The Euro Disneyland Case Essay

Tokyo Disneyland (TDL) was the Walt Disney Company’s first attempt at planning and developing an international theme park. In the 1970’s after Walt Disney’s death, the Walt Disney Company was not doing well financially when the Oriental Land Company (OLC) approached the company about opening a theme park in Tokyo. The Oriental Land Company, according to Raz (1999), author of Riding the Black Ship: Japan and Tokyo Disneyland, is a partnership between two large firms in Japan, the Mitsui Real Estate Development and Keisei Electric Railway (p.4). The Walt Disney Company was hesitant to open a new theme park in its current financial state, but the OLC offered them a deal that was hard to resist. The Oriental Land Company would own and operate the Tokyo Disneyland while the Walt Disney Company would receive “10 percent of admissions fees and 5 percent of the revenues from food and souvenir sales” (Raz, 1999, p. 27). The Walt Disney Company also received licensing fees up to 20 million dollars for their characters, attractions, and more, as well as control over the design of the park and control of park operations (Raz, 1999, p. 27; Eisner & Schwartz, 1998, p.263). Although the deal seemed alluring at the time, the Walt Disney Company would soon come to regret the deal they made with the Oriental Land Company.

Similar problems occurred in Disneyland Tokyo, where management didn’t even think about the height difference of Asians and Americans, resulting in too high public phones for Japanese guests. Concluding it is clear that the American company originally tried to implement a standardization strategy, when launching theme parks in other countries, without taking the local culture into consideration. Country specific procedures and regulations, and different local customer preferences forced Disney to adapt features of the US theme park business model to the local markets.

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 addition, the politicians’ negative publicity and the cultural leaders’ unfriendliness toward the Euro Disney theme park caused the company to close down one resort hotel and laid off 5000 employees. Taking this into account the Euro Disney marketers should have anticipated peoples’ resistance toward the Theme Park and should have changed their positioning in

As we know, Disneyland is very success in U.S. when the first Disneyland built in Anaheim, California on 17 July, 1995. After some debate about the site for a European theme park, Michael Eisner and Jacques Chirac signed a contract for the building of s Disney theme park at Marne-la-Vallee, a region of sunflower and sugar-beet farmland and small villages located twenty miles east of Paris (Janis, F., 1998, P.247). However, the European Disneyland was not as such success as they expected. This essay going to regards the main issues in opening the Euro Disneyland and compare the French cultural with American cultural by using Hofstede’s cultural Dimensions and Trompenaars ‘s cultural dimensions. This essay will then end by

"Emotional Intelligence is a way of recognizing, understanding, and choosing how we think, feel, and act. It shapes our interactions with others and our understanding of ourselves. It defines how and what we learn; it allows us to set priorities; it determines the majority of our daily actions. Research suggests it is responsible for as much as 80% of the "success" in our lives." The Effective leader requires a high degree of Emotional Intelligence. In this study, the various skills of Emotional Intelligence can be related with real situations. The various skills of Emotional Intelligence are Self awareness, self regulation, motivation, Empathy, social skill. People with high self-awareness are also able

Hong Kong Disneyland, opened to visitors in 2005, is one of the two largest theme parks in Hong Kong. It successfully brings magical experience of Walt Disney to all the visitors just like other Disneyland around the world.

“Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage our emotions and those around us, therefore, this quality gives individuals a variety of skills, such as the ability to manage relationships, navigate social networks, influence and inspire others. Every individual possesses different level, but in order for individuals to become effective leaders, they will need a high level of emotional intelligence. In today’s workplace, it has become a highly important

Emotional Intelligence is defined as the “ability to understand emotions and manage relationships effectively” (Pg. 76). Southwest Airlines displays some of the highest levels of emotional intelligence. For example, Dave Ridley (Senior Vice-President of Business Development) mentions that while a day at the airport can be stressful, “a gentle hand, a kind spirit, an extra effort going the extra mile” is what makes customers want to come back. This directly relates to emotional empathy. Emotional empathy is a branch of emotional intelligence and is defined as “the ability to feel what the other person is experiencing in a particular situation” (Pg. 81). The employees of Southwest Airlines use emotional empathy to identify those travelers who are having a stressful time and by exuding encouragement and kindness, the travelers feel more at ease. Employees being able to recognize signs of stress in their customers and being able to apply the right type and right amount of emotion (as dictated by the display rules), makes those travelers more satisfied with their

In the early 1960s, Walt Disney wanted to give the residents of Eastern United States the opportunity to enjoy the entertainment that was being offered at his California’s Disneyland theme park. Walt and his team the WED Enterprises settled on picking Florida as the new parks location. Florida offered weather that was similar year round, and was already the number one location for tourism. The announcement of the idea was delivered on November 16, 1965 at an Orlando press conference.

Most of the employees struggled to maintain the high standards of customer service that were expected in Disney theme parks and some employee described the training by Disney as brainwashing. Visitors complained that employees looked and acted like real people than Disney characters sometimes. Euro Disney was having hard time to retain their employees as well.

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

Mickey, a major promotion tool of Disney management did not create reason or attraction enough for the European community, unlike at the sister theme park Tokyo Disneyland. European families found EuroDisney to be an “over-rated” promotion of American culture and lifestyle, contrary to what

As a conclusion, all of these factors are foreseeable by Disney. Lack of knowledge of the local culture and the American ethnocentric tendency make the foreseeable things covered with the mist. Global recession, wrong pre-assumption, and Unknowledgeable of local culture are controllable things that can be managed well. For example, during the global recession, Disney can introduce affordable packages which may attract people on visiting Euro Disney. The wrong pre-assumption that affect the construction design can be overcome by building a fast and temporary facilities while waiting for the permanent building is being built. Hiring local French advisor is one of the solutions to the lack of local culture knowledge. Yet, The intense competition that came from the Olympics, world fair, and landmark’s event are foreseeable but it’s hard to be controlled as such Olympics is just happening once in 4years and other events might happens once a year. People are more interested to visit those events rather than Euro Disney that can be visited anytime.

In contrast with the past workplace challenges and organizational behavior, there is a necessity to understand ourselves and others. Sometimes the stress and prestige can cause an adverse impact on one’s position in the workplace. The ability to deal with our emotions while working effectually with others and at the same time, performing the organization’s expectations are in high demand. Since the employees are an asset, and the organization is expecting a return on their investment, understanding how emotions work and how it impacts one’s capacity is indispensable in accomplishing organizational goals. In the workplace, people often have to work with each other. So the handling of relationships and interacting with others becomes the key to the success of the organization. Managers need to have a combination of skills and abilities such as the strength of will, awareness of self, empathy for others and sensitivity toward others internally and externally. Before one can handle others emotions he/she must first learn to lead themselves. So the question become, how is this done? Coleman’s theory suggest that this can be done through emotional intelligence which is the ability to create, build and maintain viable relationships (Coleman, 1998, p. 14). No one wants to follow the leadership of a person who cannot manage his/her emotions. Let’s look together at three business CEO’s personal backgrounds and use of emotional intelligence. The top chief emotions officers in the U.S.