In this episode of Synergy Loves Company, Eric dives into the fascinating history and connections between Disney and Marriott. Discover how theme parks like Disneyland inspired similar ventures worldwide, including Marriott's own Great America parks. Explore the beginnings of Marriott as a root beer stand and its evolution into a global hospitality giant, drawing parallels with Disney's expansion. Learn about the intriguing attempted acquisition of Disney parks by Marriott, their collaboration with Warner Brothers for character licensing, and the ultimate sale of Marriott theme parks to Six Flags. Uncover the impact of former Marriott executives at Disney, like Gary L. Wilson and Lee Cockerell, who helped shape Disney's resort and guest service experiences. Finally, explore the modern relationship between these two iconic brands, with Marriott operating numerous Good Neighbor Hotels near Disney parks. Join Eric as he uncovers the synergy between Disney and Marriott, bringing Disney magic a bit closer to home. Thanks for Enjoying Synergy Loves Company! https://www.synergylovescompany.com
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00:04 --> 29:46 Synergy loves company. We have this coterie of rich franchises, the company now that people want to engage with. I came here to try and continue what Walt Disney and his associates set in motion 50 years ago, which is to experiment with every new and innovative kind of entertainment possible. It's what they hope to do here, to really develop something that, well, just more than an entertainment enterprise, it's something that contributes in many other ways. After Disneyland came on the scene in 1955, everyone wanted their own theme park. There was Nara Dreamland in Japan, which was almost a direct knockoff. But it didn't last. When Tokyo got their own name brand, Disneyland in 1960, C.V. wood, who had helped the construction of Disneyland, opened his own Freedomland USA, a United States themed park in the Bronx, New York. And it didn't last that long. In 1961, after visiting Disneyland, Angus G. Wynn opened a Texas themed park in Texas and named it after the Six Flags of the nations that have governed over Texas. And that one, it's still there. In fact, it's only gotten more popular and expanded and grown into other parks. Proving you can successfully make a theme park themed to a state that it's in. Sorry, California Adventure, one point, but in the 1970s, Marriott, you know, the hotel brand, they tried out that same United States of America theme, just like Freedomland. But now it would be just in time for the United States Bicentennial. And in the 70s with Disney parks on both coasts, Marriott's theme parks, that's right, plural theme parks were coming for that Sweet, sweet Disney parks market share. Hey, this is Synergy Loves Company where we explore how Disney connects to everything. So you can connect to Disney when you can't be at the parks. I'm Eric and today we're taking a look at those connections between Disney and Marriott. And that competing theme park that Marriott built is only the beginning of the relationship between these two companies. Hold on a minute though. Before we get into Disney and Marriott's competition and connections, let's take a look at the beginnings of the Marriott company through a Disney lens. Marriott didn't start as the Marriott Hotels and resorts that we know today. 27 year old J. Willard Marriott started the company in 1927 by opening a nine seat root beer standard in Washington D.C. that he would name the Hot shop after he added some hot food to the menu. Two years later, Marriott was incorporated in the state of Delaware as Hot Shops Incorporated. It was growing and just like Walt Disney, expanding his animation and diversifying into live action in the 1930s, JW had bigger aspirations than to just be a tiny root beer stand. His Hot Shops foods would be served on airlines flying out of DC's Hoover Field, now the space where the Pentagon stands today. He made food for American Airlines and Eastern Airlines, the original official airline of Walt Disney World. But that that would be later. His meals again expanded in Hot shops became the official food service of the cafeterias in many of the US government buildings around Washington D. They continued to expand the places where you could get hot shop foods. More airlines, even more shops. This time along the highway in New York. The company was becoming the place where you could get hot food while traveling. But they wondered if they could be more of a travel destination. You know, rest and nourishment. In 1957, they opened their first hotel, the Twin Bridges Marriott Motor Hotel in Arlington, Virginia just outside Washington dc. Whether Marriott was feeding its customers or giving them a place to rest their head, JW Marriott prided his company on its hospitality and customer service. It became known as the Marriott Way. Marriott had been opening successful hotels and wanted to expand its restaurants from just the Hot shops locations. In 1964, they changed the company's name to Marriott Hot Shops to show both sides of the business and give the founder a little name recognition. You know, just like when Walt Disney decided to change Disney Brothers Studio to the Walt Disney Studios. Marriott wanted to make sure that he got recognition. But they didn't stop there. Throughout the 60s, the Marriott Hot Shops company continued to expand by buying other restaurants like Big Boy and creating restaurant concepts like one that they did with Roy Rogers, called Roy Rogers. They weren't just hot shops anymore. And so they dropped the name from the business and they just became the Marriott Corporation in 1967. And so in the 1970s, Marriott was pretty diversified, but they wanted to keep going. J.W. marriott Jr. Known as Bill Marriott took over as the CEO at this time. And they continued to expand their hotels and restaurants. But wondered if the company could be more than just the stops along the way to your destination. What if Marriott could be a world class destination for recreation? Walt had made Disneyland a destination in the 1950s and the Walt Disney Company just opened the Vacation Kingdom just outside of of Orlando, Florida. Tons of companies had been trying to replicate the success of that theme park destination. And Marriott decided to give it a try too. In the early 70s, Marriott announced that they would open three theme parks to coincide with the bicentennial of the United States in 1976. They would name it Marriott's Great America. And no matter where you were in The United States of America. You would have a Marriott theme park nearish by you. One of them would be located on the west coast in the San Francisco Bay area in California. Another would be centrally located in the Midwest just outside Chicago, Illinois. And the largest of all would be on the east coast in Marriott's home base, the Washington DC area. Unfortunately, the Great America in Washington DC faced some strong opposition from the residents of the proposed site in Laurel, Maryland. Permits were denied and so the project was moved to Manassas, Virginia. The residents of that community also strongly opposed the theme park and the National Park Service got involved because it was really close to the Manassas battlefield. So the project was shut down. If you know anything about Disney's America, the 1990s plan to bring a Disney theme park to the Manassas, Virginia area. This is almost exactly the same story. The people of the Manassas area did not want a Marriott theme park in the 70s. And their minds did not change for Disney in the 1990s. If only Disney would have talked to Marriott, they could have avoided that whole mess. Anyway, to design the Great America theme parks, Marriott took a page right out of Disney's book and enlisted a former Hollywood set designer who then turned builder, Randall Duel. Duel had been the set designer for the wizard of Oz and a ton of other films for MGM over the years. And then he went on to work with CV Woods, Knockoff Disneyland, Freedomland USA and also that Six Flags Over Texas. He helped design both of those for Marriott's Great America. Duel designed the parks to go in a loop to be a little different than Disney's Hub and Spoke. But this would allow for an employee service alleyway to run up the middle of the park and make it easier to access a central backstage area from any land and easier to cut across the park for employees. I mean, they weren't going to build a utilidor. So I guess he was looking for the next best thing. Marriott's Great America opened two locations in the spring of 1976. They were both pretty much a copy paste of the other with the same lands and a lot of the same attractions. They had one in Santa Clara, California outside the San Francisco Bay area, and one in Gurney, Illinois, halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And if these parks weren't trying to be Disneyland or the Magic Kingdom, oh my goodness, there's so many similarities. Let's just take a look at the lands real quick trying to show the different regions of America. Great America had Hometown Square, which was modeled after a turn of the century Hometown Main street and town square area. They had Orleans Place, Marriott's take on New Orleans not dissimilar to Disney's New Orleans Square. There was Yankee Harbor, a colonial village right on the waterfront. Kind of like Liberty Square. Come on, Marriott. Okay, okay. There were some different lands like Yukon Territory and the Midwest County Fair, but Disney would actually kind of take those themes on in Grizzly Peak and Bountiful Valley Farm at California Adventure or even, you know, taking on the county fair idea in Mickey's Toontown Fair at Magic Kingdom. So I guess then Disney tried, you know, kind of copied some of those ideas that, that Marriott had implemented. But anyway, there is a lot in common. And to top it off, Marriott surrounded their park with a steam train that rode all around the border in a Grand Circle tour, just like the Disneyland railroad. Okay, I know what you're thinking, but they're not the same. Of course they're not. Disney has those iconic characters who live at the parks. Marriott can't compete with Mickey. They tried to, though. To make sure that they had characters to meet and greet. Marriott partnered with Disney's biggest cartoon competition. They licensed Warner Bros. Looney Tunes characters. And at Marriott parks you could meet Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird. Marriott was diversified now into restaurants, hotels and theme parks. Entering the 1980s, the theme parks weren't doing as big a business as Marriott had hoped. And they, you know, they were, they were great, but they weren't Disney. And Marriott was still trying to make them happen. But it would be just so much better if they like had that Disney kind of vibe or maybe if they just had Disney's parks. Yeah, Marriott could, could maybe just take Disney's parks and then they could add it to their portfolio of theme parks. Yeah, around this time was when Saul Steinberg was taking an interest in Disney and trying to buy the company and sell it for parks or I mean, parts. Marriott was actually interested in buying the Disney parks from Steinberg. If they could buy the Disney parks, they would be able to expand their budding theme park collection into an empire overnight. The Disney parks could boost Great America. We could have Marriott's Disneyland or Marriott's Disney's Great America. Although I don't think Mickey and Bugs would get along. That was like a one time thing in Roger Rabbit. Though Marriott never publicly admitted to being part of the Saul Steinberg deal, a lot of insiders at the time were reporting that, you know, Steinberg and Marriott were in talks to invest in Disney stock and to Help Steinberg get that board seat. Eventually, in 1984, as the story goes, the deal fell through and Disney kept control of the company in house. They did get a new leadership team in Michael Eisner and Frank Wells, and they were able to turn the business around. Moving into the mid-80s, with all possibility of the Disney parks going up for sale just completely gone and the Marriott theme parks not being as easy to run as the company thought they might be. Marriott decided to put their focus back on the hotels and they sold their theme park division to Six Flags. This is actually the deal that gave Six Flags access to the Looney Tunes characters that they're known for today. As part of the deal to buy Marriott's Great America parks, Six Flags got to use the Looney Tunes characters in all of their theme parks. Back to Disney in the Eisner era. My favorite, when Eisner and Wells took over, they were going to run the Disney company the way they wanted to, not worrying about what Walt would have done. And that means they would have to bring their own people on board. Hiring a new leadership team would help Eisner and Wells bring on a new era of Disney. In 1985, one of the new people they brought on board was Gary L. Wilson. As CFO of Walt Disney Productions, that was the name of the Walt Disney Company back in the 80s. Gary L. Wilson had actually been quite a big deal at Marriott before joining up with Disney. He worked at Marriott from 1974 as the executive vice president for finance and development just after they had gotten into the theme park game. He is known for his time at Marriott for developing the Courtyard by Marriott hotel concept. Marriott originally had one hotel brand, Marriott Hotels, and even though the brand started as a motor Lodge, Marriott had become a premium offering by the 1980s. Marriott hotels offered full service luxury accommodations in cosmopolitan locations, or to put it in Disney terms, a deluxe resort. Wilson's idea for Courtyard by Marriott would be more for business travelers and be located in more suburban locations outside metropolitan areas. Courtyard was more of a moderate resort. Marriott has expanded since then and includes a ton of resort and hotel labels like the Fairfield Inn, which came next on Marriott's list. And that's their like economy line, most similar to a Disney value resort. But that expansion of Marriott all started with Wilson's Courtyard concept. Michael Eisner was interested in expanding Disney's resort footprint and to him that meant a lot more hotels. When we talked about Tishman last time on the show, I mentioned a big lawsuit Tishman posed against Disney for breaking an Exclusive deal with them. Tishman had had an exclusive deal to build a hotel and convention complex with Starwood Hotels that would appeal to business travelers. The lawsuit came up when Disney started talks with Marriott about a similar project on Disney property. And I don't think it was just a coincidence that after Disney hired on Gary Wilson as cfo, they really wanted to work with Marriott. The plan to build a Disney Marriott hotel convention center complex was kibosh. And Tishman was able to proceed with Starwood in building their resort to Michael Eisner and Disney's specifications. That's when Michael Graves got involved. And so instead of a big Marriott, we got Disney's Swan and Dolphin resorts. Wait, hold on a second. In an ironic twist of events, in 2016, Marriott bought Starwood Resorts and took over control of Disney's Swan and Dolphin Resort. So I guess we actually got a Disney Marriott Convention Resort in the end. Anyway, back to Gary Wilson, though. Just like he did with Courtyard for Marriott, Wilson helped Disney usher in the hotel expansion to moderate resorts as well as more deluxe resorts. Michael Eisner continued building hotels for Disney right into the Disney decade of the 1990s. He even thought he could bring the Disney resort hotels to Europe and build a slew of resort hotels for Euro Disney in the early 1990s. But. But it was too many and one of the many reasons for the dicey start of Euro Disneyland or Disneyland Disneyland Paris. Gary Wilson ducked out of the CFO role before Disney ever made it to Europe. But he stuck around on the board of directors and he brought on another of his Marriott colleagues to the company who would help bring Disney to Europe and then into the Disney decade. Lee Cockrell helped open Disneyland Paris back when it was Euro Disneyland. And then he came back stateside to fill the role of Executive Vice President of Operations for the Walt Disney World Resort. During his time with Disney, he's known for creating the Disney Great Leader Strategies program. Doesn't really roll off the tongue, but when Disneyland came online in 1955, Walt Disney had a vision for how the employees, as cast members, would approach customer service when interacting with guests. Walt Disney put Van Arsdale, France in charge of making sure cast members would be trained completely and consistently. And his Disneyland training program evolved into Disney University, a program that all Disney cast members must pass before serving guests in the parks. If all Disney cast members take classes at Disney University, Lee Cockrell's Disney Great Leader Strategies is like the Disney University grad school. Lee Cockrell prided himself on guest satisfaction and customer service. He's Written a few books about the time he had at Disney and how you too can lead the Disney way. Creating Magic is his first and probably most popular book. I have two copies mostly because I forgot that I already bought it from Thriftbooks and and then I bought it again. Lee Cockrell had worked his way up at the hotel industry before moving on to Disney. He started out managing hotel locations for Hilton and moved up in the company before shifting to Marriott in the 1970s where he stayed for 17 years. He learned customer service from the ground up and applied it to leadership. He helped Disney continue on their tradition of customer service that goes back to Walt Disney and Van Arsdale, France. Marriott always prided themselves on having a people first mentality. If you take care of the employees, they will in turn take care of the customers, which is ultimately Marriott's goal. Marriott was one of the first ever hotel companies to offer a rewards points system to their hotel customers in their Honored Guest awards program back in the 1980s. They still give out points today. Lee Cockrell came to Disney in the 1990s to run Walt Disney World Resort with the Marriott people first mentality and he plussed up Disney's already great customer service record. It's no wonder that Disney Parks became world renowned for their customer service at this time. Cockrell left the day to day at Disney as the Executive Vice President of Operations of Walt Disney World in 2006, but he still works with Disney as a consultant for customer service. He has also founded a leadership and management consultancy firm called Creating Disney Magic where businesses can hire Lee out to to bring the customer service tenants that he learned at both Marriott and Disney to, you know, other companies. Lee Cockerel is probably the best center of the Venn diagram between Disney and Marriott, the one that kind of pulls it all together these days. But the companies are still good neighbors today. That's right. I'm talking about good neighbor hotels. In addition to the Swan and Dolphin being run by Marriott these days, Marriott owns a slew of other good neighbor hotels in Anaheim and a bunch surrounding the outskirts of Walt Disney World. Over the years, Marriott International has been snapping up smaller hotel brands and today they are the largest hotel company in the world by number of rooms. Marriott International represents 36 hotel labels with over 9 locations and almost 1.6 million rooms in Walt Disney World. You can stay at Marriott Hotels in the Flamingo Crossing area near the Western Way, Animal Kingdom. Side entrance to Walt Disney World, there's a Spring Hill Suites, a Town Place Suites, a Renaissance Inn and a Fairfield all of those are Marriott labels. There's also a JW Marriott. That's the signature label in Bonnet Creek, which is this area that's like parallel to Caribbean Beach Resort, but it's not on Disney property. But you have to access the area by traveling through Disney property. It's kind of like a landlocked island. But that's a whole thing from back in the day when Walt was buying up land and someone over there in Bonnet Creek was not selling. And then there's that lone Marriott resort on Hotel Plaza Boulevard, the Renaissance Orlando Resort. You might remember this one as the Hotel Royal Plaza from the Michael Jackson and Disney episode I did. This was the one that had a Michael Jackson penthouse suite where Jackson stayed all the time. But you could also stay there, too. And then there's Disneyland. At Disneyland, Good Neighbor hotels are pretty much the norm. They're all over the place, and there are multiples of each kind. So Marriott, being the biggest hotel company, has a ton. They got Fairfields, they got JW Marriott's, they got Sheraton's. Yep, Sheraton's owned by Marriott now, too. And of course, they've got Courtyard. Last year, when my family stayed at Disneyland, we stayed at Marriott's moderate resort, the Courtyard by Marriott Anaheim theme park entrance just across the street from the Matterhorn. And it is really just across the street. It blew my Disney World love in mind. In Disney World, you never get that close to a park unless you're at, like, the Contemporary or the Grand Floridian. Other than that, everything's so far away. I mean, even the Polynesian is on the other side of the Seven Seas Lagoon. So when we went to Disneyland, we got in town at night and we got to watch the fireworks over Disneyland from our Courtyard by Marriott window. It was amazing. And it was just a short walk from the entrance to Disneyland the next day when we were visiting the parks. When I stay at Disney World, I often stay at Pop Century. That feels like my home resort. It feels like a Disney vacation when I'm at Pop Century. But in Disneyland, I kind of always will feel like my home resort was that Courtyard by Marriott. That's my personal connection between Marriott and Disney. Anyway, thanks for joining me for this look into Marriott and Disney and all their connections and competition. Have you ever stayed at one of the Disney Marriott resorts like the Swan and Dolphin or maybe one of those other good Neighbor hotels? I would love to hear how it went for you. Let me know how you enjoyed it. Maybe you stayed at that same courtyard like me. At Disneyland. Reach out to me on Blue sky there. I'm Eric H. Synergy. Or you could find me on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. All of those meta places. I'm at Synergy LovesCompany and as always, I've got some more great Disney connections coming right up. And if you want to make sure that you don't miss those episodes, go ahead and make sure to subscribe or follow wherever you are enjoying Synergy Loves Company right now. Whether that's YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Cast, there's so many of them. You can go to Synergy Loves Company and you'll find a link to whichever is your favorite pod podcast app and you could click follow and subscribe and then you'll know when a new episode drops. Just like the Marriott way. Let's put people first. I know there's someone out there, a friend of yours, maybe a family member, a co worker, someone who loves Disney just like you and me. Think about how much they would love this show. Wouldn't they love it? Come on, they would. 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If you give to the show, it helps me keep innovating and evolving the show to make a better program of Synergy Loves Company for you. No matter how you decide to support the show though, I really appreciate you and the time that you spent with me today. Thanks again for joining me on this adventure. And remember, Disney's magic isn't just in the parks, it's all around us. So go out into the world and keep discovering the magic in everything. Sa.