Mouse Extra

The plan was a brilliant one.  Walt Disney always wanted to have a tour of his California film studio but just couldn’t do it.  So instead of trying to make it work out west, Disney decided to build a brand new working studio in Florida and have the tour there.  The Disney-MGM Studios were born.

The idea was to make the park a tribute to “the Hollywood that never was”, but more importantly a real working studio.  Here guests would come to see Disney animators working their magic, as well as live action films being made, television shows worked on and more.  It was all the things California’s tour might have been and more.   It defined the park, and made people not even notice the lack of other attraction when it first opened.

The theme the Disney-MGM Studios was based on, the “Hollywood that never was”, was quickly being jumbled throughout the park.  As attractions like Star Tours and the Rock n’ Rollercoaster opened one began to wonder how they fit in.  But behind all this was the fact that this was a working studio, so it all seemed to make some sort of sense.  All of these things related to making entertainment at a studio.  But then on February 1, 2005 that all had changed.  Due to cost-cutting measures, the working studio was closed, and the park forever altered.

Now Imagineers are left struggling with the theme of this park.  As we speak it is being renamed Disney’s Hollywood Studios but that still doesn’t solve the problems left by the decision to close the real working studios.  It seems now that any coherent theme is no longer in existence and instead the Studios park is home to whatever attractions are either somehow related to films or not able to fit in the better themed areas of the other parks.  .

Change is certainly coming to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, but will it ever be returned to its old self?  It doesn’t appear that way.  But it still has some of Walt Disney World’s best attractions.  All it needs is a coherent theme to bring it all together.  It had it once, but it is long gone now.

Picture if you will a park dedicated to animals of all kinds, big ones, scary ones, and even mythical ones.  It is a place where lions and giraffes captured the imagination while unicorns and dragons sent it soaring.  That was something near what the experience was going to be like at Disney World’s latest, and quite possibly greatest, theme park.  But as fate would have it, Disney’s Animal Kingdom ended up being very different indeed.

It was to be called “Beastly Kingdom” and it would have included e-ticket sized attractions based on mythical animals.  The plans are simply incredible and there is little doubt how big the appeal of the Animal Kingdom would have been had this land been included.  For a terrific explanation of what the Beastly Kingdom was to be, read this Jim Hill piece from 2001.  It will make you more than a little frustrated that this dream still has not been brought into reality.

So what happened to this incredible sure-fire-hit idea?  Mr. Hill explains…

There was only enough money left to build one more land. Which should the Mouse go for? Dragons or dinosaurs?

In the end, the deciding factor here was the money the Disney Company had already blown on the soon-to-be-released computer animated film, “Dinosaur.” Even back in 1995, the Mouse had already invested upwards of $30 million into production of this movie. (Current estimates suggest that Disney may have spent as much as $150 million to finish this film, making “Dinosaur” even more expensive than James Cameron’s infamously over-budget 1997 epic, “Titanic.” ) Eisner wanted to make sure that Disney’s “Dinosaur” movie made a return on that investment, so he insisted that DAK feature an attraction that heavily hyped the forthcoming film.

This is the kind of annoying story that so often destroyed the best laid Eisner-era plans.  Because of this decision to prioritize one film over the park’s quality the Animal Kingdom opened to mixed reviews and is still the most criticized park in Disney World.  It was a decision that is still felt today at the park and may be felt for years to come.  Expedition Everest has helped, but there is more to go to turn this park into the type of experience that was once planned.

Now I am the first one to understand the importance of budgets in business, and the Imagineers certainly over extended their budget, giving the bean counters the ability to pull this plug.  But is this the type of legacy Walt Disney left behind?  Would promoting one film and a strict budget really have kept Walt from creating another “wow”?