Why DisneyQuest failed

[eliza61nyc]

I only went once and it was because it was included in our waterparks and more ticket, and my husband wanted to go. I think one of the reasons it failed is that a lot of people go to WDW beacuse it's beautiful, most of it is outside, and Florida is a place with good weather. The last thing I want to do when I go to Florida is spend a few hours inside a dark, ugly arcade.

ABSOLUTELY!! SPOT ON.
We went twice also because it was included in our park tickets but the first thing I thought was my kids play solo video games enough at home, the reason we vacation is to have a more inclusive 'away from a screen" experience.

Next since the old guy and I really aren't into video games there wasn't much for us to do. we ended up simply following the kiddos around are the ran from one place to another.

 

[lazyboy97o]

I wonder if Disney Quest wasn't just an attempt to stave off and crush Orlando's Wonder Works on I drive which has a similar concept. They both opened in 1998. To keep people from going to Wonder Works and instead have them spend all their money at Downtown Disney/Disney Springs. The high admission price was simply to capture the consumer's dollars so they would have to choose between Disney Quest and Wonderworks.

Once that mission was accomplished there was little incentive to upgrade or promote Disney Quest.

How was this mission accomplished? WonderWorks is open and DisneyQuest is a pile of rubble.

 

[Cmdr_Crimson]

For example if they opened a Kid Zania on I Drive, I'm sure Disney would motor to get a Disney Zania at Disney Springs ASAP.

They are building one here within the Suburbs of Chicago....http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-kidzania-mall-entertainment-0323-biz-20170322-story.html

 

[thomas998]

I wonder if Disney Quest wasn't just an attempt to stave off and crush Orlando's Wonder Works on I drive which has a similar concept. They both opened in 1998. To keep people from going to Wonder Works and instead have them spend all their money at Downtown Disney/Disney Springs. The high admission price was simply to capture the consumer's dollars so they would have to choose between Disney Quest and Wonderworks.

Once that mission was accomplished there was little incentive to upgrade or promote Disney Quest.

No, Disney Quest was being planned and worked on before Wonderworks, it is just a fluke that they both opened during the same year. Disney Quest was killed by the failure of the one they opened in Chicago which gave Disney cold feet on opening any of the others that were planned. Had Chicago not be a failure you probably would have seen them in most major cities in the US by now... but once they killed the plans to expand it also took with it the development of new games and attractions. It is one thing to create a VR or motion ride if you are planning on having 50 different places using them... but once Disney Quest was relegated to an Orlando only location it removed any incentives to create new things for them.

Frankly it was a good idea that was killed by whoever was in charge of picking locations. Chicago was not a good place for their non-resort operation, and even if you were going to do Chicago you needed a better location as they were probably not in the best location for their target customers.

 

[ppete1975]

Lots of things... for one it was next door to Disney world, and down the street from Universal and a million other theme parks.
The original idea of Philly and Chicago was the right path build them everywhere.
Make a larger dave and busters but make it Disney add animatronics maybe a dark ride or 3 make the entire theming and experience Disney. An indoor Disney park could work, even an arcade but it needs to be in a cold area with no competition or the middle of the us with no competition. Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri would be great areas especially after you get the local government to pay for a huge part of it, no competition people will travel to it.
There you could add Disney resorts, huge strip mall. I honestly think if put in a small town near a large town with airport in the middle of the US would be a huge success.

 

[Master Yoda]

As others have said, it failed because it was never updated and it was poorly maintained.

The games they started with were state of the art. Those same games were completely obsolete inside of a few years and many remained unchanged for DQ's entire 16 year run. By the end, a freaking Wii was a more advanced gaming platform.

 

[Cmdr_Crimson]

As others have said, it failed because it was never updated and it was poorly maintained.

The games they started with were state of the art. Those same games were completely obsolete inside of a few years and many remained unchanged for DQ's entire 16 year run. By the end, a freaking Wii was a more advanced gaming platform.

Not only that they were still beta testing Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride VR in what was the Imagineering Labs at Innoventions during the Epcot 94 era..Shown in this clip from Martin's Innoventions tribute..

 

[thomas998]

They both opened in 1998. If you assume that Disney Quest was being planned and worked on one would have to assume that Wonder Works was also being planned and worked on as well. So unless they both were top secret projects, I think the fact that they came out at the same time tends to indicate that they did in fact know about each others projects and that it wasn't just this huge coincidence.

I'm sure Disney has their Disney intelligence keeping up to date on all possible competition for every single dollar.

I have no doubt that Disney will open up a Kidzania type attraction near Disney Springs or an entire Kidzania type Land in the next year or two as Kidzania USA is set to launch winter of 2018.

Well Disney's Eisner created Disney Regional Entertainment to create DisneyQuest and other entertainment options like ESPN zone in 1996... Which is a year before the company that created Wonderworks was even created... So yeah I'm pretty sure Disney was working on the DisneyQuestion option before Wonderworks... You have to remember DisneyQuest was a much more involved creation than Wonderworks and also needed to be integrated into Downtown Disney so it would naturally take more time to develop and create than Wonderworks which is fairly simply design wise.

 

[lazyboy97o]

They both opened in 1998. If you assume that Disney Quest was being planned and worked on one would have to assume that Wonder Works was also being planned and worked on as well. So unless they both were top secret projects, I think the fact that they came out at the same time tends to indicate that they did in fact know about each others projects and that it wasn't just this huge coincidence.

I'm sure Disney has their Disney intelligence keeping up to date on all possible competition for every single dollar.

I have no doubt that Disney will open up a Kidzania type attraction near Disney Springs or an entire Kidzania type Land in the next year or two as Kidzania USA is set to launch winter of 2018.

You’re only focusing on Florida. DisneyQuest was part of a larger initiative.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Just like Wonder Works which has locations in Orlando, Tennessee, Panama City, Myrtle Beach and Syracuse.

But overall Wonder Works never really took off like I guess they were thinking it could of.

Kidzania has taken off and become huge and at the time they probably all thought (Wonder Works and Disney) that Wonder Works/Disney Quest would become that big.

Those are relatively small tourist cities. There is no overlap with them and Chicago, Philadelphia and Toronto. WonderWorks obviously took off enough to expand, unlike DisneyQuest.

 

[Cmdr_Crimson]

Oh, what it could have been....

 

[TwilightZone]

Oh, what it could have been....

why does the concept art always have to look better?

 

[EOD K9]

why does the concept art always have to look better?

Because it is Blue Sky until a budget hawk looks at it and asks, "Where can we save money"?
Also, KidZania looks awesome!

 

[OliveMcFly]

I remember the first time I went I was let down because it seemed like there were more arcade games than anything else. I was really looking for VR rides. The ones they had were neat but in 2017 my nephew has a smaller and better VR system in the living room. This place could have been great but they never updated anything.

 

[tl77]

speaking of disneyquest, let's not forget philly's infamous "disney hole". I don't live there, but if my search results are true it's been there since at least 1999

the above is from 99

and here is what it looks like today

I lived a few blocks from this when it was announced, and then cancelled, people in Philly were really not happy about the Disney hole

 

[matt clark]

The Nba Experience at Universal was sort of fun. They had a really good chicken alfredo pizza. They had a shop where you could buy jerseys. They had a few pop a shot racks. They used to hold draft parties and when live games werent going they'd show nice highlight reals of classic nba moments. I was a BIG Dennis Rodman fan back when it was open and they had like a 2 level high black and white picture of Rodman diving out of bounds to save a ball. He was almost completely horizontal to the floor. I also liked that they had bronzed plastic basketballs outside with plastic hand molds of real NBA players. i used to put my little hands in them and see how much bigger people like Shaq and Olujawons were than mine. The things i valued at the old NBA restaurant I HIGGGHLLLYYY doubt Disney will try to replicate. So im really not excited about it at all. Im probably their biggest demographic too. A 32 year old that likes the NBA.

The way the concept drawings look... it looks like a slightly larger NBC restaurant at city walk. I like that restaurant, but its a good RESTAURANT. This NBA experience is replacing something way bigger than a simple place to eat. They better have some sort of VR experience where you or a group can play against lebron or MJ or something. Maybe homage the arcade vibe of disney quest and put up a section with pop a shot... nba jam arcades.. etc.

 

[Cmdr_Crimson]

The way the concept drawings look... it looks like a slightly larger NBC restaurant at city walk. I like that restaurant, but its a good RESTAURANT. This NBA experience is replacing something way bigger than a simple place to eat. They better have some sort of VR experience where you or a group can play against lebron or MJ or something. Maybe homage the arcade vibe of disney quest and put up a section with pop a shot... nba jam arcades.. etc.

I'm still leaning towards an ESPN Zone vibe to the place...

 

[tl77]

I think there were a lot of problem with Disney Quest advancing beyond the one in Chicago

1. Was choosing to build them in the downtown sections of major cities in the first place, where not only are the costs for rent and taxes higher, but people with families and small kids, who are the target audience, aren't real likely to take their family out of the suburbs, drive to and pay to park in a city. They should have been built in the suburbs, I remember hearing about this thing called Disney Quest coming to Philadelphia and thinking "that sounds like a great concept, by why Philly? 40 minutes outside the city is The King of Prussia Mall, which is the largest shopping complex on the east coast, that's where they should put it". And just recently at The Exton Square Mall, in Exton PA, a Dave and Buster type chain called Round One, which a combination bowling ally/restaurant bar/arcade, opened a location in a huge space that was a former JC Penny store, and the same mall also has a indoor mini golf at a former Abercrombie & Fitch

2. The one flat admission fee always kept me from visiting the Disney Quest in WDW, because if you don't really know what is inside the thing you're not real anxious to pay a fee to find out, plus it seems like it would be difficult to finance all the technology in a Disney Quest with the main revenue being that one flat rate. As a kid in the late 80's and early 90's I dumped plenty of quarters in to Video Arcade Machines, and that pay-per-play system still works for places like Chuck E Cheese, Round One, and Dave & Busters

3. The biggest problem for me was them calling it an "indoor theme park" when clearly it a fancy video arcade. Them trying to over sell it just made me suspicious of ever going to see it... but I love going to The Disney Store at the mall, I just wish there was more to do at the Disney Store than just shop. The concpet of a "Disney Quest" is still appealing though, having a mini, one day, one afternoon, Disney vacation experience close to home is still something I'd go do from time to time. A "theme park" is more than just attractions, it's also shopping and dining, I think if they were to expanded a few Disney Store locations to include dining and Disney Quest type entertainment me and my family would certainly go check it out. We go to the Disney Parks and stores fairly often already

 

[DreamfinderGuy]

The whole thing with DisneyQuest is that it was never updated, so people lost interest. The Florida one was never meant to be a big headliner attraction, just another thing to do in Downtown Disney. DisneyQuest was a Disney away from Disney, if you are already at WDW, why go to an imitation experience which was basically just another arcade. It's sad what happened to DQ, and I loved it but the times caught up with it, and they made no attempt to fix things. :,(

 

[Cmdr_Crimson]

Even with them taking up store space for a VR Attraction that could have fit perfectly in DQ would have worked better there....I'm sure another few years this fad will come and die as much as the interactive adventures held out..All this attraction to me is nothing but Ride The Comix....