Disneyland's golden years

LOS ANGELES, May 13 (UPI) -- The Walt Disney Co. has launched what it calls the biggest event in Disney theme park history: an 18-month long, worldwide celebration of the 50th anniversary of Disneyland in Southern California.

Disney is calling the event "The Happiest Celebration on Earth" -- a play on the slogan the company has applied to Disneyland itself, "The Happiest Place on Earth." All 10 of Disney's theme parks around the world will take part in the celebration with special attractions and programs.

The resort in Anaheim opened on July 17, 1955, in ceremonies emceed by three leading TV personalities of the day: Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings and Ronald Reagan. Reagan went on to become governor of California in 1966 and was elected U.S. president in 1980.

Linkletter returned to Disneyland recently to help announce the golden anniversary celebration and recalled the day that Walt Disney drove him to Anaheim in the early 1950s to show him the spot that he planned to turn into an amusement park. Linkletter said he told Disney he wasn't sure that "people would ride for two-and-a-half hours in a car to ride a roller coaster."

Today, Disney reports that its theme parks attract 100 million visitors annually.

When Disney reported a 71 percent increase in profits for the last quarter, the figure included a 12 percent increase in revenue from its parks and resorts. The company said the increase resulted largely from higher theme park attendance and hotel occupancy at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.

Disney's park and resort numbers are part of a positive overall trend in the travel industry, following a downturn that began with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and continued through a succession of problems that included the SARS outbreak and the war in Iraq.

Betsy O'Rourke, senior vice president of marketing for the Washington, D.C.-based Travel Industry Association of America (TIA), told United Press International the industry began to see signs of recovery in the last quarter of 2003 and is finally recovering from the downturn.

"The reality is that we are just making a comeback and it's really happening the first quarter of 2004. It's the first time we've have plus signs in every quarter," she said, adding that the industry has yet to fully recover from the downturn, but things are looking up.

"What's happening is for the first time we finally believe we can use the 'R' word," she said. "We finally believe we are in recovery."

There was something of a silver lining in Sept. 11 for the travel industry: a significant increase in travel within the United States. O'Rourke attributed that to an urge for nostalgia among U.S. vacationers. According to TIA figures, 38 percent of family vacations in 2003 included three generations, and multi-generational vacations are the third-fastest growing category of family vacations.

"Parents wanted their families to enjoy the vacations they enjoyed as kids," she said.

Disneyland is likely to benefit from that trend, as well as from an energetic promotion and marketing campaign to support the celebration.

Walt Disney Parks and Resorts President Jay Rasulo said the campaign will feature a targeted message around the world, with participation by such corporate partners as Coca-Cola, Kodak, Visa, Bank One and McDonald's.

"Part of our strategy is to find messages and communication vehicles to break through to consumers, to let them know that something really special is happening," he said.

The Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland will get a bit of a makeover as part of the celebration. Its turrets will be adorned with five crowns, one for each decade. The nightly fireworks display will be larger than any other in the park's history, and the company has sent designers to China to secure fireworks that no one has ever seen.

The park will also feature a new daily parade, Walt Disney's Parade of Dreams, which promises to be bigger than any parade in Disneyland history. It will include floats by Raul R. Rodriguez, a frequent prizewinner for his work on Rose Parade float designs.

The park is also remodeling the popular Space Mountain roller coast ride and plans to open "Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters," a new interactive ride.

Walt Disney World's four theme parks will import attractions from other Disney parks.

Magic Kingdom will offer "Cinderellabration," a musical show from Tokyo Disneyland Park. Disney-MGM will offer "Lights, Motors, Action!" a stunt show from Walt Disney Studios Paris. And Animal Kingdom will introduce Lucky the Dinosaur, the first-ever free-roaming "audio-animatronics" creation from the company's engineering division, Walt Disney Imagineering.

Tokyo DisneySea is getting two new attractions: an as-yet-unnamed roller coaster and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, scheduled to open in 2006. Hong Kong Disneyland is scheduled to open either in late 2005 or early '06.

Of all the features that the company announced as part of the celebration, the one that seems to have generated the most enthusiasm among Disney fans is the relocation of one of the company's two cruise ships from the East Coast to the West Coast for 12 weeks, beginning May 28, 2005.

The company reportedly had 400 phone inquiries for those cruises within an hour after the announcement was made, and the relocation cruises -- through the Panama Canal and back -- were said to be booked solid in short order.

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