Everyone has heard the “an EPCOT pavilion so wonderful that Eisner made a park out of it” legend. There’s a funny story that’s stuck around – I have no idea of its truth, so this should merely be treated as the typical grapevine gossip…despite its overwhelming air of believability.

When Eisner came into power, he brought a large number of Paramount and other “Hollywood” types with him into Disney. These people and Eisner in particular, were known as “the movie people”. That’s all they cared about – movies. They didn’t have the slight interest in theme parks, they didn’t have any knowledge, and (again, especially Eisner), actively disliked anything or anybody associated with them.

This, naturally, rather frustrated both Attractions and WED. They couldn’t get meetings with the new executives. No one would listen to their proposals or their ideas. They were shut out of this new company that Eisner was building. This was important for a couple reasons. One the business side, the newly opened EPCOT Center needed to get to work on Phase II. Eisner cancelled plans for a host of new pavilions: Seas, Life & Health, Space, Equatorial Africa, Israel and others. But the new park needed large new attractions to build a repeat business (at the time, the average visitor to WDW came only once every 5 to 7 years). On a more mercenary side, WED had already gone through a massive downsizing in the post-EPCOT, post-Tokyo Disneyland era and Eisner was looking at even more cuts. The Imagineers needed some big project to keep their jobs.

So, if you’ve got a boss that’s only willing to talk about movies and a theme park that needs a new pavilion…what better thing that a pavilion about movies. A couple of Imagineers created a “Movie Pavilion” for EPCOT Center essentially as an inside joke. Everyone had a good laugh, a couple of quick paintings were done, and a lot of snide remarks were made about pulling one over on the coke-fueled posers still boasting about the box office of “Flashdance”. It was soon forgotten.

The Universal announced their plans for Orlando. Eisner, also looking for additional, cheap, right-to-work production space, copied that idea. Build your studio and have a tourist area to pay for the overhead. As Michael mentioned, Universal noticed the similarity of the two plans, and Eisner’s past involvement with Universal’s ideas. They called the lawyers.

So the search began to find “proof” that Eisner’s concept for movie studio tour was an original idea created inside of Disney. The corporate orcs searched far and wide and stumbled upon…the joke painting in the art morgue. You can pretty much connect the dots from there – a pavilion so wonderful it deserves to be a theme park on its own. You see, nothing to do with Universal at all!

By this time too, Eisner was in a personal feud with several suits at MCA Universal and the dueling studios projects took on a whole different dimension. The only goal Eisner gave WED as to beat Universal. Ideas were thrown together and the park was slashed in size, not really for budget considerations but more for speed of construction. Any sort of economics and business planning was thrown out just to get the project completed. The feud also led to the strange offshoot of the studios park – the Disney/MGM Studios Backlot project for Burbank. All sorts of interesting dealings from both sides occurred, including the creation of phony “grassroots” community organizations to oppose each other plans, public protests, questionable contributions to city officials and so forth.

For a while, the Disney/MGM Studios was a favorite of Eisner (it was “his” design, after all). It was the easiest park to hock ancillary marketing – ‘Dick Tracy’ stage shows, ‘Roger Rabbit’ rides, celebrity appearances by the cast of ‘Golden Girls’. There were plans to force Disney/MGM Studios at Tokyo and Paris. But the grind of the dealings with Universal and Eisner increasing dislike of theme parks took hold. And when it turned out to be a complete flop as a production facility, Eisner simply abandoned any interest in the place entirely.

And it was a park that needed a patron. Disneyland has its history and huge local customer base. The Magic Kingdom is the draw for WDW and EPCOT Center was paid for by sponsorships. Disney needed, and could afford, to pay attention to these places. However the Studios were an “add on” to WDW without other financial support (like movie production). There was little willingness to invest in the park and so it suffered.

It is a great piece, and I encourage everyone to check it out. Yay for thoughtful debate about the parks!

Have you seen Matt Hochberg’s response to your post?

He makes some great arguments…

http://www.studioscentral.com/column/studios-weekly/defending-studios