So many interesting thoughts from people and some very different perspectives based on their exposure to the parks. For someone who thinks outside the "bubble" is ugly now, ought to see what it was like when it prompted Walt to think of a place like Disney World, where he could control everything. Here is Harbor Blvd circa 1960.
http://www.letthedogin.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/harborblvd.jpg
Here is how the same stretch looks today.
http://goo.gl/maps/JixiH
It is amazing how nice it looks compared to the "old days".
As to the person who thinks you can buy the hotels for "$10-15 million" has zero concept of So Cal land prices. The 300 room Anaheim Plaza just sold for $47 million ($157,00 per room); with that as a baseline, do the calculations on buying the hotels on Harbor Blvd & Katella. Ever since the fiasco of Hiroshi Fujishige, TWDC has been very low key in trying to force sales.
And don't blame Imagineering for DCA, that was all Eisner sans Frank Wells. With no Wells to whisper in his ear, Eisner was clueless. Tony Baxter almost bit his tongue off trying to not tell off the executive committee once they rejected WDI's ideas in favor of the out of the box rides. All of Baxter's predictions came true and TWDC has to spend double to halfway fix the disaster. Thank God for John Lasseter.
As to my Disney experience (NOT "
MDE"!, just my experience) I grew up mostly in Orange County CA so trips to Disneyland were frequent. My father took the family on an early Christmas present to WDW in December 1971. That was the first of 44 (at last count) visits to WDW. No, I am not completely nuts, at least 25 of the trips were business trips/conferences to Orlando where I sneaked in a couple of days at WDW, but the rest were family vacations of one sort or another. As to Disneyland, I started there as a Cast Member at Christmas 1974 in Fantasy on Parade and transferred to operations starting Easter 1975 and stayed through Easter 1985. (PS, as a CM I would never, ever have said "have a magical day". What a completely trite, canned, automaton phrase that is. Smiling and pleasant, genuine conversation is much better than "did you want fries with that" like speech.)
After leaving the cast I became an annual pass holder (don't hate, I never start sentences with "I am an annual pass holder and.....") so this year is my 30th. My last WDW trip was fall of 2014 (on a conference trip) so I feel pretty up to date there as well. MDE (the other one) threatens to cut my number of trips to WDW.
The idea that I have to decide 60 days out which rides I want to go on which day and which restaurants (ADRs) to eat at and then mesh the two is borderline insanity.
I would be very unhappy if DCA now became EPCOT lite. I would have loved WestCot (and Discovery Bay & Liberty Square), but its time has passed. DCA is on a good path and I think Lasseter has the juice to keep improving DLR and he has the right passion for it, unlike the soulless Eisner and Paul Pressler.
