Disney Officials Considered Combining Disneyland and California Adventure

This isn't completely surprising given the underwhelming public response to California Adventure in the early days:

Disney considered turning Disneyland and Disney California Adventure into one massive Anaheim park to improve business, the Disney president told the Wall Street Journal.

Bob Iger, the president and chief executive officer who took over the company in 2005, told the Journal that Disney California Adventure was mediocre when it opened almost 10 years ago. The Wall Street Journal posted Monday an interview with Iger in which he discusses different aspects of the company, including the Disneyland Resort. Read the full Disney president story HERE.

Disney officials went so far as designing a concept for one park, Iger said.

“We debated, ‘Should we make it one park?’ Raise the price at Disneyland, and suddenly one ticket buys you the whole thing. I even had Imagineers design that. (But) we would have had to put in transportation systems. It would have cost us so much money to put the monorail in. And to do other things to create one park. That didn’t make sense,” Iger told the Journal.

“We all concluded that the only way we would improve returns on that park is if we made it better and we made it bigger. And we decided to put what is now (around) $1 billion into that.”

California Adventure's woes in the early days were fodder for jokes on The Simpsons.  Two examples:

When the family visits Sideshow Bob in prison, Marge says she doesn't think prison is "a great place to bring the children", to which Lisa replies "It still beats Disney's California Adventure." Bart and the rest of the family loudly agree. (The Great Louse Detective)

Homer promises to hide his fugitive mother "someplace where there's nobody for miles, Disney's California Adventure." Reference to the sparsely attended Anaheim park. (My Mother the Carjacker)

Back when the park opened my family had passes that included entrance into the new California Adventure. On the second day they were open we decided to brave the crowds and go over there just to see the place even if it was too crowded to go on the rides.

The park had been jammed on day one, but it had been raining earlier that second day (a Friday). We didn't get there until about 5pm and the place was pretty much deserted. We were there until they closed at midnight and during those seven hours went on every ride and show in the place and still had time for dinner. The park was smaller in those days and I knew right away they were going to have a problem because there wasn't much for little kids to do. There were a few rides in one area and an area where they could run around, but kids were going to run out of things to do pretty quickly.

Since then they've added areas for kids and revamped some of the attractions and they're currently building Cars Land which kids will go for. Combining both parks with a higher entrance fee wouldn't have worked for a lot of reasons. It simply would have been too big for someone to see in a day, and it covers an awful lot of ground.  Besides that, the old park has a charm all its own that wouldn't be improved by adding acres and acres of fake California.