Disney's California Adventure

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.

Dedication

"To All who believe in the power of dreams... welcome. 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

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.

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

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.

Performance Corridor

The Performance Corridor is the primary parade route through the park, and as-built curves around Sunshine Plaza, passes the entrance to A Bug's Land and the Golden Vine Winery, past the Golden Dreams attraction, and halfway around the Paradise Pier water feature, exiting adjacent to California Screamin'. The Performance Corridor has hosted three major parades: Eureka! (opened with the park, now closed), Disney's Electrical Parade (currently operating) and Block Party Bash (currently operating).

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 about few and poor selection of attractions discouraged visitors.

A Los Angeles Times news article from January 14, 2001 stated that company projections show Disneyland Park attendance falling by 500,000 per year, to about 13.3 million, and California Adventure visits rising to 7 million. It has never reached those levels, in 2002, Disney's California Adventure Park had 4,700,000 visitors as reported by Amusement Business Magazine.

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, but offered the "Pay for Disneyland, get Disney's California Adventure for FREE!" for 9 months in 2003, which was a major driver of the additional attendance. 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 below that of its sister parks.

Disney's chief executive officer, Robert Iger went on record during the company's annual stockholder meeting on March 10th, 2006, when someone asked about a potential third park being built in Anaheim. "We're still working to assure the second gate is successful", Iger said, referring to California Adventure. "In the spirit of candor, we have been challenged."

Much of the park's attendance is from guests who have Annual Passports. A much higher percentage of guests use Annual Passports 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. On the other hand, unoffficial sources has the one day, one park ticket sells for Disneyland at around 15%.

Criticisms

A large number of people, including many in the mainstream 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.

It was designed 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.

A November 2002 Marketwatch.com article reported that the cost of building Disney's California Adventure Park was $650 million. Disney did spend $1.4 billion to convert the area from just Disneyland Park to a resort, but the other $750 million was spent on the Downtown Disney mall, the Grand Californian Hotel, and other resort improvements. John Cora, who was vice president in charge of Resort Development when DCA was being built said in the article that Disney's highest priority in developing the park was to keep costs down.

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, maintaining the appropriate theme.

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 parts of the park that are considered "loss leaders"-- 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 was 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.

Disney refused to offer admission discounts to its high-end opening restaurant sponsors (Mondavi, Wolfgang Puck), forcing sponsor restaurant patrons to pay full-admission-price just to access the restaurants (both of which ultimately failed).

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 by special promotions. The 2fer Ticket, which has been offered for many months in the last few years, allows Southern California residents to "Pay for Disneyland, get Disney's California Adventure Park for FREE!" (this is an exact quote that Disney uses in its marketing campaign for ticket sells), 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. As two-fer tickets approach expiration, Disney's California Adventure Park becomes very busy and has on more than one occasion closed for capacity.

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 were criticized as disappointing, including most of the attractions and restaurants in the Hollywood Backlot area. Many visitors were unhappy with the Paradise Pier area, as it seems more appropriate for a Six Flags park than a Disney park, with its carnival games and all the stucco in the area. Although they are 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 theming, 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 a part of the area's theme.

One of the original Hollywood Backlot attractions was Superstar Limo; at the time it was the only dark ride in the entire park. Its plot revolved around the guest as a celebrity who has just arrived at Los Angeles International Airport, and who is taken for a ride through Hollywood in a limousine. 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 the first attraction in the park to close. It was open for less than a year, and a Monsters, Inc.-based attraction was constructed in its place. 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; critics generally regarded it as a waste of time, and despite a last-minute rewrite it quickly closed. It was first replaced with an abbreviated version of the Blast stage show, then with the current Aladdin show which garners large guest satisfaction ratings.

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 aftermath of the September 11 attacks. It remained open until August 20, 2004, when it was closed to allow the labor costs to be shifted to other entertainment in the park. (The sister Orlando attraction is scheduled to close in August 2006.)

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 Snow White show is ending after Labor Day, 2006.

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 "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 expansion and current changes

Work has started on a new dark ride constructed at Paradise Pier called Midway Mania (tentative name) with a theme based on the Pixar characters. The current schedule has the new attraction opening in Spring/Summer of 2008. Disney has yet to officially announce the attraction to the Public. A Disney employee described the ride as a cross between Universal Studios' Men in Black and Disneyland's Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin in the Orlando Sentinel. According to rumors, 3D glasses will be required to ride the attraction.

Land ownership issues

According to Jim Hill Media, the Disney company doesn't own all of the land on which the former Disneyland parking lot--now California Adventure--is situated^*. Disney only controls the land through long-term leases from third parties. Although many of the leases aren't set to expire for a long time, issues regarding land ownership may hinder any further expansion of California Adventure.

External link

Disney's California Adventure web page

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