The Magic Kingdom Makes a Play for the ‘Burbs

THOUSAND OAKS —  You’ve already taken your kids to see “101 Dalmatians” at the local multiplex.

You’ve already fallen asleep with them during countless replays of “The Lion King” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” on the living-room VCR.

And despite several visits to the local Disney Store that have filled your house with an endless supply of toys, your kids can’t seem to get enough of the Magic Kingdom.

Don’t worry. You won’t have to pack them into the minivan and schlep them to Disneyland.

Disney will come to you.

The first Club Disney, Walt Disney Co.’s new suburban theme park venture, is scheduled to open in Thousand Oaks on Feb. 21. Disney expects that it will draw customers--or guests, as the company prefers to call them--not just from Ventura County and the San Fernando Valley, but from Los Angeles and beyond.

The indoor, 24,500-square-foot “imagination-powered play site” is geared for children under 10 and accompanying adults, said Jay Rasulo, senior vice president of Disney Regional Entertainment, a division created last year to bring new forms of entertainment to the nation’s suburbs--and new revenues to the company’s coffers.

If successful--and bets are that it will be--similar Club Disneys will be rolled out in suburbs across the country.

“We see a trend that people like entertainment in their communities,” Rasulo said. “This is a version of that.”

The fancy playground goes beyond the traditional climbing structures and floor games of other entertainment chains. It will include educational programs, science-based labs, hands-on tutorials about animation, Internet surfing--family-oriented Web sites only--and a variety of developmental activities meant to involve children and their parents, Rasulo said.

“What we’ve developed will be amazing and entertaining to families,” he said. “It’s about engaging parents and kids in a participatory form of entertainment. It will be seen by children as a place to play. But there will be a lot of stealth learning.”

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Parents will not be allowed to drop off the kids at the club, he said. Many of the activities--exploring a new software title, competing at a Goofy game, painting a picture or acting out a scene--are designed to engage adults and children together, and Disney officials want to make sure that parents and kids will stay together.

This is what they have in mind:

You’ll watch your children do the Mickey Macarena, sing along to Disney songs karaoke-style and dress up in costumes for a Fantasy Fashion Show. You’ll talk to them through whisper tubes as they crawl up the 30-foot-tall Lion King-themed Clubhouse Climber. They’ll learn about mirrors and shadows, experience the magic of animation and learn the craft of Matisse’s collages.

In the giant cone-shaped Chat Hat, you and your children will be mesmerized by the latest interactive multimedia computer games.

The Club Cafe will be just the place for your family to snack on a Mickey-shaped personal pizza.

And, completing the vision of Disney marketeers, you will want to take some of the experience home with you. Besides traditional Disney merchandise, the Clubhouse Shop will sell a variety of Club Disney props so that you can continue many of the games at home.

Burbank-based Disney picked Thousand Oaks for its first club because of its proximity to company headquarters. The city is also easily accessible to a huge market ranging from Santa Barbara to the Los Angeles Basin.

Unlike the company’s larger theme parks, Club Disney is designed to attract people from within a 30-minute driving radius--although initially, Rasulo expects, people will come from much farther.

Thousand Oaks, an affluent community with many young families, is just the kind of place where the company plans to roll out further Club Disneys.

“It looked like the perfect market for us,” Rasulo said.

Disney watchers believe that the mall-based clubs will be a blockbuster.

“They’ll make it work,” said Gary Goddard, a former Disney theme park attraction designer who now runs his own firm, Landmark Entertainment Group in North Hollywood.

“The good thing about [Disney] is that they have deep pockets. If they get it wrong, they’ll fix it. It may work on opening day, or it may work in a year and half. But it will work.”

Goddard said the club is likely to be a hit with the large number of baby boomers with young children--himself included--who are looking for quality things to do. They may not want to go to Disneyland, he said, but are tired of more traditional play sites such as Chuck E. Cheese’s and the Discovery Zone.

With an $8-per-person admission price and an expected average three-hour stay, Club Disney will cater to those looking for an afternoon of fun near home, Rasulo said.

Goddard said the key to success in a mall-based theme park is the ability to draw repeat customers.

Disney is counting on that.

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“First of all, you can’t experience it all in one visit,” Rasulo said. “Secondly, we designed the concept to evolve over time. As we roll out and expand Disney’s characters and properties, these will be reflected at Club Disney.”

That means that the games and other attractions will change to reflect the latest Disney flick.

The company doesn’t want the club, which will accommodate 850 visitors, to be a weekend destination only.

That’s why it has designed a number of separate admission programs to lure visitors to the club on weekdays: educational field trips for school groups; themed birthday parties with invitations, entertainers and cake included; and multi-session workshops like Poohrobics, a 10-week parent and child stretching and exercise program led by the beloved, befuddled honey bear.

As an indication of the club’s likely popularity, cast members--as the club’s employees are called--have been taking reservations for birthday parties nonstop since Wednesday, according to Club Disney spokeswoman Andrea Borda.

Company officials declined to say when or where the next Club Disney will open, or how many the company plans to build.

“We want to walk before we run,” Rasulo said. But Disney Regional Entertainment is planning other regional entertainment concepts besides Club Disney, he added.

The only risk the company seems to face is saturating the market with too much Disney, Goddard said.

That’s not a concern for Judy Beaulieu, a Moorpark mother of three.

“Disney is already pervasive,” Beaulieu said as she strolled through the Promenade at Westlake, the popular 2-month-old Thousand Oaks mall where Club Disney is located. Beaulieu has already taken her kids to Disneyland, Disney stores and Disney movies.

“Disney has invaded our lives,” she said. “But I think the children enjoy all of it.”