I just got back from DL/Aulani. There are things that are poor about Disneyland too. Crowd control, for instance. Knowledgeability of CMs. Food (sorry, none of the sit downs I went to are as good as WDW). Frequency of breakdowns was much higher than at WDW (this is a big one). I noticed Haunted Mansion looked like it needed a refurb. I encourage anyone who wants to go to Disneyland to give it a try. But don't expect it to be completely peachy. WDW and DL each have their high and low points.
I'm sure WDW would have crowd control problems if they recently wrapped up a $1 billion expansion at a park that used to be awful as well. Actually, scratch that. WDW has crowd control problems with transportation as-is. DL has no such transportation problem, because who needs transportation when your parks are a practically 15 yards away from each other?
And yes, WDW's Haunted Mansion is (surprisingly, given the maintenance situations at each resort, and especially the fact that it gets two refurbs a year at DL) superior on the inside. Outside, not so much, but it's one of the rides which is better at WDW. Fortunately for Disneyland, their version of Pirates wasn't rushed.
What I find amusing about the discussion of attractions lost and how Walt would be upset is the fact that it is more than likely that Walt would have gotten rid of them long, long ago. He was about changing the parks, always moving, always amazing. That isn't done by keeping everything like it always was.
Things are a little different now, understandably, Walt is dead and what he saw as works in progress, we see as monuments to his genius. We don't want to see them go, because with them goes Walt. It's different. If Walt had changed every single thing in DL, no one would have said anything except..Wow!
An interesting perspective. I think part of the problem goes back to the comments about how WDW was large enough to hold "everything we can imagine." Everything includes the classics. Ideally, we don't have to give up Carousel of Progress to get the next big thing.
The other part of the problem is risk-aversion. Walt literally put everything he had on the line to build Disneyland. Today, it's all about trying to build on the cheap (and apparently WDI has problems making this work; Carsland should
not be a $550 million project). You're not going to top Haunted Mansion if you're not willing to spend on bringing in the best and brightest creative minds, and spend even more on building everything they come up with. You're also not going to top it by building for nearly twice the industry average.
I think disney has gone downhill since Michael Eisner left but we still keep going most years it's 2times and I live disney no matter what!!! I am a proud disney freak!!!!
The decline started in the Eisner era. EuroDisney's opening and Frank Wells's death happened within two years of each other and combined to destroy the company from a quality standpoint. I'd say that the ESPN purchase was the last good thing Eisner did (in 1996, I think). Pretty solid last good thing to do (ESPN floats the entire company these days), but he stuck around for another nearly ten years, during which 2D animation got struck down and Disney-Pixar was nearly broken up, among other things.
Early Eisner > Iger > Late Eisner.
Blame Hyades for those Florida afternoon showers.
