[Park Hopper]

WDW officially announced its plans for four new attractions during the conclusion of a three-day press event Friday. Expedition Everest had actually been announced several weeks ago and news of the other three had leaked quite a while back. Here's the text of the story in the Orlando newspaper this mornng:

By Todd Pack | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted October 11, 2003

Walt Disney World is building a major attraction at each of its four parks -- but only one will be a true original.

The others -- including a car-stunt show and a lights-out encounter with the alien critter Stitch -- are being adapted or borrowed from existing rides and shows.

Disney's strategy in copying the attractions is to freshen up its parks without breaking the bank, officials said Friday, the last day of Disney World's three-day media tour.

Since the late-1990s, Disney has spent roughly $1.5 billion a year on its U.S. parks, including the costs of constructing both Animal Kingdom in Orlando and California Adventure in Anaheim, Calif.

But with Disney only now beginning to emerge from a two-year slump in travel, "We are in a period where we are really focused on the return on . . . assets already in place," said Jay Rasulo, president of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.

Spending in 2002 and 2003 was down nearly $600 million from 2001 levels, and "we are looking forward at something meaningfully below $1 billion a year domestically in our business for the next five years," he said.

And an easy way to do that is by cloning existing rides and shows.

Rasulo talked about the company's cost-cutting strategy during the tour, which attracted about 2,000 journalists and guests from around the world.

On Friday, Rasulo and Walt Disney World Resort President Al Weiss gave new details on the four so-called "E-ticket" attractions scheduled to open at Disney World by 2006. Word of three of them -- Stitch's Great Escape!, Stunt Show Spectacular and Soarin' Over California -- leaked weeks ago. But Disney didn't confirm the attractions until Friday.

Under Disney's old, lettered ticketing system, the best rides and shows required E tickets.

Of the four projects discussed Friday, only Expedition Everest will be entirely new.

Scheduled to open in 2006 at Animal Kingdom, it will be a roller-coaster ride through snow-capped man-made peaks leading to a showdown with the legendary abominable snowman. Theme-park consultants estimated the cost of the coaster at about $100 million when it was announced in April.

The other attractions are expected to cost much less.

Stitch's Great Escape!, planned for Disney's Magic Kingdom in 2004, will be a more playful, and less frightening, version of the park's ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, replacing that attraction's mysterious monster with the lovable but mischievous alien from the 2002 movie Lilo & Stitch.

It will feature a similar storyline and many of the same special effects -- the alien will escape and, when the lights go out, seem to torment each individual guest -- "but because it's Stitch, I think you're going to find it has a lot more comedy," said Tom Fitzgerald, executive vice president and senior creative executive for Walt Disney Imagineering.

Stunt Show Spectacular, a car-stunt show opening at Disney-MGM Studios in 2005, will be based on a popular show at Walt Disney Studios Park outside Paris.

Construction began this summer on a 5,000-seat stadium on the Orlando park's New York back-lot street. It will replace Disney-MGM's Residential Street of suburban house facades.

And Soarin' Over California, under construction at Epcot, will be a virtual clone of one of the most popular attractions at Disney's California Adventure.

Scheduled to open in 2005 as part of the park's Land pavilion, it will suspend passengers above a giant bowl of a movie screen for an imaginary flight over California's cities, farmland and redwood forests.

Although the attraction can be programmed to show different movies, Weiss said there were no immediate plans to customize it for Epcot.

Soarin' "is highly, highly successful in California," he said. "What we want to do is bring that highly successful show here to our guests who come from all over the world, so we think it's the right concept for right now."

Disney's strategy of duplicating rides and shows is hardly new.

Pirates of the Caribbean at the Magic Kingdom, for example, was copied from the original Disneyland in California. And a version of Disney-MGM Studio's Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is under construction at California Adventure.

But reducing development costs may be especially important now, when Disney is recovering from a two-year slump in leisure travel, said Abraham Pizam, dean of the Rosen School of Hospitality Management at the University of Central Florida.

"They need to create excitement, but they can't spend a lot of money, and they don't have the time," Pizam said. "Sometimes, it takes years to come up with a concept and refine it and put it into practice."

For example, Disney's Imagineers took five years and 350,000 work hours to create Mission: Space, which opened to guests this summer and was dedicated Thursday night.

By duplicating a proven attraction, Disney can save time as well as money, Pizam said.

"That's a wise strategy," he said. "It will work."

[monorailgoof]

WOW!
New attractions?
That sounds really cool!
I am looking forward to the RollerCoaster Expedition Everest in Animal Kingdom!
That's a great post!
I couldn't stop reading it
Great Job ParkHopper!
Thanks for the info!
:)

[lopo]

Yahoo! My favorite ride at DL is Soarin' Over California. I hoped that WDW would offer a similar ride and, sure enough, it is going to happen.:D

[sandanv1]

Wow!! lots of new things to look foward to:D

I saw the construction at AK and MGM, but did'nt notice any at Epcot. The AE attraction was still operating the first week of Oct. and CM's claimed not to know a closing date.

It is always exciting, especially when you make frequent trips, to see new construction.

[LRTJS]

When we ate at Flame Treee in AK last week we sat in a pavillion with a clear view of the construction. They were bulldozing trees and there was part of the building up. I took several pictures. I saw the crane in Epcot just like Park Hopper posted and of course I could see construction in MGM when we went on the backlot tour. No mention was made on the tour of the demise of the back lot street but the tour was different and I saw new things!