A Billion Dollar Redo

In case you missed it, Disney announced that they will be spending around $1.1 billion to remake Disney's California Adventure. This is the theme park they built right next to the original Disneyland in the hopes of making the area a mini Walt Disney World (WDW).

This new park was originally intended to be the Epcot of the West Coast (dubbed Westcot). However, when then CEO Michael Eisner met with his senior executives together in Aspen, Colorado, they decided to change course. What resulted was a theme park concept utterly devoid of anything related to Walt Disney or the company he founded. When it opened in 2001, it's headlining attractions were a vegetable garden, a tortilla factory, and carnival rides including a roller coaster.

This last element particularly disgusted me when I learned of it. Those who have read any of the many Walt Disney biographies know that it was the insipid and nasty carnival rides that provided the creative spark that eventually resulted in Disneyland. Even the concept itself was prima facie a failure. Disneyland draws primarily from its local region of California and the West Coast (as opposed to WDW, which is truly global). Why in the world would people living in or near California want to pay $66 for a synthetic California experience when the real one is right there? It is almost as if these executives intentionally decided to do everything the opposite of what Walt did half a century ago. Why are they surprised it has been such a spectacular failure?

Now their $1.1 billion dollar investment needs another $1.1 billion dollars in renovations. This time the renovations will focus on infusing Walt and Pixar themes all over the place. While I think this is a step in the right direction, do we really need Cars land? It's a great movie and all, but I don't think its smart to dedicate an entire land to just one film.

Time will tell if they can turn things around. I think their best move is to convert it over to something like the Disney-MGM studios in Orlando, but focus it more heavily on Walt Disney.

You can read the news article here.