Pardon the length, but here is a message from the Cast Portal.
It's from Magic Kingdom Vice President Phil Holmes.
Enjoy:
Hello Magic Kingdom Team,
This weekend the Orlando Sentinel published a story about maintenance and upkeep at the Magic Kingdom Park. Last week in an effort to reduce the bias of the article and share how proud we are of what we do and how great we do it, Bill Warren, Vice President of Public Affairs; Trevor Larsen, Vice President of Engineering Services; and I shared our side of the story - the facts - with reporter and four editors at the Sentinel.
Knowing how important it is for you, our Cast, to have timely and accurate information, I want to take this opportunity to provide all of the facts we shared with you:
According to our guests, we're doing a great job of maintaining the Magic Kingdom Park. Recent guest satisfaction ratings are as high as they have ever been.
During a recent survey, 90 percent of guests surveyed said that the upkeep and cleanliness of the Magic Kingdom Park was either excellent or very good.
Currently, we are spending more than $100 million per year at the Magic Kingdom Park in this arena. Last year, we spent $6 million on The Crystal Palace alone to bring it back to its original luster. Other recent or pending refurbishment projects at the Magic Kingdom Park include, but are not limited to, the following:
Big Thunder Mountain was closed for renovation that included a complete repainting of the mountain. Splash Mountain also recently went through a refurbishment.
The roof of Cinderella Castle was recently repainted.
In the future, we have an extensive refurbishment planned for "it's a small world" among other projects.
A re-paving project is already underway in the Magic Kingdom parking lot.
In addition, more people are focused on maintenance and custodial work across the Walt Disney World Resort than ever before. In the area of engineering and maintenance, there are more than 5,000 cast members. This includes 650 people who are focused on horticulture and 600 painters.
More than 20 percent of our sustainment executive team worked at the Walt Disney World Resort on opening day. In addition, more than 5,000 cast members work in custodial services and housekeeping.
Something that many people don't realize is the fact that we go to extreme measures to keep our parks looking great. For example:
We don't just wash our streets -- we steam clean streets every single night.
If you were driving a 2002 automobile, and it was a Disney attraction, it would have already gone through a rebuild process involving a sand-blast and repaint and a full chassy rebuild. Every Space Mountain vehicle goes through this every two years.
We have more than 100 intricate designs for our trashcans to ensure that they match the themes of our theme parks. These trashcans have their very own refurbishment cycle to be repainted, and this is an elaborate process given the detailed designs of each and every trashcan.
We have Cast Members who have very specialized roles in maintenance. For example, there are people who are assigned to painting the antique carousel horses. They actually use gold leaf on these antique horses - which look brand new, and they go through an elaborate process to maintain the integrity of the carousel.
There is an entire checklist for each attraction with animatronics to ensure that they are keeping up to original standards -- including the color palettes and the mechanics of each animatronic figure.
We grow our own trees at a tree farm so that if a mature tree in a park needs to be replaced, we can do so with a full-grown tree that is 30 years old. We remove it and put in another full-size tree.
It is also worth noting that during a very challenging economic time following September 11, Walt Disney World preserved Cast Members' jobs and managed to continue to invest in exciting new attractions, significant refurbishments, extensive marketing campaigns and important community programs such as the Rosen School of Hospitality at the University of Central Florida and the Disney / SBA National Entrepreneur Center in downtown Orlando. These commitments made a difference to the people who live and work in our community on many levels.
Some of the attractions the Walt Disney World Resort has continued to invest in new attractions over the past three years include the following.
At the Magic Kingdom alone, we have added Mickey's PhilharMagic and launched our new "Wishes" fireworks.
Stitch's Great Escape! opens here this fall.
At Epcot, Mission: SPACE opened last year and has exceeded all expectations for guest popularity. Mission: SPACE has achieved one of the highest guest satisfaction scores of any Epcot attraction.
Magical Gatherings was launched in October 2003 and provides planning services and online tools to make it easier than ever for groups to travel together to the Walt Disney World Resort.
Disney's Pop Century Resort opened in December 2003.
Are we perfect? Of course not. Are we doing more than ever to keep the Magic Kingdom Park and the rest of the Walt Disney World Resort show ready to Guests visiting today and in the future - absolutely.
As we all know, show is one of our Four Quality Standards. It has been since our opening day in 1971 and will continue to be what sets us apart from the rest. I am inspired by the heritage and traditions we uphold each and every day to deliver an experience unlike anything else in the world. After all, we are where magic begins.
I'll see you out there!
