The rising tide lifts all boats.
It’s a saying that’s typically tied to the economy and is meant to convey the idea
that sometimes when something good happens for one, it’s happening for everyone else
as well.
The creation of Walt Disney World in Orlando Florida is arguably one example of that.
Prior to the resorts opening in 1971, that region of the state simply wasn’t the diverse
tourism powerhouse that it is today.
So it’s fair to say that there are amusements in that area that owe their existence to Walt
Disney World.
However, there are also a couple that owe their downfall to Disney World as well.
"EPCOT Center celebrates human achievements and innovation born from imagination.
It is a showplace dedicated to entertain we hope, with a purpose."
It’s October of 1981, and Disney is about to open their second theme park in Florida,
EPCOT Center.
It’s an exciting time for the company.
Sure it wasn’t the city that Walt dreamed of, but ten years later Disney was finally
about to make good on the entire purpose of settling down in Florida in the first place.
It was also an exciting time for many outside of Disney who owned businesses in the Orlando area.
It was a message being sent that told people that, despite the loss of Walt all of those
years ago, Disney was truly committed to turning Walt Disney World into a standout vacation
destination.
It wasn’t going to be fated to just one theme park like Disneyland was at the time.
This excitement lead to tangible action.
With the idea that this park opening would bring hordes of new tourists to the region,
motel and hotel owners in the area began investing money into expanding their property.
Even competing and smaller amusements in the region perceived this as a great moment for
their business.
More tourists meant more customers, and more customers meant more profit.
And they weren’t wrong to think that.
Within the first year of EPCOT Center, room-night demands for hotels in Orange, Osceola, and
Seminole counties jumped from 8.5 million nights to 11 million nights.
More people were coming to Florida for vacation, and they were staying longer.
This was great, right?
Well it was… for Disney.
Because you see, Disney had a trick up their sleeve and that trick was the three-day passport.
At $15 a day, it would cost an adult $30 to spend two days at Disney, with a day at each park.
However, for just $5 extra, you’d get an entire third day.
Needless to say, it was a great deal, and it was a deal that worked.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, industry analysts believed that the new 3-day ticket
accounted for as many as a third of all sales within just a year or so.
The problem, for Disney’s competitors, was that for many families every extra day spent
at Disney was a day not spent elsewhere in Orlando.
This was a fundamental shift in the way vacations were seen in the region.
Slowly but surely Walt Disney World was changing from being just one stop along a string of
stops in the area, to being the stop.
"Eastern Airlines presents a flight of imagination to Walt Disney World EPCOT Center
With our low cost vacation packages, a week here including coach airfare and hotel accommodations
can be much less than you imagined. In fact, Eastern is the official airline of Walt Disney World.
So when it comes to making your dream vacation affordable, we can work a little magic of our own."
Now for the larger and more unique experiences in central Florida, this was a shift that
they were able to weather.
Seaworld and the Kennedy Space Center in particular were special enough experiences that you couldn’t
get anywhere at Walt Disney World, and so for enough families, they were worth the stop
on their vacation.
However for one smaller amusement, it would mean their end.
In 1975 Six Flags was in the process of growing, and part of that growth was trying to diversify
with smaller amusements to compliment their larger theme parks.
Walt Disney World was still growing in popularity at that point, and so they established one
of those smaller amusements in Orlando with the Six Flags Stars Hall of Fame.
It was a wax museum that offered over 200 wax figures across nearly 100 different scenes
that depicted famous faces of Hollywood and the films they were most known for.
It wasn’t a massive crowd magnet, but it wasn’t trying to be one either.
Attendance was what could only be described as fair, that is until EPCOT Center opened.
The figures were never published, but with 1982 being admittedly their worst year since
opening, Six Flags threw in the towel and put the entire venue up for sale for $3.3 million.
But that was a small place and it was just a wax museum, so the odds were stacked against
it, right?
Surely a larger and more well funded theme park would be able to avoid such a pitfall.
Well as it turns out, that wasn’t the case for Circus World.
Opened in 1974 by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, Circus World was meant to be a theme
park that doubled as the touring circuses winter home.
It was unique in that when it opened, much of the theme park portion didn’t exist yet.
Eventually it did get those rides however, such as a wooden coaster called the Roaring
Tiger and a ferris wheel called Jumbo, the giant wheel.
In fact by the end of its life, it offered 31 attractions.
Now at this point in time Ringling Bros. were owned by the toy company Mattel.
This was a big deal because Mattel was a big company with deep enough pockets to presumably
keep the park well funded.
Like many others in the region, they felt that the opening of EPCOT Center would mean
nothing but good news for the park, and even had plans to continue to build new attractions
and expand into the 80s.
However the news was anything but good.
Rather than profiting from Disney’s second park, Circus World was estimated to have losses
of up to $4 million dollars in 1983.
By that year attendance had dropped to just under 900,000 guests and shortly after in
early 1984 Mattel gave up and decided to sell the theme park.
Ultimately it’s flaw was that in a space dominated by Disney, it simply didn’t offer
anything unique enough to stand out.
Generic rides.
Generic shows.
It was kind of forgettable.
"Well the circus has come to town and has left.
One of Orlando's attractions is closing down after being a landmark for more than 10 years"
It would change hands multiple times over the following few years to new owners, who
attempted to improve it’s situation to no success.
It finally closed in 1986 and was rethemed to a new park called Boardwalk and Baseball.
However it was mostly a rehash of the previous park, just without the circus theme.
Not having learned the lessons of Circus World, it too would close just three years later
in 1990, this time for good.
As is often the case in instances like this, we can never be 100% sure that their closing
was the fault of EPCOT Center.
Maybe they were both destined to fail anyway.
In any case, many industry experts afterwards would attribute the opening of EPCOT Center
as a major cause, if not the cause of their downfall.
It served as an example that if you wanted to stand a chance against the unquestionable
leaders in a industry that was still evolving, you needed to bring something unique to the table.
Otherwise you might just find that your boat had a hole in it all along, and that the rising
tide means trouble.