Another Voice
Charter Member of The Element
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2000
- Messages
- 3,191
Sorry folks a long train ride this morning gave me far too much time to write
As has already been posted, the Monodavi Restaurants and Wolfgang Pucks Avalon Cove Restaurant at California Adventure have closed. These closings have been in the works since summer and rumors indicate that more will follow (get your free half-tortilla while you can). This marks the formal start to the dismantling the park as it was originally conceived. Hopefully, it also marks the start of the process to save this park and to prevent similar mistakes from being made at WDW.
Someone pointed to a couple of other sites that had this news as well, and its obvious that the company is trying to line up all the camels around the latest Disney Spinner so let me start by de-spinning some of the news. First, the closings came because DCAs attendance is drastically below projections* and the restaurants themselves were financial disasters. Monodavi is taking an immediate loss of $12 million on its investments and additional huge operating losses havent been disclosed yet but have seriously impacted Monodavis financials. Its an awful lot of money to loose on a restaurant. Puck was also hit by the problems and by the less-than-high-income crowd that the discounted tickets attracted. The Approved Corporate Spin is hinting that Disney wasnt happy with the service levels at the restaurants that comment is a "non-truth" to cover up the financial problems. Disneys own high-end restaurants, Soap Opera Bistro and Napa Rose, have been either closed or had their hours severely reduced due to attendance patterns as well. But the far bigger problem and the one that WDW faces is the business philosophy that put two branded restaurants in middle of a Disney park.
Both Downtown Disney and the Boardwalk at WDW are really shopping malls; Disney is leasing space to outside companies that set up shop and run there own businesses. Its proving profitable for Disney: they get the expansion and increased foot traffic, someone else pays for the building and operation. The idea sprung up that maybe the parks should be operated the same way. After all, arent the parks just like shopping malls but just with rides? But for the spaces inside the park to be sold, Disney had to give up the same thing that theyve given up at Downtown and Boardwalk the illusion that the restaurant was Disney. No brand name company is going to pay Disney rents without the ability to market itself rather than The Mouse. Just look at the logos plopped all around Downtown Disney you know youre eating at Rainforest Café or McDonalds or buying Legos.
The concept was first tried at Animal Kingdom, but traditional forces within the Company limited how far the plan would be taken. A huge non-Disney brand restaurant would be built at the gates of the park (with the agreement that Disney wouldnt build a competing restaurant inside) and the McDonalds would be themed like a traditional Disney establishment. Both places tend to do well and it seemed to show that the concept worked. With WDI removed from developing the California Adventure project, the shopping mall concept was given room to blossom.
Both Monodavi and Puck were selected because those brands would appeal to the high-income, free-spending, so-trendy-we-glow audience that Disney was panting after with California Adventure. They were also selected because they overcame the negative impact of the Disney brand on the well-heeled (the whole attempt to de-Disney Disneys California Adventure would make a great book). Walking in either restaurant, you were hit over the head with the message that THIS ISNT DISNEY the atmosphere, the prices, the menus, the tone. You were in for a Monodavi or a Wolfgang experience, the fact that it was located in an amusement park was something they worked very hard to overcome.
The guests, however, had a different idea. When people go to a Disney theme park, they want to go to a Disney theme park. They are not looking a trip to the Napa Valley, they are not looking for a pseudo-Sunset Blvd. experience. They want to see Disney. The free spending elite never showed up because the place is still an amusement park and the average guests were put-off by the were-too-good-for-you-attitude that pervades the places (and a lot of DCA). The only regular customers were local annual pass holders who spent less than half the expected per-guest amount the restaurants had been promised by Disney. Worse yet, these were the same guests that tended to deride the places because they werent Disney or offer a big enough AP discounts. Faced with these problems from Day One, both companies have been looking to bail since Memorial Day and Disney finally gave in to their demands (and to avoid some stiff performance penalty payments to the participants).
This Your Name Here concept is also heading to Walt Disney World. Its long been rumored that a major food facility in Future World at Epcot is being shopped around, there are more McDonalds popping up in the parks, and does anyone really think all that work on Main Street was just to improve traffic flow? Expansion at Animal Kingdom has been delayed for years to work out a deal to bring in another brand to actually create the new area (I wonder how many tiny plastic bricks it takes to build a unicorn ). And what exactly is Ice Station Cool doing in Epcot anyway?
All of the parks have always had leasers. But the difference between then and now is that all of the establishments maintained a Disney atmosphere. Almost all of the restaurants in World Showcase are not Disney run, but you would never know it by visiting. California Adventures experiment was the first to create other branded locations within a Disney park. Where the trend goes from here is unknown. Disneyland management is trying to dismantle the mall concept at DCA over some objections from Burbank, and the future of Florida is up in the air at the moment. The new battle is between those that claim the restaurants were themselves were at fault, or rather the concept of non-Disney operations inside the gates is to blame.
I hope that the right leason will be learned and that the failure of California Adventure may help prevent the malling of WDW.
* a Disney spokesman confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that the average daily attendance the week before Sept. 11 was only 4,500 guests. That is at the level prior to the summer discounts.
As has already been posted, the Monodavi Restaurants and Wolfgang Pucks Avalon Cove Restaurant at California Adventure have closed. These closings have been in the works since summer and rumors indicate that more will follow (get your free half-tortilla while you can). This marks the formal start to the dismantling the park as it was originally conceived. Hopefully, it also marks the start of the process to save this park and to prevent similar mistakes from being made at WDW.
Someone pointed to a couple of other sites that had this news as well, and its obvious that the company is trying to line up all the camels around the latest Disney Spinner so let me start by de-spinning some of the news. First, the closings came because DCAs attendance is drastically below projections* and the restaurants themselves were financial disasters. Monodavi is taking an immediate loss of $12 million on its investments and additional huge operating losses havent been disclosed yet but have seriously impacted Monodavis financials. Its an awful lot of money to loose on a restaurant. Puck was also hit by the problems and by the less-than-high-income crowd that the discounted tickets attracted. The Approved Corporate Spin is hinting that Disney wasnt happy with the service levels at the restaurants that comment is a "non-truth" to cover up the financial problems. Disneys own high-end restaurants, Soap Opera Bistro and Napa Rose, have been either closed or had their hours severely reduced due to attendance patterns as well. But the far bigger problem and the one that WDW faces is the business philosophy that put two branded restaurants in middle of a Disney park.
Both Downtown Disney and the Boardwalk at WDW are really shopping malls; Disney is leasing space to outside companies that set up shop and run there own businesses. Its proving profitable for Disney: they get the expansion and increased foot traffic, someone else pays for the building and operation. The idea sprung up that maybe the parks should be operated the same way. After all, arent the parks just like shopping malls but just with rides? But for the spaces inside the park to be sold, Disney had to give up the same thing that theyve given up at Downtown and Boardwalk the illusion that the restaurant was Disney. No brand name company is going to pay Disney rents without the ability to market itself rather than The Mouse. Just look at the logos plopped all around Downtown Disney you know youre eating at Rainforest Café or McDonalds or buying Legos.
The concept was first tried at Animal Kingdom, but traditional forces within the Company limited how far the plan would be taken. A huge non-Disney brand restaurant would be built at the gates of the park (with the agreement that Disney wouldnt build a competing restaurant inside) and the McDonalds would be themed like a traditional Disney establishment. Both places tend to do well and it seemed to show that the concept worked. With WDI removed from developing the California Adventure project, the shopping mall concept was given room to blossom.
Both Monodavi and Puck were selected because those brands would appeal to the high-income, free-spending, so-trendy-we-glow audience that Disney was panting after with California Adventure. They were also selected because they overcame the negative impact of the Disney brand on the well-heeled (the whole attempt to de-Disney Disneys California Adventure would make a great book). Walking in either restaurant, you were hit over the head with the message that THIS ISNT DISNEY the atmosphere, the prices, the menus, the tone. You were in for a Monodavi or a Wolfgang experience, the fact that it was located in an amusement park was something they worked very hard to overcome.
The guests, however, had a different idea. When people go to a Disney theme park, they want to go to a Disney theme park. They are not looking a trip to the Napa Valley, they are not looking for a pseudo-Sunset Blvd. experience. They want to see Disney. The free spending elite never showed up because the place is still an amusement park and the average guests were put-off by the were-too-good-for-you-attitude that pervades the places (and a lot of DCA). The only regular customers were local annual pass holders who spent less than half the expected per-guest amount the restaurants had been promised by Disney. Worse yet, these were the same guests that tended to deride the places because they werent Disney or offer a big enough AP discounts. Faced with these problems from Day One, both companies have been looking to bail since Memorial Day and Disney finally gave in to their demands (and to avoid some stiff performance penalty payments to the participants).
This Your Name Here concept is also heading to Walt Disney World. Its long been rumored that a major food facility in Future World at Epcot is being shopped around, there are more McDonalds popping up in the parks, and does anyone really think all that work on Main Street was just to improve traffic flow? Expansion at Animal Kingdom has been delayed for years to work out a deal to bring in another brand to actually create the new area (I wonder how many tiny plastic bricks it takes to build a unicorn ). And what exactly is Ice Station Cool doing in Epcot anyway?
All of the parks have always had leasers. But the difference between then and now is that all of the establishments maintained a Disney atmosphere. Almost all of the restaurants in World Showcase are not Disney run, but you would never know it by visiting. California Adventures experiment was the first to create other branded locations within a Disney park. Where the trend goes from here is unknown. Disneyland management is trying to dismantle the mall concept at DCA over some objections from Burbank, and the future of Florida is up in the air at the moment. The new battle is between those that claim the restaurants were themselves were at fault, or rather the concept of non-Disney operations inside the gates is to blame.
I hope that the right leason will be learned and that the failure of California Adventure may help prevent the malling of WDW.
* a Disney spokesman confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that the average daily attendance the week before Sept. 11 was only 4,500 guests. That is at the level prior to the summer discounts.
