What Disney Can Learn From Previous Theme Park Mistakes

We’ve reached a point where many insiders are predicting that Walt Disney World will add a fifth park soon.

Now, “soon” in this instance indicates some point over the next 10-15 years, not necessarily immediately.

Still, the building excitement over the new park comes with a cautionary tale of sorts.

Here’s why fans rarely like new Disney parks at first and what Disney can learn from previous theme park mistakes.

Hint: It involves more than 30 years of predictable disappointment.

Disney-MGM Studios Opens

“Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

This entire conversation may be summarized by that simple maxim.

Whenever Disney opens a new theme park, the same thing tends to happen.

For example, in 1989, Disney-MGM Studios opened to the public.

While the first two theme parks at Walt Disney World opened to lavish praise, the tide turned with the third gate.

The Walt Disney Company and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) entered into an agreement long before the park opened.

Then, MGM learned that Disney intended to film its own programming at the park.

MGM officials hated the idea of Disney using the MGM brand for Disney content.

Before the park even opened, the two sides feuded openly.

As I said three years ago, “MGM sued in 1988, which is bad because Disney-MGM Studios didn’t open until 1989.” So, yeah.

When the park we now call Hollywood Studios opened, it lacked attractions or long-term financial support.

By necessity, Disney had split the post-opening funding in anticipation of another big opening abroad.

That’s going to be a story with a lot of these topics.

The Cultural Chernobyl

By many accounts, Disneyland Paris is Europe’s number one paid tourist destination, a rather remarkable feat.

Despite this fact, critics seemingly crawled out of the woodwork when the park opened to assail it.

The most famous comment went viral at a time when such a thing was barely even possible in pop culture.

A French director lambasted Disneyland Paris as “a cultural Chernobyl,” a comment she was still defending a decade later.

Little did this person know that they had no need to deride Disneyland Paris. The park would struggle plenty on its own.

As The Guardian noted ten years ago, Disneyland Paris lost money virtually every year since its 1992 debut.

The park possessed a complicated ownership structure, another recurring theme at Disney international parks.

Eventually, in 2017, Disney bought a controlling interest to provide better stewardship at the park.

Before then, even fans of Disneyland Paris noted its lack of updated attractions and poor custodial services.

In short, the park lacked the funding to succeed on its own.

So, you can already tell that politics and financing play a factor in many Disney theme park struggles.

Budget Cuts at Animal Kingdom

Here’s a topic that still upsets me more than a quarter-century later.

During the Disney Decade, then-CEO Michael Eisner promised massive expansion, and he aspired to greatness.

Specifically, the leader who often compared himself to Walt Disney hoped to do something his predecessor never had.

Uncle Walt had famously wanted live animals at Jungle Cruise.

Nearly 40 years later, Eisner tried to do Disney one better by building a zoo at a theme park.

Disney aimed so high at Animal Kingdom that it briefly caused a crisis at popular metropolitan zoos.

Animal Kingdom poached the best zoologists, leaving a shortage at local zoos.

Alas, in the wake of Frank Wells’ tragic death, Eisner’s managerial style somewhat collapsed.

Disney found itself in dire straits financially, and Animal Kingdom suffered accordingly.

Management discovered a budget shortfall that prevented the construction of several promised attractions.

Most notably, Disney delayed Beastly Kingdom until the park’s first expansion and, well, we’re still waiting.

During the early years, Animal Kingdom faced the same awkward fate as Hollywood Studios, with both parks woefully short on attractions.

Disney California Adventure Proves Unlucky

As the millennia ended, the dotcom bubble burst, leading to a short-term financial struggle throughout Wall Street.

Little did anyone know then that this was the calm before the storm.

Michael Eisner, whose power was in sharp decline, had previously announced a second gate at Disneyland Resort.

Disney California Adventure (DCA) never really had a chance to succeed during its early days, as Eisner slashed the budget to the bone.

When the park opened, even generally loyal Disneyland fans derided the carnival quality of several attractions.

Eisner went too cheap, and it was a setback the park would have struggled to overcome anyway.

However, the worst part wouldn’t happen until several months later.

DCA opened in February 2001. Eight months later, terrorists hijacked planes on 9/11 and killed thousands of innocents.

I’d never undersell the trauma of that encounter, as I spoke to a friend live that morning as he watched the horrors from a different New York skyscraper.

Any financial or tourist ramifications of 9/11 are secondary to the tragedies that occurred that day.

Still, from Disney’s perspective, 9/11 set back tourism for several years to come.

Since Disney is a mainstay in the tourism business, it faced numerous setbacks related to this event.

However, the park that felt the most impact was DCA, which had already gotten off to a bad start.

Nobody would go out of their way to visit this park until the Radiator Springs expansion in 2012.

For 11 years, Eisner’s budget shortcuts ruined any hope of DCA succeeding.

The Hong Kong Disneyland Debacle

Here’s another park where politics and financial woes led to years of disappointment.

The Hong Kong government persuaded Disney to build its first Asian theme park.

As a reminder, the Oriental Land Company handled all construction at Tokyo Disney Resort.

At Hong Kong Disneyland, Disney would send some of its best Imagineers to train others to construct an entire theme park.

Everyone quickly learned that the Hong Kong and Chinese governments weren’t in lockstep.

That added a level of especially aggravating bureaucracy to an already tense environment.

Disney did something rare by rushing to complete this project, a goal that became even more urgent due to the SARS outbreak.

Frankly, this project seemed cursed from the start, and I thought about that when it was also sporadically closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hong Kong officials wanted a Disney park but didn’t want to spend the money needed to make it exceptional.

Hong Kong Disneyland languished for many years, and it might have remained that way indefinitely.

However, another park opened in the same country, which shamed Hong Kong ownership into acting…13 years too late.

The One Notable Exception

Fans rarely like new Disney parks at first due to these perennial issues.

The money shortfall leads to a lack of high-quality attractions at the start.

Often, behind-the-scenes bureaucracy issues have also prevented the development of such attractions.

So, we’ve got a two-fer of recurring problems that make theme parks lackluster when they open.

Thankfully, we do have one recent example where anything went right. That was Shanghai Disneyland.

The Chinese government worked with Disney to create a $6 billion theme park, and here’s the vital part of that total.

Initial budget forecasts had predicted expenses of less than $3.7 billion.

When the budget ran over, the Shanghai project simply paid the extra $2.3 billion, which was a refreshing turn of events.

Thus, the park didn’t face all the budget-related attraction cuts that were a staple of the other parks discussed today.

Instead, Shanghai Disneyland spent the extra money to ensure that the E-ticket attractions lived up to the hype.

Not coincidentally, Tron Lightcycle Power Run and Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure immediately stirred envy in American Disney fans.

Even now, this park is still spending considerable amounts of money on new expansions, like the Zootopia-themed land.

The other parks on this list waited decades for that added development.

Final Thoughts

That brings us to the good news in this article. Disney is already preparing for $60 billion in expenditures over the next decade.

Since the company owns three theme parks and maintains quality control over another, it mostly controls its own destiny.

So, future expansions shouldn’t suffer the same struggles caused by politics and financial shortfalls.

While Disney history has repeated itself many times, it shouldn’t do so now.

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