Theme Parks Take a Wild Ride to Catch Disney : Entertainment: MCA’s studio tours and scare rides, Sea World’s Forbidden Reef and new roller coasters all over are aimed at cutting into the industry leader.
It’s a small world and it may be getting smaller.
If the nation’s leading amusement parks are right, you soon will not need to travel far beyond Southern California or central Florida to explore the world of your dreams.
After all, outer-space aliens and Indiana Jones should be invading Disneyland at about the same time that Soviet and Swiss pavilions come to Walt Disney World. Universal Studios Hollywood will soon offer rides that travel Back to the Future or follow E.T. through the darkness. Patrons at Sea World in San Diego this spring should be able to feed bat rays and see sharks in a gigantic new Forbidden Reef pool.
And those plans are only the beginning. Throughout the amusement-park industry, major players are gearing up to battle the acknowledged king of fantasy--Walt Disney Co.--for a greater share of amusement park patrons and their leisure-time dollars.
The contest intensified earlier this month after the the company announced “The Disney Decade”--a 10-year, multibillion-dollar plan to expand its theme parks in Anaheim and Lake Buena Vista, Fla., as well as its Florida resort hotels.
The plans include development of two new theme areas at Disneyland, as well as scores of new rides and attractions at the 35-year-old park, plus a long-awaited, $1-billion, separate-admission theme park in either Anaheim or Long Beach.
In Florida, Michael Eisner, Disney’s chairman and chief executive, described plans to build seven new resort hotels, 29 new shows and attractions and a fourth gated theme park--rumored to be a Coney Island attraction or an animal park.
On the surface at least, the plans come as no surprise to amusement industry experts who have come to expect costly razzle-dazzle from the world’s most successful entertainment company.
“A lot of it is complete smoke and pixie dust,” one Southland competitor sniffed. Without the two new theme parks on the drawing boards, the 10-year plan amounts to “nothing more than the standard improvements that go into Disney’s theme parks every year.”
Other industry experts see it differently. The cute little mouse, to some, is starting to look more like a voracious rat.
“Everybody is looking over their shoulder at Disney,” said Nick Winslow, president of Harrison Price Co., a Torrance-based economic consultant to the leisure-time industry. “They’re all very concerned.”
Or, as one tourism insider put it: “Disney sneezes and they all catch cold.”
The symptoms include a reassessment by most of the major amusement park companies of their long-range plans--even though virtually all will not acknowledge concern. As Larry Cochran, president and chief executive of Six Flags Corp. of Arlington, Tex., put it: “Disney is Disney, and there’s only going to be one of them. Nobody in the world can compete with Disney, unless it’s MCA.” MCA owns Universal Studios Hollywood.
But that will not stop everybody else from at least trying to keep pace with Mickey Mouse’s company as it builds a better people trap.
Disney’s expansion plan is widely viewed among competitors as a clear signal that the company is not about to abandon its highly profitable Southern California park--or let its grip slip on the increasingly important market near Orlando, Fla.
It’s small wonder. Nationwide, major theme parks bring in more than $3 billion annually, industry analysts estimate. Of the 253 million visits Americans made to theme parks last year, more than 44 million were to Walt Disney World and Disneyland, according to the International Assn. of Amusement Parks & Attractions, a trade group based in Alexandria, Va.
For Disney, that means big bucks. Its theme parks and resort operations produced about 64% of the company’s annual operating profits and 56% of revenue coming in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30. Net income for 1989 was $703.3 million, up 35% from 1988, on revenue of $4.6 billion, up 34%.
Much of that success has come since 1972, when Disney almost single-handedly began building Orlando into a major tourist spot--and Walt Disney World into the most popular vacation destination in the country.
One key to Disney World’s prosperity is that it gives customers lots of reasons to spend as much time as possible at its 6,600 developed acres of hotels, nightspots, restaurants, golf courses, water parks and, of course, theme parks--the Magic Kingdom, Epcot Center and the new Disney-MGM Studio Theme Park.
With an average length of stay at Disney property hotels slightly more than three days, more often than not “every penny that you spend goes into Disney pockets,” one competitor said.
To help ensure that flow, when its studio theme park opened early last year, Disney began offering four-day park passes--$97 for adults, $77 for each child--and eliminated three-day passes. That gives customers a tough option of buying one $30.65 pass for one theme park or plunking down the cost of a four-day ticket to all three parks.
Disney’s plans to build a marine-oriented theme park in Long Beach or a second gated park on 40 acres that the company owns near the Anaheim park could have a similar goal here, industry observers say. With a second park, Disney could easily increase how much time patrons stay at its Southland theme parks by selling four-day passes. (Disneyland now sells three-day passes at $66.50 for adults and $53.25 for children.)
That means that “instead of providing entertainment for eight hours, Disney can provide hotel rooms, food, merchandise and everything that is related for several days,” said Ray Braun, senior vice president with Economics Research Associates, a Los Angeles-based economic consulting firm.
Industry experts are betting that is exactly what will happen--assuming that Disney can solve the tough traffic, parking and other “infrastructure” problems that Eisner stressed must be decided before the second California theme park will be built.
In a recent interview with The Times, Eisner promised a Disney hotel expansion--offering a themed motif throughout--if the plans for a second gate come true in Anaheim.
While Disney’s expansion presents a challenge, some Disney competitors see a bright side for them. They said the expansion of theme parks can only help everybody else, who will ride Disney’s coattails.
“Anything Disney does to attract more people to Southern California is good for all of us,” said Stuart Zanville, spokesman for Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park.
Privately, however, at least some industry experts acknowledge that the competition will be much stiffer and will pressure other amusement parks to upgrade their operations.
Universal Studios Hollywood, owned by MCA Inc., is moving forward with a much-ballyhooed--and much-delayed--three-year, $142-million expansion. The agenda includes the planned addition next year of a $35-million E.T. ride, followed in 1992 by a Back to the Future attraction.
The two major rides will be the first ever at Universal Studios Hollywood that are not part of the two-hour studio tour--a major shift in direction for Universal, industry experts said. Theme park industry sources view Universal’s willingness to plunk down a very sizable $35 million for E.T. as the start of the attraction’s grab for more local patrons.
The reason? Of the 5.1 million patrons who visited Universal Studios Hollywood last year, roughly 78% are from outside Southern California. That is far higher than Disneyland, for example, where about half of its 13 million customers in 1989 came from outside the Southland.
By adding new attractions, industry insiders said, Universal clearly is making a bid for customers who traditionally have been attracted to Disneyland and Knott’s--local residents who return more than once.
Joan Bullard, Universal spokeswoman, denied that the new attractions are a response to Disney or mark more than the evolutionary development of the studio tour.
But industry experts noted that Universal Studios began trying to attract more local customers by introducing the Earthquake show in 1988.
“The earthquake subject matter was no accident, believe me,” said Winslow, the consultant. “Universal just had to look at its data to realize it’s not getting its fair share of locals, and the Earthquake show brought in locals.”
Using glitzy new rides to draw local customers is not the only way that Universal will be fighting harder on its home turf.
In a move that appears to be mirroring Disney’s development in Florida, MCA Inc. plans to break ground in September on a quarter-mile shopping street at Universal City, which will link the 18-screen Cineplex Odeon with the studio tour entrance and two restaurants. The retail street is the first phase of a long-term development that MCA is planning for Universal City.
Moreover, by introducing the E.T. and Back to the Future attractions--as well as others in Florida--Universal will have a complete cast of characters capable of matching Mickey, Kermit and Dumbo--or Snoopy at Knott’s--said Dick Lyon, who heads the Lyon Group, a Pacific Palisades-based consultant to the leisure-time field.
In Florida, meanwhile, Universal is giving Disney an even tougher run for tourist dollars.
In May, MCA Inc. plans to open its $600-million, 440-acre Universal Studios Florida, 12 miles from Disney World. The MCA project is two-thirds the size of Disney’s 135-acre studio tour and will include attractions themed on such blockbuster movies as “Jaws,” “Ghostbusters,” and “E.T.” Patrons can shimmy through an 8.3-magnitude Earthquake ride or follow Dr. Brown in a DeLorean traveling Back to the Future.
The new studio tour will even outdo the original Universal City version, with a full-bodied, 37-foot King Kong swinging from a bridge and attractions in which customers can take a screen test, flee the attack of “The Birds,” or direct an episode of “Murder, She Wrote”--then buy the videotape to bore their friends and relatives back home.
Disney is responding by doubling the entertainment side of the studio tour.
Disney is also not ignoring Southern California, where 118 million tourists visited last year. Orange County alone had 35.1 million tourists in 1989, according to the Anaheim Visitor and Convention Bureau.
With those numbers, it’s no wonder that Disney is eyeing a second gate. If the new theme park ends up in Long Beach, it “will certainly take advantage of the fact that we’re on the water,” Eisner said.
Long Beach Mayor Ernie Kell said Disney is considering a nautical attraction that “obviously will be ocean-oriented and educational--not a Pleasure Island,” referring to Disney’s water park in Florida.
And that is sure to cut into the tourist traffic to Sea World of California in San Diego.
“We’re not particularly concerned,” said Bob Gault, president of the San Diego attraction. “We do marine life better than anyone else in the world. With Shamu and our killer whales, we’re in a very strong position.”
Sea World in San Diego has one big advantage. After years of neglect from publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, it should get a boost of badly needed capital now that Anheuser-Busch Cos. bought the four Sea World theme parks in September. That infusion will begin this spring, when Sea World patrons should be able to feed bat rays and see eels and sharks in a $2.5-million Forbidden Reef pool.
Moreover, executives with Sea World, Knott’s Berry Farm and Magic Mountain insist that they are distinct enough to complement Disneyland, rather than competing nose to nose.
“We’ve got our niche” of specializing in thrill rides and roller coasters, said Cochran, president of Six Flags, which has seven parks including Magic Mountain in Valencia. After all, 67% of Magic Mountain’s customers are age 24 or younger. That’s far different from, say, the throngs of families who flock to Disney attractions.
In the theme park business, one sure way to bring back business is to give them a new thrill--in other words, a new attraction that gives local patrons a reason to return to an amusement park. So major parks typically add at least one new attraction--a ride, a parade or a show--at least every other year.
Knott’s Berry Farm, for example, in April is unleashing Boomerang, a $5-million roller coaster. Magic Mountain, not to be outdone, is adding its own white-knuckler, the $8-million Viper, “the tallest, fastest, most astonishing steel roller coaster,” which will race along at 70 m.p.h. and spiral upside down seven times.
In the long term, though, Magic Mountain executives are looking at more than steel rides to keep its turnstiles churning. If outside developers’ plans gel to build hotels, golf courses, homes and offices near Magic Mountain, the amusement park hopes to start operating almost year-round within the next few years, said Joe Schillaci, president of Six Flags Magic Mountain.
After that, Magic Mountain could start marketing itself as a package along with Universal Studios so “people can spend several days” in a resort-like setting, Cochran suggested.
After all the new rides, parades and hoopla, what else is there?
For one thing, competitors can try offering slightly lower admission prices. “There’s not much else they can do,” said Harold Vogel, an analyst with Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York. “They can spend a lot of money on marketing, but there’s not much they can do to compete against Disney.”
MAJOR THEME PARKS PLAN INVESTMENTS IN AMUSEMENT
WALT DISNEY WORLD
Location: Lake Buena Vista, Fla.
Annual attendance: More than 25 million.
Acreage: 6,600 (total developed acreage).
DISNEY/MGM STUDIOS THEME PARK:
* Midsummer, 1990: “Here Come the Muppets” variety show; Dick Tracy Musical Revue to be staged five times daily; revival of “Let’s Make a Deal.”
* Christmas, 1990: “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” zone to be developed where kids can scramble through a world with 20-foot-tall blades of grass, giant lawn sprinklers and huge insects.
* 1991: New land called The Muppet Studios will begin development, including a 3-D Muppet movie.
* 1993: “The Muppets Movie Ride” to take guests on a “misguided tour through movie history.”
* 1994: Sunset Boulevard, a new section of the park, will open with Roger Rabbit’s Toontown Trolley, a simulator ride; Baby Herman’s Runaway Buggy; Benny the Cab Ride, and Dick Tracy’s Crime Stoppers.
THE MAGIC KINGDOM:
Alien Encounter will debut in 1996.
1992: New Circle-Vision 360 film on Western Civilization.
1993: Splash Mountain to open.
1994: The Little Mermaid ride opens.
1996: A new Tomorrowland will be created by redesigning the area, including an Alien Encounter attraction and Plectu’s Fantastic Galactic Revue, an outer-space musical variety show.
EPCOT CENTER
1994: A 3-D musical movie by Star Wars creator George Lucas.
Late 1990s: Swiss Pavilion featuring a Matterhorn Mountain bobsled ride; new Soviet Pavilion; “Journeys in Space” pavilion will provide patrons with an “outer-space experience.”
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS FLORIDA
A 37-foot-tall Kong accosts patrons.
Location: Orlando, Fla. (expected to open in May).
Projected attendance: 6 million.
Acreage: 444 acres.
Major plans: The $600-million movie and TV facility will include rides, shows and attractions, including:
* E.T.’s Adventure: Patrons on bicycles travel through the darkness with E.T. sitting in the front basket as he guides them through the adventure.
* Back to the Future: Customers buckle up in a DeLorean and go back in time to see dinosaurs, the Wright Brothers and Leonardo Da Vinci in Venice.
* Jaws: The 24-foot killer shark swims again.
* King Kong Kongfrontation: Thirty-seven feet and 13,000 pounds of terror and banana breath.
* Earthquake--The Big One: Yet another train-wrecking, 8.3 earthquake.
* Ghostbusters: A live action “spooktacular” in which ghosts are re-created with lasers and holograms.
DISNEYLAND
Annual attendance: Slightly more than 13 million.
Acreage: 86 acres for the park alone, 110 acres with parking.
Attendance breakdown: 50% from Southland.
A chase highlights Dick Tracy action.
Major plans: A new $1-billion theme park in Anaheim or Long Beach will break ground before the end of the decade.
* 1990: Disneyland celebrates its 35th anniversary.
* 1991: “Here Come the Muppets” stage show and daily parade.
* 1993: Mickey’s Starland opens for Mickey’s 65th birthday. It will include Muppet-vision 3-D movie and Little Mermaid undersea attraction.
* 1994: Tomorrowland remodeled to include Alien Encounter ride, Plectu’s Fantastic Galactic Review, an outer-space adventure show; George Lucas 3-D film; sky walks crisscrossing the area, and scenes of Western countries in Circle Vision 360.
* 1995: 40th anniversary celebration.
* 1996: Dick Tracy attraction, including a police car chase, to open. Patrons are cast as extras in Dick Tracy film.
* 1999: Hollywoodland to open--a replica of Hollywood Boulevard in the 1940s. Also: Toon Town ride, with Roger Rabbit; Baby Herman’s Runaway Buggy Ride; Superstar TV Theatre.
KNOTT’S BERRY FARM
Annual Attendance: About 5 million each year (including park and marketplace).
Acreage: 150 acres with parking.
Attendance breakdown: 50% from Southland.
Major plans:
* Boomerang roller coaster: To open in April. Cost is $5 million, including improvements
* Ghost Town: 50th anniversary, Summer 1990, with new, multimedia show
* Snoopy and His Friends: 40th birthday celebration show; June 30-Sept. 3
* Halloween Haunt: Oct. 21-31.
MAGIC MOUNTAIN
The Viper will have a 188-foot drop. Annual attendance: 3.1 million in 1989 (open 200 days).
Acreage: 260 acres including parking (111 acres without parking).
Attendance breakdown: 80% from Southland.
Major plans:
* Viper: World’s largest looping roller coaster, with a 188-foot drop that turns riders upside down seven times. Opens this spring. Cost: $8 million.
* Bugs Bunny 50th birthday show: All summer. New show, commemorative merchandise facility and theming throughout park.
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOLLYWOOD
Annual attendance: 5.1 million for 1989.
Acreage: 424.5 acres, excluding parking.
Attendance breakdown: Almost 22% from Southland.
Major plans:
* E.T.’s Adventure: $35-million ride scheduled to open in 1991.
* Back to the Future: Scheduled to open in 1992.
* Shopping: MCA Inc. expected to break ground in September for a quarter-mile shopping street at Universal City that will connect the 18-screen Cineplex Odeon with the studio tour entrance and two restaurants.
SEA WORLD OF CALIFORNIA
Annual attendance: 3.57 million in 1989.
Acreage: 135 acres without parking, 160 with parking.
Attendance breakdown: 20% to 25% from California.
Major plans:
* Forbidden Reef: Opening in May. Bat ray shallows/moray eel caverns. Pool where patrons can touch and feed bat rays and view eels from underwater.
