Numbuk wrote:
My wife has never been to Disneyanywhere and has lamented this whenever family members plan outings to it. I've maintained that it's just a black hole where money goes to die* if you go just as an adult with other adults. But that it will be completely different once we have kids. I guess she'll finally get her chance to go in the next few years.
* - Ok so it is pretty decent from not only an artistic perspective, but also a fascinating look at unapologetic big business. My last trip to Disney literally made me want to purchase and play Railroad Tycoon (and I did). I can allow the kid inside me to enjoy the place, but when seeing that a 12 ounce bottle of water costs six dollars it violently shakes me awake from that fantasy.
Numbuk, I'm not going to try to pretend Disney's not another big corporation out to make megabucks. That is their priority, just like every other corporation. But there's more at work there that goes beyond the big billions evil corporation. At the risk of being overly poetic and metaphorical, the spirit of Walter Elias Disney is still right there directing things, and I'm not talking about one of the 999 spooks in the Haunted Mansion.
It's hard to explain if you haven't really looked into the history behind those theme parks and the movies they were based on, and compare to what Disney's doing now and still doing the same. In almost every way that counts, the movie and theme park side of the business not only still
follows Walt's design philosophies, they
believe them. Walt said once that he didn't make movies for children, but that he made movies for the child in all of us. Disney Pictures has strayed from that idea on occasion, but they've always come back to it. I swear, John Lasseter is, in so many ways, the second coming of Walt, right down to the way he sees his job as his own personal toybox, and its purpose to make us all enjoy ourselves. But it's at the theme parks where this comes through the most. He hated amusement parks...collections of rides with nothing to tie them together. The Disney Parks are not amusement parks. Walt created the concept of the "Theme Park," and he nailed it down pretty solidly, but he knew he could do better. He said Disneyland would never be finished, and it isn't, still to this day. They still improve upon it year after year. The entire branch of Disney engineering named 'Imagineering," no more interesting job exists, I think, to blend art and imagination with engineering skills to try to bring to life the fantastical and impossible. Walt started the Florida Project, as he called it (Walt's brother Roy named it Walt Disney World after Walt's death in tribute to his brother) to fix the things he got wrong in Disneyland that it was too late to fix at that point. To this day they still design attractions based on unrealized sketches Walt had made; Walt was a 20th century Leonardo da Vinci with his fantastic sketches of the impossible. He spent far too much money -- he'd have long since been fired as CEO if he were still alive today, no group of shareholders could have tolerated that level of risktaking for that long, and yet, Disney sinks over 90% of their profits from the Parks back into improving those parks. The pricing scheme, as expensive as it seems, is reasonable. You get value in what you pay for, and if you're going for a long time, the cost isn't all that much.
It's really hard to explain this, but I think I can get my point across best with a fact about the Magic Kingdom and Disneyland. Walter Elias Disney did not want alcohol in his theme parks. He did not feel it was appropriate in a family environment. When a good friend of his, Mr. August Anheuser Busch, Jr. offered him all the land he would need to build another theme park in the St. Louis area, on the sole condition that he had an exclusive on beer sales in the park, Walt turned him down, politely, because he didn't want to sell beer there, at all. This was a place for children.
Now, personally, I believe that few situations make alcohol more useful than a hot Florida afternoon after chasing a couple kids around a crowded theme park all day, but that's not the point. I may disagree with Walt there, but I understand him. Disney corporation today obviously disagrees with Walt. You can get alcohol at Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, Epcot Center, and Disney's California Adventure. You can grab a beer at any of the water parks on Disney property in Florida, and I think you can get a drink at Disneyland Paris, Tokyo, etc. But Walt built Disneyland himself, and he drew up the plans for The Magic Kingdom, himself. The only place in the Disneyland park where alcohol was ever sold during Walt's lifetime was Club 33, which was a private club not open to the public. And to this day, that's still the only place in Disneyland where you can get a drink. You can't get alcohol in The Magic Kingdom at all. Why? Disney obviously doesn't entirely agree with Walt any more than I do. They could make a whole lot more money if they'd sell beer and wine there. Why don't they? They are, after all, just a big corporation there for the money, right?
Like I said, there's more going on there than that. It's about respect. Respect for the man, respect for his vision, and respect for his principles. Even in the rare cases where they disagree, they will do him the respect of honoring his wishes for his original designs. They could make more money selling alcohol, yes, but Walt wouldn't have wanted it. And therefore 47 years after his death, they still honor his wishes. This is mind-boggling to me, and very, very telling. The spirit of Walt lives on at Disney because the people who work and run the company keep it there. You can feel it the entire time you're in those parks. I honestly believe he would be happy if he were brought back to life today and shown how his dream was still running. Would he change some things? Yes. Nobody else is Walter Elias Disney. But they've tried, and you can sense his heart in every brick of those theme parks.
As Khross once told me, "It's a company that derives its profits from reminding other people to just dream every once in a while."
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