Commentary: The Chapek-era wasn’t the best of times for the Disneyland Resort. First, its construction was on hold due to a lack of funding and the loss of a number of major investors who had funded a number of earlier Disneyland hotel projects over the years. Then it was delayed for three years, its first three years of operation as a full-service resort.
It took until late 1999 to get a contract with a theme park consultant for $6 million in upgrades to its two theme parks, along with $3 million of capital improvements to its hotels. By the time that contract was signed, it made the parks far more like California’s Disneyland than Walt Disney’s other parks, with a few elements from the theme park and hotel-level projects at his other parks — the monorail (a scaled-down version of Disneyland’s) was added to the Disneyland area, and the hotel was designed more like a hotel than a Disneyland hotel.
The park was delayed again for another year while it was modified in order to make it compatible with the nearby California Adventure. The California Adventure and its new Magic Kingdom theme park opened with the park in late 2001.
The California/Disneyland Resort project has always suffered from a lack of funds, but it has always been the case that it was never able to attract enough investors for a project as large as a mega-theme park with two separate theme parks.
There is talk of the Walt Disney Company building a theme park in New York, but it’s not clear that would be anything like Disney’s California/Disneyland Resort project, or that the New York theme park would be in any way comparable.
The California/Disneyland Resort project was eventually finished in late 2003 after an additional two years of construction. The park reopened in 2004, and it has been extremely popular ever since.
Disney’s California/Disneyland Resort is one of the most interesting, and in many ways unique, themed projects in the Walt Disney Company’s history. While it may not be as large as some of Walt Disney’s other
