One aspect of Michael Eisner I admire when it comes to his time as Disney CEO was his
insistence on brainstorming from all levels of the company. He felt that it was important
to foster an environment where people weren’t afraid to voice their ideas, so that the good
ones could float to the top among all the bad ones.
From that ethic came some ideas that changed the Disney company forever and are still with
us today.
There were also some pretty bad ideas.
Some of these made it as far as testing stages and some design.
Some were shot down while they were still ideas.
Here are five failed ideas from the Eisner Era.
Number 5: Rentable boats in the World Showcase Lagoon
According to both Eisner and investor Sid Bass, during an afternoon at EPCOT together
while walking around the park and talking business, Eisner realized that there was nothing
going on in the World Showcase Lagoon.
As Bass tells the story, Eisner found a board and marker and made a sign that said “Boat
Rentals”, and within the hour the lagoon was filled with kids in boats.
If that sounds whimsical, it’s because it probably is.
As Eisner later tells it, it wasn’t that simple.
Disney did run tests of a boat rental program in Epcot, however it never left the testing
stage as they soon learned that the testers struggled with boats due to the wake bouncing
off the walls of the lagoon and roughing up the waters.
On the subject he said “Our people who were testing were all capsizing and getting sick.”
and that “Not all my ideas are practical.
For every idea I have that we go forward with, ten others people yell me down on.”
Number 4: Disney branded fast food
In 1990 during the rise of the Disney store, as they were expanding from 41 to over 120
locations across the country, Disney decided it was time to get into the fast food business.
The idea was called Mickey’s Kitchen and the first one opened in April of that year
at their Montclair Plaza Disney Store in California.
The idea was to offer a healthy fast food alternative with the Disney brand attached
to it, and the initial test locations existed within Disney stores themselves as extensions.
The menu offered up dishes such as “Salads in Wonderland”, meatless “Mickey Burgers”
and “Bibbity Bobbedy Beverages”.
The test lasted for two years and expanded to a second location, but by March of 1992
both were shut down due to poor performance.
As consumer products division spokesman Chuck Champlin put it, Disney “barely broke even
with Mickey’s Kitchen.”
Number 3: Disney Cars.
No, not the Pixar film.
Actual Disney cars.
Some of the ideas that Eisner introduced to the company were inspired by his personal
experience with his family in one way or another.
As the story goes, Splash Mountain was ultimately built because it was his oldest son Breck
who saw a model of the ride during a tour of Imagineering and singled it out as something
teenagers would like.
When it came time for Breck to start driving, Eisner floated the idea of an actual Disney car.
He thought it would be wonderful for Disney to be known as the safest car on the roads.
The idea included co-designing the car with General Motors, who was currently sponsoring
World of Motion over in Epcot.
The car would, among being the safest, offer fenders and roofs that could easily be swapped
out for different designs, making them more customizable.
The idea got as far a focus testing through Disney’s outsourced PR firm, Young and Rubicam.
As it turns out, according to Young and Rubicam’s Steve Rose, when people think of a Disney
car, they imagine Goofy on the hood and a Mickey Mouse steering wheel.
It was an idea nobody wanted.
With that data at hand, Eisner shelved the concept.
Number 2: The year long wedding of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
Eisner often hosted weekly meetings in which division heads throughout the company would
not only update each other on their part of the business, but explore new ideas.
As the story goes, one of those Monday lunches started off with Eisner telling the group
that “Today we’re going to talk about whether Mickey and Minnie should get married.”
The concept was to not only have Mickey and Minnie get married, but to make a year long
event out of it.
The idea was that Mickey and Minnie would get engaged on Valentine’s Day, get a ring
in April at Tiffany & Co (surely a sponsorship opportunity), and finally get married in June
during the height of the Disney vacationing season and during a televised special.
Lastly the two would honeymoon in Paris, not too far off from the relatively new EuroDisney.
It was packed with all of the tie-ins and synergy that Eisner was known for.
However ultimately the idea of Mickey and Minnie getting married, and all the implications
and complications that came with it, were just too radical for many at the company,
and the idea was shot down.
Number 1: The Mickey Mouse hotel, a 43-story towering, inhabitable monument to the mouse himself.
During their second week as CEO and COO of The Walt Disney Company, Michael Eisner and
Frank Wells got to work on developing a new plan for the Walt Disney Studios lot over
in Burbank.
One idea that made it on the list was putting a hotel along Riverside Drive.
Eisner and Wells met with legendary Imagineer Marty Sklar and Disney’s in-house Harvard
trained architect, Wing Chao and that’s when Eisner proposed his idea for the hotel.
He said “Let’s make this a Mickey Mouse hotel.”
Sklar replied “You mean the name, the Mickey Mouse Hotel?”
“No” said Eisner.
“Make it in the shape of Mickey, with rooms in the legs.
The idea was to build a 43-story version of Mickey Mouse that would stand upright and
with a leg on each side of the drive, straddling the street.
It was such a bizarre idea that as first nobody was sure if he was even being serious.
There was some lively debate over the practicality of such an idea, but it was finally Chao who
put the idea to rest by raising the question as to where the elevators for the hotel would go.
The idea didn’t last long at all, but it remained as a story that exemplified Eisner’s style.
He was dedicated to creating a space in which nobody would be afraid to pitch an idea, no
matter how ridiculous or unrealistic.
Eisner later claimed in his biography that he knew the idea was going too far, but that
it was suggested to stress the importance of theatricality and innovation and to encourage
his team to suggest the impossible and as a result come up with new ideas.
As history has shown, not all fans agree on which ideas during his time as CEO were good
and which were bad, but I think one thing most people can agree on was that if nothing
else, most of them were… interesting.
Now I want to throw a question to you.
Out of these five ideas that never really came to fruition, which one would you most
want to see brought to reality today?
Let me know in the comments below.
Thank you for watching, and I’ll see you next time!