Disney In Coomera?

[Ethan]

If indeed they do build in Asutraila I dont think you will see a Disneyland duplicate, as it would not fit the culture here. You may see a OZ themed park, like the Disney Sea Parkm in japan. Just a thought~

Hope not, the whole country is already themed Australia! I want to go to a park to escape to somewhere different!

[Gazza]

^Yeah true, the concept of condensing a local culture into a park flopped when they opened DCA, I hope they don't go down that path again (for their own sake). One thing I am worried about is ending up with a poorly executed 'magic kingdom' style park like Hong Kong Disneyland. It seems there they picked the worst of the Disney attractions (Space Mountain is the exception) and this trend looks to continue with Small World opening next. If they are going to do one, stick to the better rides. What I would have loved to have seen is DisneySea here, it is my favourite Disney park (aside from the original) I think a unique concept like that would have gone great on the GC.

Edited October 22, 2007 by Gazza

[Gold Coaster]

Yeah... it's weird to have a Disneyland without Frontier Land / Haunted Mansion / etc. I don't see DCA as a bad park but it could have been so much better. At least the overhaul will readdress the balance somewhat. DisneySea would have been brilliant.

Edited October 22, 2007 by Tony Teulan

[Richard]

The problem with Disney's California Adventure wasn't linked to its theme but rather the overall quality of the park. Hong King Disneyland has suffered the same attendance problems. The parks were built on minimal budgets, atypical to how Disney has built parks in the past, and this has strongly affected their performance. They seem to have learnt their lesson; the Shanghai Disneyland appears to have a budget of around 3x that of the Hong Kong park. Some of the (largely bogus) figures that have been quoted in articles in this topic have also suggested that such an Australian park would have a budget roughly the same (ignoring inflation) as the entire DCA/Downtown Disney/Grand Californian expansion; of which less than half went to the development and construction of DCA. The fact is the only way a Disney park could succeed in Australia is if it relied very heavily on international tourism. In addition, there is no way a Disneyland could be built in Australia to the standard of any of the current parks and be even close to financially viable. Our population, even combined with tourism figures, could not sustain the sort of attendance this type of park needs. It is highly likely that a Disney park in Australia would need to be a completely different genre of park, and you could expect that all the E-ticket attractions would be clones and at the cheaper end of the Disney spectrum.

[Ethan]

The govt revealed: The theme park was due to open in 2003 on 90 hectares of land donated by the government and was expected to attract up to four million visitors a year. 90 hectares is the size of the LA park (88 hectares) so that was a pretty substantial park. So Disney clearly DID want to build a park of that size, and they did not stop because of fears of visitor numbers, they stopped because of funding shortfalls from the govt. But for that the park would be here today. I hazard to guess that any current proposal would be a similar size (though a smaller parker is certainly possible and Disney could be trending this way), but I would reject the notion that a full size park is not possible in Australia because the evidence clearly shows this was contemplated quite recently and was OKed by Disney. Obviously that may be impacted nowadays by HK Disney and Shanghai, but still, I would not write it off by any means. Funnily enough, on the subject of DisneySea, well I'm not sure but I think DisneySea was at one time proposed for the coast as well, I agree it would suit the location very well.

Edited October 22, 2007 by Ethan

[Richard]

DisneySea was due for construction on the Gold Coast in the early-mid 1990s. In addition to a lack of full government support, I'd say the financial problems with Disneyland Paris (Eurodisney at the time) was more than responsible for a few of the nails in that proposal's coffin. Amount of land available to Disney has virtually no bearing on the size and quality of park that would be viable. Citing the amount of land available at Anaheim isn't the best comparion; Walt Disney knew in the 1950s and 60s that this land was terribly undersized. Even the tiny Hong Kong Disneyland sits on 125ha. Fact is, based on Australia's population and tourism, there is no way a Disneyland/Magic Kingdom style park could be successful here because of the cost needed would exceed possible revenue. Using that quoted figure of four million visitors per year, there would simply be no way a park larger than DCA could be built here and be anywhere near a financial success.

[colliric]

Hope not, the whole country is already themed Australia! I want to go to a park to escape to somewhere different!

DisneySea was due for construction on the Gold Coast in the early-mid 1990s. In addition to a lack of full government support, I'd say the financial problems with Disneyland Paris (Eurodisney at the time) was more than responsible for a few of the nails in that proposal's coffin. Amount of land available to Disney has virtually no bearing on the size and quality of park that would be viable. Citing the amount of land available at Anaheim isn't the best comparion; Walt Disney knew in the 1950s and 60s that this land was terribly undersized. Even the tiny Hong Kong Disneyland sits on 125ha. Fact is, based on Australia's population and tourism, there is no way a Disneyland/Magic Kingdom style park could be successful here because of the cost needed would exceed possible revenue. Using that quoted figure of four million visitors per year, there would simply be no way a park larger than DCA could be built here and be anywhere near a financial success.

Agreed. Disney's interest in building something over here is two fold. They want a park(It would be smaller than their other parks) AND more importantly they probally want to build studios here like WB(at movieworld) and FOX(in sydney) did. This seems only to have been hightened with the opening of Melbourne's Independant major film Studios at Docklands(we want everything Sydney has!). Australia has been proven to be "the place to film" for many of hollywoods biggest productions and a Disney park's best hope of being built in Australia is becasue of disney wanting to get a slice of the top quality film crews and production services that we have in australia for their cinema releases. It is not because of the profits a theme park would produce, but really because of the quality film production services avalible in Australia to major hollywood productions. It has been very sucessful for Fox and Warner Brothers, and doubtless disney are keeping their eye on it. Other studios have also expressed keen interest too, Paramount was set to build a major theme park and Studio in Melbourne's Docklands in 1999 and pulled out because of the change of government. The Gov decided to procced and build the huge film studios anyway.