Wait a minute last week everyone around here was saying that Mr. Hill was an uninformed, unreliable, misinformed, hate-spewing, agenda-promoting, fact-twisting, negative troll from New Hampshire whose only purpose in life was to unfairly bash Disney on the Internet as part of some evil scheme headed by Al Lutz.
Funny how a critics standing can change, isnt it?
If you read the introduction to the piece on the sites homepage, even they refer to the article as positive spin, since the piece is 95% opinion and 5% information. Theres nothing wrong with that and I even share some of Mr. Hill's opinions but he never addressed the primary cause of DCAs failure because he doesn't see it. To keep this from being a seven-page essay, Ill skip to specifics of the article (speaking as an Orange County local Downtown Disney is certainly NOT the place for Orange County locals and he dismissed the re-themeing efforts far too easily and he should know better). Instead, let me get to the heart of the matter.
California Adventure was designed to appeal to the tourist: the out-of-town visitor, the Mr. Hills, Captains and DisDucks in the country. And theres nothing wrong with that either. People have been making tourist parks since the trolley lines snaked out of the cities in the late 1800s. I think the tourist park is a legitimate design concept. But its a business disaster for Disney in Anaheim.
Disneylands attendance base is 65%+ locals from Southern California. Everything that makes California Adventure appealing to the tourist makes the park unappealing to the locals. Its that fact that I think Mr. Hill (and others) miss. They may like the park because it was designed with them in mind, but two-thirds of its potential customers have a different mindset and are left cold by the place.
Case in point Paradise Pier. Nice, but seaside amusement parks are an East Coast tradition that never really took hold way out here. There have been a few in California last century, but only one that remains is up in Santa Cruz. To us Californians, the beach is special it is a place to surf, swim, sunbath, hangout, roller blade, watch girls, play volleyball, ride bikes, see the freaks in Venice, to pass the summer away. It is not a place to ride a roller coaster. Our memories of sunset at the beach is seeing the sun sink behind Catalina Island while the sailboats come back into the harbor and getting the fire ready for the nights party. It is NOT watching the neon flicker to life on a Ferris wheel. Listening to merry-go-round versions of Beach Boys tunes may be beach-fantasy for those in New Hampshire cabins or Park Avenue apartments, but it has no emotional connection to those of us who actually live here.
I suppose it might be possible to build a profitable attraction that draws one third of Disneylands customer base, but I wouldnt want to try it on some of the most expensive land in the country. Anaheim is never going to be a major vacation destination (especially with a park thats half reruns from parks in Orlando) unless it has attractions that are so truly unique that they cannot be found anywhere else. Disneyland lost that designation in 1971 but made up for it through expanding the local market. Even the many ardent Disney fanatics on this board, the ones who travel to WDW just to see a couple of new parades, remain uninterested in traveling to see California Adventure, a whole new park. If Disney cannot attract that group, what chance to they have of attracting the less fanatic guests to replace the local customers that Disney has lost?
The real world of California is more interesting, more accessible and less expensive than Disneys recreation. Heck, even the fantasy world thats weve grown up with for fifty years Disneyland is a lot more interesting than this park for the 21st century. Californians have a fairly good sense when theyre being taken advantage of, and California Adventure comes off to us as a scam. Disney did the least amount of work and is demanding the highest possible prices the exact definition of a tourist trap. That may work in the boonies, but theres far too much competition for entertainment dollars around here and people are acting as you would expect them to. Disney already has a reputation for being expensive and now they're asking us to spend the same amount of money as Disneyland for less than half of its product. California Adventure is deserted and no one is going to wait ten years for the place to become adequate. Well all have moved onto to something else by then.
Are Mr. Hills opinions wrong? No, they are just irrelevant. His likes and dislikes about the park are not the problem. Its the opinions of the millions of local guests who are avoiding the park that really matter. The danger for Disney is that one side of the company that wants to fix DCA by making it more appealing to the tourists (more WDW clones, more spinners for the kiddies) might win out over the other half of the Company that wants to make the place appealing to all (create a theme park that is unique and worthy of the Disney legacy). Big changes are needed and Disney can act boldly when it needs to, and sometimes those changes can more than carnival rides and a decade long expansion plan.
Just ask yourself, when was the last time the Mr. Hill attended a class at The Disney Institute?
