Disney's California Adventure
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Disney's California Adventure Park is a Disney theme park in Anaheim, California, adjacent to Disneyland Park and part of the larger Disneyland Resort. It opened on February 8, 2001.
The park has a California theme -- the original proposal was to build a park sporting an experience similar to stepping inside a picturesque postcard. This concept spawned the idea for the park's entrance. Just beyond the gates of the park, the Disneyland Monorail passes over a miniature Golden Gate Bridge; various areas of the park were designed to recreate different California landmarks. The overall intention was to create a more adult-themed park than Disneyland, including faster, scarier rides; shows designed more for an adult audience; and a large number of restaurants. Unlike Disneyland Park, alcohol is served in California Adventure.
Disney's original plan was to build WestCOT, a west coast iteration of Epcot, upon land which was formerly Disneyland's parking lot. Disney's California Adventure Park was built on that land instead. Parking is now available in a space-saving multi-level parking structure a short distance away. The new parking structure is one of the largest in the world.
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Dedication
"Here we pay tribute to the dreamers of the past... the native people, explorers, immigrants, aviators, entrepreneurs and entertainers who built the Golden State. And we salute a new generation of dreamers who are creating the wonders of tomorrow... from the silver screen to the computer screen... from the fertile farmlands to the far reaches of space. Disney's California Adventure celebrates the richness and the diversity of California... its land, its people its spirit and above all, the dreams that it continues to inspire." - Michael Eisner, February 8, 2001
Park Layout
Paradise Pier
Template:Main Image:Paradise pier marquee at screamin.jpg Image:ParadisePiermergsm wb.jpg Paradise Pier is the part of the park that looks most impressive from a distance, thanks to its large and colorful rides. Divided out into two areas, the first a California boardwalk themed based on popular coastal boardwalks like the Santa Monica Pier or the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, with a very large ferris wheel (the Sun Wheel), a large roller coaster (California Screamin’), a big shot style attraction (Maliboomer), and the Orange Stinger (a classic swing spinner attraction within a themed shell that resembles an orange). The second themed area of Paradise Pier is the Route 66 area, a desert road area that starts with Paradise Pier's crashed fireboat the S.S. rustworthy. Notable attractions are the Jumpin' Jellyfish, Golden Zephyr, and Mulholland Madness.
Golden State
This "land" allows for guests to experience the Golden State of California as it is in real-life. It is further divided into three sub-lands (Condor Flats, Redwood Creek, and the Pacific Wharf). It features Golden Dreams a film about the history of California.
Condor Flats
The aviation-themed area, Condor Flats features the flight simulator Soarin’ over California simulated hang-glider ride. It is also a popular favorite for visitors.
Grizzly Peak Recreational Area
A wilderness/forested area, Grizzly Peak Recreational Area features Grizzly River Run a fast-paced river rapids ride around Grizzly Peak, similar to other river rapids rides found in other local parks such as Knott's and Six Flags Magic Mountain. The Travel Channel claims Grizzly is currently the fastest, largest, and tallest rapids ride in the world. It has the record for the highest drop for this type of attraction, nearly 30 feet. Nearby is the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail; an interactive playground area and amphitheater featuring characters from Disney's Brother Bear as well as a special entrance to Disney's Grand Californian Hotel.
Pacific Wharf
Pacific Wharf, based on Monterey's Cannery Row area, especially as depicted in John Steinbeck's novels (but also resembling San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf). Pacific Wharf contains a couple of restaurants, along with a beer truck and Margarita stand, plus a Mission tortilla factory (which features peep-shows on how tortillas were once made, and working corn and flour tortilla machines), and a Boudin sourdough bakery (which has nearly the entire bakery visible behind glass), with Rosie O'Donnell and Colin Mochrie as video tour guides.
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Hollywood Pictures Backlot
There is also a Hollywood Pictures Backlot area styled to appear as Hollywood streets and movie studios, with Hollywood-themed attractions. A copy of the Tower of Terror attraction from the Disney-MGM Studios opened in the Hollywood Pictures Backlot in 2004. Recently, a new attraction, Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue!based on the characters from Monsters Inc opened in the attraction building which used to house Superstar Limo. The 2000-seat Hyperion Theatre currently plays host to Disney's Aladdin - A Musical Spectacular.
A bug's land
Template:Main Featuring Flik's Fun Fair, It's Tough to be a Bug! and the Bountiful Valley Farm, based on the Disney-Pixar film A Bug's Life, opened in 2003, and offers kid-friendly rides sorely lacking from DCA's initial roster.
Initial lack of success
Disney opened the park with high hopes, but the opening day's crowds were far below predictions. Although anticipation had been high prior to the park's opening, bad word-of-mouth from early visitors on preview days and from the local media discouraged visitors.
In 2003, Disney's California Adventure Park saw a 13% increase in attendance and was the only amusement park in America to see a double-digit gain. In 2004, the park had a 6% increase with 5.6 million visitors. Partial credit for the increase may go to the new Twilight Zone Tower of Terror attraction in Hollywood Pictures Backlot. While these numbers are encouraging, Disney's own internal tracking reveals that the amount of return customers is still far below that of its sister parks.
Much of the park's attendance is from guests who have Annual Passes. A much higher percentage of guests use Annual Passes to enter Disney's California Adventure Park as compared to Disneyland. The majority of other park guests are made up from those who have bought a ParkHopper that allows visits to both Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure Park, and free admissions that come as a perk for Disney employees. The park sells very few one day tickets that allow admission to just Disney's California Adventure Park.
Criticisms
A large number of people, including many in the main stream media, along with quite prominent Internet columnist Al Lutz, have criticised the park in general as well as specific aspects of it.
Theme
One complaint is that the theme is not a clever or engaging one, and furthermore not one that interests Californians (being a California theme). Since Californians account for a very large proportion of visitors to Disneyland Resort (60%, according to research) this is a major drawback.
The park, however, was not meant to replicate the real California (it's a stylized rendition of it) nor was it designed with the local guest in mind. The idea to expand Disneyland into a resort was to bring in more out of state tourists and/or to have them stay an extra day in Anaheim. It was to be a living showcase of California past and present, for tourists who have come to the Golden State.
Allied to this is the criticism that the park is "not Disney enough." Rather than capitalise on the success of Disneyland itself and Disney's successful products, very little of the park (especially at opening time) had much to do with Disney themes. Similar criticisms were said about Epcot, Disney's second Florida park, when it opened in 1982.
The Imagineers who designed Disney's California Adventure Park had a limited theme to work with. The history of California is set in stone, and design creativity was limited at risk of being historically inaccurate. Compare this to Disneyland's design, where Imagineers were allowed to create practically anything they could imagine. Children and the child in adults prefer the fantasy in a Disney theme park, over historic realism. The original WestCOT idea would have been a broader theme, allowing for more imagineer creativity.
Emphasis on shops and food, not on attractions
Disney's California Adventure Park is also rather light on rides and attractions in general, and a number of the rides that have been created are limited in their capacity (chiefly Soarin' over California). Disney management insisted that the park be built to a budget 20% under what the firm would have previously considered adequate, and it is the view of detractors that the savings have come largely out of the 'non profit making' parts of the park -- the attractions, in other words. In their view, Disney spent much more time and effort on the shops and restaurants than they did on the attractions, though the latter is most peoples' main reason to visit.
On the other hand, Disney's California Adventure Park does have as many or more attractions than other Disney theme parks around the country such as Disney's Animal Kingdom and Disney-MGM Studios in Florida (both are several years older than Disneyland Resort's second gate). It was the inevitable comparison to its neighbor, the 60-attractions filled Disneyland Park, that makes California Adventure Park's offerings seem minuscule since it offers only about half as many attractions.
One major difference between Disneyland and Disney's California Advenure Park is that California Adventure serves alcohol. Many restaurants offer beer, the Pacific Wharf area has both a beer truck and a margarita stand. The Golden Vine Winery offers wine tasting, and as part of the Ariel's Grotto restaurant, the Cove Bar has a large selection of cocktails, along with beer and wine. Disney tried to get a major beer company to sponsor the park, but failed to do so. A deal was made with San Diego based Karl Strauss Brewing Company to be the official beer supplier of the park and sponsors the beer truck in the Pacific Wharf area. It also has seven different types of their beer on tap at the Cove Bar.
Price
The admission price was highly criticized upon launch. Disney charged separate admission for Disney's California Adventure Park at a rate equal to the Disneyland Park entry fee. To many guests, the price (then $43) was better spent on the larger, more attraction-loaded, and proven formula just across the entry plaza -- the original Disneyland Park. Disney's California Adventure Park seemed to offer less value for money than the original park.
Disney also announced that its guests who held Annual Passports for the Disneyland Park would not get entry to its new park. A Two-Park Passport would be available, but at a much higher rate. In fact, Disney suspended sales of all its annual passes just before the opening, and did not restart sales for three months. It was widely rumored that Disney were planning to either scrap the popular Annual Passport program altogether, or to withdraw single-park passes and force everyone to buy more expensive two-park passes.
With the unpopularity of Disney's California Adventure Park obvious soon after launch, none of this took place. The price differential between single park and two-park passes eroded, and eventually Disney merged the two, at the lower price, effectively giving entry to Disney's California Adventure Park to annual pass holders for no additional charge.
Although the Box Office price for admission to the Park remains the same as Disneyland Park, the relative price for entrance has been drastically reduced trough special promotions. The 2fer Ticket allows Southern California residents to "Pay for Disneyland, get DCA for FREE!", and other promotions such as one offering two "free" days to visitors from around the world planning to buy at least a three-day ticket are not uncommon.
Transportation
Unlike the original Disneyland Park, the only mode of transportation around the new park is on foot. There are no buses, trains, monorails, or vehicles of any kind available to the public. (The Disneyland Monorail passes over Disney's California Adventure Park, but does not stop there.) The park itself is actually much smaller than Disneyland Park, and so covering it by foot is not difficult.
Guests staying at the Disney's Grand Californian Hotel have their own entrance to the park, which can be used by any of the three Disney owned hotel guests for first entry, and any park guest that wants to re-enter the park. A special entrance has been closed that used to be available to the guests that stay at Disney's Paradise Pier Hotel.
Attractions
A large number of the original attractions have been found by many to be disappointing. This included most of the attractions and restaurants in the Hollywood Backlot area. Many people have been turned off by the Paradise Pier area, as it seems to belong more in a Six Flags park than a Disney park, with its carnival games and all the stucco in the area. Although fun, the attractions at Paradise Pier have been criticized as lackluster and generic. (In a number of cases, the Paradise Pier attractions are quite literally generic: "Mulholland Madness" is in fact an off-the-shelf Wild Mouse roller coaster with minimal themeing, and a number of the others are equally standard.) At the same time, though, given that Paradise Pier is themed as a sort of sanitized, nostalgic version of an old-style seaside amusement park, the generic nature of some of the rides is itself part of the area's themeing.
One of the original Hollywood Backlot attractions was "Superstar Limo," which was the only dark ride in the entire park. Its plot revolved around the guest being a celebrity who had just arrived at Los Angeles International Airport, and who is taken for a wild ride through Hollywood by an obnoxious limousine driver. The humor was based on inside jokes ("Madame Leota" from the Haunted Mansion makes a cameo appearance) and obsessed fans and paparazzi, and much of it very likely went over the heads of many guests. The attraction was criticized for crude sets and characters, and was quite probably the very first attraction in the park to close. It was open for less than a year, and a Monsters, Inc. attraction has been constructed in its place. The Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! opened on January 23, 2006, following its soft opening in late December 2005.
The Hyperion Theatre, also in the Hollywood Backlot area, initially opened with a show called "Steps in Time." Contrary to the implications of its title, it was neither based on Mary Poppins, nor on any sort of Disney retrospective; it was generally regarded as a "Waste of Time", and quickly closed, to be replaced first with an abbreviated version of the "Blast" stage show, and then by the current Aladdin show.
Attractions for small children
The park as first built had few attractions geared towards younger children, surprising those used to Disneyland's child-centric attitude. Currently, all of the attractions built for small children can be found in the a bug's land area, and there are only two rides outside of this area: Monsters, Inc.:Mike & Sulley to the Rescue! and Jumpin' Jellyfish. While on one hand this makes life easier for tired parents or grandparents who don't want to have to walk very far between attractions that their kids can ride, it's very inconvenient for parents who wish to experience more than just one tiny area of the park. However it should be noted that California Adventure was designed to be more mature and adult themed than its sister Disneyland park.
Changes since opening
Since opening, a large number of changes have been made to the park. A large proportion of the attractions and restaurants in the Hollywood Backlot area have been closed, and some re-opened with less-California, more-Disney themes. Most of the farm area at the center of the park has been rethemed upon the Fall 2002 opening of a nearby area for young children themed around Pixar's A Bug's Life movie (distributed and marketed by Disney.)
One of the first attempted "fixes" was the building of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire - Play It!" attraction, which was a copy of the same attraction being offered at Disney-MGM Studios Park in Orlando. But Disney decided to not bring over the pre-show to the California version. The timing of the opening of the attraction was unfortunate, as it was scheduled for early September, 2001. The scheduled Media Opening was cancelled due to the major news events on September 11th. It remained open until August 20th, 2004, when it was closed to allow the labor costs to be shifted to other entertainment in the park.
In 2002, the park added Disney's Aladdin - A Musical Spectacular to the Hyperion Theatre in its Hollywood area. The show has become a favorite for many, with a script and even original lyrics that are high above the standard theme park fare. The effects are also impressive; children love to see Aladdin and the princess take flight right over their heads on the flying carpet. This type of show was such a success that a Snow White musical on the similar scope was commissioned for Disneyland; the show recently closed for a hiatus due to overrunning budgets, possibly denoting the quality of both shows.
A number of restaurants operated by outside firms have closed or been taken over by Disney as their sponsors pulled out. One example is Avalon Cove on Paradise Pier, which was once operated by Wolfgang Puck; after he declined to renew his contract, Disney converted it into Ariel's Grotto, a family restaurant where kids can dine with characters. Also, many restaurants that Disney operated when the park opened in 2001 are currently closed, including Hollywood and Dine, the Lucky Fortune Chinese Cookery and Mali-Burritos.
Disney relaunched the well-known Main Street Electrical Parade, formerly at Disneyland Park, as Disney's Electrical Parade in Disney's California Adventure Park. This did not find favor among many Disney fans, who had been promised that the parade had been retired permanently (and who had purchased expensive commemorative items based on its permanent retirement, which were replicas of the parade's twinkling lights). However, guests generally welcomed the return of this thirty-year-old "California Classic," and still line up to see it.
Disney also attempted many different types of events to drum up business, but all have been cancelled. Some of the more publicized events were Fiesta Latina days, Super Soap Weekend (still offered at the Disney-MGM Studios at Walt Disney World), ABC Primetime Preview Weekends, Rockin' the Bay (a summer music series), and the X-Games Experience.
On May 5, 2004, Disney's California Adventure Park opened the Twilight Zone: Tower of Terror attraction in the Hollywood Pictures Backlot area of the park. This attraction is similar to the ride of the same name at Disney-MGM Studios in Florida. This is a thrill ride, based on the premise of an elevator car falling free when the cable breaks. On its first weekend, it pushed Disney's California Adventure attendance to one of its highest points since the park preview days.
As part of the Happiest Homecoming on Earth, Disney's California Adventure Park opened Turtle Talk with Crush based on the characters from Finding Nemo, and a replica of the attraction opened last year at the Living Seas at Epcot. This attraction features the "living" character technology, where Crush interacts in real time with the guests in the theatre. Also recently opened as part of the celebration is the brand new dark ride called Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue!, which occupies the venue formerly housing Superstar Limo.
Rumors of future expansion and changes
- Groundbreaking on a complete revamp of the entrance area will begin in late 2006. The current modern, hip theme will be replaced with a Spanish mission theme, much like California in the 1920s - the period in which Walt Disney first visited the state. All building fascias will be replaced, and most shops will be rebuilt. The Sunshine Plaza will be demolished along with the Golden Sun icon, and a new theater will be built there, also in the new style of themeing, to house the "Golden Dreams" film which currently plays in another area of the park in an over-sized theater. The main gate will be rebuilt and the industrial steel look will be replaced with a new Craftsman style entrance. [1]
- It is rumoured that a new E-ticket based on The Incredibles or Cars (film) will open on part of the Timon parking lot behind the park.
Reasons for Low Attendance
Image:DCAconcept.jpg Still, Disney's California Adventure Park has yet to match the popularity of the other American Disney theme parks. This could be partly blamed on California Adventure's lack of promotion in the east coast. California Adventure has been rarely advertised on television since its opening, taking a backseat to the Walt Disney World Resort (which is advertised the most), and Disneyland Park (which isn't advertised as much, but still advertised more so than Disney's California Adventure Park). The theme park has also yet to become a piece of American pop culture like Disneyland Park and the Walt Disney World Resort. The low attendance was mocked on an episode of The Simpsons in 2003, a sign of the public's apparent apathy towards California Adventure.
The company's CEO, Robert Iger did admit problems with the park at the March 10th, 2006 Company Shareholders meeting, "We're still working to assure our second gate is successful," Iger said, referring to California Adventure. "In the spirit of candor, we have been challenged." .
Land Ownership
According to Jim Hill Media, the company doesn't own all of the land the former Disneyland lot and now what California Adventure rests on.[2] Disney only controls the land through long term leases. Although many of the leases aren't set to expire for a long time, it may hinder any expansion of California Adventure, since some of the land that California Adventure rests on and all of the Timon parking lot are leased from third parties.
See also
- Disney's California Adventure entertainment history
- List of current Disney's California Adventure attractions
- List of past Disney's California Adventure attractions
External link
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