Disney\'s Expedition Everest One of the newest thrill rides to open in the Walt
ID: 414059 • Letter: D
Question
Disney's Expedition Everest
One of the newest thrill rides to open in the Walt Disney World Resort may just be the most impressive. As Disney approached its 50th anniversary, the company wanted to celebrate in a truly special way. What was its idea? Create a park attraction that would, in many ways, serve as the link between Disney's amazing past and its prom ising future. Disney showed that it was ready to pull out all stops in order to get everything just right.
In 2006, The Walt Disney Company introduced Expedition Everest in Disney's Animal Kingdom Park at Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Expedition Everest is more than just a roller coaster. It is the embodiment of the Disney spirit: a ride that combines Disney's trademark thrills, unexpected twists and turns, incredible attention to detail, and impressive project management skills.
First, let's consider some of the technical details of
Expedition Everest:
With a peak of just under 200 feet, the ride is con tained within the tallest of 18 mountains created by Disney's Imagineers at Disney parks worldwide.
The ride contains nearly a mile of track, with twists, tight turns, and sudden drops.
The Disney team created a Yeti: an enormous, fur-covered, Audio-Animatronics monster pow ered by a set of hydraulic cylinders whose com bined thrust equals that of a Boeing 747 airliner. Through a series of sketches, computer-animated drawings, sculptures, and tests that took more than two years to perfect, Disney created and pro grammed its Abominable Snowman to stand over 10 feet tall and serve as the focal point of the ride.
More than 900 bamboo plants, 10 species of trees, and 110 species of shrubs were planted to re-create the feeling of the Himalayan lowlands surrounding Mount Everest.
More than 1,800 tons of steel were used to construct the mountain. The covering of the framework was done using more than 3,000 prefabricated "chips" created from 25,000 individual computer-molded pieces of steel.
To create the proper color schemes, 2,000 gallons of stain and paint were used on rockwork and throughout the village Disney designed to serve as a backdrop for the ride.
More than 2,000 handcrafted items from Asia are used as props, cabinetry, and architectural ornamentation.
Building an attraction does not come easily or quickly for Disney's Imagineers. Expedition Everest was several years in development as Disney sent teams, including Walt Disney Imagineering's Creative Executive Joe Rohde, on repeated trips to the Himalayas in Nepal to study the lands, architecture, colors, ecol ogy, and culture in order to create the most authentic setting for the new attraction. Disney's efforts reflect a desire to do much more than provide a world-class ride experience; they demonstrate the Imagineers' eagerness to tell a story-a story that combines the mythology of the Yeti figure with the unique history of the Nepalese living in the shadow of the world's tallest mountain. Ultimately, the attraction, with all its background and thematic elements, took nearly five years to complete.
Riders on Expedition Everest gain a real feel for the atmosphere that Disney has worked so hard to cre ate. The guests' adventure starts by entering the build ing of the "Himalayan Escape" tour company, complete with Norbu and Bob's booking office to obtain permits for their trip. Overhead flutter authentic prayer flags from monasteries in Nepal. Next, guests pass through Tashi's General Store and Bar to stock up on supplies for their journey to the peak of the mountain. Finally, guests pass through an old tea warehouse that contains a remarkable museum of artifacts reflecting Nepal's culture, a history of the Himalayas, and tales of the Yeti, which is said to inhabit the slopes of Mount Everest. It is only now that guests are permitted to board the Anandapur Rail Service for their trip to the peak. Each train is modeled after an aging, steam-engine train, seating 34 guests per train.
Over the next several minutes, guests are trans ported up the roll r coaster track, through a series of winding turns, until their encounter with the Yeti. At this point another unique feature of the attraction emerges: The train begins rushing backward down the track, as though it were out of control. Through the balance of the ride, guests experience a landscape of sights and sounds culminating in a 50 mph final dash down the mountain and back to the safety of the Nepalese village.
Disney's approach to the management of projects such as Expedition Everest is to combine careful plan ning, including schedule and budget preparation, with the imagination and vision for which the company is so well known. Creativity is a critical element in the development of new projects at Disney. The company's Imagineers include some of the most skilled artists and computer-animation experts in the world. Although it is easy to be impressed by the technical knowledge of Disney's personnel, it is important to remember that each new project is approached with an understanding of the company's underlying business and attention to market projections, cost control, and careful project management discipline. New attraction proposals are carefully screened and researched. The result is the creation of some of the most innovative and enjoyable rides in the world. Disney does not add new attractions to its theme parks frequently, but when it does so, it does so with style!
Suppose you were a project manager for Disney. Based on the information in this case, what critical success metrics do you think the company uses when designing a new ride; that is, how would you prioritize the needs for addressing project cost, schedule, quality, and client acceptance? What evidence supports your answer?
Explanation / Answer
At least three elements of these projects are clear from the case - a) the huge cost the company is incurring, b) the accuracy and background details of each individual element of the project, and c) the projects are delivered infrequently. Definitely, the market research before starting the projects must be very detail. Only when the revenue projections or cash inflows in the future support the initial outflow of cash, then only the approval of a project is carried out.
Therefore, 'client acceptance' must be the primary priority of the project. Before starting any single task for the project, the team will make sure that the outcome will be accepted by the customers and they will be willing to pay for it. Next, is the 'quality'. The success of the project depends hugely on how detail, how innovative, how accurate, how much research-based the attraction point is. The project team must ensure the competitive advantage of Disney in that the attraction is difficult to replicate by a competitor. The third priority should be the 'schedule'. Though a large project can take a long time (5 years), the team must abide by the schedule as close as possible. Because, once the work gets started, it is hard to keep this a secret and too much delay will either frustrate the customer of creating scope for the competitors to react. Finally, the last priority should be the cost. Cost should not come in front of quality or accuracy of the attraction point. This, however, does not indicate that wastages are granted.