Full disclosure: I live in Austin, Texas. With that out of the way…
Anyone who has gone to Disneyland or Disney World in the past year knows that park attendance is through the roof. What used to be downtimes in September and January are no longer ghost towns at the parks. Recently, Disney announced that it is moving to tiered pricing for tickets. Many will write this off as Disney getting greedy, but really they are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Trips are not enjoyable when the parks are packed. They want crowds, but not to the point where it severely compromises the guest experience. In the short term, the only tool Disney has to reduce crowds is higher ticket and hotel prices.
For now, Disney has the above-mentioned parks in the US, Disneyland Paris, Disneyland Hong Kong, Tokyo Disneyland, and the as yet to open China park. Despite the proliferation of parks across the globe, Land and World continue to bring in the lion’s share of park revenue and are attracting record numbers of visitors. Given that, it makes sense for Disney to focus more attention on the US market. We will see what happens with Shanghai, but there Disney is mostly betting on future growth. The US is ready now!
Another theme park in Orlando would reduce crowding from park to park, but there is a strong argument to be made that Disney World has reached market saturation with 4 theme parks. The American family on average, according to a CBS article, spends 4 days on vacation. It’s a tall order to do the Disney World Resort justice in only four days. Even if the typical first-time-family has 5 full days in the parks, you are looking at 2 days needed for Magic Kingdom and 1 in each of the other parks. Rivers of Light and Pandora will soon solidify Animal Kingdom as a full day park, and Hollywood Studios may move into the 1.5 day range with its new attractions. At some point, adding additional parks to Orlando will only take revenue away from itself. It will also only increase the cost of a vacation, which is already starting to price out lower and middle income families.
The labor market also has to be considered. At this point, Disney World in Orlando staffs a lot of their positions with college program employees. Orlando and the surrounding areas just don’t have the population to provide all the positions an entirely new park would require.
Going across the country to the west, there have been rumors lately that Disneyland in Anaheim might be thinking of adding a third park. This could get very complicated and pricey however, because all the land surrounding Disneyland has been built up and is owned by various other hotels and businesses.
That leaves us with two very crowded and busy USA Disney parks. Adding another US park can solve this overcrowding problem.
Enter: the argument for a Disney park in Texas.
Texas has comparable weather to California, which has the better weather overall of the 2 American parks. The summers will be a little warmer in Texas, but the nights will also be warmer than California. In the north near Dallas it can get cold in the winter, but farther south the weather stays very nice year-round with maybe only a few snaps of temperatures in the 40-50 degree range.
Houston would be an ideal city to host a Disney park. There are two major airports and a very large population to pull from for employees. In a perfect world, I imagine the situation would be a lot like Disney World in Orlando. Most tourists fly into the Orlando airport and then travel about a half-hour to reach the parks.
There is a lot of land outside Houston to the west that could be used for a new Disney resort. Plenty of acreage could be purchased so that the Walt Disney Company does not run into another Anaheim situation.
Yearly average rainfall for Orlando is 53.2 inches. Houston’s yearly average rainfall is 45.3 inches, but the farther to the west you go, the less rain you get. This would be very desirable for a Disney park, since less rain means outdoor rides can stay open. Disneyland’s outdoor rides almost never have to close for rain, whereas some of Disney World’s most popular rides can go down several times a day for rain or storms.
A high-speed train from Dallas to Houston is currently in the works, which would only be good news if Disney wanted a large population of Dallas locals to have easy access to the parks.
Texas would be a perfect place for a new Disney park for another reason: Marvel. Disney parks (due to a contract with Universal Studios) cannot have most Marvel characters in Disney parks east of the Mississippi. If Disney builds a new resort in Texas, they can utilize Marvel. I would build the requisite Magic Kingdom park with a strong emphasis on the Frontierland portion. I don’t even want to put the idea into Disney’s head, but the castle could be themed off Elsa’s ice castle in Frozen (though I’d rather have it based off Rapunzel’s). Disney could bill the eventual second park as a more intense experience featuring Marvel, Star Wars, Tron, and other action-oriented movie properties.
There you have it, the argument for another US Disney park in Texas. What do you all think? Will Disney ever invest in another US park? Should they?
Map Image: Aviationexplorer.com
