Page 77 - The Disneyization of Society

THE DISNEYIZATION OF SOCIETY

are more likely to consider staying in a linked hotel. We have seen this principle in
connection with the casino-hotels and the Disney theme parks have used this strategy.
68 Many other theme parks are doing likewise and Universal Orlando, which was
mentioned previously, has developed a great deal in this area. Other theme parks are
following suit, in that there is a Legoland Hotel at Legoland in Holland, while Alton
Towers theme park in England now has two themed hotels on the site.
Similarly, some large malls are including hotels in their complexes. Even the
Hamburger University in Illinois, where McDonald’s franchisees and managers are
trained, has its own Hyatt. 30 The new football (soccer) stadium that is the home
of Bolton Wanderers, known as the Reebok Stadium, has a hotel attached to it,
reflecting a growing tendency for sports venues to be sites for hybrid consump-
tion (see the section on sports stadiums below). The large Las Vegas hotel-casinos
are not only platforms for shopping and restaurant opportunities, they are also
frequently venues for shows of various kinds and sporting events, thereby further
extending the ways in which hotels are implicated in hybrid consumption.

Sports stadiums

Many sports stadiums, and the modern baseball park in particular, are increas-
ingly a home to a variety of forms of consumption. 31 They are no longer solely
locations for watching a favourite team play. One writer on sports marketing
writes that ‘today’s ballparks have ATM machines, virtual shopping malls, and …
restaurants and hotels’ and observes that the Skydome in Toronto ‘offers dinner
views of the park, hotel rooms with views of the diamond, and even a swinging
Hard Rock Cafe in right field’. 32 According to a journalist from the Wall Street
Journal, at Tropicana Stadium, the home of the Tampa Devil Rays baseball team

fans can get a trim at a barber shop, do their banking and then grab a cold one at the Budweiser
brew pub, whose copper kettles rise to three stories. There is even a climbing wall for kids and show-
room space for car dealerships. 33

At the MCI Center in Washington, DC, Ritzer notes that there is a Discovery
Channel store, a sports gallery that includes museum displays, and an electronic
games arcade. Regarding baseball parks, there is now a growing number that
include among the various consumption elements: shopping malls, food courts,
beer gardens and bars, video games arcades, museums, some amusement park
attractions, and banking facilities. 34

McDonald’s

There are two main ways in which hybrid consumption can be seen in relation
to McDonald’s. One is through the way its tie-ins with companies like Disney