Ok I guess it's time I chimed in on this whole debate. We all have wishes, fantasies and dreams and wish we could have a say on what type of park Disney will build next (if they ever build on in the states again, which I doubt). But here is the thing I am noticing from this thread. First Thrawn, you by far are one of the most knowledgable people on this site when it comes to business of Disney, but I do have to catch you on one thing, it seems like you argued 2 different points, the first you were say that Disney should only be a tourist destination where they would spend a few days:
Disney knows the money is in the weeklong or longer stays, and they will add parks to WDW or DLR to increase the amount of time people spend on their vacation. Why do you think the Disney Cruise Line includes days at WDW in their packages? To increase the time spent at Destination: Disney.
which I totally agree with by the way, but then you go onto to argue about Disney America:
Ok, simple question: How can the huge income from a Disney park not be better than a field that, really, in the general sense, no one really cares about. (Yes, some people do, but something like 95% of the country knows/cares very little about US history)
As talked about in detail in this very post, first and foremost the weather is less then ideal in Virginia for a Disney park. Second, Disney did get a heck of a deal from the state of Virginia to build the park also to have the state build new roads, but few high profile people (i.e. people with cash vetoed this little act because of the battle field excuse, which i do agree even though I love Disney, even if you don't know your history, we still have to perserve it for future generations. One of the reasons Euro Disney bombed at first (now Disneyland Paris) was that they did not guage the french people or the french history correctly and it came to bite them in the ***. After that little fiasco, Disney had enough problems to deal with and another park shrowded in controversy was not what the company wanted.
The ideas for new parks will never go away, we all will have ideas for new parks, I myself would love to see a heros/villians park. Heres the idea, it's set up like MK with a hub and spoke system, instead of a castle at the end you could have bald mountain and at night Chernabog could emerge with a choreographed firework show. The lands could be set up to have famous Disney heroes on one side of the park and the villians on the other, where the two sides come together you could have clashes of Disney heroes verse Disney villians, thru dark rides, 3-d movies, costers, live shows etc. The villians side would be more dark rides and thrill rides, the heroes would be more live shows, kid friendly attractions and the like. That is just my thought though and since my paycheck doesn't come from WDI, i really don't have a say in things like that.
The last point I want to make is that I have know idea why Disney has bought land down in Texas, but my idea is not another theme park persay, but what about the idea of a disney water park down there? Obviously there is always a need in Texas during the summer for a place to cool down. The upside of this is that they are designed to only be a day attraction, and are very profitable if done correctly. This way you still might be able to bring the magic of Disney to Texas, inc. characters, but not have to worry about detering #'s from Anaheim or Orlando.
These are just my thoughts and Thrawn keep up the good work, you have an amazing amount of knowledge and I love reading your posts.
One last thing, even though its almost totally unlikely, don't discount a small town to be Disney's next home, both Orlando and Anaheim were nothing before Disney came to town!!
Have a good night all,
Steve