Anaheim Puts Itself on Map to Displeasure of Los Angeles

Forget hijackings, the primaries and the price of Bruce Springsteen tickets. A really important issue has arisen, and we’d better get it settled.

Is Anaheim or Los Angeles the center of Southern California?

The issue arose because the Greater Los Angeles Visitors and Convention Bureau got a look at the travel agent guide published by the Anaheim Area Visitors and Convention Bureau and didn’t like it at all.

The cover of the guide, sent to travel agents worldwide, portrays Southern California as a game board with Disneyland and Anaheim at the center. Other, more distant Southern California attractions--Universal Studios, NBC Studios, the San Diego Wild Animal Park, Glen Ivy Hot Springs--also are shown on the board, and it looks as if you’d need only a roll of the dice to get there.

“All the Los Angeles attractions look like they’re right in Anaheim,” Bill Arey of the Los Angeles bureau said. Los Angeles “is the true hub of all Southern California and certainly the gateway to the West.”

Anaheim had an “oh yeah?” loaded and ready.

“The L.A. bureau has a visitor’s map publicizing the ‘Greater Los Angeles Area,’ and Orange County is within those boundaries,” said Elaine Cali of the Anaheim bureau. “They’re doing the same thing.”

Regardless of the opinion in Los Angeles, she said, Anaheim is the most convenient place to stay if you want to see all of Southern California.

Who really cares?

The hotel and restaurant industries and the people who tax them--that’s who.

It’s profitable if the folks from back East visit Disneyland or Universal Studios, but where they eat and sleep counts for even more. It determines who pockets the room rent, restaurant tabs, sales tax and bed tax the folks leave behind. It is the reason city governments subsidize visitors and convention bureaus.

It is the reason the Anaheim bureau prints on the cover of its guide for travel agents: “Go directly to Anaheim/Orange County to see all of California.”

“What concerns me,” said Arey, “is that people do get the feeling that Anaheim is closer to all these places than it really is.”

For example, he said, the guide tells travel agents that it’s a 45-minute freeway drive from Anaheim to the NBC Studio Tour. Try it, Arey suggested.

“We came up with what we felt were fair (travel) times,” Cali said. “Traffic patterns vary. Most sightseeing tours don’t leave during rush hour.”

Can you drive from Anaheim to Burbank in 45 minutes?

The question was posed to the Caltrans office in Orange and was met first with laughter and then with a referral to Dan Butler, chief of the department’s traffic systems branch in Los Angeles. Butler did some quick calculations, then pronounced that “it is conceivable. If you hit one tie-up, however, you’ve blown it. I’d recommend allowing at least an hour to be on the safe side.”

Sgt. Mark Lunn, public affairs officer of the California Highway Patrol in Los Angeles, said a 45-minute trip “under normal conditions is extremely optimistic.” Then he reconsidered and pronounced it “bordering on unrealistic.”

That may be close enough for advertising, however.

In any case, it probably doesn’t decide the issue. Very likely, Anaheim and Los Angeles will continue to debate their relative centricities. Once that’s decided, they can move on to the question of how many tourists can dance on the head of a pin.