http://miceage.micechat.com/allutz/al101309a.htm
Meet Me on Main Street (for a cup of Starbucks)
Waiting around in DCA with your Showpass in hand on chilly evenings may get easier for many folks though if Disneys Corporate Alliances group has their way.
The Corporate Alliances group cultivates and nurtures the sponsorship of stores, restaurants and attractions inside the parks. They've had a rough time of it in recent years though, as businesses scale back their traditional marketing dollars and the cachet of being associated with
Disneyland doesnt have the same status as it did in the 1960s and 70s when seemingly every park location was proudly sponsored by some giant of American commerce and industry. But, Corporate Alliances have recently been working hard on big new sponsorships, (that General Motors deal out in Epcot Center is a real headache for them) and they are trying to seal the deal to get Starbucks to come to Anaheim with sponsored locations inside the parks.
Javaland.
If the plan gets its final approvals, and the Starbucks executives in Seattle can be convinced that Disneyland Cast Members can be properly trained and trusted to run the operation, the Market House on Main Street USA would be reconfigured into an old-fashioned coffee house serving up a basic menu of Starbucks espresso and coffee drinks. A similar 1930s themed Starbucks coffee house would be included on DCAs new Buena Vista Street main entrance complex that begins construction this winter, and the coffee served at all park restaurants and hotels would be switched to Starbucks brews under the proposal.
A few Disneyland purists, who often forget the dozens of corporate logos that adorned the park in Walts day, may light up the message boards in horror with this news. But the truth is that the complaints about the lack of good coffee at Disneyland from average Southern Californians grow louder every year. The industrial grade Nescafe that Disneyland currently uses just isnt cutting it anymore, and most Disneyland visitors expect a Starbucks level of service and product.
Nescafe and the Carnation ice cream still served are the last holdouts of the collapse last year of the long-standing Nestle brand sponsorships around the park that also included Stouffers and Friskies. Before Disney switched to Nescafe about 10 years ago, the Market House on Main Street was actually "Hosted by Hills Brothers Coffee" for years after Hills Brothers was moved from their original coffee house location around the corner on the Town Square, when the American Egg Board took over that first location in the 1970s and turned it into an omelette restaurant. Swift was the original sponsor of the Market House when the park opened.
