Disney Park to Celebrate Golden State

Forty-one years after Walt Disney opened Disneyland and enshrined California as a destination for fun, the company he founded took the wraps off plans Wednesday for a long-awaited second theme park in Anaheim that will celebrate and sometimes satirize the wonders of the Golden State.

The $1.4-billion project, dubbed Disney’s California Adventure, will condense the California mystique into three themed lands centered on Hollywood, the beach and the state’s wilderness areas.

Visitors to the new park will be able to choose from a white-water rafting adventure, a hang-gliding “flight” over the Golden Gate Bridge, a turn-of-the-century boardwalk area and an irreverent, chauffeur’s-eye view of Hollywood.

“Disney’s California Adventure is really a celebration of the fun, the beauty, the people and the accomplishments of this magical state,” said Disneyland President Paul Pressler. “We really have set out to try to capture a bit of what that California dream is all about.”

The new park, slated for completion in 2001, also will encompass the Grand Californian, a 750-room, Craftsman-style hotel, the first ever to be constructed completely inside a Disney theme park.

Outside the gates, Disney plans to construct a vast public promenade larger than St. Peter’s square in Rome, as well as a 200,000-square-foot shopping, dining and entertainment complex called the Disneyland Center to attract more adult visitors.

Slated to break ground next year, Disney’s California Adventure is expected to attract 7 million visitors a year, which would put it among the half-dozen most popular theme parks in the country.

Disney officials estimate that the new theme park, hotel and entertainment district will create 14,500 jobs, 8,100 of them in Anaheim. The company projects that the expansion will generate $25 million in new annual revenues for the city of Anaheim, $10 million a year for Orange County and $35 million annually for the state of California.

Earlier this week, Anaheim and Disney officials laid out a plan to finance the millions needed to pay for improved streets, landscaping, utilities and some shared parking for the proposed Disneyland expansion.

They have crafted a deal that would link the funding for those improvements with plans for a $150-million expansion of the Anaheim Convention Center.

Under the proposed deal, Anaheim plans to issue nearly $400 million in bonds, to be repaid by hotel and sales taxes and increased property taxes in the Disneyland Resort area. Disney would guarantee about $200 million of those bonds, meaning it would step in and pay investors in the event the city cannot.

The unveiling coincided with Disneyland’s 41st birthday celebration Wednesday and represents the first major expansion of Disney’s Anaheim empire in as many years. The new California-themed project supersedes Westcot, a massive 460-acre, $3-billion world’s fair resort Disney announced with great fanfare in 1991 but scrapped last year as too ambitious.

Exuberant Disney officials appeared eager to put the Westcot debacle behind them Wednesday, pulling out all the stops at a news conference inside the “Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln” theater at Disneyland. Local dignitaries, business leaders and reporters swarmed a buffet table in search of morning coffee while a Hawaiian-shirted band belted out Beach Boys hits amid balloons and streamers.

“This is awesome,” said Stan Pawlowski, an Anaheim banker and leader of Westcot 2000, a citizens group that led the charge to win approval for Disney’s original expansion. “This will secure Anaheim’s position as an international tourist destination heading into the 21st century.”

The eager crowd was treated to a blueprint the slimmed-down, 55-acre Disney park and surrounding developments, which represent Disney’s latest effort to meld its Anaheim holdings into a full-fledged vacation resort. Although the Walt Disney Imagineering creative team has yet to work out the details or even the names of some attractions, it did provide a broad overview of the three themed lands of Disney’s California Adventure.

“This Hollywood doesn’t exist in a fixed time period,” said Barry Braverman, executive producer of Walt Disney Imagineering who headed the design team for the new park. “It’s the Hollywood of your mind.”

As planned, this Hollywood will feature:

* Disney Animation--A fantasy building, crowned with a replica of the sorcerer’s cap worn by Mickey Mouse in “Fantasia,” showcasing animated films, exhibits and demonstrations by Disney animators.

* Superstar Limousine--A satirical swing at Hollywood’s beautiful people. Patrons will be the stars, cruising a wacky Tinseltown with their sycophantic chauffeur and visiting a Disney version of such landmarks as Sunset Boulevard, a studio backlot, Malibu and movie star homes.

“It’s outrageous and pure fun and pokes some holes in Hollywood icons,” said Marty Sklar, vice chairman of Walt Disney Imagineering. “We’re going to enjoy making fun of that whole culture.”

* ABC Studio Tour--Similar tours are offered at Disney-MGM Studios, but unlike the working studios in Orlando, Fla., these will simulate movie and television production. Visitors will get to play behind and in front of the cameras.

* Theater--Disney plans to construct a 2,000-seat Broadway-style theater in the park to stage major theatrical productions, such as Disney’s recent “Beauty and the Beast.”

* Movies--Restaurants, shops and memorabilia will have a Hollywood theme.

The second major themed land is tentatively named Golden California. This area will pay homage to the state’s outdoor wonders and pioneer past. Marked by a snow-capped mountain with a grizzly bear carved on its face, Golden California will focus on adventure attractions:

* California Soarin’--A simulated hang-gliding tour of the Golden Gate Bridge, Yosemite Valley and other California landmarks. A specially designed glider will suspend riders in front of a huge projection screen to give them the feeling of soaring.

* White-water rafting--Riders will plunge through rapids simulating the wild rivers of the West.

* Eureka Adventures--Trails will traverse five acres of man-made geyser fields, caves and forests.

“It’s like every car vacation you ever took as a kid through California,” Braverman said.

* Waterfront Village / California Workplace--Disney’s tribute to the immigrants and artisans of California. It will feature a village of working factories and farms demonstrating cooking methods and crafts.

* Historical show--Devoted to working men and women of all backgrounds who helped build California. “It’s going to be a very emotional experience,” Braverman said. “We want people to hear these stories.”

The third land is the beach-themed California Boardwalk, with a large man-made lagoon and lighthouse.

The boardwalk itself will recreate the look and feel of an old-fashioned seaside promenade with nostalgic entertainment and shops.

* Rides--No details were given, but Braverman said the company is looking at a number of attractions, including a carousel and a wooden roller coaster. “There will be thrill attractions,” he said. “They will be classic rides, reinterpreted with a fun Disney twist.”

* Surfing demonstration / Extreme sports--Disney Imagineers plan to use wave-making technology in a man-made lagoon.

The idea for Disney’s California Adventure was hatched last year during an Aspen, Colo. retreat where company representatives tried to salvage something from the wreckage of Westcot.

What emerged was a new theme park based on the culture and mythology of California. Disney’s focus groups and marketing studies confirmed the popularity of the theme among potential visitors.

“You come to California today and you can’t find it,” said Imagineering’s Sklar. “You know what Hollywood Boulevard is like now, and you can’t get into most of the studios. The whole Walt Disney story of coming out from Kansas City as a 21-year-old, that’s a real California success story.”

Still, California cool isn’t exactly an original concept in the theme park business. Just this year, Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park opened a new beach-themed area that pays tribute to Southern California’s oceanfront lifestyle. Universal Studios Hollywood is the West Coast’s premier movie park. And a Newport Beach-based consulting firm is designing a Hollywood-themed entertainment center in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, the heart of Communist Vietnam.

But Disney brass say they will put a fresh spin on the whole California genre, and they bristle at the notion that their latest creative endeavor is a me-too.

“Nobody will do it like we will,” Sklar said.

Tourism officials are banking on Disney’s Anaheim expansion to reverse a nearly decade-long slide in tourism that has seen California lose market share to popular new destinations such as Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla., which have seen billions in new investment in recent years.

California is still the nation’s most visited state, with 295 million tourist visits last year and record travel spending of $55.2 billion in 1995.

But a closer look at the numbers shows that California is attracting a smaller and smaller slice of the fast-growing global tourism market. Last year California garnered 10.9% of the U.S. domestic leisure market, down from 12.% in 1989.

The Disney expansion is “profoundly important to California’s future as a travel destination,” said John Poimiroo, director of the California Trade and Commerce Agency’s division of tourism.

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Disney’s Big Adventure

The Disneyland Resort expansion will include Disney’s California Adventure, a new hotel, a shopping and entertainment area and a public plaza. Three main themes will make up the companion park: beaches, California and Hollywood. Construction will begin in early 1997.

Disneyland Center: shopping, dining and entertainment complex

Grand California Hotel: 750 rooms, inspired by Craftsman architecture

Disney’s California Adventure: 55 acres

Disneyland Resort Plaza: gateway to both parks

Boardwalk Area: Palm-lined boardwalks with classic rides and performers. Surfing demonstrations will be given in man-made lagoon.

Scenic California Area: Features forest and cave exploration, white-water rafting ride and scenic hang-glider rides. The state’s pioneers will be saluted.

Hollywood Area: A Celebration of movie-making and animation. Tinseltown glitz will be viewed from the Superstar Limousine.

Source: Walt Disney Co.