ALMOST THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH
HOW CLOSE WE CAME TO A COOMERA DISNEYLAND
IT’S a secret chapter in Gold Coast history ... how we almost became the happiest place on Earth.
Instead, the day an international meeting was held to turn an 810ha Coomera plot into a world centre of tourism, became the day that Disney died. For the Gold Coast, anyway.
The lion-hearted man behind the mouse-eared plan, Runaway Bay-based developer Gordon McAlister, said the 1990s deal was down to formalities when Disney chief executive Michael Eisner pulled out.
“It was a bitter blow,” said Mr McAlister, who was behind the original Jupiters Casino development in the early 1980s, the creator of the SeaWorld Nara Resort and Brisbane’s Treasury Casino.
“The president of Disney theme parks absolutely loved the plan. We were so far down the line, we had all the impressions drawn up, the site mapped out, the land optioned. We had the state and federal governments on our side and it all just fell at the final hurdle.
“We got to the last meeting in Burbank, California, when Michael Eisner stepped in and said ‘No, I want to go to China’.
“That was it, he was the boss. He wanted Disney dollars in China, he was looking at Disney as a whole corporation, not just a theme park. And that’s how Hong Kong got a Disneyland instead. “We got that close.” Mr McAlister said many within Disney remained fans of an Australian site, be- lieving the two cultures aligned closely.
He said executives flew to the Gold Coast a number of times, scouting the site and laying plans.
“The theme park president was really our No.1 fan. He liked that culturally we were so similar to where Disney has come from,” he said.
“He never supported Euro Disney in France and didn’t like Tokyo Disney either. In fact, Tokyo was never going to happen except that Japan sweetened the deal so well they literally could not say no.
“Disney really is a culture. I remember meeting with one of the executives, he was a nice guy, he’d been working with us all day. We asked him what did he do to relax when he went home at night?
“He said: ‘I stop smiling’. That sums it up there.
“It’s a strict organisation but that’s why they are so incredibly successful. If a guest walks out of a Disney park with a dollar in their pocket, they’ve failed.” Mr McAlister says despite the strong backing of then-Queensland premier Rob Borbidge and present and past prime ministers, including Bob Hawke, the doomed plan came from humble beginnings.
Mr Borbidge yesterday said the deal was well advanced to build Disney on land near Dreamworld, originally bought for a failed World Expo bid.
“It had got to the stage where there were proposals before Disney and proposals before the government,” he said.
“Part of what would have been required was a pretty sig- nificant contribution from the state government – in those days the government had plenty of money and plenty of reserves and our feeling at the time was that it was worth pursuing.”
But then “along came Pauline Hanson”, Mr Borbidge said – his government was out, Peter Beattie’s was in, and he never found out what happened to unseal the deal.
Mr McAlister said he was still hopeful Disney would one day open an Australian-based park.
“The impact that Disneyland would have had on the Gold Coast is almost unimaginable,” he said. “Orlando was in the middle of nowhere when Disneyworld was built, but look at it now. That could have been our story too.
“We estimated about five million visitors each year, which is small for Disney but
huge for us. That was one of the arguments against us, that we would be too small – and yet that’s exactly what Hong Kong Disney turns over.
“Many Asian tourists would prefer to come here to do Disney than Tokyo or Hong Kong, and it would be a deciding factor for a lot of tourists from farther afield – the cherry on top that wins them over.
“That’s actually how this
whole thing got started. I was having coffee with a friend of mine from Sheraton, it was just after I’d finished doing the Treasury Casino in Brisbane.
“I told him that this idea had been bugging me for a while – that I really wanted to have a crack at bringing Disneyland Down Under. He looked at me and said he’d been thinking the same thing.
“So that was it, we said ‘let’s do it’. We had a lot of industry contacts and Disney was interested from the word go.”
Mr McAlister said despite the high-profile names involved and lengthy, prolific meetings, the team managed to keep the plans low-key.
He said while the plans would need to be updated, he still believed the idea held merit.
“I would love to see it happen in my lifetime,” he said.