DizBiz: And The Blustery Day

First published April 8, 2003

By C. W. Oberleitner

We sent our intrepid travel reporter C. W. Oberleitner out to the Disneyland Resort to write an OnTheGround story about the new Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh ride in Disneyland's Critter Country and he came back with a DizBiz column. In fairness he does talk about the Pooh ride experience. So join us please as we see what happens when two columns collide.

The Walt Disney Company is about to take the wraps off of two new attractions at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim California. Disney's California Adventure is preparing to open its version of Playhouse Disney Live on Stage. Disneyland Park is about to see the opening of its first new attraction in more than five years, The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh. Both attractions are due to open soon with the Pooh ride already in the midst of a soft opening. Invited guests and people visiting the park and willing to stand in line have a chance to check out the new ride while park operations works out any last minute glitches.

This past weekend employees of The Walt Disney Company -- known as Cast Members -- throughout Southern California were invited to bring the family and try out the new ride. This week Disneyland's nearly four hundred thousand annual passholders have been invited to get a first look. I decided to get a first look this past Saturday and joined the standby line for this new ride.

OnTheGround

Okay at first blush you might think that Winnie The Pooh is a little off my regular beat. I tend to write OTG stories more for singles and empty nesters, grownups who aren't necessarily visiting a park or an event with children in tow. But, you just can't turn your back on a bear of very little brain that's worth billions of dollars in annual revenue.

Because of Pooh's popularity Disneyland is expecting large crowds for the new attraction. In addition to fitting the ride into the former Country Bear Theater great attention was paid to every detail surrounding the new ride. The ride queue occupies the space formerly used for the Winnie The Pooh character meet and greet. The meet and greet has been moved to the center of the Critter Country cul-de-sac. The FastPass center for The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh is across the way from the ride's entrance and a few feet up the hill in what was the FastPass distribution center for Splash Mountain. The Splash Mountain FastPass distribution center has been relocated to the entrance of Critter Country at the top of the hill next to The Haunted Mansion.

While this may sound like a lot of work just to add a new dark ride to Critter Country it should make it much easier for large crowds to ride both Pooh and Splash Mountain. At the same time folks coming off these rides will find it easy to visit the shops, the character meet and greet and return to New Orleans Square.

As for the ride itself, well it's fun. Bruce Gordon of Walt Disney Imagineering and project manager for The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh and his staff and crew have done an excellent job of bringing Pooh's fantasy world to life. From the beehive ride vehicles that bob and drift throughout the ride to the colorful set pieces that create the ride's storyline.

Whether you are familiar with the Winnie The Pooh stories or not you'll find this ride a charming tour through The Hundred Acre Wood. It opens with Pooh and his friends experiencing the high winds of his Blustery Day adventure and moves through a series of vignettes from several well know Pooh adventures.

Bruce Gordon and Imagineering have incorporated and updated a variety of favorite Fantasyland dark ride special effects to delight the senses as guests are whisked through Pooh's dreams and exit through his surprise birthday party. There's no surprise when we learn that all of Pooh's gifts are of course hunny, as Pooh likes to call it. This is a ride that should delight children of all ages.

Speaking of children, the day I rode the Pooh ride they were a distinct minority. Over the course of four hours I was in the standby queue three different times. The very first time I noticed how few children there were in line. On a later visit I counted twenty-eight adults and five children enter the queue immediately after me. I asked a cast member at the ride entrance if he had noticed the same thing. He had. In fact, he told me that this had been the norm ever since they began the soft opening.

It is way to soon to make anything out of this little observation. I did, however, find it to be the most unexpected part of this very delightful little experience. The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh, the best new "C" ticket attraction at Disneyland.

DizBiz

So, if The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh dark ride is the best new "C" ticket ride at Disneyland why is it being taken to task by so many Disney and theme park fan sites even before it opens. One reason is that it is a C ticket.

For those of you to young to recall the days before unlimited ride admission to theme parks A, B, C, D, and E were the types of tickets used to board Disneyland's various rides and attractions. An A ticket would get you on things like the Main Street Horse Carts and King Arthur's Carousel. B tickets provided access to the Motor Boat Cruise and Casey Junior. And, C tickets got you on rides like Dumbo Flying Elephants, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and Peter Pan's Flight.

The now famous E ticket was reserved for the latest, greatest and most spectacular rides and attractions. Theme park operators of all types create advertising campaigns around new E ticket attractions to build attendance at their parks. Disneyland has not had a successful new E ticket ride since 1995's Indiana Jones Adventure. Anticipation of a big new attraction has been building among the park's overnight and single day visitors for years.

During this time DLR guests have grown frustrated as they watch state of the art thrills, attractions and entertainment being developed for Universal's Islands of Adventure or The Oriental Land Company's DisneySeas. This frustration was only compounded by the underwhelming response The Disneyland Resort received to the opening of Disney's California Adventure.

More than just the lack of a big new thrill ride the new Winnie The Pooh ride has become the unfortunate symbol of what Disney fans of every type have come to see as The Walt Disney Company's wholesale abandonment of its leadership position in family entertainment. The new ride is seen as the latest example of WDC's willingness to sacrifice a higher level of quality and a desire to wow its guests for the cost savings to found by doing just enough to get by while still leaving the guest with just enough of an experience to say that it was satisfying.

Bruce Gordon and the members of his Walt Disney Imagineering team did a very good job of creating the best Winnie The Pooh ride they could within the constraints placed upon them by Disney management. The new ride will undoubtedly attract crowds. Guests in all likelihood will tell guest relations opinion takers that they enjoyed the ride. That would be all well and good if it were not for one thing. There are two other Winnie the Pooh rides in two of Disney's other theme parks. And, as I discovered people are going to compare them.

The first Pooh ride opened in Tokyo Disneyland. Each successive version of the ride has had its construction costs cut and consequently key elements of the ride removed. The Tokyo ride features elaborate scenery and trackless smart ride vehicles that utilize positioning technology to randomly maneuver the vehicles through the ride. The trackless technology provides the guest with a different and unique experience each time they ride. Tokyo's Winnie The Pooh ride is a huge favorite among park guests of all ages.

Like the new ride at Disneyland the Winnie The Pooh ride at Walt Disney World in Florida did not receive the trackless technology. The Florida ride vehicles are guided through the attraction on a fixed track just as the Disneyland ones are. The Florida version of the ride retains many of same elaborate scenic elements used in the Tokyo version.

I spoke with several Disneyland guests who had ridden both the Disney World and Disneyland Pooh rides. They liked the Disneyland Pooh ride but still thought the Florida version was better. They told me that the interior set pieces of the Disney World Pooh ride were much more elaborate. As one Grandmother who's ridden both versions of the ride told me, the Walt Disney World Pooh ride is "more like what you expect from Disney".

Long before last week's soft opening of Disneyland's The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh word began to leak out that once again Disney management was going to "cheap out" on construction of yet another Disneyland Resort attraction. Word of mouth for the new ride was becoming so negative that it became known that management within the Theme Parks and Resorts division at Team Disney Burbank wanted publicity for the new ride cut back lest public expectations for the new attraction become to high for the little bear and his friends to meet.

Oddly enough, whatever the public may come to think of the new attraction Disneyland Media Relations was given a polite way out of what could have been an otherwise embarrassing situation. Acknowledging the fact that it might be in very poor taste to hold a big media event to announce the opening of new theme attractions while war rages on in Iraq last week Team Disney Anaheim canceled the Winnie The Pooh and Playhouse Disney April 11, press events.

This may have also been a smart thing to do for other reasons. Since mid February Team Disney Anaheim has been looking for three new players. As recently as last week all three of the top spots in TDA Media Relations were still seeking new talent. It has been widely known for sometime now that TDA has been very dissatisfied with the way it has been portrayed in the media. They want a media relations department that can "control the story" and they haven't had much luck assembling such a team.

My suggestion for applicants to these three positions is that they ask for pay or play contracts. Not something usually given out at this level of management it would nonetheless allow TDA to attract media-relations professionals who would be free to stand up to management and let them know in advance of a coming public relations fiasco. By the way Jim and I are available.

DizBiz's Rumor Round Up

Last Saturday while checking out the new Winnie The Pooh ride I managed to catch up with some friends within the ranks of DLR cast members. I don't usually report cast chat but I found two of the things I heard so entertaining I thought I would share them here.

As always please remember anything and everything you hear about what may or may not happen at The Walt Disney Company -- regardless of how reliable the source -- is subject to change and revision right up to the moment it happens.

First Sleeping Beauty's Castle, contrary to earlier reports it now looks like the Castle will neither be painted all gold or all white nor will it be out fitted with thousands of fiber optics. Park traditionalists have managed to convince TDA it should be restored to its Opening Day look. Since this will involve very little expense TDA is expected to embrace this idea.

Next there is the world-premiere of Walt Disney Pictures Pirates of The Caribbean The Curse of The Black Pearl. You may know that the studio folks in Burbank plan on holding the premiere in late June in Disneyland along the Rivers of America. There has been much chat on the web about how the event will effectively wall off whole sections of the park to paying customers. Now comes word that for security reasons the Studio in Burbank wants the entire park to close down at six o'clock instead. The added security of closing the park to the public will also allow all the invited VIPs and guests to roam the park as part of the après cinema party.

All sorts of ideas are being tossed around as to what can be done for guests who suddenly at five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon find themselves on the receiving end of the bums rush towards Disneyland's front gates. One plan has guest relations giving out free one-day admissions to everyone as they leave the park. The problem with that idea is one of compensating Annual Passholders who, if given the free passes, could in turn give them away to thousands of people who were not put out by the early closing.

Another idea is to give everyone in Disneyland admission to Disney's California Adventure as they exit the park. As an added incentive DCA would feature a surprise performance or event by some famous person or group, famous but not famous enough to be offended by not being invited to the exclusive premiere going on across the Esplanade.

The problem with the second idea is essentially the same thing that's wrong with the whole idea of closing Disneyland down at six o'clock on a Saturday in late June. By late June, when this event is supposed to take place, Disneyland is typically open until midnight -- Main Street will stay open an additional hour for your shopping convenience. Attendance at the park can range anywhere from forty to seventy thousand guests depending on the weather and events. DCA was designed for peak crowds of fewer than forty thousand. If Disneyland draws sixty thousand visitors that day and half of them decide to move over to DCA and if DCA has about twenty thousand guests already in the park, well you can see how it could quickly bring DCA to its knees.

Then there is the public relations nightmare that could be created by people who booked Disneyland vacations months in advance believing they would be able to spend that day in Disneyland itself until midnight and conveniently shop on Main Street until 1:00AM. There will be thousands of folks who come to the park looking forward to the Believe There's Magic in The Stars fireworks display. And, let's not forget about the dozens of folks who come to Disneyland every Saturday night to Swing Dance at the Plaza Gardens.

I have been hoping to attend the Pirates premiere as a member of the media. (Editor's note: Please note columnist's shameless ploy for invitation to star studded event.) I want to cover it for JHM.com. Now, however, if this last little tidbit proves to be true I'm not so sure that the real story might not be taking place outside the park in the Esplanade. Then again maybe the new TDA media relations staff will be able to present the story as a matter of anti-terror security and convince the public that it's in their best interest to close Disneyland on a Saturday night in June.

C'ya real soon!