The Shifting Cost of Disney Project

In the halls of government, Walt Disney Co. emissaries describe the new California Adventure next to Disneyland as a $2-billion project. “It’s the only number you hear the corporate people throwing around,” a Sacramento lobbyist said in explaining his use of the figure.

The $2 billion is repeated by construction supervisors for the new theme park, luxury hotel and outdoor mall complex, which opens in 2001. And Disneyland boss Cynthia Harriss used it recently while describing Disney’s California Adventure.

In talking to the press, though, Disney officials have consistently used $1.4 billion as the cost estimate for the new park. So what’s up with the higher figure? “It’s not cost overruns,” a senior Disney executive said. “It’s just marketing, trying to make [the new park] seem bigger than it is.”

Harriss used the figure during a presentation to a group of young executives from other companies, to whom she apologized for the mighty construction mess in Anaheim. Despite it all, she predicted, Disneyland attendance will still top 13 million this year. It peaked at 15 million in 1996, according to the trade publication Amusement Business, then fell to 14.3 million in 1997 and 13.7 million last year.

In a related statement, the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau says convention business has held up better than expected during the construction, which includes a major Convention Center addition. The bureau said its final figures showed 836,226 people attended conventions during 1998--11% more than it had projected.

Convention attendance peaked in 1991 at 1,064,502, and was 979,259 in 1997.

E. Scott Reckard covers tourism for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7407 and at scott.reckard@latimes.com.