Disney’s first international theme park in Tokyo, Japan was not owned by Disney and was a franchise operation built and operated by a Japanese developer (O’Rourke, 2007). As such, the Japanese developer understood their culture better than Disney and made appropriate changes to the park, rides, and merchandise to account for Japanese culture differences. Disney’s future efforts in Europe and Hong Kong would not be as smooth. Following the success of Disneyland Tokyo, Michael Eisner, the then new CEO of Disney in 1984, expressed his displeasure with how passive Disney’s commitment had been with Tokyo Disneyland’s development and operations; considering it to have been a big mistake (O’Rourke, 2007). He announced the planned development …show more content…
Like with Euro Disney, Disney partnered with a local company, in this case, it was a newly formed company created by both the Hong Kong SAR and Disney. Disney felt that Hong Kong could be a jumping off point for further brand penetration into the Chinese market because Hong Kong has a mix of Eastern and Western cultures. Believing it had learned its lessons with Paris, the park would be directly based on Disney’s United States parks in order to not dilute its brand equity. Changes would be made to retail merchandise, live entertainment and dining and performances would be in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. Disney also employed a feng shui master to help with the layout of the part, utilized the number 8 throughout the park, which is a symbol of prosperity and removed the number 4 from hotel floors and other areas due to its association with death (Okumus, Altinay, & Chathoth, 2010). Despite these considerations, Disney was unprepared for opening day. Mainlander Chinese were relatively unacquainted with Disney’s stories and characters and as such were not sure what to do in the part. The park was also small, taking only 30 minutes to walk through. Disney later made mistakes with holidays for Hong Kong and mainland China that resulted in unexpected surges of attendance that it had not planned
The Walt Disney Company is a highly diversified media and entertainment company that has been growing by leaps and bounds since its inception in the late 1920’s. In the past few decades, The Walt Disney Company has expanded into numerous markets and diversified its business greatly. The company states that their corporate strategy is targeted at creating high-quality family content, exploiting technological innovations to make entertainment experiences more memorable, and expanding internationally. Upon studying the happenings of the company throughout the years, it is easy to see that the company is executing this strategy well through numerous strategic moves in the industry.
In communication, Disney is most vulnerable in public and government relationships. Eisner developed in proposal of a new theme land near the national capital; however the ideal property was on historical and important property within the Commonwealth of Virginia. Destroying history in order to make potential profit did not stick with citizen and land effect of the idea.
Disney’s long-run success is mainly due to creating value through diversification. Their corporate strategies (primarily under CEO Eisner) include three dimensions: horizontal and geographic expansion as well as vertical integration. Disney is a prime example of how to achieve long-run success through the choices of business, the choice of how many activities to undertake, the choice of how many businesses to be in, the choice of how to manage a portfolio of businesses and the choice of how to create synergies between those businesses (3, p.191-221). All these choices and decisions are made through Disney’s corporate strategies and enabled them to reach long-term success. One will discuss Disney’s long-run success through a general approach. Eisner’s turnaround of the company and his specific implications/strategies will be examined in detail in part II. Disney could reach long-run success mainly through the creation of value due to diversification and the management and fostering of creativity, brand image and synergies between businesses (1, p.11-14).
A basic of Disney theme parks is the Main Street USA zone. This section features highly in all of the parks, usually coming right after the entrance. Key services like Guest Relations are located in this section, inside the "City Hall" (HK Disney Source, 2014). There are a number of elements to the Main Street, USA exhibit, and these will be discussed along with the history of Main Street USA in this paper. In particular, how the different elements of Main Street USA work together are covered. The concept has proven to be long-lasting, even across cultures, because of its magical portrayal of idealized American life, which draws heavily on Walt Disney's own childhood experiences.
Disney failed to realize that while its strategy in Japan worked for Japan, its Japan strategy was not going to work in Paris. Disney decided to photo copy their operation and learned that was not acceptable. In 1992, several unforeseen issues arose that Disney was not prepared to handle. There were transatlantic airfare wars and currency movements that lead people to avoid traveling to Paris. Also, Disney was expecting a flocking of French people to visit the park; yet again basing their assumptions on the performance of the Japanese park (Cateora & Graham, 2007).
3. The whole Disney idea was not sitting well with the French people. For example, during a trip to France in 1989 Michael Eisner was hit with eggs by a French columnist. When a culture shows somebody this much disrespect, take it as a hint and get out. The French people were extremely upset at the thought of having an American tourist attraction arrive onto their land. When Japan got Disneyland they welcomed it with open arms. Each culture and country is different as it pertains to other cultures. Japan?s successful adaptation to an American tourist attraction all but guaranteed its success in Europe.
It is being predicted that Disneyland will see a dip due Harry Potter. However, Disneyland too is in the process of adding more attractions. There is a 14 acre expansion plan which would resemble Star Wars. The spokesperson of Disneyland, Suzi Brown has said that, Disney would continue to raise the bars of theme parks and strive to provide an unique experience to tourists. This arms race, however, would do a lot of good for the industry and people as
One of the key factors of the successful diversification is the very strong branding of the name Disney. That the name was famous after the success in the early years made it among other things possible to go into the theme park industry. Evaluated isolated, the theme parks was a success. But when also accounting for the synergies created, the decision to go into this industry was a huge success. It has created a spiral of synergies, where the characters in the movies get more popular due to the parks, as well as the fact that when people are visiting the parks they get stimulated to buy the merchandise. This is just one example of the synergies that exist in Disney. When Michael Eisner took over control in Disney, he kept focusing on same corporate values as earlier, which are quality, creativity, entrepreneurialism and teamwork. These values have been preserved despite of the size of Disney, and are an important factor in sustaining and building the Disney brand.
Euro Disney’s decision to open its Theme Park near Paris has caused a negative publicity in the sight of many French politicians. In fact, they have objected the existence of Theme Parks in the center of their French culture since the park has been viewed as a visible symbol of the U.S. culture. Although Euro Disney marketers probably choose this location, in particularly France, due to the fact that is the center of Europe and could most probably be the most convenient place for people to arrive and settle in their hotel to be entertained. For instance, people from all over Europe could travel quickly to Paris due to short distance and travel convenience like people from Germany or Spain could quickly and conveniently arrive in Paris.
The first theme park opening in 1955 was Disneyland in California. After one full year of construction demands and a total investment of $17 million the Six thousands invitations to the grand opening had been mailed inviting people to experience the magic Disney had created but when the gates opened the Disneyland was far from magical. Workmen were still planting trees, the paint was still wet and the asphalt wasn’t set. The food stalls and restaurants ran out of food due to the high number of people because of counterfeit tickets being sold. Walt Disney didn’t know didn’t know what was going on because his attention was on the live broadcast. The rides broke down shortly after use. When Walt Disney World opened in 1971 the
Since the company was started, Walt Disney has always envisioned more than just making animated movies. In 1952 the company made plans to build its first theme park known as Disneyland (Disney.com, 2011). With the opening of the park the Walt Disney Company initiated a growth strategy that would take them to the global entertainment company that they are known as today. In 1984 the company brought in a new CEO ...
Sparked Walt Disney World in Florida in 1971, Tokyo Disney Resort in Japan in 1983, Euro Disney in Paris in 1992, Hong Kong Disneyland Resort in 2005 and finally Shanghai Disneyland Resort, which is opening in June 2016 (Dehrer). Walt Disney hosted the opening of Disneyland in June 17, 1955 even with all the chaos he managed to give one last sliver of hope to those yet to experience the magic of it all “ To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America, with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.” (Bryman
The Walt Disney plans to expand its presence in other countries too mainly the emerging market like China that offers great opportunity. Due to its highly advanced infrastructure and higher population, the Disney already made a biggest investment till date on a development and construction of Disneyland theme park in Shanghai, China. The success of Disneyland Hong Kong and the presence of 330 million people that resides within the 3 hour commute to Shanghai allows the Disney to invest $5.5 billion on this theme park. The Disney CEO states that the park will be open for the visitors in the early The company know its various revenue generating streams very well.
In 2005, Hong Kong Disneyland was opened. Before the open of Hong Kong Disneyland, the public always had a heat debate on whether the park would bring any problems to Hong Kong from the perspective of livelihood and economy. However, nobody realized that disneyization has already been affecting our daily lives. In the following essay, shopping centre Langham Place of Hong Kong will be used as an example to illustrate how shopping culture in Hong Kong are influenced by disneyization.
Japanese is the main language used throughout the park, accompanied only by English on signs. The workers in Tokyo Disneyland are only required to speak Japanese, many menus are written completely in Japanese and some games and live shows feature only Japanese as a language option. Many alterations were made to the layout of the park, changing the names of many different areas that contained phrases with context that was difficult for the Japanese locals to understand (e.g. the transition from ‘Frontierland’ to ‘Westernland’).5 In an attempt to maximise profit, Tokyo Disneyland has become a much more localised theme park than Hong Kong Disneyland, and has found great success with that original goal due to the Japanese cultural tendency to appropriate imported ideas into completely new and entirely Japanese creations. In comparison, Hong Kong Disneyland has been much less successful, which can be credited to its far more Americanised system of management that does not cater to the demands of the locals to the extent of the heterogenetic Tokyo