turn that meeting this week into a major think tank,
because the thorough trashing Disneyland received this weekend is
only a taste of what is coming for World of Color. (Not to mention
the frenzy that will develop over the Little Mermaid E Ticket in
2011, and the massive Cars Land expansion in 2012 with three new
untested ride systems that will go through months of teething pains
after opening.)
Even though Nightastic had a less than stellar start this June,
and it may be mid July until Fantasmic is fully operational with a
completely programmed dragon, there's a good chance Nightastic may
be part of our lingo for years to come. The concept didn't start out
this way, but there's a movement now to turn Nightastic into a
regularly branded seasonal offering, much like Halloweentime and the
wildly popular Christmas season offerings.
The thought is to try and
boost summer visits from locals who have largely left Disneyland
alone during recent summer seasons under the assumption that it's
too crowded in July and August. The irony is that lesser holiday
weekends like Columbus Day and Veterans Day now routinely pull in
bigger crowds than the 4th of July weekend, and the average weekend
in July and August is now less crowded than the weekends in the fall
and spring. TDA would love to move some of those crowds
back towards the summer months when staffing and park operations are
geared to handle them, in addition to simply pulling in some
additional visitors who may need a reminder that a summer visit to
Disneyland is a good bet for their entertainment dollars.
Much better!
Next year, as part of the 55th Anniversary, the newly freshened
Electrical Parade is finally planned to move back over to Disneyland. That
move isn't so much a sentimental anniversary gift for Disneyland,
than it is a logistical necessity for DCA once the main entrance
area is sliced apart by construction walls and the nightly attention
is on the World of Color lagoon instead of the parade route.
The Nightastic "brand name" will likely be pulled out again to put all
of the summer events under that umbrella, but by next summer it will
be focused primarily on Disneyland instead of both parks. The focus
for DCA in 2010-2012 is really going to be about rebuilding that
park's image with each new attraction opening for the next
three years, and they are going to try to avoid overlaying any other
promotions on top of it for a while.
To help with the image boost, TDA's marketing team has recently
been coming up with a revamped logo for DCA, it's third logo in 9
years. The favorites thus far have a very elegant art deco
appearance to them. Disney fans will also appreciate that the team
tasked with creating the new park logo was also asked to come up
with several options that use the title "Walt Disney's California
Adventure," in addition to the more generic "Disney's California
Adventure." Although, it should be noted the official buyoff on that
name change has not yet been decided upon by Burbank and Glendale.
Just drop the "California" part of
the name, that's what gets ridiculed.
Work at DCA seems to gear up more and more by the week now, and
there likely isn't an unused plywood wall left in
Anaheim. The Blue Sky Cellar, which we told you would receive an
update this summer, is now scheduled to close July 10th and reopen
July 15th with new exhibits focusing on the World of Color and
additions for 2011. You can also expect the new Blue Sky Cellar
website run by WDI to launch at that time, bundled in with the
Disneyland Anniversary events being hosted by D23 the weekend of
July 17th.
In addition to the updated Blue Sky Cellar, TDA is taking
advantage of the lower summer attendance figures by scheduling
several refurbishments and closures in July and August, a practice
that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago when attendance
patterns still followed the old formula. The Orange Stinger will be
closing earlier than originally planned, shutting down in mid July
to begin its 10 month transformation into the Silly Symphony Swings
(More walls along the DCA parade route!).
At Disneyland the Casey Jr. Circus Train and Storybookland Canal Boats will now close for 10 weeks of heavy
refurbishment at the end of August, rounding out the summer rehabs
rolling through the other Fantasyland attractions. Peter Pan's
Flight just came out of its 5 week rehab looking fantastic, and the
new boats can now seat a family of four instead of having to split
into two boats, so the line is moving faster there now. Also look
for improved special effects and some new tricks when Snow White's
Scary Adventure reopens in July, and when Pinocchio's Daring Journey
reopens in August. |