All sarcasm and satire aside, the Disneyland Resort will never be the Walt Disney World Resort. It can, however, continue to be a worthwhile business for the corporation long into the future. Despite turnover in recent years, you still have talented people on staff at Imagineering who can tell you exactly how to move forward with expanding and upgrading the Disneyland Resort for the future, but chances are, you’re not really listening closely enough to them, or are too preoccupied listening to the same kind of thinking that got you some of your big failures. But here you are, reading this. So here’s my chance to keep telling you what I think, even if it means I’ll no longer even get called back for interviews.

From a financial perspective, you’d like to get more revenue per guest. From a guest relations perspective, you want your guests to be eager plan a return visit, and tell all of their friends how awesome they found your Resort. From a public relations perspective, you want the neighboring residents, businesses, and the government officials you deal with to be glad you’re around.

So here goes.

Change Your Pricing System. The current one-size-fits-all, all-or-nothing unlimited passport seemed like a great idea when it was introduced and replaced the legendary “ticket books�? model. But something is not right, as evidenced by the need for discounts to be offered through supermarkets, and the “2fer�? promotions, which cheapens the Disneyland name. Your current system tries to pretend that Disneyland Park and California Adventure are of equal value, which is ridiculous. It charges the same for a pregnant woman who can’t ride certain attractions as it does for someone who can ride all of them. The prices go up a couple of dollars frequently whether or not there is a significant new offering to the guests.

One of the advantages of being in Anaheim is that there are tens of millions of people very close – close enough to drop in with little planning for part of a day or for a night out. If some convention-goer wants to drop by for a couple of hours to ride a couple of attractions, grab a bite, and pick up a nice t-shirt, why not grab that market? I think a pay-for-play system may encourage maintaining quality and capacity in dining and shopping experiences in order to lure in people who won’t be spending the whole day at the Resort, will encourage having friendly greeters at all attraction entrances, and will provide incentives to keep breakdowns, renovation closures, and vacancies to the shortest time possible, and provide an incentive to plus your attractions.

It will also prove the financial worth of each attraction.

There is no reason why you can’t price the Resort in way that people will think of it as a special high-end treat and still make it accessible to most of society. You don’t need supermarket discounts. Things like the Magic Kingdom Club, sweepstakes with Resort trip give-aways as prizes, and discounts through group sales can still keep visiting the Disneyland Resort a reality for most families. There are classy ways of “discounting�? that strengthen the Disney name, not weaken it.

Keep Plussing Disneyland Park. With the unlimited passport, you really don’t have as much incentive to add to a “built-out�? park, but you would if a new attraction would directly bring in more revenue. Disneyland Park still has room, though some back-of-house stuff may need to be moved, for new attractions, new restaurants, and new shops. Plus, existing offerings, such as Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, Star Tours, the Primeval World (on the railroad), and Fantasmic can be plussed or changed. Kudos for plussing and re-opening the Submarine Voyage, and for plussing the nightly pyrotechnics. Disneyland Park needs new draws.

“Fix�?/Build-Out California Adventure. Whatever you do, remember that you do theme parks, not loose collections of attractions with no unifying theme.

Build a Third Theme Park. This would be for things that wouldn’t fit thematically into your existing two parks. I understand you have plans for this. Great.

Remember What Made Disneyland Disneyland. One of the reasons so many people fell in love with Disney is that it was different. It wasn’t just more of the same. You need to be sure to distinguish yourself from Busch, Cedar Fair, Six Flags, Universal, and all of the others. Disney theme parks gained their reputation by being unique, innovative, reassuring, nostalgic, American, patriotic, respectful about the past, optimistic about the future, and letting people live their fantasies and conquer their fears. The passing of Fulton Burley makes me wonder – is there an equivalent today of the Golden Horseshoe Revue – a show we can all talk about more than 20 years later, with performers we can name by name? Maybe it is time for the Disneyland Resort to take the next leap, like Pirates of the Caribbean was for its day, pushing the theme park show to a whole new level.

Be Careful About Cloning. It’s okay to borrow from what you’ve done elsewhere, but the overall offering has to be different enough to warrant a visit from someone who has been to another one of your resorts. An EPCOT Center variation, for example, can be compacted into a different enough experience to not be redundant to Epcot, or whatever you’re calling it these days. The Disneyland Resort should be built, operated, marketed, and maintained as a worldwide draw, not a regional amusement park.

Make Creative King. You are “selling�? memories. You are selling entertainment, experiences, fun, and happiness along with merchandise and food, and if you do it well, you strengthen the value of your corporation. You aren’t selling budgets, or press releases, or contracts, advertisements, or management skills. Those things are all there to support the creative development involved in putting on a good show for your guests. There was a time when creative talent was more cherished, nurtured, and was retained for as long as possible in the corporation, when things functioned well without so many formal titles. While titles needed to be developed to interact with other corporate cultures, somehow things seem to have gotten administratively top-heavy and overly cautious, and the creative types are relegated to the back seat or shown the door. Are you pushing more John Lasseters out the door to make a name for themselves elsewhere? It gets really expensive to get them back. Do you currently have on-staff or under long-term contract the equivalants of Marc Davis, Alice Davis, John Hench, Bob Gurr, Blaine Gibson, Richard & Robert Sherman, Harriet Burns, Mary Blair, Wathel Rogers, Roger Broggie, Bill Evans, Van France, Rolly Crump, Ken Anderson, Claude Coats, Harper Goff, Ward Kimball, Herb Ryman, Joe Fowler, X Antencio, or Yale Gracey? Will we look at your people of today the same way when we look back? If you’ve got them, either you aren’t using them right or you aren’t publicizing them the same way. Yes, we see some Imagineers on the Discovery Channel. But do we really see what they do, like that footage of Walt walking around previewing the elements of Pirates of the Caribbean and talking with folks like Marc Davis?

Space is Tight, Make it Count. I consider the design of the New Orleans Square area, from Pirates of the Caribbean to the French Market, and it is a marvel of space planning. It is packed with attractions, shops, restaurants, and atmosphere overlapping each other. Yes, building several levels, some below grade, is more expensive, but your square footage is valuable. Consider imbedded lodging, as was considered in the Westcot planning.

Grow Your Cast. I understand that the outdated scheduling requirements that forced me out two years ago are finally being changed in an effort to help slow down turnover. That’s a good thing. Not a lot of people who are in school or have other jobs are fully available around the clock seven days a week for three weeks in the spring, from Memorial Day to Labor Day, for two weeks at the end of the year, and from 6pm on Friday through 2am on Monday (Tuesday, if Monday is a holiday) the rest of the weekends out of the year. You’re finally adjusting to people who can just work weekends year-round, or can work short shifts in the afternoon all week, or whatever, and hopefully it will slow the turnover.

To really get and keep more quality Cast Members, at least for a reasonable amount of time, you’re going to have to pay more. Despite current law, I don’t think it is anyone else’s business - not the Federal, State, or City government - what you pay your Cast Members. I know the unions exist to negotiate this stuff. However, I think you should voluntarily pay better, at least the “permanent�? full-timers. This will attract and retain more good Cast Members.

True, not every position should be a lifetime career, but you do want some lifers – happy, bright, friendly, pleasant, intelligent lifers. You don’t really want this lasting representation of your company name to be essentially run by only the “just here until I find something better that I can get without a degree�? crowd. Value the front-line experience and promote from within. While you may not think their job tasks really prepare them for careers, these are people who understand your customers, and they can gain the “office�? experience if you give them the chance. Not everyone will want to work in a career position at the Resort or for some other part of the corporation, so do what you can to keep the students, teachers, others with alternative schedules, second jobbers, retirees, freelancers, and would-be housewives/husbands to stay on board as long as possible, until that phase of their life is over.

The Disneyland Resort Can Mean More Than Just Revenue. The business benefits of the Disneyland Resort to the corporation don’t have to be limited to direct revenue. Not every everything important shows up directly on the balance sheets. The Disneyland Resort, if built, operated, and maintained correctly, can also be a…

Consider a Transportation System. It doesn’t have to be the monorail, but if you can ease the traffic and long walks around the Anaheim Resort and the Platinum Triangle with some sort of “different�? transportation system, you’ll likely be a hit with the nearby residents and you’ll find it easier to lure people from the Convention Center, the Honda Center, and Anaheim Stadium to the Disneyland Resort to take advantage of the pay-for-play system. You can leave Gardenwalk out of that loop – that would be understandable.

It is my hope that the City of Anaheim will come around and be more supportive of the Disneyland Resort and the Anaheim Resort in general, and it is my hope that you will expand the Resort in a way that puts you leaps and bounds ahead of other major theme parks.