Disney Co. Plans 3rd Theme Park in Anaheim
Walt Disney Co., aiming to create the premier family resort in the West, disclosed plans Friday to build a third theme park complex in Anaheim as part of its massive Disneyland expansion.
Company officials said the new complex could include an amusement park that would borrow popular rides from Disney venues in Florida, Tokyo and Paris, and perhaps a water park, retail center and hotel rooms. A theme for the new park and other details are still being formulated, but parts of the new attraction could open as early as 2003.
Disney’s latest plans come as its second Anaheim park, California Adventure, prepares to open in February, shortly after the premiere of its Downtown Disney retail and entertainment area and a luxury hotel, all adjacent to Disneyland.
A third park next to the 45-year-old Disneyland could rival in scale and investments the $1.4 billion that Disney is spending for California Adventure. It also reflects the company’s continued focus on theme parks. Including California Adventure and a new attraction being planned for Hong Kong, this would be Disney’s 11th major theme park worldwide.
Theme parks have been hugely profitable for Disney, which last year garnered 42% of its operating profit from its park division, even though that division accounts for just 26% of company sales.
In Anaheim, Disney has long wanted to create an urban resort--a vacation destination that could draw the multiple-day stays that Florida’s Disney World does--and better compete against the multitude of attractions in Southern California, from Hollywood to Sea World in San Diego.
Although the Burbank entertainment colossus is not formally committing to build the third park, its efforts outlined Friday represent a significant step forward. It already has purchased the 52.5-acre Fujishige family strawberry field and has long said that would probably be the site of a third theme park.
Thomas Staggs, Disney’s chief financial officer, said the formal decision to build the park will depend on whether the economics of the project make sense for the company’s shareholders. Analysts generally reacted favorably to Disney’s announcement. But its stock fell $1.19 Friday to $37.44 a share.
Disney said Friday that it was beginning an environmental review process with the city that could take nine months if all goes smoothly, as Disney expects. And it created a Web site, https://www.thirdthemepark.com, to explain its vision.
Together with land it already is using as a staff parking lot, Disney will have a 78-acre site for the new project, just south of Disney’s existing complex on Harbor Boulevard.
Disney’s latest plans, economists say, could help spur ongoing economic growth for the area, revive financially strapped plans for other Anaheim attractions and give competitors a shot at luring even more vacationers to their parks as well.
“This only strengthens California as a major tourist destination. As more activity is completed in Southern California, we can collectively gain a larger share of the U.S. family tourism market,” said Bill Haviluk, who heads the international theme park operations of Lego Co.
Plans Modeled on Disney World
Disney’s pull is so great that even competitors say they benefit more from the new visitors pulled into the area than they suffer from loss of patrons to Disney.
“As Disney keeps on building and building in Southern California, that only helps Knott’s Berry Farm,” said Richard Kinzel, chief executive of Cedar Fair LP, parent company of the Buena Park operation. “All we need to do is get a day out of all the people Disney is bringing to the area and we will be very pleased.”
Disney’s model for its entire resort is Disney World in central Florida, where it has four theme parks, 20,000 hotel rooms and three water parks. But in Anaheim, the company faces not only stiffer competition but also limits on space.
Disney’s goal is to entice visitors to spend days on end at its hotels, eating at its restaurants and shopping in its retail zones. But if it is to increase stays from the current average of 1.5 days to the nearly 5-day stay typical in Florida, it must add attractions, officials said at a briefing with The Times.
“You have to have generators that draw visitors to the area,” said Douglas Moreland, a senior vice president with Disney’s Imagineering research and design unit.
The new project would mean that Disney visitors would have to pay at least three admissions to see everything in Anaheim. If the new project includes a separately gated water park--observers have speculated recently that such a park is the likely first phase of the new development--there could be four separate admissions.
Staggs also said Disney would weigh the community’s response in moving ahead with the third park.
Not everyone was enthused at the prospect of inching toward a third Disney park.
“It seems a little foolhardy to me,” said Steve White, a member of Anaheim Homeowners Maintaining Their Environment, a group that opposed Disney’s California Adventure.
He said the city should wait to make sure California Adventure opens smoothly and repayment is assured on $510 million in improvement bonds before it begins approving another park.
A new park would mean more construction nightmares for Anaheim, which has endured 3 1/2 years of torn-up streets in the Disneyland/Convention Center area as the price of progress.
More construction would be “intolerable,” said Richard Geiger, who lives in a condominium complex just south of Disneyland. He complained that Disney seems to get whatever it wants from the city. “There’s a lot of things that could be done around town other than just doing what Disney wants done,” he said.
Esther Wallace, chairwoman of the West Anaheim Neighborhood Development Council, said she doesn’t object to a new Disney park but worries it will bring more low-income workers to Anaheim who will need housing.
“We just don’t want the city saying Disney needs 5,000 more people so we’re going to build more affordable housing in our neighborhoods.”
The project manager for Pointe Anaheim, a proposed $500-million retail, entertainment and hotel complex across from Disneyland that has stalled for lack of financing, said he was ecstatic over Disney’s expansion plans.
“They’ve just affirmed that this is a dynamite location and the town has potential beyond [Disney] Gate 2,” Robert Shelton said. “That’s exactly what our financial sources need to hear.”
For Disney, the challenge in Anaheim has long been how to change a “sea of asphalt” area with aging motels and souvenir shops to “a world-class destination resort,” Disneyland spokesman Bill Ross said.
Anaheim spent $546 million on improvements to the area, including expanding its Convention Center by 40% and building a $90-million, 10,000-car parking garage for Disney. But lenders have been slow to fund additional attractions and hotels in the area, disappointing city officials who had hoped for new revenue sources.
City Not Expected to Pay for Upgrades
The new Disney proposal could help make up the difference.
“We’re very excited, very supportive” of the new Disney park, said Anaheim City Manager James D. Ruth. “The new theme park should help stimulate development in the area.”
Disney and city officials said no new street improvements, sewer or utility work will be needed for Disney to build, although the city will need to rezone the former strawberry field from hotel to theme park use.
Long-range plans for the expansion involve a second huge garage that would house 9,000 cars on the site of the former Grand Hotel. Moreland said Disney wouldn’t ask the city to fund that garage.
Disney previously has started and halted efforts to build theme parks, depending on economic and political conditions. It scrapped a plan, for instance, to build an American history-themed park on the East Coast after the objections of community activists and historians who said it would be too close to a Civil War battlefield.
Disney also scrapped an earlier $3-billion project to build an Anaheim version of its Epcot park in Orlando because Chief Executive Michael Eisner wasn’t comfortable with the financial projections. California Adventure, which replaced the Westcot project, will cost the company about half as much.
The current addition at Disneyland includes not only the $1.09-billion second park but also a Downtown Disney retail and entertainment mall projected to cost $159 million and the Grand Californian, a $186-million luxury hotel.
That combination of hotels, restaurants, shops and additional park is one Disney is creating at all its park complexes. Outside Paris, where it already has a lavish Disneyland-style park and six hotels, it’s adding a second, movie-themed park at a cost of $650 million.
The Japanese company that owns Tokyo Disneyland, the most successful of Disney’s parks, is funding a $3-billion ocean-themed park there. And the recently announced Hong Kong Disneyland, which is to open in 2005, includes hotels and a mall, with room to add more lodging, shops and entertainment and a second park there.
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Times staff writers Jerry Hirsch and Leslie Earnest and Times correspondent Judy Silber contributed to this report.
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* PROFITABLE VENTURES
Theme parks are a major moneymaker, out-earning Disney’s movie business. C1
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Mickey’s Expanding Empire
In the hope of developing a full-fledged urban resort, Disney took the first step Friday toward building a third amusement park in Anaheim. A “best of” theme park culling from Disney attractions around the world would be open by 2003.
Source: Disneyland
Graphics reporting by BRADY MacDONALD / Los Angeles Times
