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July 23, 2007

Fixing California Adventure

Last week's travels took me out of the news loop - RSS or no RSS, it's hard to stay current on the road. So imagine my surprise (delight!) when I returned home, booted a browser, and discovered that Disney management has finally, finally decided to Do The Right Thing at the Disneyland Resort.

They're going to spend [pinky to lips] a billion dollars to fix Disney's California Adventure.

Al Lutz has the scoop (as usual):

While the final budget wasn't the shoot-for-the-stars 1.5 billion plan that John Lasseter encouraged Imagineering (WDI) to dream up, the Board did plunge right in and approve right around one billion dollars in improvements and additions for California Adventure (DCA) into early next decade. The end result is that the creative folks in WDI's Glendale headquarters are downright giddy, and the suits in Team Disney Anaheim (TDA) out back are just as giddy but slightly shell-shocked at the huge budget numbers that have been approved to fix DCA.

...There are even some folks at WDI who are saying that if DCA gets everything the board just approved that DCA could rival DisneySea or Epcot as one of the best second-gates in the Disney empire. That sentiment may be hard to believe for anyone who has visited DCA in its current form, with the visual intrusions from outside the park, its dismal layout and its off-the-shelf rides. But that's just how excited people are in Glendale this summer.

This is, without question, unbelievably cool.

Since its launch in 2001, DCA has been an underperformer for both its owners and the public. Many believe (as I do) that the park suffers from being done on the cheap - it offers off-the-shelf carnival rides, makes extraordinarily light use of themeing, and suffers from a relative dearth of genuine attractions (remember, this is a park where tortilla-making is listed as something to do).

Disney has tried to fix the park here and there - it closed Superstar Limo, built Tower of Terror, brought back the Main Street Electrical Parade. And yet none of this has been sufficient to give the park what it needed - a character of its own, a heart, a reason to exist other than being across the Esplanade from Disneyland.

In February of 2006, I wrote:

The park needs to be rebooted. It's salvageable. I'm greatly encouraged by John Lasseter's appointment as the senior creative guy ("Principal Creative Advisor") in charge of the theme parks - John's a former skipper on the Jungle Cruise, and loves Disneyland as much as the hard-core fans. If anyone will fix DCA - with imagination, spectacle, and vision - it's John. My hunch is that DCA will be a radically different (and radically better) park by the time it turns 10.

And now - almost unbelievably - it looks like Bob Iger has finally decided to fix the problem.

I'm in shock. Delighted, but in shock.

Concept art isn't available (yet), and Disney is still mum about what's officially in store. But John Lasseter is a class act, a guy who loves stories, loves Disneyland, and loves to delight people. If he's got the power of the purse, I expect that DCA will finally blossom into something worth raving about. Let's sweep out the cheap carnival games, the crummy Orange Stinger, the paper-thin Hollywood Backlot. Let's put in some fantastic Pixar-themed attractions, bring over the Rockin' Roller Coaster from Orlando, and dial the park ambience up to 11.

I'm telling you, construction walls never looked so good.

In all seriousness - DCA turns 10 on February 8, 2011. It's a Tuesday. Anyone up for a midweek trip to California?

Posted by Gavin Shearer at July 23, 2007 9:24 PM. Posted to Disney.

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