Been thinking about this a lot lately, as Disney pushes for more rides with physical thrills and doing everything on your phone...
Walt was 54 when Disneyland opened, with no thrill rides. Dick Nunis was adamant about building something, but it's not hard to understand why Walt was reluctant to have one in the first place. Even after the Matterhorn was built and Space Mountain was in its early concept phase, Walt's Disneyland was not focused on physical thrills. The attractions made were something different generations (or more pointedly, HE) could enjoy together. It's not like people didn't like roller coasters in the 1960s, it's just they were not the thing that differentiated Disneyland from other amusement parks. Most of the E-tickets from this time were dark rides and shows.
Marc Davis was almost 60 when WDW did. Little wonder why he didn't care for Space Mountain and BTMRR and preferred designing animatronic boat rides and shows. Much of WED's talent at the time was late-middle aged men, and older. The younger generation that gave us a run of rides like Star Tours, Splash Mountain, Tower of Terror and Indiana Jones was taught by them and perhaps understood more than their successors that physical thrill was not the end point of what defined a "Disney" quality experience, nor could it come at the cost of something gentler for other age groups.
Disney later built stripped down rides where the thrill was the predominant focus or selling point, but Test Track, California Screamin' and Mission: Space have never enjoyed the cultural significance or franchise build of the thrill and show combined rides of the late 80s/early 90s. For how expensive it was to build, I don't think something like Cosmic Rewind is much better and suffers from the same shortcomings.
If you're over a certain age, regional amusement parks offer little for you to do besides sit around and watch other people go on rides. The whole reason Disneyland was built in the first place was to give something adults to do too (specifically, one adult). Disney's push to build more and more thrill rides with inadequate capacity for marketability and Lightning Lane sales risks them getting trapped into the same corner Universal is stuck in. Where regardless of the hype or technology on display, some people don't care or don't want to go because they simply cannot do those types of rides.
The OG "Disney Adults" were those Florida seniors. The ones WED assumed would make up a higher % of visitors than California when building WDW. They don't care about Six Flags, but WDW is where they can rekindle their youth and enjoy some nostalgia [hard to think now, but when Disneyland opened there were people old enough to remember the America of the early 1900s, less so, but still somewhat possible in 1971] and more importantly feel the environment and experiences are accessible to them, with or without the grandkids.
And that's where technology and customer service come into play too. Regardless of how tech savvy they are, quite a lot of people still prefer talking to someone in person vs using their phone to do certain tasks. As a hospitality experience specifically, I think WDW is doing a huge disservice by pushing every aspect of your day in the park into a micro transaction done with a screen. Not everyone feels comfortable with tech and Disney's tech in particular is prone to issues. Beyond that, talking face-to-face with a person is part of the experience and "show" of Disney. How often does the company say their CMs are what make the "magic"? Is it really "magical" to have an app crash and no one's around to help? Trying to run WDW as efficiently as possible, loses that human connection that guests of any age appreciate.
And much of what I've written above applies to people with accessibility issues too, another demo Disney excels with, but can't ignore.
I'm sure we've all had relatives who have aged out of going to Disney for one reason or another, but Disney was the thing they probably kept doing for so long because they enjoyed their time there and felt they could go if they wanted to.
I hope Disney never forgets this.
Walt was 54 when Disneyland opened, with no thrill rides. Dick Nunis was adamant about building something, but it's not hard to understand why Walt was reluctant to have one in the first place. Even after the Matterhorn was built and Space Mountain was in its early concept phase, Walt's Disneyland was not focused on physical thrills. The attractions made were something different generations (or more pointedly, HE) could enjoy together. It's not like people didn't like roller coasters in the 1960s, it's just they were not the thing that differentiated Disneyland from other amusement parks. Most of the E-tickets from this time were dark rides and shows.
Marc Davis was almost 60 when WDW did. Little wonder why he didn't care for Space Mountain and BTMRR and preferred designing animatronic boat rides and shows. Much of WED's talent at the time was late-middle aged men, and older. The younger generation that gave us a run of rides like Star Tours, Splash Mountain, Tower of Terror and Indiana Jones was taught by them and perhaps understood more than their successors that physical thrill was not the end point of what defined a "Disney" quality experience, nor could it come at the cost of something gentler for other age groups.
Disney later built stripped down rides where the thrill was the predominant focus or selling point, but Test Track, California Screamin' and Mission: Space have never enjoyed the cultural significance or franchise build of the thrill and show combined rides of the late 80s/early 90s. For how expensive it was to build, I don't think something like Cosmic Rewind is much better and suffers from the same shortcomings.
If you're over a certain age, regional amusement parks offer little for you to do besides sit around and watch other people go on rides. The whole reason Disneyland was built in the first place was to give something adults to do too (specifically, one adult). Disney's push to build more and more thrill rides with inadequate capacity for marketability and Lightning Lane sales risks them getting trapped into the same corner Universal is stuck in. Where regardless of the hype or technology on display, some people don't care or don't want to go because they simply cannot do those types of rides.
The OG "Disney Adults" were those Florida seniors. The ones WED assumed would make up a higher % of visitors than California when building WDW. They don't care about Six Flags, but WDW is where they can rekindle their youth and enjoy some nostalgia [hard to think now, but when Disneyland opened there were people old enough to remember the America of the early 1900s, less so, but still somewhat possible in 1971] and more importantly feel the environment and experiences are accessible to them, with or without the grandkids.
And that's where technology and customer service come into play too. Regardless of how tech savvy they are, quite a lot of people still prefer talking to someone in person vs using their phone to do certain tasks. As a hospitality experience specifically, I think WDW is doing a huge disservice by pushing every aspect of your day in the park into a micro transaction done with a screen. Not everyone feels comfortable with tech and Disney's tech in particular is prone to issues. Beyond that, talking face-to-face with a person is part of the experience and "show" of Disney. How often does the company say their CMs are what make the "magic"? Is it really "magical" to have an app crash and no one's around to help? Trying to run WDW as efficiently as possible, loses that human connection that guests of any age appreciate.
And much of what I've written above applies to people with accessibility issues too, another demo Disney excels with, but can't ignore.
I'm sure we've all had relatives who have aged out of going to Disney for one reason or another, but Disney was the thing they probably kept doing for so long because they enjoyed their time there and felt they could go if they wanted to.
I hope Disney never forgets this.
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