An Interview with Disneyland Resort President Cynthia Harriss - Part One
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LP: An area that has come under scrutiny and criticism the past few years is just the general maintenance and upkeep of the park. Do you think that is a justified criticism?

CH: I think everybody’s got their point of view so that’s the thing that I respect. Everybody’s got their point of view. But what I do know is the millions of guests that come in every day - and my favorite thing to do, my absolute favorite thing is to come early in the morning when the guests are first arriving, stand there at the entrance as they come in and you’ve done this so many times. And you watch people come in and they just go (makes an excited expression) or to see people walk down Main Street, especially if it’s the first time they’ve ever been, they’re in awe. And the fact is that we have over a 100,000 communications from our guests every year. I would say absolutely the majority of them are all about "I had a fabulous time. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it" and highlighting special things within the park, but more importantly the experience with it.

I would tell you this is such a huge place and we have, as you know, an army of people out there all night long painting and spiffing up and doing all that to a level that we want. I guess what I’m saying is we work at it every single day. We enhance things. We make it better all the time. But when you host this many people every once in a while a wall gets dinged or something because there are so many people that we host.

Have you seen it’s a Small World since it’s been painted?

LP: I have not seen it.

A newly painted Small World

CH: You need to go out and see it. It’s so beautiful. It really is. As you know we’re bringing Small World back to its absolute original colors. I obviously didn’t see the original but I saw a picture of it when it was in its original color and I thought it was so beautiful. So we had the debate because it had been the multi color for so many years. I have to tell you, it really is beautiful. It’s not quite done, but almost.

LP: Tomorrowland is another area that is always being talked about. A lot of people think the redoing of Tomorrowland was not a big success, especially now with the Rocket Rods gone. Is that an area that you continue to look at for even the near future?

CH: I think Tomorrowland will always be our Tomorrowland that we will be always working on. Absolutely, we’re disappointed that Rocket Ride wasn’t the hit that we thought it would be. But just like over the years that started back with Walt, for us to be innovative and creative you try things that have never been done before,.99.9% of them are huge hits. A couple of them don’t work. The thing to do is to stop that and get the next new thing in there. We’ve got a lot of ideas for the 50th of utilizing some of that great space there to do some pretty extraordinary things, so I would say stay tuned with that. The other thing I’d highlight is - have you been in Innovations lately? There are several new things in there. Innovations is one of those things that we - it’s almost a secret and we’re trying to figure out a better way to keep letting people know because it’s always changing, there’s always new things in there. Have you done the Stitch thing in there.?

LP: I’ve heard about it. I haven’t done it.

CH: That is so fun. There’s always something new there. I would love to let people know more about that. But we’ve got some ideas for, before the 50th there’ll be some cool things in there.