An Interview with Cynthia Harriss, Disneyland's President
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Harriss announces the first group of tenants for the Downtown Disney expansion.

LP: On a happier subject. Disneyland has been working on a second gate since long before you arrived. And now it's close enough where I see you have your Cast Member countdown watch on today

CH: Exactly, did you see?

LP: Yes, I noticed that.

CH: 213 [days until DCA opens. Laughs]

LP . How ecstatic does that make you and what is the magnitude of this change relative to the 45 years of the Disneyland Resort?

CH: I’d say in answer to both of those questions. It’s historic and I'm ecstatic. This is just as you called out, it’s historic. The fact that 45 years ago Walt Disney himself stood there and welcomed the first guest and that we, as a group of Cast Members, now will be able to welcome the first guest to come to the very first expansion of the Disneyland Resort. You’re probably even a bigger student of Walt Disney than I am, but that was his original plan - to be able to continue to grow the Disneyland Resort beyond Disneyland. That has come to fruition in Walt Disney World with buying the additional property once it was clear that this was going to be a little more challenging here. I think the fact that we’re able to carry on that dream, that was the original intention.

As you said, it’s been many, many years in the making and many, many many people have had their hopes and dreams and heart in all this and that in literally in 213 days we’re going to get them to say, "ta da, here it is" is just incredible. I think we’re all viewing this as just a - I wouldn’t want to characterize; how would I know what Walt Disney was thinking? But a different level of anticipation just because we already know how popular Disneyland is and we’re building the best park that we've ever built since the opening of Disneyland right here, and we’re anxious to share it with our guests.

LP: I’m sure it’s going to be a big success. How important is that success of DCA and Downtown Disney and all the rest to the future of this park here?

CH: First of all we think this is going to be a gargantuan success because - it’s not just that we’re excited about it, anybody who has had an opportunity to read, see or hear anything about it when we’ve done our press releases and you’ve been to several of those, just the responses come back, it’s like wow that’s even better or more or more extensive than I thought. We’re anticipating that. I think it speaks to anything else that the bigger the success it is that's really going to inspire us to do more and more things within Disneyland and within the Resort at large. We’re in the business to serve our guests. When they respond positively it reinforces to us - "let’s do more of that."

LP: I know you’re not necessarily directly involved with creating particular attractions, but ultimately it comes to you. How high is it when there's a big, big hit like Believe ... There's Magic in the Stars, which is probably world known now. And how low is it when something's not quite as big a hit like maybe the first version of the parade?

The two examples that you used (the new parade and fireworks) both of which were entertainment offerings put together basically by the same teams

CH: I think we’re in the entertainment business. Our goal is at all times -  everything is extraordinary, like over the top. The guests absolutely love it, and that’s our goal at all times. We would not be in keeping with the tradition of the Walt Disney Company, about being sometimes the first and experimental. And with that, just like anything else, it’s a requirement sometimes to adjust and modify and that’s what I take it as. We give it our very best effort and and if we think it’s time to adjust we’ll do that because we’re relying on satisfying our guests, that’s what we’re in business to do.

The two examples that you used were both entertainment offerings put together basically by the same teams, maybe different individuals within. And both were testing waters on new ways to present a parade and new ways to present fireworks. The good part is you’re right, the fireworks sky spectacular has probably been one of the biggest hits we’ve had here at Disneyland in a long, long time based on our guests comments. And currently the parade is getting the kind of guest comments comparable to all the parades. Better than Mulan at this time in terms of the response we’ve gotten, and Mulan we classified as one of our better parades.

It’s an interesting thing. It’s harder to do a soft opening on a parade as opposed to when you look at a Broadway show. You open in a smaller community and kind of try things out when you're doing live entertainment and that’s basically what we do  This is kind of an anomaly where our first premier day is with our guests and they get to help us shape that. Part of that is just an understanding that there's always an early aspect of it. You probably even noticed, even in Believe, we’ve added some adjustments as we've gone through it, because I think you watch it every night, so you probably know more the date that we did it. [laughs] There were some ideas that we had and once we had the success we said let’s maybe add these couple of things. That was taking something that was great and plusing it up a little. And the parade was basically good and adding things to it to make it even better.