(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.
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