I Come to Bury Pressler, Not to Praise him. . .

First published October 1, 2002

By C. W. Oberleitner

In his debut column, DizBiz weighs in on the whole Paul Pressler affair. Which I'm sure will give some of you folks some intriguing new insights about this episode.

Friends, Romans, park goers, lend me your ears! I come to bury Pressler not to praise him.

By now virtually anyone with even a passing interest in the workings of The Walt Disney Company is aware that the Chairman of Disney Parks and Resorts, Paul Pressler, resigned suddenly last week to accept the post of CEO at The GAP. There have been numerous articles and news stories about his departure.

The Orlando Sentinel referred to Paul Pressler as one of Michael Eisner's loyal lieutenants and someone who was viewed as a potential successor to Eisner. They went on to say that the loss of Mr. Pressler only contributed to the perception by the investment community that there is no clear-cut line of succession at WDC.

Like the Sentinel and many others, including our own Jim Hill, news stories about Pressler's departure tended to focus more on his embattled soon to be ex-boss Michael Eisner than Pressler himself. To be sure Eisner has many problems and a lot of those are of his own doing.

Career on the Move

Paul Pressler is a brilliant executive and extremely loyal. His record of achievement at Disney is impressive by any standard. Unlike those, however, who would lay the responsibility for his departure at Eisner's feet it is my feeling that it was his skill at his job and loyalty to Disney that allowed him to paint himself into a corner that left him only one way out, over the wall.

Paul Pressler rose through the ranks of corporate management at Disney by meeting and exceeding the goals set for him. His move from Disney Stores to becoming President of Disneyland coincided with the first serious decline in the value of Disney stock since Eisner took control of the company.

To combat the drop in value of Disney shares Eisner, as would any good CEO, began a series of cost cutting initiatives. He had his division chiefs and department heads cut their operating budgets, however, being The Walt Disney Company he also insisted that this be done without sacrificing overall customer satisfaction. And, he insisted that they submit plans for increasing revenues from each of their divisions. At this Paul Pressler excelled.

Paul Pressler dramatically reduced Disneyland's operating costs. At the same time he called upon his experience running Disney Stores to raise the park's focus on merchandise and food sales. While his changes were taking place Disneyland's customer satisfactions surveys continued to show that the park's guests were as happy and satisfied as ever.

Though Disneyland continued to flourish in terms of numbers of guests visiting the park Pressler himself began to develop a terribly negative reputation among Disnelyand's employees, known as cast members. The park's growing number of annual pass holders also began to chafe at some of his reforms.

Layoffs of many long time Disneyland cast members did little to improve Pressler's standing with the park's CMs. The process of budget reviews he instituted lead to a cycle of deferring maintenance on many of the park's most famous attractions. A small but vocal group of park regulars began to raise an alarm about what they saw as an erosion of the traditional Disney level of quality.

Pressler's efforts to increase Disneyland's profitability were successful. Faster than you could say, let your conscious be your guide, two things happened. Paul Pressler became a star in Disney management and an Eisner favorite. He quickly rose to the position of Chairman of Disney Parks and Resorts. At the same time he became the Disneyana community's most despised and reviled symbol of everything that was wrong with their favorite entertainment company.

During Pressler's time at Disneyland and during his first year's at the company's Burbank headquarters it seemed he could do no wrong, at least from a management point of view. He knew how to make a tough boss like Eisner happy and at the same time retain a certain degree of autonomy over his division. The U.S. economy was booming and it seemed that you couldn't do anything at or to any of the Disney theme parks and resorts that would dissuade the public from visiting and spending money, lots of money. It's estimated that the Disney parks and resorts are responsible for $1 out of every $3 the company takes in.

What about those cranky annual pass holders and Disneyanamaniacs? By this time the Disneyana community had taken up residence on the Internet. Disney related web sites of every description were sprouting faster than white roses in the Queen of Hearts garden. About the only thing they had in common was their almost universal disdain for Paul Pressler. It didn't matter. No matter what was being said on the web about The Walt Disney Company, the theme parks or Paul Pressler it appeared to have no effect on the company's bottom line and or guest satisfaction.

The second half of the last decade saw phenomenal growth in the American economy. Parks and Resorts, lead by Pressler, continued to outperform the company's expectations. They did so well that in the last half of the 90s the company went on a hotel and theme park building spree.

True to form Pressler threw himself into these projects determined to bring them in on time and under budget. Walt Disney World in Florida was Parks and Resorts shining example of how to maximize revenue and profits. It was determined that The Anaheim Property, as it was known inside the company, needed to become a resort in order to reach its full potential. Put another way, they wanted to see spending by Disneyland guests parallel that of Disney World guests.

Eisner approved spending a billion and a half dollars to convert the Anaheim property into The Disneyland Resort. He worked closely with Pressler and Walt Disney Imagineering's Barry Braverman on what would become the West Coast's second Disney theme park, Disney's California Adventure. Blinded by a flood of profits from Parks and Resorts both Eisner and Pressler believed they could do no wrong converting Walt Disney's original theme park into a resort.

Eisner and Pressler's local critics contended that both men had lost sight of one very important fact. Over 60% of Disneyland's visitors were local coming from a distance of less than one hundred miles and returning home at the end of the day. The vast majority of people visiting Walt Disney World traveled more than one hundred miles to get there and tended to stay longer. If a destination based resort was to succeed in Anaheim it would also have to have much more to offer local visitors.

This was the beginning of a relentless and highly critical campaign against California Adventure on the Internet. There was no indication that either Eisner or Pressler took the criticism seriously.

Ironically the first signs of trouble for Parks and Resort's building plans came from the fact that the economy of the late 90s was booming. It meant that the cost of raising funds for the various projects had increased beyond their original estimates. The original plans for the project were trimmed back and costs were brought back into line. Ultimately California Adventure would be most impacted by these cutbacks.

The 20^th Century gave way to the 21^st and the drum beat on the web about the cheapening of Disney parks increased. By now the first of the new U.S. parks, Disney's Animal Kingdom, had opened at The Florida Property to lukewarm guest response and reviews. All the while California Adventure was taking shape and pot shots.

A major debate about the quality and Disney-essence of this as of yet unopened park raged on the Internet. The best the pro DCA forces could do was to implore the critics to at least wait until the park opened before condemning it to Yesterland.

February 2001 rolled around and California Adventure was finally ready to open. Paul Pressler was at Michael Eisner's side during all of the official grand opening events. Disney marketing had built such anticipation for opening day that first day guests were allowed to stand in line overnight in Disneyland. The local media cautioned commuters that the streets and freeways around the Disneyland Resort might be blocked for hours. Finally the great moment arrived. And then it happened.

Thursday February 8, 2001 Disney's California Adventure theme park, which was designed to accommodate over thirty five thousand visitors, opened to fewer than ten thousand guests. While many explanations for that day's and the following lower than expected turn out were offered by WDC and Disney fans alike it didn't matter. On that weekend DCA became the symbol of victory for all of Paul Pressler's critics from within the Disneyana community. What was even worse for Mr. Pressler was the fact that people outside of that community were beginning to pay attention to what these disgruntled fans had to say.

While refusing to lay blame at the feet of any one executive within the Disney organization the mainstream press, nevertheless, began to pick up on the idea that all was not right within WDC's most successful division. California Adventure's problems were and still are regularly featured in Disney related stories from the Wall Street Journal to CNN. Reporters of every type quote web masters and web columnists critical of the way Disney operates its parks and resorts.

At the same time a snowball effect began to take place on the Internet. As more and more families became increasingly comfortable surfing the web they began to seek out websites dedicated to the things they found interesting. Information about Disney theme parks was high on the list of things these families wanted to read about. Families that could afford personal computers and Internet access were just the type of people Disney wanted visiting their parks and staying in their hotels. The problem was that a search on Disneyland or California Adventure was just as likely to bring up an unofficial site critical of the parks, as it was an official Disney site.

End of the Line

Pressler, like most Disney executives, rarely gave interviews. When he did they were usually tightly controlled affairs. Such events were reserved for A list journalists. That is why many people were shocked when he invited the web master of one of the Internet's most Disney friendly websites to the company's Burbank headquarters for an unprecedented one on one interview.

It didn't help. There was a new perceptual problem brewing for Pressler and his division. Even Pressler's Disney friendly interviewer could not avoid raising the subject.

While The Walt Disney Company was putting the finishing touches on California Adventure it was nearing completion of a joint venture with its Tokyo Disneyland partner The Oriental Land Company.

Tokyo Disneyland was also being transformed into a destination resort. Oriental Land, which actually owns Tokyo Disneyland asked for and got a second park. Shortly after beginning work on the expansion of the Anaheim resort property Disney began, on behalf of Oriental Land, to design and oversee the construction of Tokyo DisneySea.

By the time Pressler gave his Internet interview word was reaching Disney fans all over the world that Disney's Imagineers – the people who design Disney parks and attractions – unfettered by cost conscious "accountanineers" back in Burbank were creating a marvelous new park on the edge of Tokyo Bay. Unlike the 1.5 billion dollar Anaheim project, where WDC used its own funds, Oriental Land reportedly insisted that the Disney Imagineers create a park within a budget of three billion dollars.

The Walt Disney Company conducted all the events surrounding the opening of Tokyo DisneySea. Unlike previous such events the American press were not invited.

Tokyo DisneySea opened and soon the Internet was filled with pictures of the new park. Web columnists fell over themselves trying to find adjectives lofty enough to describe the wonders they had either seen first hand or were seeing for the first time in photographs. Once again the Internet was filled with criticism of Pressler. He was now seen as the chief architect behind California Adventure's dearth of attractions.

That summer Pressler made fewer public appearances. More noticeable were the increasing number of corporate events at which he was no longer at Eisner's side or even present. His harshest critics began to predict his eminent departure from Disney. Even those willing to cut him some slack found joy in what they saw as his fall from grace and Eisner's inner circle.

During the Internet interview he had given earlier in the year Pressler had played down the differences between California Adventure and DisneySea. Ultimately he left some readers of the interview believing that he felt the Japanese people were more worthy of such a park because they spend more per visit than Americans. It was at this point in his career at The Walt Disney Company that Paul Pressler, as the saying goes, jumped the shark.

Pressler had now committed the unpardonable sin of failing to control the story. He did this by permitting it, over time, to stop being about the wonder and joy of the parks. Instead by implying that Disney parks were more about spending than magic he let his detractors make it a story about corporate mismanagement of a national treasure and the corrupting of Walt Disney's legacy.

The next head of Disney Parks and Resorts will find themselves in the same corner Paul Pressler painted himself into. In order to keep revenues up Disney needs to attract same day visitors to its parks while continuing to curtail spending. Yet after years of cost cutting measures the parks, without increasing spending, must overcome a lack of any significant new attractions with which to attract visitors.

Families planning on spending several hundred dollars on a visit to the Disneyland Resort find a legacy of benign neglect. Failed attractions like Rocket Rods stand ghost like over Tomorrowland. The submarine lagoon lays dormant years after its closure and maintenance crews can't keep pace with the peeling paint in ToonTown.

Conversely, even in the face of Japan's on going recession by all accounts Tokyo DisneySea is a major success. Wait times of several hours just to get into the park have been reported. On the other hand, stories of California Adventure's ongoing problems and poor attendance still appear regularly on the Internet. DCA's problems are frequently mentioned in news accounts of Eisner's problems turning around The Walt Disney Company.

Paul Pressler's career with The Walt Disney Company was not cut short by any one single action or event. His career with WDC came to end because he was good at what he did. During good times he traded on the Disney legacy of quality for increased profitability. He allowed just enough ill will among a small minority Disney's guests to fester long enough for their complaints to be heard by the world. And when events stemmed the flow of visitors to Disney parks and resorts he was left with a diminished product of his creation and no means to turn it around.

Epilogue

While it is true that Walt Disney's original theme park Disneyland currently faces a series of challenges in terms of maintenance and imaginative new attractions, it still remains one of Southern California and the nation's most beloved places to visit. Thousands still come to the Happiest Place on Earth daily. Park regulars may grumble about changes in the way the park is run, they do not, however, stop coming. It is a testament to Walt Disney's vision and the dedication of the men and women who staff this national treasure that even during troubled times it is seen as a place of peace and joy.

C'ya real soon!