The Walt Disney Company and Disney Management

Before discussing the cultural missteps taken by the Walt Disney Company (TWDC) at their international theme parks, a quick overview of the company and its international theme parks will be given. The Walt Disney Company is an entertainment conglomerate with business divisions in movies, television, radio, theater, publishing, and theme parks. Since the focus of this paper is international theme parks, only a brief history of the American theme parks will be discussed. Walt Disney thought of the idea of the theme park one day when he took his daughters to a local park and watched them as they rode the merry-go-round (Disney, 2009). Disney wanted a place where children and their parents could have fun and enjoy the rides together (Disney,

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.

What factors contributed to EuroDisney’s poor performance during its first year of operation? What factors contributed to Hong Kong Disney’s poor performance during its first year? The factors that contributed to EuroDisney’s poor performance during its first year of operation were their lack of knowledge of their target market and the fact that they did not realize that the target market consisted of more than one culture. Disney tried to force feed American culture with a mixture of what they thought the Europeans would enjoy. By using American characters and the American attitude on ideas such as design, price and experience they were bound to fail; At Hong Kong Disney failed the first year due to their ignorance of the culture again

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.

     However, the opportunity should have not been ‘taken for granted’. Other cultural factors should have been analyzed to decide the positioning of Theme Park. Their prevalent mistake has been the failure to recognize the cultural differences between Americans and French people. Locating the Theme Park near Paris and acquiring agricultural land as well as imposing the U.S spirit undeniably negatively affects french citizens. The French peoples’ lifestyle deeply depends on the gratitude to their traditional agriculture. Thus, the land takeover by an American Company mainly does not provide pleasure to them.

Disney believed in magic. Disney is a common household name. In fact, some toddlers can recite the name of their favorite characters from their favorite Disney movie. It is not uncommon to see adults watching a Disney movie, and I would venture out and say most Americans have been to Disney Land or Disney World once in their life. Needless to say, Disney is part of the American culture. However, translating the success that Disney has had in the United States to another country can present a lot of challenges. As we will see, in this case, Disney did not do their homework when it came to planning this project in Europe. Some of the challenges that the company had were their makings such as hubris management and a lack in understanding their customer’s cultural differences

For the employees of the Hong Kong Disneyland, they are required to build up an operative role and same belief of making dream into a reality. However, in fact, they have to wear the overweight costumes which weight over 35 lbs with one size with long period of working hours. If employees are shorter, they will need to add pads on their shoulder to bear the overweight costumes. If employees are taller, they will need to wrap their back to fit the costumes. These will cause

It does not matter we're it is, even in France or Japan people still love Disney theme parks.  Even today when you are visiting a Walt Disney theme parks all of the cast members are in a great mode so they do not ruin a Walt Disney theme parks experience. Walt Disney theme parks make it easy to make your experience to your liking because Walt Disney theme parks have the best way to make it magical. Whenever you come back from one of the Walt Disney theme parks you will have a smile on your face. Walt Disney had the best dreams because Walt Disney theme parks are one of the best inventions.  Whenever you go to any Disney theme park you will have “A Happily Ever

Spencer, 2009, summarized the early failure of Euro Disney to four trends: European real disposable income per capita, vacation patterns and habits, oil prices, and cultural hostility. As pointed out by our text, new attractions, lower prices, a name change to Disneyland Paris, and a massive marketing campaign has turned the problems around. (Ferrell, Hirt, & Ferrell, 2009)

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

Disney has become a marketing goliath and the #1 entertainment company in the US. They have been able to develop a creativity-driven philosophy that over time was tempered by financial responsibility and that benefitted from powerful synergies between its divisions. From the very beginning, Disney has been synonymous with innovation within the children’s entertainment industry, from their introduction of animations with synchronized audio, full-length animated feature films and then later into theme parks and on-ice and Broadway shows. One important element of Disney’s success was the extent to which they integrated and expanded into different

Euro Disney could not modify the main theme of other Disney parks to create something unique for Europeans. Restaurants were not prepared according to the European eating habits and one of the biggest mistakes was not selling alcoholic beverages in the park which has very close connection with French culture. Customers had to leave the park to buy those from outside.

2. Location accessibility by the European population was another advantage for Disney to open its theme park in Paris.

Walt Disney overestimated the magic that was to be in introducing Europe's most lavish and extravagant theme park in April of 1992. The fiscal year 1992-1993 brought EuroDisney a loss of nearly $1 billion.

The main problem of the Euro Disney was that all calculations made by Walt Disney Company were based on parks in the USA and Japan considering Europe as a mass of people rather than many countries with different languages and cultures. Americans see theme parks as a destination where you can stay between 4 and 6 days. In Europe, Euro Disney was seen as a part of the experience when traveling to Paris. The cost was also a problem for the park. A night in a hotel inside the park costs as much as a high quality hotel in the French capital. So, given that the park was located 40 minutes by car from Paris, visitors preferred to spend a night in the romantic city of Paris.