California Dreaming

Where were we?

When we left our dynamic house of mouse, we were in the midst of the regrouping of a company devastated by its own public. It's important to realize that though the locals, in most of the cases, had a point to their arguments, the mouse was extremely hurt. Here is a company who, for so many decades, could essentially do no wrong. Everything Walt Disney touched appeared to be Fool's Gold, but turned into 24-karat by the time he had finished with it. Now, the same public that supposedly adored them had turned their backs on them. They adored them until the mouse wanted their support.

With Disney's America, WestCOT Center and Port Disney dead on the line, and a fourth gate for Walt Disney World in development but barely beginning the planning stages, Michael Eisner brought together the minds of the company in Aspen for a creative sojourn. The minds involved- namely Barry Braverman, the newly-installed Paul Pressler (president of Disneyland, and one of the worst things that ever happened to that edifice) and Eisner himself. Wanting an idea that could be built cheaply-- hold on.

Let's examine the claims against DCA for a moment. The intention is not to back up the decisions that were made in the wake of all the project cancellations, but to provide a background against which more informed judgements can be made. When people constantly criticize Disneyland Resort's second gate as being a cheap knock off of a theme park from day one, its because they haven't looked at the history of this project. The real issues with the park's current state lie mostly in the same neglect that Pressler offered Disneyland. The issues that made the park go from a full-day experience to a third of a day experience, or an "overflow park", as it came to be known, are mostly found in the actual construction of the park, and the constant budget slashing that plagued that phase of the project.

All that in mind, its not false information that they wanted DCA to be "cheap"- not in quality, but in funding. Eisner had already sunk buku dollars into new theme parks. Animal Kingdom was in development, and WestCOT, Port Disney and Disney's America (and, around this time, what came to be known as "Disney's American Celebration"- a scaled down version of the Prince William County resort that featured a smaller, "regional" park) had all absorbed money for the past few years. Eisner's budgets for Imagineering were no doubt being strained to their maximum at that time. He wanted cheap because he wanted to push his Imagineers...atleast, if someone wanted to defend the park, thats what they would say.

It's a difficult subject ot broach, just because Eisner began his career as the watch dog of quality. He once famously told the Imagineers "amaze me"- and they did, by designing the Disney-MGM Studios, itself having been a victim of budget cuts. They also, perhaps more importantly, designed the fabulous Disneyland Paris, arguably the most gorgeous themed environment in the entire world.

Anyway, by the time Aspen rolled around, the subject of WestCOT's sad demise became a major discussion point. The Imagineers and top execs present began to ask themselves, "what is the essence of California? Why did this project fail as a result of that very thing?"- And then, Eureka! That was it!

They would construct a theme park, a neighbor to Disneyland, across the promenade, that was about California. Clearly someone wasn't thinking too clearly. The park, remember, was to be a neighbor to Disneyland. Which was in...um, California. Why would we want to build a theme park in California whose chief idea was...California? Because Disneyland's audience was local. In the way that EPCOT offered perspective on our world, and WestCOT would have done the same, The California Adventure Park would provide a perspective on what made California great. And what was that, exactly?

That was a question very broad and difficult to answer. It proved a fatal question for the project, too, because many of the themes of "California" were already encased in Disneyland, and particularly the Hollywood angle belonged to Universal Studios, just up the road. Competition isn't a bad thing, not by any means, but to copy- directly- the idea of a movie studio- that was foul play.

So, what is it? Nature. Certainly, nature could play a part in this show. After all, CA is home to some of the most diverse and interesting ecosystems in the world, and its natural wonders are second to none.

Around this same time, Mark Sumner, a WDI Show Designer from the Blue Sky division, had been toying with his erector set one weekend at home. He had ended up constructing a glorious model of a ride system he'd been trying to convey on paper for several months- an advanced, imax-based flight simulation system that could be contained in a vertical structure. The erector set model provided the jumping off point for another element to be included in the new park that was central to the history and essence of California: Aviation.

The attraction became Soarin' Over California, and provided one of the three attractions at opening that could be called "E" Ticket level attractions. Soarin', interestingly, is the only DCA original that WDI has cloned anywhere in the world. At the time, Soarin' was truly revolutionary. It is still one of the great themed attractions ever created, because it follows the model that the rest of California Adventure ignored.

A comparison is drawn between Disneyland and DCA the same way we can look at Florida's Magic Kingdom and EPCOT. The Walt Disney Company was extremely hurt when Walt passed away, and to realize his vision of EPCOT would have been too much. It took WDI fourteen years to realize any version of EPCOT that could actually be constructed. The reason for the main differences in show quality between Disneyland and Florida's Magic Kingdom has a lot to do with the fact that WDI had completely lost all creative bearings in 1967 when Magic Kingdom was being planned. Luckily, people like John Hench and Marty Sklar stepped in and provided at least a shred of deceny and authenticity to that park, but it was a very difficult time and since Walt loved the theme park so much, WDI needed to avoid most of the design aesthetics that made Disneyland such a rich narrative experience.

Florida's Magic Kingdom is a park lost in its own image of fantasy. While Disneyland's narrative provides a view of America, almost from the outside looking in (or, better yet, from the inside looking in), Magic Kingdom looks primarily at fantasy and all the facets of that idea. We have many of the same ideas, but no longer are we telling a story about America. Now, we are telling a story about the Walt Disney Company. We are telling a story that helped ease the pain of knowing that the creative leadership had gone. Walt Disney World became focused on being a self-branded "vacation kingdom", and while a themed environment like Disneyland was always part of that plan, it was never meant to be the main attraction. Now, being billed as the main attraction, the theme parks in Florida are in the middle of a very serious identity crisis.

In California, the same problem arose. With the failure and rejection of Port Disney, Disney's America and WestCOT (as well as Disney's American Celebration after the original America plan failed), the company was in a difficult creative plummet, and they needed to find something to occupy them that they could be assured would be completed. The crucial decision came when Eisner, Pressler and Braverman partnered and went low-key. Sixteen years earlier, in the late 1970s when EPCOT was getting underway, the decision had been made to go High-Key. The company was in the unique position of having a gold mine at their disposal, and they chose to finance a project (EPCOT) that would have made Walt proud. In the early 1990s, the company no longer had that goldmine. The Lion King had not yet been unleashed on the world, and the company was still in financially difficult times. They knew they needed something to boost Anaheim, and WDI needed the creative assurance that whatever they decided to do would not be interfered with and murdered by the business men and town reps that had killed the other projects they had poured their hearts into.

It wasn't that they wanted DCA to be an unworthy companion to Disneyland. It was that they were low on time and resources, they were hurt creatively by the failures of several brilliantly designed projects, and they made a wrong decision at a time when wrong decisions were being made everywhere within the company. The wrong choice was, they didn't think Walt Disney mattered. His legacy, to these people, may have been "important", but it wasn't important the way it was all those decades ago to Hench and Sklar and the rest of the talented Imagineers that came before, and that knew Walt personally, and understood (as a result) his vision of what themed entertainment could be if they allowed Quality to "Will Out."

Well, they say, it was a different era. A different time with different ideas and the company was now truly a company instead of a collection of artists that were free to create wonderlands and let their imaginations soar. Now, it was about the bottom line. Eisner was spooked, and maybe he put the fear of God into himself by monitoring the financial performance of the company so closely.

The kicker- the big issue, the thing that basically killed the chances for DCA to become a great companion to Disneyland- was that if you give the public apples, they will enjoy apples. If you give them apples with worms, from the outside they still look like apples, and they will enjoy them. If you give them steak that has been prepared and aged and cooked wonderfully, then they will enjoy that. If you give them steak that was lean-cut and barely cooked, they may not know anything better, so they will enjoy that. The issue, really, is that themed entertainment in comparison to every other art form in the world, is a brand new medium. The public has expectations, but not the way they have expectations for painting or musical theatre. The experiences can be constantly re-invented, the perceptions changed, and the presentation altered a thousand times. People will still love whatever you give them, because there is no art form in the entire world that can replicate experience.

So, why not? Let the Imagineers be free...within the theme of "California". Let them design outstanding attractions (Eisner, if you'll recall, and his "Amaze me" edict that sent WDI's minds to Port Disney and WestCOT), but now they will have to do it within the budget. They were terrified of their own ideas from the very beginning. They misjudged that the public had higher expectations because of what Disneyland was to SoCal. They thought that people wanted another Disneyland, and they didn't have the confidence in themselves- after so many letdowns and failures- that they could provide a perception-shattering theme park the way they had done so many times before.



Instead, they stuck to the familiar. They chose a central theme and riffed on it to create an entire theme park. The theme was California. The riffs were Cheeky Tourists, Chinsy Hollywood, The massive and ill-advised "Golden State Recreation District", which incorporated Condor Flats and Grizzly Peak, and Paradise Pier, which is the most misunderstood themed area in any Disney park in history.

Disneyland, by contrast, chose not a theme, but a STORY- the story of America- and looked at it from many different angles within the context of childhood, innocence and eventually growing up to see the future. DCA would be about places, things, materials. Disneyland was about ideas. It was the furthest thing from a match made in heaven, because the last thing people want to see is "The Real California." They can see that beyond the gates...in the real California. If the public did have expectations, they wanted Disney to be Disney. They wanted more of that unique blend of whimsy and charm and great narrative that made Disneyland so special. They- WE - probably didn't want another Disneyland. EPCOT was not another Magic Kingdom Park. Disney-MGM was not another EPCOT. All three, though, share the element of being parks about ideas.

MGM comes the closest to being brethren to DCA, but MGM is still about the "idea" of Hollywood- "The Hollywood that never was." DCA is about California, but, in its current form, its about the real thing. EPCOT is about the "real world", but its thrust comes from an idea instead of a place or thing: EPCOT says This is who we are (World Showcase) and This is what we can do, together (Future World).

DCA just says "Here is California, the way we THINK you WANT to see it." It isn't the way Disney sees it, it isn't the way we want to see it. Disneyland says "This is how a child sees history and America and the future." DCA says "This is how tourists (you) view California (Which is where you are)....

There is no inherent contradiction to make the circle of story continue on forever (We begin and end in a cheesy tourist plaza, but we haven't seen anything but that for our entire trip through the park, so what does it matter where we start and end?). What people mean when they gripe that DCA contains no "Theme" in its "Theme Park" is that it has no perspective, no narrative structure the way Disneyland has the timeless and perfect and quaint yet massive historical angle on America.

They mean, if it had to be put in a word, that DCA really doesn't contain any Disney.

...To Be Continued...

California Sun

Disney's California Adventure. What a troublesome entity it is. Before we delve into the stories behind its development, its problems, its opening, its lackluster first decade and now its 1.1 Billion Dollar expansion, lets review the history of Disneyland's fabled second gate. Maybe along the trail, we'll see the part of this theme park attraction where things went horribly wrong...


(Copyright The Walt Disney Company)

As a neighbor to Disneyland, many people make the connection that it should be equal, which is not at all what was intended. It should, however, be a solid companion experience- perhaps expanding in different directions of Disneyland's multitude of themes and stories. It does neither of these things.

Born over a three day executive retreat held by Michael Eisner (then CEO of the company) in Aspen, Colorado, the idea was born by Barry Braverman, Tom Fitzgerald, Paul Pressler and Eisner, and Braverman's involvement would later lead to his being relieved from his position at Walt Disney Imagineering altogether. From the beginning, it was his baby. By this time, he had been through the development of Epcot, Disney-MGM Studios, and Euro-Disneyland, and was to be the number-two man on this new project- the number one creative being Tom Fitzgerald, who would later be placed in charge of Imagineering (more on that later).

Looking for a solid way to make Eisner happy, the idea was concieved to do a "small companion park" on the theme of California. Well, if that isn't quite vague enough- like saying that Disneyland's theme is "America"- I'm not sure what is! Disneyland is certainly about America- its themes and stories are based around nostalgia for the worlds we knew as children- the jungles, the wild west, a jazz-soaked New Orleans, a back country bayou, and the worlds of Fantasy and the Future. It tells the stories of these different periods and places in American history- and tells the stories within each that made them what they were. To say that Disneyland IS America, however, is to commit an ultimate sin. "Disneyland is dedicated to the dreams, the ideals, and the hard facts that have created America."- That's what the entrance plaque said, and thats exactly what the intention was, and remains today.

In the Eisner-era, Disneyland didn't become about anything except neglect, because the company didn't understand what it was dealing with, much as Epcot was treated until recently, and much as Walt Disney himself was treated before Snow White proved itself and before Disneyland itself was constructed. Everyone looks at the mad genius as mad, until he proves himself a genius. That's precisely what Walt did, time and again, and doubtless would have done with his EPCOT Center if he had lived to see it to completion.

Now, then, regarding DCA. Disneyland had been aching for attention for some time- not as a theme park, as that portion was quite well off, but as a destination. To explain, Eisner wanted a resort. He was tired of watching Walt Disney World hog the attention (and the dollars) as the place people would center a vacation around. With so much more to see in SoCal, Disneyland had become a part of the appeal instead of a separate entity. When people thought about Disneyland, they thought about a portion of their vacation, a stop on the long road to fun in the sun. WestCOT was supposed to change all that.

The old Disneyland parking lot would be the sight of a fantastic Re-Imagineered version of Walt Disney World's EPCOT. It would be a bold move for a company whose last bold move had been almost twenty years before in the United States, and it would usher in a bold new era of entertainment design, and change the way guests to thought about and experienced Disney parks. WestCOT would have taken EPCOT Center and placed its elements in order, in a story sequence, sometimes literally (as with the "World Cruise", a 45-minute boat ride that would cover the entire park and tell the stories of each Future World pavilion and each area of World Showcase) and sometimes figuratively (the placement of Spacestation Earth on an island would have created a design metaphor that though our planet seemed lonely, there was so much to learn from one another and the world around us that we need only stay on board. This version would have been called "Spacestation", and would have been encased as a full pavilion by a 300-foot tall Golden ball).

WestCOT was the baby and brain child of Tony Baxter, a creative executive that still works for Walt Disney Imagineering, and also the man that brought us Figment, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Splash Mountain and the revitalized Disneyland classic Submarine Voyage, albeit with an overlayed Finding Nemo theme. Baxter is one of the true creative geniuses in the art of show design, having apprenticed with master animator and designer Marc Davis in his early years at WDI (then still WED Enterprises).

WestCOT was grand, on a scale unknown in the current realm of Disney theme parks. It was also trouble almost from its inception. Plans were formally announced to the Anaheim residents and government, and immediately they tore the project apart. Firstly, they didn't want all that traffic in their little slice of heaven- the heaven filled with with awful run-of-the-mill hotels and buffets that sprung up as a result of Disneyland- and they didn't want all those fireworks and all that noise late into the night, and they certainly didn't want that 300-foot tall Geosphere looming over their backyards during a summer barbeque.

Disney had to respond. Eisner ordered that Spacestation Earth be removed from the design, and it was, which shows that WDI and Eisner both had great hopes for the project. To remove its icon- its chief design element, entirely, without a fight, meant that they really wanted to see this thing go into that space in some form. The new icon would be a 180-foot tall White Spire, and if one sees the design of the 1939 World's Fair's geosphere, EPCOT and WestCOT both find their ancestory a bit more easily:



WestCOT took a lot from the Worlds Fairs on which Walt had honed his craft of experiential story. Anaheim having not responded well to the project, the company went with the other half of this postcard for the proposed icon of the park. It was still to include some version of the show that would have been found inside Spacestation Earth, but plans were never finalized for that version because soon after the entire project met its messy and destructive end.

All the while that WestCOT was dying on the vine, another project had been building momentum. South of Anaheim, in Long Beach, Disney had aquired an old airplane- one with a history ironically entwined with the company. Howard Hughes, late in his association with RKO Radio Pictures, had asked Walt Disney if he would like to take control of that motion picture studio. Disney purported that, in addition to his own projects and Disneyland in particular, "Why would I want another studio to worry about?"- Hughes was disappointed by the response.

Hughes, an eccentric Hollywood-cum-aviation millionaire, had created his own aviation company after a brief and extremely successful career making films. The company, Hughes Aircraft, was later aquired by General Motors, but in 1942 it designed and constructed the Spruce Goose. It took five years for the Goose- the largest "flying boat" design aircraft to ever be constructed. The Spruce Goose was made entirely out of wood due to wartime restrictions on metal and other raw material, and it made its only flight on November 2, 1947, and took off from the waters of Long Beach. The aircraft flew just shy of a mile down the shoreline before coming back down.

The Spruce Goose- formally called The Hughes H-4 Hercules- was aquired by the Walt Disney Company in 1988, under the tutelage of Michael Eisner and Frank Wells. They coupled the H-4 and another exhibit already in Long Beach, the Queen Mary ocean liner, and together they formed a historical navigation attraction that operated under the Disney company until the Hercules was purchased by the Evergreen Aviation Museum in 1995. That purchase post-dates WestCOT Center and the Long Beach Project by a narrow amount of time, but still post-dates it.

WestCOT was perhaps too big of a dream to be fulfilled in Anaheim. Disneyland already existed there, and to add something so grand as WestCOT was planned to be (there were also nighttime entertainment districts and several tremendous and opulent hotels planned for the revitalized Disneyland resort) would almost overshadow the real star of the show: Disneyland itself. Walt Disney's dream, and the only theme park to have been built while Disney himself was still in charge of his own company. The only park to have been built, in short, by a man instead of an empire.

WestCOT overshadowing Disneyland was not part of the reason the plans had been second guessed- that honor belonged entirely to the residents of Anaheim and the money-men that would later prove WestCOT an impossible venture- but it was certainly part of the reason that the company gave up with only a minor battle compared to how hard Walt had fought to get Disneyland through the pipe.

Yet WestCOT was only the very beginning. The earliest incarnation of a second gate for the company. They started to think that the overshadowing could have become an issue early on, and what resulted was a bidding war between Disney and the city officials of Anaheim and those from Long Beach, where Disney had proposed another, entirely different project: Port Disney.

Due to the company already owning the Spruce Goose/Queen Mary complex and looking for something to energize profits and tourism, it was initially concieved to place the attraction inside a greater entertainment complex. That entertainment complex started to look more and more like a full fledged Disney theme park...but Port Disney (as the project was titled) was to be not just a theme park (based on Oceanic science, lore and fable, this project would later come back to life as Tokyo DisneySEA) but an entire oceania-based center. Disney Cruise Line's main ports would be located there, as well as the "Future Research Center"- where real life scientists would study the ocean and its animals. Disney wanted not to give Seaworld a run for their money here, but to make it so that competition was entirely out of the question. Yet, it was competition that had given birth to the project at all.

So, the combination of the bidding war and the lacking profits of the Disney Long Beach investment with the Queen Mary sailing ship and Hughes' massive seaplane had led now to a brand new theme park-- Port Disney, also referred to as Port Disney Long Beach. The complex included many of the elements of DisneySEA, but also had its own unique touches...Below, the AquaSphere is the central icon of the park- a real, live multi-story aquarium.


(Copyright 1991 The Walt Disney Company)

Port Disney eventually lost the bidding war between the two cities, just before WestCOT encountered its death rattle in the form of the residents of Anaheim. Disney backed out of the project due to issues with the California Coastal Comission, as well as the longshoresmen that worked on the Long Beach docks- all of which would be shortly losing their jobs due to Disney's elaborate plans for the area. The entire Port Disney complex would need an additional 250 acres of open shoreline to be filled in and made buildable in order for the five themed hotels, theme park and cruise ship headquarters to become a reality.

By 1992, Port Disney was dead as a doornail. By late 1993, WestCOT had suffered the very same fate...

Both of these alternatives having failed, Disney turned its attentions more earnestly to Disney's America, a theme park based around American history, to be constructed as "a counterpart to the experience of our nation's capital"- much as WestCOT was to have been a counterpart to Disneyland.

By September 1994, all three projects were dead due to extensive problems encountered mostly with outside entities and the locals of both Anaheim and Haymarket, Virginia (in Prince William County, where the "America" and then Disney's American Celebration were both to have been erected). Eisner and company needed to reconvene. It was a time in the Disney company's history that had been tumultuous, and he scheduled a retreat to Aspen, Colorado in early 1995. It was at this conference, this meeting of the minds, that Disney's California Adventure was born.