Disney Admits to California Misadventure

Being a Disneyland annual passholder for over 20 years (and a former employee from long, long ago), I take a keen interest in what goes on over there. My family visited California Adventure for the first time on the second day it was open and was shocked to see a nearly empty park. It had been raining during the day and the weather was cold and damp, but in about six hours we were able to walk onto nearly every ride and attraction in the park. Given the hype and buildup during the months prior to opening and the large crowds that showed up on opening day, we had expected to be cheek-to-cheek with thousands of other visitors.

In the subsequent years we've always found California Adventure to have a fraction of the crowd that would be in Disneyland, and often when Disneyland was too packed for any fun, we'd cross the plaza and go to the wide open spaces of California Adventure. Even The Simpsons poked fun at the park in an episode in which Homer was trying to hide his fugitive mother:

HOMER: Mom, I'm gonna hide you where there's no one around for miles. Disney's California Adventure!

Disney has tried to fix the attendance problems by adding A Bug's Land for little kids and the Hollywood Tower of Terror for the bigger kids, but the park is still under performing. Today the Wall Street Journal is detailing plans by the Disney company for an overhaul of the park that will cost more than the original construction cost of the park. (h/t Hugh Hewitt)

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Since its 2001 debut, the Walt Disney Co. theme park Disney's California Adventure has floundered in the shadow of its legendary neighbor, Disneyland. To fix it, Disney is now planning a $1.1 billion overhaul -- the most extensive makeover the company has ever given to a theme park.

Disney's board recently approved the investment, which will be poured into California Adventure over roughly five years, according to people familiar with the plan. The sum is particularly significant, considering the theme park cost around $1 billion to build and Disney has already spent more than $100 million trying to improve it.

Originally aimed at luring visitors to spend more time and money at the Disneyland Resort, California Adventure has been criticized as lacking Disney's trademark creative spark. The California theme has fallen flat with visitors from the western U.S., who make up the bulk of attendance. Last year, the park drew just under six million visitors, compared with nearly 15 million at Disneyland and short of Disney's original forecast of seven million visitors a year for the new park.

Now Disney hopes to turn the park around by making it more like its successful neighbor, filled with references to company founder Walt Disney, say people familiar with the plan. A key project will be redesigning the entrance plaza, now a hodgepodge of California icons, and replacing it with something akin to Disneyland's signature Main Street.

Just as Main Street harks back to Walt Disney's hometown of Marceline, Mo., in the early 1900s, California Adventure's new entrance will trace the footsteps of Walt Disney from when he arrived in Los Angeles in the 1920s, these people say. Similar to Disneyland's iconic castle, the redesigned park will feature a replica of Hollywood's former Carthay Circle theater, where Walt Disney premiered the movie "Snow White" in 1937.

The new-look park also will be expanded by around 12 acres and will bulk up its attractions, with a heavy emphasis on animated movies created by Pixar, including "Cars" and "Toy Story."

I think my family's feelings about the park would pretty much mirror what this young annual passholder had to say:

On a recent afternoon at the Disneyland Resort, 18-year-old season-pass holder Megan White made a standard complaint: "Disneyland is a magical place, but California Adventure is just a theme park you can get anywhere." Ms. White, of Valencia, Calif., adds she spends most of her visits at Disneyland, only entering California Adventure for one or two rides because it has "no imagination."

Instead of "imagineering" a bunch of new, creative...and expensive, attractions for this park, Disney went with off-the-shelf rides that you can find at just about any amusement park or county fair. There really wasn't much special about them. When you visit the Haunted Mansion or Pirates in Disneyland you know you're seeing something you can see anywhere else (except another Disney park), and there are lots of attractions like that in Disneyland. The Tower of Terror and Soaring Over California are the only attractions at California Adventure that have the special Disney "Wow!" factor. I'm convinced that Walt Disney would never have approved California Adventure as it exists today.

I'm glad to see them try and improve the park because the costs of the annual passports keep increasing and I'd like to think I'm getting more for my money. However, there's part of me that hopes the crowds don't increase that much since it is nice not to be in the constant crush of people that you find in Disneyland.

UPDATE: Here's another article on Disney's plans for California Adventure.