Disney’s Ambassador Guides Foreign Policy for a Magic Kingdom

It’s not exactly nuclear disarmament, but when one of Disneyland’s chief ambassadors deals with foreign powers, the negotiating still can be delicate.

How, for example, do you diplomatically dissuade the Japanese from putting a pig farm next to Tokyo Disneyland?

And how do you satisfy the French insistence on including local culture--like wine with meals--in an essentially American institution to be built outside of Paris?

Those are the sorts of problems that Disneyland ambassador James B. Cora has handled since 1979, when he was appointed managing director of operations for the planned Tokyo project. Three years ago he took on the French version of Disneyland--scheduled to open in 1992--and projects in countries on nearly every continent being considered for the future including China, India and Australia.

So far, Cora and his cohorts have managed to overcome most of the problems of fitting Disney into foreign cultures. And Disney’s success in Japan, where the locals ignore blizzards to visit Mickey and Donald, has encouraged the company to forge ahead around the world.

But it has been a lengthy learning experience for Cora, whose official title is executive vice president for Euro Disneyland and vice president of Disneyland International, which oversees foreign projects.

During the almost four years between his appointment to manage the Tokyo Disneyland project and its completion in 1983, Cora found that the Japanese like to come up with their own solutions to almost any problem--whether it needs to be solved again or not.

The pig farm may have been the classic example.

Unique Problems; Unique Solutions

The problem: How to dispose of some 250 tons of trash to be generated weekly by Disneyland visitors.

The standard Disney solution: trash compactors.

The Japanese proposal: Pigs--to eat the trash and then be slaughtered and sold at a profit.

But a Piggyland did not appeal to Disneyland executives. Cora and his team of some 150 operations experts did a little calculating and pointed out that it would take 100,000 pigs to do the job. And then there would be the smell . . .

The Japanese relented.

The French, however, appear to be getting their way on a number of cultural matters and Cora’s job has been to find ways for Disney’s planned European park to accommodate the Gallic culture.

Euro Disneyland, a $2.5-billion park and resort, for example, will likely offer wine at restaurants inside the park--a clear departure from the no-alcohol policies at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

So far, Cora, 49, has managed to find an answer to each cultural problem while learning a great deal about international diplomacy.

It’s been a challenge far greater than the ones Cora had to deal with in his first job for Disney in 1957--operating the Dumbo and Mad Hatter spinning teacup rides part time while attending California State University at Long Beach.

Since then, Cora has held down a series of Disney jobs including foreman of the Snow White ride and production director in charge of Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. When Disney was negotiating to purchase the Disneyland Hotel during 1973 and 1974, Cora served as its general manager--returning to the Disney fold when the sale was called off.

Even his family is pure Disney--his wife, Susan, was a tour guide and Cora proposed on the Steam Train ride. Cora’s brother is the Anaheim park’s director of operations and one of Cora’s three children is a tour guide.

But Cora’s 30 years in the Disney world have not been repetitive. In fact, while he is based at Disneyland, he operates out of offices in Anaheim, Burbank, Orlando, Tokyo and Paris.

And in Anaheim, Cora, at least for the time being, has offices in pretty posh quarters.

Planned as Apartment

Located atop the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in what appears from the outside to be a French Quarter mansion, Cora and other executives of Disneyland International have become accustomed to crystal chandeliers, French doors that look out onto a courtyard fountain, a wet bar (no booze, but the coffee comes in Styrofoam Disney cups) and a picturesque porch overlooking the Mark Twain river boat ride.

The suite, soon to be an art gallery, originally was intended to be Walt Disney’s apartment, but Disney died before construction was completed.

And on the wall of that office is a poster of a snowbound castle at the $638-million Tokyo Disneyland, a souvenir of one of Cora’s greatest successes so far.

During its first year, more than 10 million people visited the 204-acre Tokyo amusement park. Today, Tokyo Disneyland is considered a huge success, although it draws about 2 million fewer visitors than the Anaheim Magic Kingdom, which had about 12 million guests in 1986.

To prepare for the Tokyo opening, Cora and a handful of other top Disney executives trained first in the United States. They learned Japanese cultural practices and body language, but didn’t discover until they arrived in Tokyo that the Japanese were not about to follow the Disney way without asking questions.

“We really thought it would be as simple as producing manuals . . . teaching the Japanese how we do things, then getting (the park) open,” Cora recalls. “Boy, were we naive.”

Lines for attractions had to be redesigned so that people walking through the park do not cross in front of patrons waiting to ride an attraction. “It’s very discourteous in Japan to have people cross in front of somebody else,” Cora said.

The Japanese were also uneasy about a rustic-looking Westernland--Tokyo’s version of Frontierland. “The Japanese like everything fresh and new when they put it in,” Cora said. “They kept painting the wood, and we kept saying, ‘No, it’s got to look old.”’ Finally, the Disney crew took the Japanese to Anaheim to give them a first-hand look at the Old West.

Phones Too High for Guests

But in Disney’s enthusiasm to make Tokyo a brick-by-brick copy of Anaheim’s Magic Kingdom, there were a few glitches.

On opening day, the Tokyo park discovered that almost 100 public telephones were placed too high for Japanese guests to reach them comfortably. And many hungry customers found countertops above their reach at the park’s snack stands.

After dealing with a park that the Japanese wanted to be as American as possible, Cora and crew discovered that the French want their own cultural values recognized within Euro Disneyland.

During 18 months of negotiations, the French insisted on a clause that requires Euro Disneyland to respect and utilize French and European culture in its themes.

Disney conceded, after months of tedious bargaining with the French equivalents of federal, state, county and city governments and a regional transportation authority. The result, not surprisingly, was a series of contractual compromises.

So while the project’s layout will be very similar to Walt Disney World, the official language in Euro Disneyland is likely to be French.

The park will also have a French-oriented Jules Verne area, in tribute to the French hero and author. The match seemed a natural, since it was the Disney company that produced the 1954 movie, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”

In the themed area, visitors will be able to walk through a full-sized Nautilus submarine and look at a lounge, dining room, diving tanks and nautical equipment--similar to a museum-type attraction that opened at Anaheim’s Disneyland in 1955 and closed a few years later. “It’ll be just like you took Nautilus out of the sea,” Cora explained. “The French culture is very big on museums.”

By opening day at Euro Disneyland, Cora will head a project with as many as 7,000 employees.

And if France succeeds, Cora’s worldwide diplomatic education may have only begun. After France, he said, he’ll probably start preparing for a Chinese Disneyland.