From Eisners Shareholder letter...
"Certainly, the big event of our domestic theme parks this year was
the expansion of the world's very first theme park -- Disneyland --
with the addition of a second park -- Disney's California Adventure --
a shopping district -- Downtown Disney -- and a magnificent resort
hotel -- Disney's Grand Californian. Put them all together and we now
have a fantastic destination resort. Unfortunately, we launched it in
a year of abnormal rain (for Southern California), a softening
economy, a California energy crisis and, of course, the uncertainty
following September 11. Unlike Tokyo DisneySea, the crowds that the
expansion has attracted have not been of the magnitude we had hoped
for in its inaugural year. But we now have a vastly improved asset in
Anaheim, which -- as the economy improves, and the lights stay on, and
the Bug's Life children's land opens this fall, and The Twilight Zone
Tower of Terror opens in a few years -- will turn the park, like our
others, into the blockbuster we all know it is. As Richard Corliss of
Time magazine wrote, "At this splendid Disney adventure, visitors need
never stop glowing." "
"Certainly, the big event of our domestic theme parks this year was
the expansion of the world's very first theme park -- Disneyland --
with the addition of a second park -- Disney's California Adventure --
a shopping district -- Downtown Disney -- and a magnificent resort
hotel -- Disney's Grand Californian. Put them all together and we now
have a fantastic destination resort. Unfortunately, we launched it in
a year of abnormal rain (for Southern California), a softening
economy, a California energy crisis and, of course, the uncertainty
following September 11. Unlike Tokyo DisneySea, the crowds that the
expansion has attracted have not been of the magnitude we had hoped
for in its inaugural year. But we now have a vastly improved asset in
Anaheim, which -- as the economy improves, and the lights stay on, and
the Bug's Life children's land opens this fall, and The Twilight Zone
Tower of Terror opens in a few years -- will turn the park, like our
others, into the blockbuster we all know it is. As Richard Corliss of
Time magazine wrote, "At this splendid Disney adventure, visitors need
never stop glowing." "