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When Disney’s California Adventure (DCA) opened in 2001, the Southern California attractions market changed forever. By adding a second gate to Disneyland, The Walt Disney Company transformed an essentially oneday location into a multiday destination resort.
Now almost a decade later, Disney is shuffling the deck once again. DCA is in the middle of a massive five-year overhaul and expansion that will come as close as the company can get to opening a new park without actually … opening a new park. Mainstay attractions such as “The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror,” “Soarin’ Over California,” and “California Screamin’” will remain in place, but almost every aspect of DCA will see changes—some subtle, some very not so. Even the park’s main entrance will be rebuilt to resemble the Roaring Twentiesera California as Walt Disney found it, complete with Red Car trolleys.
Though work began in 2007, a major step in the renovation occurs in the spring with “World of Color,” a nighttime lagoon show Disney Imagineers are calling the most elaborate entertainment spectacular they’ve ever done. Following in 2011 is “The Little Mermaid—Ariel’s Undersea Adventure,” a lavish dark ride in the classic Disney tradition. And in 2012, DCA expands its real estate into the brand-new Cars Land, featuring three attractions themed to the Disney/Pixar film franchise.
“The enhancement of Disney’s California Adventure is really about a continued expansion of the Disneyland Resort,” says Jay Rasulo, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. “We had a strategy when we opened DCA; this is the next logical step.”
In this exclusive interview, Rasulo tells FUNWORLD why the decision to expand Disney’s California Adventure was made, how the park will be new and different, and what this billion-dollar project means for the future of the Disneyland Resort. Then, read on for more details of the “World of Color” show and the rest of DCA’s makeover—straight from the Imagineers.
Can you explain the original decision to open Disney’s California Adventure in 2001?
At the highest level, the histories of all our destinations share a common thread: listening to our guests. Listen to their reaction to the entertainment we offer; listen to what they’d like to see next, or more of, or a direction they’d like us to take the product. And then we try our best, being true to our own principles, to get there.
Disneyland, even within our world of Disney destinations, holds a special, iconic status, being the only theme park in our system to actually be created by our founder. Southern Californians have an incredible affinity for this product, an incredible sense of ownership.
So if you have this thousand- watt light bulb called Disney land, what can you possibly place next to it that could live up to that status? We wanted to take this primarily single-day experience of Disneyland and convert the Anaheim area into a multiday destination. With the opening of DCA, we certainly accomplished that by any measure.
Now, with those two parks we’re at a capacity situation that requires us—based on the success of the destination— to enhance and grow DCA in a way we can better distribute the guests at the Disneyland Resort.
It doesn’t make sense to consider them separately— it’s a single destination. This enhancement of the resort happens to be at Disney’s California Adventure, but that’s more coincidence, land availability, and our desire to grow the story there than it is specifically about Disney’s California Adventure.
What drove the idea of expanding Disney’s California Adventure?
The growth of the resort as a destination, the extension in length of stay we’d been hoping for, and the realization that if we don’t occupy more of guests’ time at Disney’s California Adventure, the resort is tapped out from a capacity perspective. We don’t want to tap out—we want to provide as much entertainment for as many people as want to come. This was the logical place to add the capacity to more evenly spread the amount of time guests are spending at each park, therefore allowing the whole water level to rise.
It was a realization that we’re hitting the wall in terms of more guests coming to the resort, and we’ve gotten feedback on what guests want more of, so that sounded like a good impetus to expand the place in a substantial way.
How do you best describe this massive undertaking at Disney’s California Adventure?
I think about it in primarily two ways: In one sense, it will simply be more entertainment, more developed real estate, more attraction capacity. That is the fundamental, obvious change. Second, it is a reorientation more toward a fantasy experience than DCA started out originally.
The history of art, in any form it takes, is one of breakthrough ideas, and trying things that are different and new. Some of those things work extraordinarily well and continue, and some of them need adjustment. We’re fortunate our product is organic, one that continues to be alive and thrive and evolve after opening.
How will the guest experience change when the park is finished?
When we opened DCA, we took a quasi-fun, but quasirealistic view of everything people think about California and put a zany overlay on it. It was a [present day], realitybased idea that we had some Disney fun with. Our guests told us, “Yeah, we like this,” but when they think of the Disneyland Resort they think more about something steeped in fantasy. Places they can’t go, periods of time they can’t live in anymore—or can’t live in yet. This enhancement is about orienting and evolving Disney’s California Adventure more toward a fantasy destination.
Cars Land, for example, is a Route 66, 1950s place, bringing you into a world where the cars are alive and people don’t exist. The main entrance, where today you walk through a postcard and arrive in a kitsch version of Southern California, is going to be more about Walt’s arrival in California; what he saw, the place he found—everything from the Red Car to the Carthay Circle Theatre, and on and on.
Our guests like to be transported to those worlds— they’ve told us that resoundingly. So that is the second part of the expansion: an expansion of the mind and spirit. Following those two guiding principles, the Disneyland Resort is going to be a different place by the time we’re done with this program.
Does refocusing on Walt Disney’s story at DCA speak more deeply to your strong fanbase in Southern California?
We think it will. When people walked into Disneyland [in 1955], in some sense they were walking right into Walt’s brain and seeing the different parts of his creative expression. It wasWalt Disney—as a person and a creative genius.
When we thought about California Adventure, the original concept was your California adventure. What we’ve heard from guests is the desire for more fantasy, so we’re making it Walt’s California, and the adventure he had as a young man arriving in this thriving movie capital. I don’t think it hinges directly on people’s love of Walt; it’s more about taking the next step into his life—this is what the dream has grown to. Obviously Walt had no part in “Cars” or “The Little Mermaid,” but it’s the natural evolution of the spirit of The Walt Disney Company, and where we’ve taken those original ideas at Disneyland.
Where does the DCA expansion stand for you in the context of past Disney Parks and Resorts projects?
Our evolution as a business, one could argue, is a fits-andstarts thing. Some small, organic changes, and some big, like the conversion in Florida from having just the Magic Kingdom to [adding] Epcot. The scale of this enhancement is a pretty big one. It’s not the addition of a new gate, but it is the maturation of the Disneyland Resort as a true multiday destination.
Before we opened Disney’s California Adventure, only 10 to 15 percent of guests came to Disneyland for a second day. It was a regional park. When we opened DCA, we took a quantum leap and almost doubled the average length of stay. Along with the enhancement of Downtown Disney and the retheming of the Disneyland Hotel and Paradise Pier Hotel, all of those things combined for continued growth of the Disneyland Resort.
This big addition to Disney’s California Adventure will allow it to occupy more of our guests’ time. Adding nighttime entertainment with “World of Color” means it’s no longer “everybody go back to Disneyland for the nighttime show.” There are now two nighttime shows, a recognition people are staying multiple days and nights.
I see it as a pretty big step in scale. If you measure scale by attraction capacity, the addition of a whole land at one time, the amount of financial resources we’re putting behind it, the amount of time it’s taking … it is the scale of a whole new park.
Will it feel like a whole new park when it’s done?
Guests will find Disney’s California Adventure will take as much of their time to go through as Disneyland does. They can enter the gates at 8 o’clock in the morning and stay through “World of Color,” and feel like their time was well spent.
They’re also going to get a sense of those different fantasy realms that are more clearly organized with better wayfinding— they’ll know when they’re leaving one land and entering the next. That kind of clarity will make DCA feel like a new place, even to guests who have been many times.
When this expansion is finished, what do you hope the Disneyland Resort looks like?
I hope it looks like it does today … just bigger and with more [to do]. The Disneyland Resort is an incredibly successful destination by any measure, whether you look at the volume of guests who visit, or financially, or guest ratings. There’s nothing wrong or broken about it. The next step is for there to be more, and to reflect our newest and most popular films. We’ve never done an attraction around “The Little Mermaid”—an absolute evergreen film—so it’s high time we did it, and this is the right place. “Cars” is a continuing franchise, and it should have its place at a Disney park. But that in a small way; you have to wait until you have the opportunity to do it in a big way.
The hallmark of The Walt Disney Company is taking stories created for one medium and pushing the envelope in representing them in other mediums. No other company has figured out how to represent franchises in so many different forms. We’re not only proud of it, but feel like it’s an obligation to push the limits. Taking a world where everyone’s a car and everything’s car shaped—whether it’s rock formations or animals—was a huge creative challenge to reproduce in three dimensions; when people see Cars Land at DCA, they’re going to be absolutely blown away by it.
There’s a certain pride and desire on our part to continue with new franchises what so successfully happened in our company’s past. I hope people feel just as at home in Cars Land as they do in Fantasyland. It’s overdue, and I think it’s going to be a great success.
This project was announced prior to the economic downturn. Has the recession impacted the expansion plans?
We tend not to plan around business cycles. When something’s strategically right, it needs to be strategically right for the long term, for upturns and downturns. Certainly you can be unlucky and plan something that happens to open during an economic downturn. In fact, that’s a little bit of the history of DCA, which opened in 2001 in an uncontrollable decline and challenge to the tourism industry. But look at it three or four years later and the place is busting at the seams, and we need to expand it.
So it’s either right strategically or we don’t do it—we don’t worry so much about the business cycles. Thankfully we’re a company with the resources to invest—even during economic downturns—in projects we know will be successful in the long run.
This project opens progressively through 2012. That’s a good thing: It gives the marketplace time to absorb it; it gives guests lots of reasons to come back each of those years as new things open.
How does a revamped DCA position the Disneyland Resort for a global economic recovery?
I’m very confident in the market fundamentals for the Disney land Resort. Our history proves through thick and thin people want to visit here and be entertained. There’s no indication people are any less interested in the entertainment Disneyland offers. We continue to be in a strong position.
Our destinations, no matter where we put them, are absolutely unique for families. They stand the test of time, they are multigenerational, and they continue to evolve in a way that encompasses changes in tastes and demand—whether it’s about personalization, customization, or interactivity, those are things you’ll find in Disney parks today you didn’t need in the ’50s and ’60s, where people were happy to sit back and let you entertain them. Now they want to be part of the show; they want to determine the ending; they want to have something unique and different for themselves.
I’m very proud to say our creative organization steps up to that challenge in such an incredible way that people say, “That’s Disney. Only Disney would do that. Only Disney could do that.” They expect us to be out there on the cutting edge, and our creative people live up to that.
Contact Senior Editor Jeremy Schoolfield at jschoolfield@IAAPA.org.
All the Colors of the Water
Massive ‘World of Color’ nighttime show to light up Disney’s California Adventure in spring 2010
by Jeremy Schoolfield
“We’re going to take you out of this world of reality for a visit to the most fantastic of all the worlds of fantasy. It’s a wonderful world of colorful characters.” —Walt Disney, introducing “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” television show
The next major addition to Disney’s California Adventure arrives in the spring with “World of Color,” a nighttime spectacular on the park’s lagoon. “Spectacular” certainly seems the appropriate term, as the 25-minute show will translate iconic Disney films and characters into a performance of such scale Disney Imagineers say they’ve never attempted anything so big and bold before.
“It’s huge,” says Steven Davison, vice president of parades and spectaculars for Walt Disney Imagineering Creative Entertainment. “It’s the biggest entertainment undertaking we’ve ever done—bigger than Epcot, bigger than anything we’ve done in Tokyo, bigger than any fireworks show we’ve ever done. Every division of the company is involved with the show.”
The World’s Largest Water Screen
The focal point will be the largest water-projection screen in the world, measuring 380 feet long by 50 feet high (19,000 square feet), that will stretch along the south side of the lagoon in front of “California Screamin’” and “Mickey’s Fun Wheel.” High-definition projectors will use this wall of water as the canvas for “World of Color’s” paint. Beloved characters old and new—from Tinker Bell to Pocahontas to Wall•E—make appearances as Imagineers mix images from the films with all-new animation created especially for this show.
For example, in one scene Pocahontas will appear on the screen with her long hair flowing out in 380-foot glory. Butterflies will float out of her hair, matched by butterflies of fountains in the water. At another point, wildebeests from “The Lion King” will come off the screen and become 30- foot walls of water charging across the lagoon.
“The whole thing’s very stylized,” Davison says. “We’re not just taking animation from the movies. We do not want this to be ‘it’s what I saw in the movie theater.’ It’s a combination, a re-dreaming.”
A Feat of Engineering
As stunning as the visuals promise to be, the engineering behind the scenes—or below, in this case—may be even more astounding. “World of Color” will emit from a giant underwater staging platform stretching 400 feet long and 120 feet wide (nearly one full acre). Secured to that platform are more than 1,200 fountains that shoot water up to 200 feet in the air, along with nearly 30 high-definition video projectors, flame effects, and lasers. Though it will take months to program the show initially, Davison says the technology is infinitely adaptable and visitors should expect special versions of “World of Color” in the future, such as holiday editions.
The platform—affectionately known as “the aircraft carrier” to Disney Cast Members—will remain about five feet underwater for most of DCA’s operating day, so as not to disturb the park’s ambience. It rests on a series of tanks that alternately fill with water and air, allowing the structure to literally float up to the surface for showtime (it only takes about 10 minutes). It also has a third position above the water for after-hours maintenance work—no scuba gear required.
Finally, Disney built a new viewing terrace along the lagoon’s shore to hold 9,000 guests, though sightlines will be available around much of the water—including directly behind the screen.
‘A Kiss Goodnight’
From an operations standpoint, Disney officials say “World of Color” alone goes a long way toward their goal for making DCA more of a full-day park. “This gives us a strong anchor in the way ‘Fantasmic!’ is an anchor at Disneyland,” says Bob Weis, executive vice president, creative, for Walt Disney Imagineering. Adds Davison: “It becomes a big, communal thing—a kiss goodnight.”
Thematically, “World of Color” reinforces DCA’s shift toward a more fantastical environment refocused on Walt Disney. The name of the show and its intro music come directly from the 1960s television show “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.”
“A big part of everything we do—because we’re all Disney fans ourselves—is bring more of that sense of Walt, and the legacy he started. We think that way, we design that way, and we want the parks to reflect that, also,” says Weis, who’s shepherding the entire DCA makeover. “The tone of [‘World of Color’] is so perfect, because it combines everything we’re trying to do [at DCA]. It symbolizes for us what’s going to be transformative about everything we’re adding.”
What Else Is in Store for DCA?
Expansion plans run through 2012 with hotly anticipated Cars Land
by Jeremy Schoolfield
 Paradise Pier
2008-2012
The first sign of DCA’s overhaul arrived last year with the debut of “Toy Story Mania!” on Paradise Pier (for more, see FUNWORLD’s August 2008 issue). The four midway games along the pier next to “Mania!” were rethemed, as well, infused with characters from the Disney and Pixar rosters.
Other attractions receiving facelifts:
- This year the “Sun Wheel” became “Mickey’s Fun Wheel,” featuring the iconic Mickey Mouse face that opened Disney cartoons of the 1930s. The wheel also has new LED animated lighting.
- The “Mulholland Madness” coaster will become “Goofy’s Sky School,” where Goofy will teach guests how to fly a plane.
- “Orange Stinger” will transform into “Silly Symphony Swings,” hearkening back to the series of animated Disney shorts from the 1930s.
‘The Little Mermaid—Ariel’s Undersea Adventure’
Opening 2011
The classic animated film from 1989 receives its first fullfledged ride at a Disney park with “Ariel’s Undersea Adventure,” and Imagineers promise the wait will be worth it.
 A dark ride in the lineage of “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “it’s a small world,” “Mermaid” will take guests “under the sea” via clamshell vehicles where they will experience all the famous musical numbers from the movie. Along the way they’ll encounter an eight-foot-tall Ursula, and an Ariel animatronic Imagineer Bob Weis calls “one of the most challenging and amazing figures we’ve ever done.”
“We want her to be incredibly realistic,” says Weis, the executive vice president overseeing DCA’s enhancement. “Not only does she have to move, but she’s supposed to look like she’s underwater, so her hair has to move, also.”
“Ariel’s Undersea Adventure” takes up residence in the former “Golden Dreams” building on the edge of DCA’s lagoon in Paradise Pier.
Buena Vista Street
Opening 2012
The original concept for DCA’s main entrance asks guests to step through a picturesque postcard of California and into all the promise and fun the Golden State offers.
 That present-day motif will be gone come 2012, as the park receives an entirely new entrance plaza themed to the early 20th century Los Angeles Walt Disney discovered when he ventured West to pursue his dreams. Dubbed Buena Vista Street, the entrance will be redone in architectural styles of the era; it will feature new dining, shopping, and entertainment options, plus a re-creation of L.A.’s Red Car trolleys that will run all the way through newly renamed Hollywood Land, ending at “The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.” Capping it all off will be a recreation of the Carthay Circle Theatre, the cinema that premiered “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” in 1937; the structure will serve as DCA’s new central icon.
“It’s a great complement to Disneyland, where Disneyland is Walt’s youth and [DCA] is when he first came to California and started his legacy of filmmaking, animation, and storytelling,” says Imagineering’s Bob Weis, who’s shepherding the overhaul.
Cars Land
Opening 2012
Even among all the spectacular changes coming to DCA over the next few years, Cars Land remains the gold standard. Imagineer Bob Weis calls the 12-acre addition “a land unlike anything we’ve ever done—it’s so closely tied to the stories and characters from the Disney/Pixar film ‘Cars.’”
 He says there is unprecedented collaboration between Imagineering and Pixar to replicate the film’s small-town setting, Radiator Springs, in three dimensions and figure out how to literally bring the animated cars to life. The land will sit on property previously used as parking, with the entrance in the center of DCA where the Bountiful Valley Farmers Market currently stands; it will also have access from Hollywood Land and Paradise Pier, getting rid of what is now a dead end at “Tower of Terror.” Weis says guests will enter the land via a long vista providing a stunning view of Radiator Springs; he says the impact on DCA will be even greater than when Sunset Boulevard expanded Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Orlando in 1994.
Disney’s keeping the finer details on Cars Land under wraps for now, but it will feature three attractions, headlined by “Radiator Springs Racers.” In this combination dark ride/thrill ride, guests will speed along what the company calls “one of the largest and most elaborate attractions ever created for a Disney park.” Weis says the ride will bear “similarities” to Epcot’s “Test Track,” only in this version the independently operating vehicles will race against one another on the same track. “It’s a thrill ride, but with a lot of animation and show,” he says.
The other two rides are smaller, kid-friendly attractions:
• “Luigi’s Flying Tires” is a version of bumper cars that tips a hat back to the “Flying Saucers” that used to zip around Disneyland’s Tomorrowland.
• “Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree” will be a whip ride where guests are tugged along in little trailers. |
Big Plans for Orlando and Hong Kong, Too
Disney’s California Adventure isn’t the only park in the Disney chain receiving major upgrades over the next several years. Here’s a quick look at other projects from around Walt’s world:
Hong Kong Disneyland
The Walt Disney Company’s newest park will dramatically increase in size by 2014, adding three lands that will increase total attractions to more than 100. Mystic Point will feature a dark ride akin to “The Haunted Mansion”; Grizzly Trail promises a mine train coaster; and Toy Story Land will deliver rides based on the beloved Disney/Pixar characters.
Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, Orlando
In 2012 and 2013, Magic Kingdom’s Fantasyland will expand to cover what is currently Mickey’s Toontown Fair. New attractions include themed meet-and-greet environments for several Disney princesses and fairies, an expanded (and relocated) “Dumbo the Flying Elephant” ride, and a version of “The Little Mermaid” dark ride appearing first at DCA. |
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