Disneyland VP Leaving to Head Start-Up

Signaling the end of an era for old-guard management at Disneyland, Norm Doerges, a 30-year veteran and the park’s second-highest-ranking executive, said Monday that he is leaving the Walt Disney Co. to head a start-up entertainment venture near London.

The 53-year-old executive vice president was the park’s point man on the upcoming expansion of the Disneyland Resort and one of the last of a breed of top managers who worked their way up from the theme park’s trenches. No replacement was immediately named.

“We are sorry and saddened to see Norm leave,” Disneyland spokesman Tom Brocato said. “We wish him well.”

One of the industry’s foremost experts in theme park operations, Doerges has signed on with Leavesden Development Ltd., a Watford, England-based company whose principal asset is a 400-acre tract northwest of London.

As the company’s new president and chief operating officer, Doerges will be responsible for helping develop a studio and entertainment complex on the site. He said he will remain at Disneyland another 30 days before departing for England.

“This a start-from-scratch, build-your-own-company kind of opportunity,” Doerges said. “It’s a chance to use my 30 years of experience to do something really exciting in a special part of the world.”

Once considered a candidate for the top job at Disneyland, Doerges was passed over for the presidency in 1994 in favor of Paul Pressler, a youthful outsider and marketing whiz who made a name for himself at the Disney Stores. Insiders and observers say Doerges’ departure underscores the move away from home-grown management at Disneyland, where executives once cut their teeth on the park’s nuts and bolts and were schooled in the exacting “Walt way” of doing things.

“The route to the top used to go through the parks,” said David Tsoneff, a Laguna Hills consultant and former senior vice president at Walt Disney Imagineering. “That’s no longer the case.”

However, Doerges dismissed the notion that a generation gap drove him from the company where he has spent his entire adult career.

“I wouldn’t characterize it as anything but a natural transition that all companies go through,” he said. “It’s hard to leave, particularly because they didn’t want me to go.”

Jack Lindquist, former president of Disneyland and Doerges’ old boss, said the executive has a “keen analytical mind” and an unrivaled knowledge of the day-to-day workings of Disney’s Orlando and Anaheim theme parks.

Lindquist said Doerges’ extensive experience in getting new projects up and running will be missed as the company begins construction on Disney’s California Adventure, the companion theme park going up next to Disneyland.

Still, he said it was inevitable that Pressler would want to surround himself with managers of his own choosing.

“It’s human nature to want your own team,” Lindquist said. “The worst thing you can do is tie yourself to the past.”

A native of Colorado, Doerges joined Disney in 1967 as a pool manager at the Celebrity Sports Center in Denver. His first job at Disneyland came in 1970, when he was named an assistant supervisor in Adventureland. The following year he transferred to Walt Disney World, where he rose rapidly through the ranks, becoming operations manager at the Magic Kingdom in 1973.

Doerges helped launch the 1982 grand opening of Epcot, Disney’s international-themed amusement park next to Walt Disney World. He served for a time as the Florida vice president of Walt Disney Imagineering, the company’s California-based design and engineering firm, before returning to head up Epcot in 1984.

Doerges came back to Anaheim in 1990 as executive vice president in charge of Disneyland. In 1995, he was given additional duties that included coming up with a concept to replace Disney’s scuttled Westcot project, the $3-billion theme park and hotel development that was scaled down, re-themed and reborn as Disney’s California Adventure.