At Disney, reality shadows fantasy world
Orlando shooting, and attack by alligator help tarnish the park’s fairyland image
LOS ANGELES— Disney theme parks have always been about trading an imperfect world for a perfect one.
There is no trash blowing down Main Street, USA. It’s nothing but happy trappers and singing bears over in Frontierland. Dream big, and the gleaming technology of Tomorrowland just might come true.
In case the castles are too subtle, Disney outright promises escape from the real world.
The welcome signs at Disneyland in California and Walt Disney World in Florida read, “Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy.”
Lately, however, it has become harder for Americans taking or planning a Disney vacation to completely buy into the company’s sales pitch.
The mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla., cast a shadow on nearby Disney World. Then word leaked that the gunman had also scoped out a Disney shopping complex.
Next came an incident that was shocking enough to kick the nightclub carnage off some front pages: a toddler was dragged by an alligator into a Disney World lake and drowned.
“Is Disney’s Image Tarnished?” a headline on an investment website asked Monday, with the alligator attack — perhaps the most gruesome incident in Disney’s 45-year history in Florida — as a particular source of concern. Whether last week’s events reverberate for Disney in a business sense (beyond a possible lawsuit stemming from the alligator attack) is a question that will only be answered in the months to come, peak season for theme park vacations.
If families cancel reservations or the pace of reservations noticeably slows, then the answer is yes. If they do not — as most analysts predict — then Disney will power forward, recovering from this PR nightmare as it has from others.
The company’s stock price is already improving, up about 3 per cent since Thursday, when authorities discovered Lane Graves’ body. (Blockbuster results at the box office for Finding Dory helped, as did the opening of Shanghai Disneyland.)
“You now have that same dynamic here in China that existed in the ’50s and ’60s in the United States, as people started looking for more leisure activities. It’s palpable.” ROBERT IGER DISNEY CEO
But the intangible cost will be much harder to measure.
Even without the incidents, Disney was having to work harder to pull off its “not a worry in the world” magic trick.
Record crowds have made the experience less joyful. So has technology: Never mind their cynical parents, American children, babysat by iPads from the time they were in diapers, are not as easily mesmerized by analog rides like It’s a Small World and Autopia, with its little cars putt-putting along a track.
Safety measures are also affecting the experience. In response to increased security concerns, Disney and Universal began using metal detectors at their Orlando parks in December, the first time the companies deployed such measures on a large scale. In January, a man with two guns was arrested at a Disneyland Paris hotel, sending a new ripple of fear around the Disney empire.
It’s awfully hard to forget the real world when you’re being wanded.
Shanghai Disneyland, formally unveiled Thursday, also has rows of metal detectors at its graceful front gates.
But the mood at this newest Disney park — the first on the Chinese mainland — was utterly joyful last week, even as the grim news from Orlando made its way to visitors’ smartphones. Spending time in the park for four days, three of them with pay- ing guests, I was struck by how fully intact that classic Disney sense of wonder really seemed.
Without question, the excitement and pomp around the opening contributed to that feeling.
But something else was happening at Shanghai Disneyland. I got the sense that this was what it must have felt like at the original Disneyland in the 1950s.
Visitors were very obviously awestruck — this fantastical place, smelling of fresh paint and new vinyl seat covers, was something they had never seen before. Chinese guests seemed eager to fall under Disney’s spell. The real world? Forget it. Just point us toward Peter Pan’s Flight.
Robert Iger, Disney’s chief executive, alluded to this fascination as we toured Shanghai Disneyland.
“I grew up in the United States dreaming of going to Disneyland one day — unaffordable for us, by the way, and I didn’t go until I was a parent,” he told me. “You now have that same dynamic here in China that existed in the ’50s and ’60s in the United States, as people started looking for more leisure activities. It’s palpable.”
In Shanghai, Disney’s rides are fully updated technological marvels — no more jerky animatronics in Pirates of the Caribbean, which is now fully digital, with boats controlled by underwater magnets and IMAX-style screens with video.
In another difference from Disney’s domestic parks, even rankand-file cashiers and hotel maids seem thrilled to be there. When they waved and chirped, “Have a magical day!” they appeared to mean it, rather than just repeating a corporate mantra.
On an especially difficult week for Disney in the United States, Shanghai proved that the company’s pixie dust still works. Even if you have to go to the other side of the world to find it.