Disney: Losing Magic in the Middle Kingdom

Walt Disney set a vision for the company – to provide wholesome family entertainment. Everything that the company did was aligned to this vision and corporate philosophy.

Relevance: Walt Disney created Disneyland and Disneyworld because he believed that people who rushed to grow up were selling themselves short. He invented the theme parks in order to bring out the inner child in you, no matter your age.

“Walt wanted to create an amusement park in which his cartoon characters could come to life and interact with the visitors.” A place where both parent and child could have fun. So in 1955 Walt purchased 160 acres of land in California and began the $17-million-dollar project to construct Disneyland. His vision of how he wanted to construct Disneyland was unpretentious. He wanted the entrance to embody a euphoric restoration of the conventional American main street. The goal was that people would walk down “Main Street, USA” and want to discover more by going to the other 4 different “dream lands,” he had creted: Fantasyland, Adventureland, Frontierland, and Tomorrowland. Fantasyland was created to be more child orientated, where all of Disney’s

The case “Euro Disney: First 100 days” talks about the issues faced by the Walt Disney Company when expanding to international borders. The case begins with the history of Disneyland and then describes the reasons behind its success and expansion to various states across the country. It then describes the success of Tokyo Disneyland, first Disney theme park outside America and the factors affecting it.

| In 1955, Disneyland was introduced to the American public by creator Walt Disney. It was one of the first theme parks offered in America and attracted crowds of young children and families. The theme park was inspired by many of Walt Disney’s animated features as well as historical figures like Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln.

The Walt Disney Company has seen their share of success in taking their parks and resorts into global markets. “60 years ago, the first Disney theme park opened, in California and was the brainchild of Walt Disney himself, who was motivated by the lack of entertainment options available to him and his two young daughters.” (Forbes, 2016). Disneyland California penetrated the market rapidly, and its popularity led to the opening of Disney World in Florida, followed by global expansion in Tokyo, Paris, and Hong Kong. Their latest expansion came in June 2016, on a 963 acres’ site in Shanghai, China (Xu, 2012). After one year in operation, Shanghai Disneyland is outpacing their most optimistic projections, and the park’s

As Walt Disney said in his speech on opening day, “To all who come to this happy place; welcome. Disneyland is your land.” Whether it comes to making your Disneyland experience as realistic as possible or to the eerie souls that supposedly roam around the park, Walt Disney set out to please all of his guests and cast members. Each secret of Disneyland was created for a specific reason by Walt himself, some explained and some will never be known. The secrets live on even after Walt has passed, represented in the candle in his apartment window and thousands of Mickey Mouse silhouettes you can find hidden around the

Hong Kong Disneyland has created a culture for their employees with open communication with their managers

In 1955, the most charming place in the world was ‘Disneyland’ was open for the public. The idea was to create a magical place for the whole family. Ever since then, Disneyland theme parks have been growing and today Walt Disney Company owns 14 theme parks in the world.

After Eisner invested tens of millions of dollars to update and expand attractions and park facilities, Disney recovered its investment with attendance-building strategies. By creating a range of complementary services and entertainment at the park, customers stayed longer and spent more money. A plan was also put in place to develop Disney’s unused acreage and further maximize the profitability of these assets. One result of the above measures was that attendance at Tokyo Disneyland increased by 50% from 10.2m in 1983 to 15.8m in 1991.

Even in the United States, Disneyworld (Florida) and Disneyland (California) vary in there social forces. Cast Members (Disney’s term for employees) in CA are trained to be friendly and greet every guest, while in FL they are trained to only greet guests who seek them out. The political, legal, and regulatory factors again, vary from theme park to theme park. The parks in the United States have more restrictions than say those of Hong Kong, China. In the U.S, minors (age 15-17) are only allowed to work 20 hours a week. In Hong Kong, young persons (ages 15-17) are allowed to work up to 48 hours a week. Regulatory factors such as this differ in each region. The Walt Disney Company Parks and Resorts has quite an extreme variety of natural environments. The weather in Florida for example can get in the 100’s regularly whereas in California it can get as cold as the low 50’s. These weather conditions actually are a big factor in guests determining which park they want to visit. Technology seems to stay consistent between most of the theme parks. In fact, many of the theme parks have some of the same rides at their parks. The global forces actually can create threats to the company. The addition of the newest theme park to the company, Shanghai Disney, took several years to become accepted. This has been common throughout the duration of The Walt Disney Company. Many people vote against a new theme park or resort because of the crowds that it

Culturally, Disney cannot force itself on another people, which in this case was the whole of the European continent. Disney promoted its product, the theme park, similar to that of Tokyo Disneyland believing Europe wanted their piece of “Americana”.

Walt Disney Company had always been successfully operating theme park until 1992. Starting in 1955 where the first Disneyland set its foot at Anaheim, California and in 1983 in Florida (Hill, 2000). While in 1983, Disney faced a true challenge as they opened the first international Disneyland in Tokyo. In a fear of wide cultural differences between American and Japanese, it turned out an unexpected massive successful Tokyo Disneyland. As a result, Disney did not hesitate to invest a big sum of money for Euro Disney in Paris.

In 1951, with the opening of Disney’s first theme park (Disneyland, in Anaheim, California) the Company made a dramatic shift from a media-oriented company to

The actual number of visitors per year never hit the expected number. However, sometimes the park still got too crowded and had to prevent visitors from coming in. During Chinese New Year in Feb 2006, hundreds of people with valid 6-month ticket could not enter the park. It led to chaos and further eroded Hong Kong Disney’s image. Generally this is due to poor capacity planning. Disney tried to boost attendance rate, but neglect its peak capacity. It should smooth demand relative to available park capacity.