An Interview with Disneyland Resort President Cynthia Harriss - Part Two,

An Interview with Disneyland Resort President Cynthia Harriss - Part Two
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Harriss at the opening of the Grand Californian Hotel

LP: Paradise Pier Hotel - are there some things that are being done over there in the near future?

CH: What we’re doing, and you've watched this happen, is over the years our objective is to make the whole resort a Disney Resort. And so prior to the opening - along with opening the exquisite Grand Californian Hotel which is a huge, huge, huge, huge hit, probably one of the biggest hits that we have, the hotel and the restaurants there - prior to the opening we entirely refurbished the Disneyland Hotel and we did that one its entirety knowing in that it had the word Disneyland on it. And I think we’ve done a great job bringing to life all the characters and it’s magical. Paradise Pier Hotel is our next avenue. As you know, we’ve reconcepted the exterior. But we are doing the creative now - our goal is before the 50th that it’ll have an even more Disney feel to it and it will be the Paradise Pier Hotel. We think that there are some clever and wonderful ways that are true Disney to celebrate a beach front, relaxing environment. We’ve got so many great hotels down in Florida that we can learn from. I think you’ll see some new things happening there. Our goal is to do the creative this year and build it in the next year so by the 50th.

LP: You talked about how the Grand Californian was perhaps the biggest success of the expansion. I know there's room there to expand the hotel. Are you going to do that?

CH: Those are all things that are in active debate. It’s just about timing more than anything else and as you can imagine, land in this area is so valuable so before we say, "okay, let’s go do this," we just have to debate and say is this the absolute best use of this piece of property because we want to make sure it’s the best for our guest experience.


The Grand Californian Hotel

LP: How far out do you plan things? Do you have a good idea what’s going to happen in two years or five years or ten even?

CH: As you can imagine, with the expansion of the Resort that was all of our energy for so many years. And whereas we plan ahead, and we have lots of ideas creatively - for Disneyland Resort one of the benchmarks was we had to get the Resort open. When you put that much in the ground, you have to get a reaction from the guests before you plan what you’re going to do next to know what will be that perfect compliment. So this past year has been an awful lot about learning about what the guest wants. And what we hope to do in the next few months -  we kind of know what’s happening 03, 04 and the big things. We’re going to round out those events. In the next six months, we’ll have a pretty good idea of what all that will be so that we can get them implemented. As you can imagine fast and furiously we’re working on that wonderful 05 and 06. We’re working on lots of great ideas for 06, 07, 08 so the real answer is we look pretty much at a 10 year window but what happens 10 years from now may be very different once we get to that than it does today. All I know as you know the Imagineers are always cooking up new and exciting things along with our entertainment team. We’re just picking the right time to do it. Many things take multiple years to build. So a ten year window is really the most definitive answer.

LP: Does Imagineering typically present attractions to you? Or do you go to them with ideas? How does that process work?

CH: Over the years, I think it’s taken lots of tacts, but the one thing that has always been is that there's such a spirit of collaboration. Obviously, as you know because you’ve met the Imagineers, they love Disneyland. We love Disneyland. We love our guests and we want to have the best experience for them. With any dynamic creative process it comes on multiple tracks. We continue to do extensive guest and market research about what people say they want. They do creative work with wild and unbelievable ideas. I would just say it's a dynamic process that happens, some of it is we have a need, what do they think about how to fill that need. Sometimes (they say) we have this unbelievable idea, how is it going to match up with that.