invader
Well-Known Member
I'm hoping smaller more intimate like the Magic and Wonder. Those classic ships aren't going to last forever... They'll be 25 years old at that point, pretty much the expected retirement age of any cruise ship.
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A Spirited Perfect Ten
- Thread starter WDW1974
- Start date
Brewmaster
Well-Known Member
It would definitely get things moving...
HenryMystic
Well-Known Member
Frozenstrom to be called "Frozen Ever After" per WSJ. Anyone have WSJ credentials to read the rest? I see the trolls will be involved.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-disney-milks-its-hits-for-profits-ever-after-1433813239
http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-disney-milks-its-hits-for-profits-ever-after-1433813239
TalkingHead
Well-Known Member
Wasn't there a short film called "Tangled Ever After"? I mean, everyone's gonna call it "the Frozen ride" anyway, but the name doesn't exactly distinguish itself.
PhotoDave219
Well-Known Member
Concept Art? Concept art.
You're welcome, I hate Paywalls and The Hell with Rupert Murdoch.
How Disney Milks Its Hits for Profits Ever After
CEO Robert Iger’s love of ‘franchises’ spawns years of sequels, park rides, merchandise
Norway is about to get a “Frozen” makeover. At
Walt Disney
Co.’s Epcot Center in Orlando, Fla., a 27-year-old tour of Norwegian history and mythology called “Maelstrom” is being rebuilt as “Frozen Ever After,” based on the blockbuster animated musical’s fictional world of Arendelle.
Disney Imagineers who designed the ride recently got a virtual-reality tour at a warehouse in Glendale, Calif., wearing 3-D glasses while watching high-definition images of Olaf and Sven horsing around, Grandpappy Troll telling a magical story and Elsa belting out her song “Let It Go.” They will become animatronic characters that Epcot visitors float by on a log after “Frozen Ever After” opens next year.
The first “Frozen” ride is the latest example of Disney’s transformation under Chairman and Chief Executive Robert Igerinto a company that tries to turn each big hit into its own successful business. Mr. Iger has refocused Disney around what it calls “franchises”—or entertainment juggernauts that live on for many years as theme-park rides, toys, videogames, television shows, pajamas and just about anything else that keeps revenue rolling in.
The consistent performance of those franchises is helping Disney outshine competitors by measurements ranging from stock-price growth to product licensing to ticket sales per movie.
“Ten years ago, we were more like other media companies, more broad-based,” Jay Rasulo, then Disney’s chief financial officer, told analysts last fall. “Almost every aspect of the company” is now “oriented around brands and franchises.”
It’s easy to see why Disney is giving Anna and Elsa a new home in Epcot. As of early May, sales of “Frozen” merchandise so far this year are more than 10 times higher than during the same period of 2014. A mobile game has been downloaded more than 105 million times.
The movie itself has grossed about $1.3 billion since its release in November 2013, the most successful animated motion picture ever. In March, Disney announced that work has begun on a sequel.
The new ride is just the start of a growing presence for “Frozen” in theme parks around the world, executives say.
“When people love a Disney product this much, they expect to be able to somehow experience it,” said Kathy Mangum, a senior creative executive in the Imagineering theme-park design group, as the ride in Disney’s warehouse ended and the world of Arendelle disappeared from the white walls, ceiling and floor.
Anyone who recalls the five “Planet of the Apes” movies from 1968 to 1973 (or two more sequels since 2011 and another scheduled for release in 2017) knows that franchises have been part of Hollywood for ages. Disney has been a pioneer of the strategy since the company opened Disneyland in 1955 with Sleeping Beauty’s castle at the park’s center.
Iger’s big changes
For decades, though, Disney also churned out a hodgepodge of content with no particular connection to any of its entertainment properties, including the 1998 thriller “Armageddon” and California Adventure theme park.
Walt Disney Studios released 19 movies nationwide in 2006, Mr. Iger’s first full year as CEO, and its Miramax unit had nine “art house” films. Those releases included just three that could be considered part of a franchise: “Cars,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” and “The Santa Clause 3.”
Movies released that year, like Mel Gibson’s ultraviolent “Apocalypto,” a pair of action thrillers starring Denzel Washington and Kevin Costner, and Christopher Nolan’s drama “The Prestige,” wouldn’t be made by Disney now.
The studio now produces about 10 movies a year, and its annual lineup is dominated by family-friendly franchises: one“Star Wars” sequel or spinoff, two or three Marvel superhero movies, one or two live-action versions of animated classics like “The Jungle Book” and “Beauty and the Beast,” and two or three animated films, either originals or sequels. Miramax was sold five years ago.
The changes show that the traditional Hollywood model of producing a large, diverse slate of risky movies in hopes that a few big hits outweigh a larger number of flops is dead at Disney as part of its focus on consistency.
The strategy has swept through every part of Disney except for its television business, which is dominated by ESPN. For example, employees in Disney’s consumer products group are assigned to “Toy Story,” “Mickey Mouse,” “Marvel” and other cash cows. The group used to be divided by product categories such as clothes, toys and furniture.
Disney’s videogame division now publishes just one major console game a year, Infinity, which brings together the company’s most popular characters. It used to make as many as half a dozen games a year, with original titles in genres like action and auto racing.
To keep executives focused on the biggest hits, Mr. Iger has tied the majority of their compensation to the performance of Disney as a whole, rather than individual businesses.
A committee of 20 executives analyzes franchises, hunts for new opportunities and occasionally demotes fallen stars, as happened with “High School Musical.”
Mr. Iger decides what the company’s top franchise priorities are each year, sending a powerful signal to Disney’s 180,000 employees in offices, studios and theme parks around the world.
“Once that’s done, a switch is turned and off the organization goes,” he said in an interview.
The push is paying off in ways that are envied by rivals. The interactive media unit that includes Infinity reported its first-ever annual profit in fiscal 2014, which ended in September. Last year, 11 different Disney franchises each sold more than $1 billion of branded products, up from seven in 2011.
Disney’s film studio, which gets a cut of revenue from products based on its movies, had an operating profit margin of 21% in fiscal 2014 and 27% in the next six months. Profit margins averaged about 10% in the previous decade, roughly in line with competitors such as Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures and ComcastCorp.’s Universal Pictures.
Overall, Disney earned profits of $7.5 billion in its latest fiscal year, up 22% from $6.14 billion in fiscal 2013. Revenue rose 8% to $48.81 billion. Disney hasn’t disclosed its number of franchises or profit and revenue for each.
Many outsiders believe Disney is defying the long-held maxim that entertainment is an inherently topsy-turvy business plagued by unpredictable hits and flops.
“Some on Wall Street no longer see Disney as a media company and see it more as a global consumer-products company like Nike,” saidMichael Nathanson, senior research analyst at MoffettNathanson LLC.
Disney’s collection of successful intellectual property is so vast that a senior executive at one Disney rival complained recently: “It’s almost unfair given the amalgamation of resources they have.”
Relying so much on a small number of moneymakers is risky, though. If interest in the Marvel or Star Wars franchises were to falter, it would be a serious blow to the entire company, not just Disney’s movie studio.
Last month’s Marvel sequel, “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” has grossed 23% less in the U.S. and Canada than its 2012 predecessor during the same period, though it still is the highest-grossing movie of the year and has exceeded the first “Avengers” internationally.
And because Disney makes fewer films now, especially original, live-action productions, the company is less likely to develop new franchises like Universal’s “Fast and Furious” or surprise hits like “American Sniper” from Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. The latest “Fast and Furious” movie is in a virtual tie with “Avengers” as the third-highest-grossing movie of all time.
Meanwhile, Disney competitors are doubling down on their franchises. Starting next year, Warner Bros. will release two superhero films a year from its stable of DC Comics characters like Batman and Wonder Woman.
Universal is making a series of movies based on classic monsters like “The Mummy” and “The Thing.” Paramount plans to accelerate the pace of sequels and spinoffs based on “Transformers.”
Some analysts are worried. “We think there is cause for increasing concern that the major studios are all moving towards increasingly indistinguishable strategies as they all put more eggs in the franchise picture basket,” media analyst Doug Creutz of Cowen and Co. wrote in a research note.
The shift also could make it harder for fresh ideas to surface in Hollywood, skeptics claim, while filling theater marquees, theme parks and store shelves with even more of the same.
In response to criticism that they aren’t doing enough to foster originality, Disney executives point to offbeat, animated fare like next week’s “Inside Out,” about the characters inside an 11-year-old girl’s brain, and last year’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” based on an obscure Marvel comic book that was new to most moviegoers.
Franchises kick in
Mr. Iger began focusing on franchises early in his tenure as CEO. He said he was “pretty amazed at how low” Disney’s return was on capital invested in movies. He was quickly willing to bet that kicking a then-nascent franchise strategy “into high gear” would help Disney withstand the challenges of globalization and falling DVD sales by letting movies, theme parks, product licensing and other businesses feed off each other’s successes.
“The case I laid out was that by creating and then supporting franchises, it could impact the bottom line of the whole company in a very profound way and everybody would benefit from that,” he said.
Over the past decade, Disney has primarily fostered franchises in its own animation divisions and at companies it bought. The takeover of Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in 2009 brought “Avengers” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
The 2012 purchase of Lucasfilm Ltd. for another $4 billion gave Disney the ability to release a “Star Wars” follow-up every year, starting with “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” this December.
Disney paid $7.4 billion in 2006 for Pixar Animation Studios, which released “Cars” and “Toy Story” and delivered a jolt of energy to Walt Disney Animation Studios, the creator of “Frozen” and last year’s hit “Big Hero 6.”
The Disney Junior cable channel, which went on the air in 2012, is considered a franchise, too, with “sub-franchises” such as the animated series “Sofia the First” and “Doc McStuffins.”
As the entertainment business grows increasingly digital and global, Mr. Iger has argued that recognizable franchises give Disney an edge. For example, the company is developing “over-the-top” digital channels to offer entertainment programming from its well-known franchises directly to consumers.
That could one day result in something akin to a “Star Wars”-only version of Netflix Inc. and other ways to hold on to viewers as the cable bundle unravels.
At theme parks, Disney’s annual capital investments have roughly tripled in the past decade. Franchises are becoming much more prominent, a shift from the more abstract ideas that used to inspire rides and attractions, such as the future and the Wild West.
Thomas Staggs, Disney’s chief operating officer, said that a “pretty high percentage of the uptick in capital we’ve been deploying has to do with our belief in the creative library.” He ran the theme-parks unit until February.
California Adventure got the “Cars”-inspired “Cars Land” in 2012, and the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train roller coaster opened at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom last year.
Next year, Disney will open Iron Man Experience, its first attraction based on a Marvel character, at Hong Kong Disneyland. “Star Wars” attractions also are in the works.
Disney’s new $5.5 billion theme park in Shanghai, set to open in 2016, will include a large “Pirates” area based on the movies that were in turn based on a ride. Other Shanghai attractions were picked partly based on analyses of the most popular Disney franchises in China, Mr. Iger said.
The link between popular franchises and park attendance is strong. After struggling for a decade, California Adventure in Anaheim, Calif., saw attendance surge 40% between 2011 and 2014, a sign that “Cars Land” is a powerful draw, according to the Themed Entertainment Association.
Disney executives are hoping that “Frozen Ever After” will help boost Epcot, where attendance has grown just 4% in the last five years. “Epcot could use a shot in the arm,” said Ms. Mangum, the Imagineer executive who oversees Disney’s theme parks in Orlando.
Purists may scoff at putting sentient snowmen in a park meant to “entertain with a purpose,” as Disney’s chief executive described Epcot when it opened in 1982.
But Disney executives point out that “Frozen” is tied to Scandinavian art and culture, adding that millions more people will likely visit Norway and the rest of the World Showcase just to experience the new four-minute ride.
“We have to be careful not be too doctrinaire when we apply these principles,” said Mr. Staggs. With a sequel and Broadway show also in the works, he added: “You will see ‘Frozen’ in the parks for as long as we’re around.”
Edit: That Concept Art should have a Credit of Disney on it, accidently cropped it out as I was cutting the photo caption.
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FigmentJedi
Well-Known Member
EFF PRINCIPLES, ACQUIRE MONEY
PhotoDave219
Well-Known Member
Also Note the early quote from Jay Rasulo.
“Ten years ago, we were more like other media companies, more broad-based,” Jay Rasulo, then Disney’s chief financial officer, told analysts last fall. “Almost every aspect of the company” is now “oriented around brands and franchises.”
Via con dios, Señior Rasulo. Your brand is off to the great landfill of ET Atari 2600 Cartridges.
FigmentJedi
Well-Known Member
Remember when X-S Tech was brilliant satire and not just "Unedited footage of Disney executives with a green filter added in After Effects"?
PhotoDave219
Well-Known Member
Of Interest:
On SDL/China:
On SDL/China:
- Disney’s new $5.5 billion theme park in Shanghai, set to open in 2016, will include a large “Pirates” area based on the movies that were in turn based on a ride. Other Shanghai attractions were picked partly based on analyses of the most popular Disney franchises in China, Mr. Iger said.
- Disney executives are hoping that “Frozen Ever After” will help boost Epcot, where attendance has grown just 4% in the last five years. “Epcot could use a shot in the arm,” said Ms. Mangum, the Imagineer executive who oversees Disney’s theme parks in Orlando. (Dave's note: TEA estimates suggest 5.8% growth since 2010 but if you go back to 2009, its 4.2%. And if you go back to 1994, its 18%. Same point I was trying to make last week - Epcot hasn't grown much in 20 years.)
- Next year, Disney will open Iron Man Experience, its first attraction based on a Marvel character, at Hong Kong Disneyland. “Star Wars” attractions also are in the works.
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Mike S
Well-Known Member
Interesting choice of words, a "shot in the arm" indeed. A nice mixture of sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride* for EPCOT Center. There is one part of that concept art that is very bittersweet: I see a Dragon head at the front of the boat. Looks like we'll have the same boats from Maelstrom, unchanged.
*look it up
PhotoDave219
Well-Known Member
Uh... that chemical cocktail was just outlawed in Nebraska.
Anyone who is familiar with the boat ride knows where that is probably going to be....
Mike S
Well-Known Member
Who wants to place bets that Elsa's ice powers in the concept art will just use the pre-existing effect?
PhotoDave219
Well-Known Member
That would save them a buck, wouldnt it?
FigmentJedi
Well-Known Member
That'll be the "touching homage" to the original attraction that they think will cover their butts.
Mike S
Well-Known Member
That and the boats.
cdd89
Well-Known Member
The upshot of this conversation to my ears is not the worst-kept secret that the MK is the worst Disney park in the world (the absolute truth... I spent half a day there on a five day trip, and I cannot stop thinking about how appalling my experience in Be Our Guest was - an immersive restaurant doesn't make up for some of the worst and most expensive dining I have ever had), but that respected people are consistently choosing HKDL as the worst or second-worst castle park. (Even though I get the strong implication from WDW1974 that there's a big gap between No. 4 and No. 5).
Not trying to be controversial here, but (both at the time and with hindsight... and the benefit of having seen TDL and its evening 50-minute-queue Fastpass Fiascos) I have it in my mind as #1. It may be smaller than the others, but it's immersive and immaculate everywhere you look (I admit being the youngest park helps there, but on the flip side, they're on top of refurbishments). Not only that, the lands are still true to their original themes and come alive beautifully at night (Adventureland in particular).
I wonder if people are marking it down for what it doesn't have (Pirates, Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder, Peter Pan's Flight). Perhaps... but the attractions it has in-place are no less impressive. I give it extra points for creating something original and not sticking to the 'tried and tested' formula. It also has some of the best dining - with "real-world quality" - within the gates of any Magic Kingdom park I've visited.
Its setting with the castle against those mountains, and the beautiful (and fully-walkable) resort that surrounds it (that fountain...) only go to further elevate the park in my eyes. Perhaps the fact it's a castle park evokes a misplaced nostalgia in guests familiar with DL/WDW (which is then not fulfilled because of the missing elements), but if you eliminate nostalgia and just look at quality, it's right at the top for me.
Nemo14
Well-Known Member
Thanks for posting that, Dave.
gotta be honest and say we all thought Be Our Guest was a great experience last week, even better than last year....but tomorrowland is showing some serious age along with future world...I mean just awful
Probably spent the least amount of time in future world last week...rode test track (good) rode soarin (yeesh) got out of there
Nmoody1
Well-Known Member
I heard that Disney certainly did rest on their laurels (don't tell Sandra) when it came to getting in orders for the two new ships and spaces at MW were taken by other liners. Disney wanted to have newer ships sooner but waited around too long.