Peter says,

Tokyo Disneyland is the most profitable theme park on the planet thanks to understanding psychology.

I can believe that. I could certainly believe that it's the most profitable of the Disney properties. It's interesting to contrast that to Euro-Disney, in France, which has long been the most troubled of the Disney properties and the one that has had the most trouble with debt.

One difference is that Tokyo Disneyland is right in the middle of Tokyo, while Euro Disney is out in the sticks. But that can't be all of it, because Disneyworld is also out in the sticks.

But another issue is the local culture. Putting Euro Disney in France always seemed a bit risky, given the traditional French condescension towards all things American.

The Japanese, on the other hand, are at least as xenophilic as Americans are, and have no issues with enjoying a quintessentially American theme park.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 06:26 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 They should have put it in Germany. Germans love to go on vacation.  Throw in some cheap beer and surely the British would follow.

Posted by: Zyrkon at February 03, 2009 07:54 PM (PBdV8)

2 But wouldn't cheap beer drive the Germans away? 

Posted by: metaphysician at February 03, 2009 08:33 PM (h4nEy)

3 They also market the heck out of Tokyo Disney, too.

A few friends of mine got into the habit of watching a Japanese variety show called King's Brunch for a while. (Live feed of Japanese TV... gotta love the internet!) The segment that hooked them was "Room Research", which was a sort of game show to guess the rent for certain apartments in Tokyo, but practically every week there would also be a segment on "check out this fun thing at Tokyo Disney". Eventually they phased out Room Research, but the Tokyo Disney stuff's still there.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at February 03, 2009 08:50 PM (7TgBH)

4 The weather in Germany is too beastly too much of the year. Actually, I would have said Portugal, but I guess they wanted it more central, near to a larger concentration of people.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 03, 2009 09:51 PM (+rSRq)

5 From what I understand, when Disney World was born Orlando was a sleepy town of about 50,000. Walt Disney chose the location precisely because it was out in the sticks. He wanted to avoid another Disneyland, with miles of tacky tourist shops right next to the park, so he secretly bought up mile after mile of Florida land, only stopping when the truth was discovered and land prices suddenly shot up. It worked pretty well... the tacky tourist shops are miles away from the parks, and most of Disney World is given over to forests, even now.

Posted by: EvilOtto at February 04, 2009 03:07 AM (moJjI)

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