Disney Theme Parks Research Articles

Music and the disney theme park experience

Music and the disney theme park experience

Impact of Contaminated Land Adjoining the New Disney Theme Park in Hong Kong

As a measure to boost the economy, the Hong Kong Special Administration Region government (HKSAR government) reached an agreement in November 1999 with Walt Disney to build a 126-hectare theme park on Lantau Island in the former British Colony. In connection with the construction of roads and other infrastructure for the future park, a shipyard was compulsorily acquired by the government. It was later found that the demolition of the shipyard would involve the removal of around 87,000 cubic metres of dioxin laden contaminated soil.The presence of the highly toxic soil required extra finance for the remediation. It not only caused a budget blowout but also an embarrassment to the HKSAR government. This paper finds that the problems were mainly caused by the fragmented nature of the current contaminated land management approach adopted by the government and the lack of adequate power for the acquiring authority to enter the land for site investigation prior to the land acquisition. Unless appropriate changes are made to the current land contamination management and land acquisition practice, similar land contamination incidents may occur in the future and may have a long-term impact on the Hong Kong property market.

Images of Main Street: Disney World and the American Adventure

When Dean Koontz wishes to evoke an image of innocence to contrast with horror and dread in Watchers, he introduces a shared love for characters between intelligent and good dog, Einstein, and his equally intelligent but evil nemesis, Outsider. In fact, this shared love for Mickey and his friends saves Einstein from murderous Outsider, originally named Other, when sight of a home video box softens his heart and leads him to show mercy on his intended victim for sake of their common memories. These memories were their only happy ones when they were experimental animals in a National Security Agency facility. As schmaltzy and sentimental as this summary may be, use of characters works in book just as it does for millions of people who share dream of Disney's Main Street U.S.A. of a pure innocence where mischief of Huey, Dewey, and Louie are boyish fun in contrast with lurid headlines that greet us daily. The entire Main Street experience is designed to evoke nostalgia for an Age of Innocence. In fact, there are a number of Main Streets at properties, each tapping into a different era and range of emotions: colonial period, frontier, and the future, for example. It is pointless to murmur that these depictions are romantic fantasies, for that is indeed point. Moreover, this very fantasizing reveals a great deal about special relationship Americans have with and manner in which has managed to bring American cultural fantasies to life, externalizing almost inchoate romantic images of people. Indeed, at times this Disney-influenced version of reality has resulted in criticisms from right as well as left. The action of Southern Baptist Convention in 1997 resolving to boycott because Walt Co. was providing health care benefits to companions of gay employees and its hosting of homosexual theme nights is a case in point (Book of Year 199. owns those people who bought their image of America and then used that image against them. It is instructive to examine some of these various Main Streets in World and compare them with a British view of America's Main Street at American Adventure amusement park in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, England, near Robin Hood's Nottingham and Sherwood Forest. Main Street, U.S.A., World Disney occupies a special place in American landscape and culture, states Michael Pollan; Few companies are as skillful at making places, at shaping physical environment to affect our behavior. Disney's theme parks deserve credit for helping to keep alive not only a large part of America's vernacular architecture but, on Main Street, very experience of walkable streets and pleasing public spaces-this at precisely time when Americans were abandoning real Main Streets for their cars and suburban cul-de-sacs. (58) Getting to Main Street U.S.A. for most visitors is an adventure in itself. In addition to months or years of planning and dreaming to visit secular Mecca that World has become, there is trip from parking lot or ticket and transportation center to enter park itself. Others have written of park's controlled environment and Walt Disney's determination not to have area around World be spoiled by other commercial ventures. Part of that plan is Disney's desire to rouse sense of a journey from mundane to magic in their guests. For most guests, there are two choices in reaching park from ticket and transportation area: monorail or steamboat. Experienced guests, many of whom have gotten tired of time it takes to leave mundane and experience magic, look quickly at lines to monorail and then to steam boat's dock to note whether boat has just left or is arriving. …

The Disneyization of Society

This article proposes the idea of Disneyization as a complementary notion to McDonaldization. Disneyization is depicted as a process by which the principles of the Disney theme parks dominate more and more sectors of society. It is presented as comprising four aspects: theming, dedifferentiation of consumption, merchandising, and emotional labour. The empirical manifestations of these attributes are outlined. The roots of Disneyization in theories of consumerism and consumer culture are examined and are contrasted with the grounding of McDonaldization in the idea of rationalization. Some of the theoretical implications of the contrasts between Disneyization and McDonaldization are presented.

Review: The Architecture of Reassurance: Designing the Disney Theme Parks

Review: The Architecture of Reassurance: Designing the Disney Theme Parks

Designing Disney's theme parks: the architecture of reassurance

Designing Disney's theme parks: the architecture of reassurance

Disney World and Posthistory

Tr his study deals primarily with Disney World and is presented, at least in places, in narrative form, following a linear time frame, an actual walk-through analysis of Magic Kingdom and EPCOT, and, most importantly, the retention of my two sons as participants and speakers. The study intends to show the skewed history, ahistory, or posthistory of Disney in theme parks that have eradicated all sense of shame from history. It also will show that Disney World is based upon an elaborate and highly successful blueprint of high modernism (and assembly-line capitalism), whose major trope, I contend, is metaphor, while the actual experience of the park must necessarily follow a postmodernist line of thinking/experiencing, whose major trope is metonymy. Thus, the experience of the park is often at odds with the blueprint. Further, I want to show that the major critics of Disney's theme parks (excluding Max Apple in fiction and the South Atlantic Quarterly issue devoted to Disney), Louis Marin and Jean Baudrillard, have given an aerial view of Disney, with no actual proof that either one ever set foot in the park or went on any rides. Their analyses rely on blueprints, conceptual thinking, and figures of resemblance (meta-

Localization Economies in the Theme Park Industry

Central Florida boasts one of the largest concentrations of theme parks in the world. Disney World, the industry’s dominant firm, has the two largest theme parks (EPCOT Center and Magic Kingdom), each drawing over 80% of all Central Florida tourists who visit at least one theme park (Florida Division of Tourism, 1987). However, within a 70 mile radius of the Disney theme parks, there are over 20 additional parks. Table 1 shows the percentage of tourists who visit each of the area’s eight largest parks. The purpose of this paper is to test the hypothesis that unit savings costs that accrue to customers through the decrease in the real costs of time and travel is an important factor in explaining agglomeration of the industry.