Walt Disney World.Demand For Euro Disney - Essay Example

Running Head: demand for Euro Disney What were the key drivers used to estimate demand for Euro Disney How critical were these to the project evaluation [Writer's Name] [Institution's Name] What were the key drivers used to estimate demand for Euro Disney How critical were these to the project evaluation Disney theme parks basically belongs to the United States, but there is a basic structure to the parks which has been replicated in the Japanese and French models and they all share many common rides and attractions, but it is the US parks which have typically been the object of attention. Unfortunately, there are no pictures here of the parks' buildings or landscape due to the fact that the Walt Disney Company has copyrighted many of the buildings and structures, so that even a tourist guide like The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World (Sehlinger, 1994) contains no photographs. In his discussion of the Disney parks, Sorkin turns these restrictions into parody by printing a photograph of the sky above Disney World to which the following inscription is added: This is the sky above Disney World, which here substitutes for an image of the place itself. Disney World is the first copyrighted urban environment in history, a Forbidden City for postmodernity. Renowned for its litigiousness, the Walt Disney Company will permit no photograph of its property without prior approval of its use. Is there a better illustration of the contraction of the space of freedom represented by places like Disney World than the innocent sky (Sorkin, 1992:207) All the Disney theme parks are united by a common approach which distinguishes them from conventional amusement parks. The share prospectus for Euro Disneyland provides a good account of their thinking and this forms a useful backcloth to the discussion that follows: Rather than presenting a random collection of roller coasters, merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheels in a carnival atmosphere, these parks are divided into distinct areas called 'lands' in which a selected theme (such as exotic adventures, childhood fairy tales or the frontier life of the nineteenth century American West) is presented through architecture, landscaping, costuming, music, live entertainment, attractions, merchandise and food and beverage. Within a particular land, intrusions and distractions from the theme are minimized so that the visitor becomes immersed in its atmosphere.... Restaurants and retail stores at Disney theme parks are designed to entertain guests and support the theme. Disneyland Disneyland is situated outside Anaheim, a town to the south of Los Angeles. It is built on a 160-acre orange grove which Walt bought following a feasibility study by the Stanford Research Institute which had been hired to find a suitable site. It is said that Walt's original notion was for a small playground across the road from the studio, but as the vision grew this idea was eliminated. Schickel (1986) notes that Walt sent some of his staff to examine ideas which could be seen at existing amusement parks and to find manufacturers. Apparently, these informants felt that his idea of having a park without a roller coaster or a Ferris wheel or barkers was absurd. Nor were they impressed with his notions of not having outdoor hot dog stands or the sale of beer (he disliked the smells they created). But the exclusion of these symbols of the amusement fair may have been a deliberate strategy of product differentiation, whereby he could establish the distinctiveness of his enterprise and its market niche. Roller coasters were added in later years as visitors made it clear that they wanted more exciting fare, but the heavy theming of these rides disassociates them from traditional roller coaster rides. Disneyland opened on 17 July 1955 at a cost of $17 million. One problem with describing a park which has been in existence for 40 years is that it has changed greatly over the intervening period. Many of these changes are summarized in Bright (1987). When it opened there were 26 attractions, though 12 more were added before the end of 1955. Nowadays, there are over 50 attractions. Walt once said that the park would never be finished, and both he and his successors have been true to that commitment. Basic to the theming of the parks are the 'lands' and some other areas which have distinctive narratives. The four basic lands are Adventureland, Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, and Frontierland. A fifth land was added in 1993, Mickey's Toontown. The other main regions are: Critter Country; New Orleans Square; and Main Street, USA. There is also an area called Rivers of America. The entire Magic Kingdom, other than Toontown, is circled by the Disneyland Railroad. Once past the ticket booths, visitors move to the Town Square, then down Main Street, round a Central Plaza with the Sleeping Beauty Castle inviting them forwards, and then they fan out to one of the lands. Walt Disney World As can be seen from a casual comparison with Disneyland, it is vastly bigger than the California park. It is not a theme park in itself, in that it is a vacation resort at which the visitor is expected to spend a large amount of time; the idea has been to turn into a total holiday destination, rather than a place to visit as part of a visit to the region. In order to attain this goal, the company has successively added attractions and theme parks to its land, as well as several hotels, which in particular have grown in number during the Eisner-Wells era. Whereas the visitor to Disneyland would probably purchase a one-or two-day pass, in Florida a four- or five-day multi-park ticket is the norm. Disney World comprises three main theme parks, two water theme parks, and two minor theme parks. The two water theme parks are the older River Country and Typhoon Lagoon, which opened in 1989. Both of the parks are heavily themed. A further water theme park, Blizzard Beach, is scheduled to open in 1995. The two minor theme parks are Pleasure Island, an area for night-time entertainment, and Discovery Island, which is a very open zoo with a special emphasis on birds, and which offers some shows. A third minor theme park, Disney's Boardwalk, is scheduled to open in 1996. According to Sehlinger, it will be 'an amusement park in the style of Atlantic City and Coney Island. Game arcades, rides, music, food, and bright lights will render a Disney-clean version of America's traditional amusement park' (1994:17). Disney's transportation system, which includes a futuristic monorail system, ferries visitors between the theme parks. A 5-Day Super Duper pass gives access to all the parks and allows transportation between them. Thus, a family not staying at one of the Disney hotels, can leave their car at the EPCOT Center to book an evening meal at one of the restaurants there, travel on to Disney-MGM Studios on Disney transportation, visit that park, return to EPCOT for the meal, evening fireworks and their car. According to Sehlinger (1994), attendance at Disney World varies from around 13,000 per day in early December to around 70,000 at Christmas. In the busy summer months, attendance is around 55,000. Sehlinger's guide indicates that on one day alone, 92,000 people have visited the Magic Kingdom, though this is far from normal. Disney World and Disneyland share many attractions, though similarly named attractions often differ in content. That the parks are the province of the white, middle class is very apparent and it is not really necessary to subject the assertion to detailed testing, but such hard evidence is available. Van Ansdale France, the founder of the University of Disneyland, refers to a market research survey undertaken around 1958 to determine the nature of Disneyland's primary audience. France reports: The results showed that we had an ELITE AUDIENCE, people from the middle and upper income areas' (1991:52; capitals in original). Findlay reports that surveys around that time showed that Visitors were disproportionately well educated, well paid, and well positioned compared to American society as a whole'. Writing about Disney World, Wallace (1985: 33-57) informs us that the median income of visitors was $35,700 and that 75 per cent are managers or professionals. He also writes that 3 per cent are black and 2 per cent are Hispanics. Nor is the middle classness solely a feature of the guests. John Van Maanen, a sociologist who worked at Disneyland as a ride operator, has described ride operators as a 'distinctly middle-class group' (1991:61). Sayle (1983: 36-45) attributes much of the success of Tokyo Disneyland to the huge increase in the Japanese middle class after the Second World War. The Disney theme parks, then, are closely connected with the middle class. Targeting the parks at the middle class served to act as a strategy of product differentiation (to establish their difference from the conventional amusement park) and to attract the most affluent sections of the population. The latter would be most likely to own cars on which Disneyland was heavily dependent and they would be more likely to afford the price of admission and to spend heavily once in the park. They would also be less likely to engage in the kind of boisterous behaviour which would destroy the ambience of the parks as regions for family entertainment. As will be seen, many of the features of the Disney theme parks which will be explored below were designed to dovetail with the world-view of the middle class. This occurred in two ways. First, many of the parks' features were designed to appeal to a middle-class audience (their cleanliness, safety, concern for the visitor). Second, many of the motifs to be explored below affirmed the middle-class world view. The parks provided an image of a Utopia that is not only congruent with middle-class values; the Utopia is middle-class America. What is important about the strong culture among employees at the theme parks is that it is not simply an emergent product of interaction at the workplace; it is also, perhaps even primarily, a device for controlling their behaviour. Van Maanen and Kunda (1989: 43-103) have noted that the work of ride operators exhibits the three levels of control of work explicated by Edwards (1979), though the following exposition differs slightly from theirs: hierarchical control (revealed in supervision of employees); technical control (mechanization of rides which restrict movement and variation); and bureaucratic control (use of manuals, rules, regulations and procedures to constrain behaviour). These three methods of control can be viewed in a linear sequence in the twentieth-century workplace with greater emphasis being placed on technical and later bureaucratic control as the century progressed. Van Maanen and Kunda distinguish a fourth level of control, 'culture control', which aims to influence the emotions and feelings about the company and about work. This level of control 'is intended to act on the values, loyalties, sentiments, and desires of employees' (1989:90). This form of control, which is perhaps the main type in the Disney parks, also helps to reconcile employees to the other forms of control. There is little doubt that the growth of interest in organizational culture in the 1980s had much to do with the recognition of its potential as a control device (Barley et al., 1988: 24-60). This discussion suggests that the managers of the theme parks had realized this potential a long time ago and that they have created a highly efficient framework for controlling the behaviour of its front-line employees. There may be cultural (in the sense of the nation state) constraints on the effectiveness of organizational culture as a control mechanism. There have been rumours that at Euro Disneyland, European workers (who have been mainly French, of course) have not taken readily to the Disney corporate culture and attempts to socialize them into it. It is believed that turnover has been high; in August 1993, Langley (1993) reported that it was estimated that as many as 50 per cent of the original 12,000 employees had left, and quoted the Disney University's manager as admitting that the French 'are not known for their hospitality'. In February 1992, Jenkins (1992) gave an indication of possible problems when it was reported that a government inspector had submitted a report declaring that the Disney pronouncements on dress were illegal. However, for those who did get hired, hope was at hand in the form of a French priest and member of a communist union who, at the behest of his bishop, secured a job at the park and became the employees' union representative (Lennon, 1993: 2-3). However, in the long run, it may be that Disney's ability to build culture control will take root as well in France as it has done in the USA and in Japan. They have every reason to persist with it because, in conjunction with the other approaches to control that are employed, it represents an extremely effective means of controlling employee behaviour. References Barley, S.R., Meyer, G.W., and Gash, D.C. (1988) 'Cultures of culture: practitioners and the pragmatics of normative control', Administrative Science Quarterly, 33:24-60. Bright, R. (1987) Disneyland: Inside Story, New York: Harry N. Abrams. Edwards, R. (1979) Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century, London: Heinemann. France, V.A. (1991) Window on Main Street, Nashua, N.H.: Laughter Publications. Jenkins, I. (1992) 'French turn on "fascism" at Disney', The Sunday Times (section 3), 16 February: 6. Langley, W. (1993) 'Euro-dismal', The Sunday Times, 22 August: 9. Lennon, P. (1993) 'Priest who took Mickey for a ride', Guardian (section 2), 25 October: 2-3. Sayle, M. (1983) 'Of mice and yen', Harper's, August: 36-45 Schickel, R. (1986) The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney, revised edition, London: Pavilion. Sehlinger, B. (1994) The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, New York: Prentice Hall. Sorkin, M. (1992) 'See you in Disneyland', in M. Sorkin (ed.), Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, New York: Noonday. Van Maanen, J. (1991) 'The smile factory: work at Disneyland', in P.J. Frost, L.F. Moore, M.R. Louis, C.C. Lundberg and J. Martin (eds), Reframing Organizational Culture, Newbury Park, Cal.: Sage. Van Maanen, J. and Kunda, G. (1989) '"Real feelings": emotional expression and organizational culture', Research in Organizational Behavior, 11:43-103. Wallace, M. (1985) 'Mickey Mouse history: portraying the past at Disney World', Radical History Review, 32: 33-57. Read More