By Erich Schwartzel
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- When he took over Walt Disney Co.'s
theme-park division last May, Josh D'Amaro had an unusual asset: a
vacated Disneyland.
The 66-year-old Southern California park had been closed since
March of last year, when Covid-19 swept across the U.S., and would
remain inactive even as Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., resumed
operations in July at limited capacity.
California officials only recently lifted restrictions that
cleared the way for Disneyland to reopen on April 30. On a recent
afternoon, Mr. D'Amaro walked the barren streets of a park that
will look and feel significantly different when it reopens in a few
weeks -- and for reasons that go beyond the pandemic.
"We don't get a pause button often," he said in an interview
conducted on the empty, yet still pristine, Disneyland grounds that
called to mind a miniature-size Mayberry, complete with a quiet
City Hall, an unused Fire Department and a closed movie theater.
The park had closed just a handful of times in its history -- and
for cataclysmic events like John F. Kennedy's assassination and the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- when Covid-19 shut the gates
for nearly 14 months.
A Disney veteran, Mr. D'Amaro is running the world's most famous
theme parks at a critical time, with the pandemic changing the ways
people interact and have fun. The park closures have caused
billions of dollars to disappear from Disney's balance sheets and
forced thousands of layoffs, and it remains to be seen how
fervently consumers will return to outdoor activities and summer
travel.
Mr. D'Amaro's message to investors: The lost time has been an
opportunity to update Disney's theme-park business beyond paint
touch-ups and polishing the statue of Mickey Mouse. (Working on the
Mickey statue during normal business is a challenge, since few
guests tolerate leaving the park without getting a chance to see
it, said Mr. D'Amaro.)
The yearlong hiatus has allowed Disney to re-evaluate some park
traditions deemed anachronistic or problematic, including some
older rides at both domestic locations with outdated cultural
representations or racist connotations.
At both U.S. parks, the Jungle Cruise ride is being updated to
address negative depictions of "natives" featured in the
attraction's narrative. Executives also had decided earlier to
redesign Splash Mountain -- originally based on "Song of the
South," a racist Disney movie from the 1940s -- with characters
from "The Princess and the Frog." Mr. D'Amaro said listening to
such concerns from visitors and workers and finding the right
response will remain a major part of his job.
"We've got an obligation to make sure we reflect the world," he
said.
In making adjustments to Disneyland during its closure, Mr.
D'Amaro risks fan disappointment. The park is one of the company's
most emotionally compelling connections to consumers, which means
he walks a tightrope to embrace the new without alienating those
who cherish the old. Take out an old tree, and you've suddenly
removed a site where countless Disney fans proposed to their
significant others.
With Disneyland closed to visitors, Mr. D'Amaro has worked to
define his priorities atop the company's parks, experiences and
product division. He said one goal is to introduce more
technological elements to the park's offerings that might pull in
nontraditional customers -- even speculating at one point during
the interview about a virtual-reality experience that takes place
on Disneyland's Main Street. It represents a parks-division
response to a companywide shift, crystallized during the pandemic,
toward more direct-to-consumer relationships and personally
tailored interactions with the entertainment giant.
The pandemic has forced some of those updates already. Disney
now offers contactless park entry through Apple iPhones and
Watches, and the use of mobile ordering for food at its parks has
risen from 9% of transactions before the pandemic to more than
84%.
Incorporating more technology into the inherently in-person
Disneyland experience reflects a new Disney, one in which online
and offline worlds are increasingly blurred. That will be evident,
Mr. D'Amaro said, in the Avengers Campus, a park expansion slated
to open later this year that incorporates Disney's lucrative Marvel
Studios superheroes. The 50-year-old executive, whose division
earlier this year closed dozens of Disney stores to encourage
online shopping, wants to turn the company's parks into a
"megaverse" where such fluidity between the physical park and
digital world is encouraged.
Wall Street is watching. The Disney parks division had been one
of the company's most reliable moneymakers; between 2013 and 2017,
its annual income rose 70%. In 2019, the last full year before
Covid-19, the unit's operating income rose 11% -- top among Disney
divisions -- as crowds regularly reached capacity on busy days.
Since the pandemic began, the company has given priority to its
streaming efforts, especially with movie theaters closed. Its
flagship service, Disney+, has delighted investors with its rapid
growth but has yet to turn a profit.
The pandemic quickened Disney's push into streaming, and Mr.
D'Amaro similarly accelerated experiments with ticketing options,
introducing a reservation system and canceling the company's
popular annual pass program. That program will likely be replaced
by a suite of choices better tailored to different kinds of park
customers, he said, whether families who visit together or adults
who come alone. While that could broaden the pool of potential
customers, changes to such programs typically anger some of
Disney's biggest fans. The company has already faced criticism for
increasing ticket prices to control the flow of guests.
The reservation system will ensure Disneyland reopens within
capacity limits, set by California officials at 25%. As at Walt
Disney World, the park will institute a mask mandate and
social-distancing guidelines. Characters like Goofy and Cinderella
will say hello from afar -- though the only "cast members" visible
while Mr. D'Amaro strolled around the park on Wednesday were
cleaning crews working in freshly ironed uniforms. And trademark
daily events like parades and nightly fireworks displays have been
canceled.
Mr. D'Amaro wouldn't speculate on whether visitors would return
to the park with pre-pandemic enthusiasm, but he noted the response
to some of the limited entertainment options the company has
offered, such as a $75 ticket that lets customers shop and eat in
parts of Disney's California Adventure Park. Those tickets have
routinely sold out, and some visitors have been said to burst into
tears upon being reunited with Mickey Mouse.
Write to Erich Schwartzel at erich.schwartzel@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 08, 2021 16:44 ET (20:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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