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The other lesson Disney has learned is to share the cost. In Tokyo, Disney gets a management fee for licensing its brand to DisneySea, but it has invested virtually nothing in the resort. In France the company now owns only 39% of the property. In Hong Kong, Disney has paid only $310 million for a 43% stake in a venture that is valued at around $4 billion.

Back home, Disney has always worked with corporate sponsors, such as Kodak and Coca-Cola, but the trend is clearly toward shifting even more of the financial burden to them. So California Adventure offers more brand names than Macy's: the Golden Vine Winery and tasting room sponsored by Robert Mondavi, a sourdough breadmaking factory from Boudin Bakery and the Avalon Cove restaurant of celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, to name a few.

Disney executives are so convinced they have got the right formula at California Adventure that they're predicting 7 million new customers will visit the park in its first year--despite a weakening economy. That's on top of the 14 million that Disneyland already gets. The goal is to make these visitors, many from overseas, feel like they've hit all the tourist high points of California without ever leaving Anaheim.

It's that last, not-leaving part that has spooked Disney's competitors and kicked off a miniboom in Southern California theme-park construction. Knott's Berry Farm, owned by Cedar Fair L.P., a publically traded, Ohio-based company that owns nine amusement parks across the country, has just spent nearly $70 million on a new luxury hotel, a 13-acre water park, Soak City U.S.A., and a thrill ride, Perilous Plunge, which it calls the tallest (115 ft.) and steepest (75[degree] angle) water ride of its kind. Knott's is located only seven miles down the freeway from Disneyland.

Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia has 12 roller coasters, but it plans to spend $30 million this year to add three more. "We'll have more roller coasters in one place than anywhere else on this planet," promises spokesperson Amy Means. Six Flags currently boasts, among other superlatives, the tallest (415 ft.) and fastest (100 m.p.h.) coasters in the world. And over at Universal Studios Hollywood, which is planning new attractions around a live Rug Rats entertainment show and the Animal Planet TV show, officials lined up a deal to provide free round-trip transportation for Disneyland guests to Universal, less than an hour from Anaheim. "We can offer the real Hollywood experience," says Larry Kurzweil, president and COO of Universal Studios Hollywood.

He may be right, but who wants reality? The whole point of theme parks is to be transported to a place that's cleaner, safer and more fun than real life. If Disney's illusioners can persuade 7 million more people to double the time they spend here, they will have transformed what they like to call "the Happiest Place on Earth" into one of the busiest--and also one of the most profitable.