The Happier Place on Earth

As Disneyland boss Cynthia Harriss prepares for an annual update to employees Monday, the Happiest Place on Earth is launching new programs to cut waits for rides, restoring full hours at many attractions and preparing a lavish new parade featuring Disney’s favorite characters.

What a difference from last fall, when the news was about shortening attraction hours--a cost-saving move partially rescinded after mass protests--and relaunching the glitch-ridden Rocket Rods, a ride that had been grounded for months by repairs.

Regular visitors were complaining of shoddy maintenance, the Submarine Voyage had been closed with no replacement announced, and the park’s darkest hour--the accidental death of a tourist, attributed to a worker’s inadequate training--occurred on Christmas Eve.

Nowadays, workers are sprucing up Disneyland for its 45th anniversary next year, when they will flood the park with costumed characters, light up the sky with a new fireworks show and invite 70 customers a day to join in the new parade.

Blending scenes from “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King,” “The Little Mermaid” and “Fantasia 2000” with images from the artists Bernini and Botticelli, the “45 Years of Magic Parade” will be directed by Jean-Luc Choplin, who last year created the well-received “Mulan” parade.

Mulan ends in mid-November, followed by a Christmas parade, with the new parade debuting Feb. 18, 2000.

“The fireworks are going to be the best ever in Disneyland history,” Liz Gill, vice president of strategic brand management for the park, said in announcing the parade Friday.

But for the second year in a row, the Anaheim theme park will not be unveiling a major new ride or permanent attraction, a sign of the pressures it is under to help Walt Disney Co. shave $500 million a year in costs. The cost-cutting included the decision to fix up the Swiss Family Treehouse with a Tarzan theme instead of adding a new ride last summer, Disney finance chief Thomas Staggs said recently.

While that penny-pinching annoys many fans and attraction designers, who note that the company has spent billions on new parks and cruise ships elsewhere, longtime Disney-watchers say the park has often relied on parades and other live shows instead of adding new rides to celebrate anniversaries.

“Disney traditionally has had success in anniversary years with major entertainment spectaculars,” said John McCoy, a longtime Disney park operations supervisor who is now an industry consultant.

Recalling Light Magic, a 1997 street extravaganza that bombed as a replacement to the well-loved Main Street Electrical Parade, McCoy said the new parade must be “really whiz-bang” for the strategy to succeed. But he said he’s betting Disney has a winner.

With pressure from shareholders mounting, Disney Chairman Michael Eisner “can’t afford not to get the stock back up again,” McCoy said. “And he’s not going to do it by commissioning a piece of garbage for the 45th.”

One visible sign of change this year is the reappearance of the character-costumed “mountain climbers” assigned to the Matterhorn on busy weekends--shifts that fell victim to budget cuts under Harriss predecessor Paul Pressler.

And employees say FastPass, a system that lets parkgoers bypass long lines at popular attractions, is scheduled to go into effect Nov. 19 at the It’s a Small World ride, which will be made over with a Christmas theme.

The program, pioneered at Walt Disney World in Florida, assigns customers specific times to go to the attractions and stand in a secondary, shorter line. It will also be phased in on the Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and Roger Rabbit rides by mid-December if all goes as planned, a knowledgeable employee said.

Disneyland also has begun testing another line innovation from Florida at the Rocket Rods ride. Riders who agree to go solo can bypass the often lengthy regular lines at the attraction and join a short standby line.

Rocket Rods vehicles are designed to carry five people but often are sent out with fewer riders, such as when a group of four reaches the front of the line. Under the new program, those empty seats are filled with the volunteer solo riders before the vehicles are dispatched.

The park also is restoring longer hours in Toontown, an entire section that had been closing two hours or more before the rest of the park, and at many other attractions whose operation had been curtailed since last year. For example, the audio-animatronic Tiki Room was penciled in for 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. operation on a new schedule, whereas previously it was open from just noon to 6 p.m.

Harriss also has proposed that rides such as the Columbia sailing ship, which previously operated only on days of heavy attendance, be up and running for at least part of each day.

“Cynthia would like the guests to be able to take any ride that isn’t down for rehab, any day,” said one employee who has been briefed on those plans.

Other changes won’t be so easy for parkgoers to notice but are significant nonetheless, a knowledgeable employee said. Lead ride operators, foreman-like jobs that had been phased out on many rides, have been reinstated on nearly every ride following the Christmas Eve accident that killed a Washington state man and seriously injured his wife and a park worker.

And next month, Disneyland begins transferring employees to California Adventure in preparation for its opening in 2001. The first group of 15, mostly leads and trainers on Disneyland rides, will be assigned to test the ocean carnival-themed rides that already have been installed in the new park’s Paradise Pier section.

The idea is to make sure the rides work smoothly and operating procedures are well-established before the park opens.