Well, it's been an interesting past couple of weeks. I've had many readers give me grief for always saying in my Blue Sky Buzz reports: "if the economy stays healthy".
THIS is exactly why I always made that statement. Not because I was trying to have an out if some of the projects I've talked about don't happen. As the title of the blog says, everything discussed here is from the "Blue Sky" phase that WDI goes through. Everything that's been talked about has been proposed, but not everything that's been proposed will get built.
Now, we're at a time where the economy is going in the tank. We've had a slowdown over the past two years. It's not like we've not been through this before though... if you look over the past quarter of a century you'd notice that this type of situation has happened four times. The first was back in 1987 when the stock market lost twenty-five percent of its value in one day. The second was the "Dot-Com" bubble at the end of the 90's. The third was after 911. And now we come to the fourth, with this economic downturn that's more than likely going to be a recession by the end of the year. It's happened before, it'll happen again, and America will come out of it. Such is life that when there are good times, they won't always last. The biggest problem right now is a lack of confidence in the markets. There isn't a lack of money. The money is out there... with an estimated four trillion dollars waiting to be spent. The world market has the jitters right now, and given some time it'll settle down. Sadly, that always happens. It's not fair and it's painful, but if you follow history you'll notice that life is cyclical.
So it's with that statement that I mention what some of you have already heard as rumor...
Changes are in the works. Thankfully, for the time being, we here in Southern California haven't had our projects changed. It doesn't mean it won't happen, but as of right now the DCA Extreme Makeover is still on. Much of the budget was already approved on this before many of the other Mouse projects around the world were...
Of course, not everything here has gone untouched. There will be some blowback from the economic bad news. The hotel projects at the Disneyland Resort have been put on hold with the exception of the Grand Californian expansion which is already underway. The additional hotel that was going forward, as well as the situation with the hotels at the Garden Walk have been put in a holding pattern while the Mouse assesses the need for these expenditures over the next year or so. It's going to depend on how much demand for rooms there is over the next few months to see how the downturn has effected the resort. So, ironically, if you want to see those new hotels in a few years then perhaps you should go stay at the old ones to show your support. Just a suggestion...
All those changes we talked about for WDW have been put on hold indefinitely. The face lift that we mentioned for Tomorrowland months ago has been set aside while the situation with the economy is the way it is. That doesn't mean these projects have been canceled, they haven't. They've just been put in a holding pattern. If the economy settles down and we start to grow by the end of 2009, then more than likely they'll go forward. Unfortunately, that makes the completion dates in 2011/2012 move as well. If everything goes well, you're now looking at more of new date of 2014/2015. Not that you won't see a new face on some or many of the attractions, you'll just have to wait a couple years more. Remember when I always say patience? Well, this is why...
Over in the land of the rising sun projects have been affected too. That massive project that the Oriental Land Company was going forward with that was supposed to open around 2011. It's been
canceled. When the Suits at the OLC got a look at the price tag for this little project they had to justify the expense of building this quasi/mini-resort and when the economic turmoil happened a couple weeks ago, the company decided that it just didn't meet the criteria for profitability that it had set... and it was gone. At least for now. It could show up again, maybe a year or so later or more likely a project like this will wind up in Singapore or somewhere else in Asia. But as of now, this Disney project is gone... not postponed, but actually gone.
It's not known yet how this has affected the redo of Tokyo Disneyland's Tomorrowland that WDI is working on. When I last talked with my Bothans that was still on. The project that Imagineers have been working on for the redo of TL was/is a welcome thing. It was originally going to be done back in the late 90's when the remake would be known as "Sci-Fi City", but because of the OLC deciding to spend that money on Tokyo DisneySEA, those funds were diverted to the expansion of the park in general. Hopefully, this project hasn't died because WDI was going to use all the R & D from this to justify the makeover here in Anaheim. This was going to make it easier to justify the large redo of TL in Disneyland as the development cost would have been subsidized by our partners in Japan. The status of this project is unknown as of yet.
Other projects around the world may be slowed as well, but don't expect expansion to stop. The plans in Hong Kong have been moving forward and as of the last I heard, they haven't been put on hold. We'll find out between the holiday season and early next year as that was the actual time period when the expansion was to be announced. It's also the time period within which we would finally hear about that new resort in Shanghai that Disney was working on...
Time will tell.
As for Europe and Disneyland Paris? Well, from what I've been told, the projected expansion of Walt Disney Studios is under review. No final word is in until they figure out how the economy is going to affect the resort. Much of Europe has been hit by this tide of economic turmoil as well and the Suits are waiting to see how the situation in the resort is by the end of the year. So far, for the last two years at least, the Paris Resort has been doing fantastic. If the situation doesn't change drastically, then the plans won't change drastically... but we'll have to wait and find out as we weather this storm over the next few months.
By the holiday season next year, we'll have a clearer picture of what to expect. But remember, on many of these projects, the pause button has been punched, not the delete button. You will seen many of these attractions/rides in the future...
It's just more than likely that it'll be a few years further out than many of us had hoped or expected.
Patience...
