







WESTCOT Center

and the Original Disneyland Resort



Guest Contributor: Sam Gennawey

Part 1 of 2

Cover of the Preliminary Master Plan for The Disneyland Resort, March 1991 Ten years before the opening of Disneys California Adventure, The Walt Disney Company released bold plans to government agencies and the news media. Newspapers printed some of the artwork from the document and described grand and wondrous visions of Anaheims future. Unfortunately, the artwork ended up as small black-and-white newspaper images.



Urban planner Sam Gennawey is the author of SamLands Disney Adventures, a blog about the history and design of Disney theme parks. This 2-part article is based on articles from Sams blog.



Here, in part 1, Sam takes you back to the 1980s and 1990s. Sam includes terrific color artwork from the Preliminary Master Plan for The Disneyland Resort.



, Curator of Yesterland, December 11, 2009

WESTCOT Center and the Original Disneyland Resort, Part 1

by Sam Gennawey In 1984, Michael Eisner and Frank Wells took over The Walt Disney Company. They immediately saw the potential to aggressively expand the supply of Disney hotel rooms at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. It was full speed ahead in Florida. In 1986, the Golf Resort was renamed the Disney Inn and 150 rooms were added. The Grand Floridian Resort and the Caribbean Beach Resort were both completed in 1988. In 1989, Michael Graves’ Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin were added to the on-site lodging roster by Tishman Hotels & Realty. The Yacht and Beach Club Resorts, designed Robert A. M. Stern, opened in 1990. More resorts were on the drawing board and moving quickly toward construction.

Disneys Grand Floridian Resort opened in 1988. While the success at Walt Disney World was inspiring, it was a different story at Disneyland. The goal was the same. That is, create a multi-day destination where your best time would be spent inside a Disney hotel, at a Disney theme park, eating at Disney restaurants, and buying stuff from a Disney-owned shopping mall. Eisner only had one problem. Disneyland was located in California. Eisner learned that Jack Wrather, Jr.’s company, which owned the Disneyland Hotel, had the exclusive right to build Disney-branded hotels in the state. Wrather held this right until 2054. This did not make Michael Eisner happy.

The Disneyland Hotel looked completely different in the 1950s (publicity photo). Back in 1954, Walt Disney knew that people would be tired after touring his park all day. He really wanted to provide a good, clean, safe place that met his standards. But he had no more money. Everything he had was invested in the park. So he contacted his good friend Jack Wrather, Jr., who had made a fortune in the oil and natural gas business and then even more money as the producer of Lassie and The Lone Ranger. Walt begged him to invest in his dream, but Wrather was unmoved and uninterested. So Walt made Jack an offer he couldn’t refuse. He offered him 60 acres and the sole use of the Disney name for hotels in California for the next 99 years. Jack said yes. And the relationship became even closer in 1961 when the Disneyland Monorail started daily door-to-door service. Over the years, the Disneyland Hotel grew to over 1,100 rooms and had a convention center, shops, attractions, and restaurants. The place was a huge success. At one time, it even sported the tallest building in Orange County. Every few years, Walt Disney Productions would come knocking and ask if they could buy the property. Jack said no. He was pretty happy with arrangement.

Jack Wrather, Jr. and his family posing in front of what was

then the tallest building in Orange County (photo circa 1962) Jack Wrather died November 12, 1984, just seven weeks after Michael Eisners first day on the job at Disney. With the financial health of Wrather Corporation declining in 1987, Eisner thought it was the perfect time to take another shot at the Disneyland Hotel. Except this time, there was another suitor. The Industrial Equity Company from New Zealand had made a bid for Wrather Corporation’s holdings. The idea of the Disneyland Hotel going to a foreign company was too much for Eisner. So he played the one major card he had—the Disneyland Monorail. Up for renewal was the lease agreement for the monorail stop. The Walt Disney Company dropped hints that the cost would become very, very expensive for any new owners. According to Donald W. Ballard, author of Disneyland Hotel: The Early Years, 1954-1988, “The unstated threat was that Disney could make the Hotel less desirable to a potential buyer by increasing the leasing cost of the monorail to an exorbitant amount.” This constraint would make the purchase of the Hotel unattractive to anyone but Disney. So Disney and Industrial Equity did a creative thing and partnered together to buy Wrather’s holdings. Then Disney bought out their partner. In 1988, after spending $161 million and absorbing $89 million in debt, Disney finally owned the Disneyland Hotel and, more importantly, the naming rights for California. The realization of a multi-day resort was almost within Eisner’s grasp. All Eisner needed was an attraction so incredible that people had to make a visit to California. He saw what happened when Tokyo Disneyland opened to rave reviews and huge crowds. He also saw how the tiny, little Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park was bursting at the seams since day one. His Imagineers were on a roll and they could do no wrong. He felt confident that the Euro Disneyland project was going to blow people away and be a huge financial success.

An aerial photo (circa 1990) show the limited amount of land available. Eisner challenged his Imagineers to design an amazing destination. The $3.1 billion plan included the next generation of theme parks, multiple themed hotels, a shopping and dining district, a stand-alone, state-of-the-art amphitheater, and the transformation of the surrounding area into a garden district. The plan also included a sophisticated upgrade to the local circulation network and proposed significant public infrastructure improvements such as an enhanced sewer system and undergrounding the electric utilities.