Universal Versus Disney: The Unofficial Guide to American Theme Parks' Greatest Rivalry - Hardcover

by Sam Gennawey (Author)

This book tells how Universal Studios shook up the multibillion dollar theme park industry, one so long dominated by Walt Disney and his legacy.

When an aspiring young director named Walt Disney came to Hollywood in 1923 to seek fame and fortune, one of his first stops was Universal City, home to Universal Studios. Universal Studios had been open to the public since it opened in 1915 and its founder, Carl Laemmle, was the only studio chieftain who understood that the public was willing to pay to pull back the curtain and witness the creative process. And what the public wanted, Laemmle was happy to provide.

What Walt Disney and thousands of others saw was a city dedicated to making movies. Disney must have been amazed at the sight of dozens of movies of every genre being filmed right in front of the public. Always curious, he was able to secure a day pass that allowed him to go beyond the public areas within his first year of arriving in Los Angeles. He wandered around the backlot for three days before the security guards threw him out. Undeterred, Disney returned to animation and would find another angle to get him back on the Universal lot.
By the end of 1926, Universal was looking for its first cartoon to distribute and Laemmle asked Charles Mintz to find it. Mintz contacted Walt and Roy Disney to see if they had any ideas. The timing could not have been better since the brothers were already looking to replace the long running Alice's Wonderland cartoon series with something new. For Walt Disney, having his work distributed by a major studio would be a real coup.

Walt and his chief animator Ub Iwerks drafted some sketches of a cute comedic rabbit wearing short pants and Mintz named him "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit." The series was a success and over the next two years Walt Disney produced 26 cartoon shorts. In 1928, he lost the character and much of his animation staff to Mintz and Universal during a contract dispute. Once again Disney was not deterred and would come back even stronger with Oswald's replacement, Mickey Mouse.

When Walt Disney became a successful studio chief in the mid-1930s, he considered a tour of his studio on Hyperion Avenue but he felt the animation process would be too boring. He said, "You know, it's a shame people come to Hollywood and find there's nothing to see. Even people who come to the [Disney] Studio. What do they see? A bunch of guys bending over drawings. Wouldn't it be nice if people should come to Hollywood and see something? He toyed with the idea for years but nothing came of it.

Instead, he decided to do something completely different and opened Disneyland in 1955. Disneyland put the guests onstage in immersive environments based on the popular movies and television genres of the day. The backstage would remain hidden. In the process, Walt Disney invented the theme park industry.
A few years later, Universal Studios would be sold to entertainment powerhouse MCA. Led by Lew Wasserman and Sidney Sheinberg, their team found an authentic way to satisfy the public's desire to go backstage that would not interfere with production. The result was an industrial tour that turned into a multi-million dollar business.

Disneyland appealed to one audience and the Universal Studios Tour appealed to a different audience. Everybody was making money and everybody was happy. Then came Wasserman's growing ambitions, Michael Eisner and Frank Wells at Disney, and Universal's constant changes in corporate ownership.

Circumstances would force Universal to move toward the Disney theme parks model of immersive fantasy environments with varying success. Even though Disney had the money and the creative heritage, Universal had one significant advantage. For many years at Disney, the theme parks were the tail that wagged the corporate dog. At Universal, the theme parks were a small flea on the back of the dog. This difference allowed a handful of ambitious people at Universal to gain a reputation as theme park innovators and they quietly reinvent an industry. Can the underdog become the top dog?.

Author Biography

Sam Gennawey is the author of the newly released history of Walt Disney's first ever destination attraction, The Disneyland Story. Gennaway is also the author of Walt and the Promise of Progress City, a contributor to Planning Los Angeles and other books, and a columnist for the popular MiceChat website. His unique point of view built on his passion for history, his professional training as an urban planner, and his obsession with theme parks has brought speaking invitations from Walt Disney Imagineering, the Walt Disney Family Museum, Disney Creative, the American Planning Association, the California Preservation Foundation, the California League of Cities, and many Disneyana clubs, libraries, and podcasts. He is a senior associate at the planning firm of Katherine Padilla and Associates, and he lives in Pasadena, CA.