An Interview with Paul Pressler, Part Two
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LP: Why don’t you guys announce a few months in advance when you’re going to close attractions?
Pressler: I think we’ve done a much better job of that in recent years. I think back to when I first got involved with Disneyland, the first attraction I think we took down was the Skyway. I had been there for like, a day, and Norm Doerges came in and said "tonight we’re going to take the Skyway buckets down and we’ll open tomorrow and hopefully no one will notice." And I was like "ok, whatever you tell me, I don’t know." (laughs) Now, one could argue that I’ve taken it to the extreme with the Main Street Electrical Parade (laughs) where I gave you 12 months to know that it’s going away. But overall, I do think we’ve done a much better job in giving our guests the opportunity to know about things like this further in advance.
Sometimes, there’s a lot of discussion and debate within Imagineering and our park operating units in terms of what are we going to do, and one of the challenges that we do have is we love to create ideas and iterate on those ideas. Unfortunately, many of those ideas find their way into the press or on the Internet sites before decisions have been made and then we get accused of "why didn’t you tell us sooner?" But we haven’t made that decision yet. So there’s a little bit of that as well.
LP: The obvious one that comes to mind now is the Country Bears and the rumor that Winnie the Pooh is going there.
Pressler: So you knew that one! (laughs)
LP; It just popped in my head. I don’t know what I was thinking earlier.
Pressler; The truth of the matter is that we’re this close to being able to finalize all our plans and decisions and we will give our guests time - if we were to close it - we will give our guests time to enjoy it. But a lot of this is marketing too. For instance, we just opened the Mr. Lincoln, therefore we don’t want the attention to be someplace else. So part of it is that. We want have the right venue to be able to announce these things.
Pressler rides down the parade route with newly
crowned Ambassadors Dorrell Minter and Jennifer Simis in 1998
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LP; What are you most proud of in your time with the theme parks?
Pressler: Well I think there are a couple of things. First and foremost I must say, I’m most proud of my team. When I come to work and I think about the people that I get to work with - that maybe I had some influence or pushed them to do something they didn’t think about before or to some greatness that is inside of them, that feels terrific. That, to me, is the most important part of my job and the most satisfying part of my job.
Having said that, I’ve got to say that going over and playing with Imagineers everyday is really fun. Sitting with Marty and the rest of the team and coming up with ideas (and I’d like to think every once in awhile I come up with a creative idea that they look at and embrace), iss important. But I’d say that first and foremost I am proud of having the kind of people who delivery exceptional guest service every day - whether it be on the operating side of the unit or on the create side. Driving that is critically important.
And, of course, I am proud of Disney’s California Adventure. There has been a whole renaissance of the area in Anaheim which I think, to some degree, people have lost sight of., but the truth is that it was a declining market. We had an infrastructure in and around that Park that was turning into a poor urban environment. The ability to get the city and creative ideas together and to unify that neighborhood and get everybody moving in one direction and get the support of the state and Orange County - that, for me, is a big accomplishment. And at the end of the day, had we not been able to do that we’d be looking at a continually deteriorating area around Disneyland which would be a huge problem for our company, so I think that’s a big success.