Spirited Thursday Night Quickees:
I'm sure you've all heard (or read) that Erin Wallace is gone from WDW Co., off to run the second-largest chain of early child education centers or some such place based in a state that only a Wolverine or a unionized auto worker could love.
Here's what you may not know: she's been quite unhappy, and vocal about it, in her last position and was told a while back that she was on her last contract with Disney. Unlike many who would be glad to retire in the sun and enjoy the millions of dollars in stock she has amassed working in the swamps at the resort her daddy helped build, Wallace wasn't ready for retirement.
Speaking of which, if you talk to folks in the business what you hear about Disney P&R execs is quite scary. A whole generation of execs from George Kalogridis to Karl Holz to Bill Ernest to Phil Holmes are at (or close) Disney's point of being shoved out due to age, on top of Wallace and Meg Crofton leaving. And there isn't a NEXTGEN program of talent below them. If Disney insists on simply moving chess pieces around the same board, then the company will be stuck with a group of middle managers elevated to positions that they aren't remotely capable of handling. Sounds about right.
Will Disney finally bring some new blood ... outside blood into the asylum of Pixie Dust and MAGIC Bands? Stay tuned.
Also stay tuned to see whether succession to the top spot at Disney is on the minds of the audience in San Francisco in March at Disney's annual shareholders gathering. While Wall Street may be enamored with Bob 'The Acquirer' Iger, neither Jay Rasulo nor Tom Staggs gets the analysts hot and bothered and Iger is acting like it doesn't matter and that he'll simply get to pick one. He really shouldn't jump to that conclusion.
OK, so is the Lifestyler debate/discussion over? I was really enjoying it. And actually agreeing with much of what both
@flynnibus and
@WDWFigment were saying. Far more interesting than talking about the pathetic state PotC is in or PPF's new queue that takes the part of
@TalkingHead 's beloved quail tile restrooms and fanboi pickup locale.
So, DCL is getting all Frozen over? Now, really, did you guys/gals not see that one coming like a giant iceberg in the middle of a pond?
Had to run into my mall earlier tonight and stopped by the Disney outlet, for my semi-weekly 'what is WDW P&R retail trying to dump now?' Anything with the year 2014 on it (I still don't get why anyone would buy that stuff at half off ... maybe 75-90% off if you visited in '14 and wanted something) as well as all those nice dishes from Phil Holmes New Fantasyland Boutique and Shrine To His Own Amazing Teeth Whitening ... and the first of what likely will be a huge selection of Co-op stuff, namely some Kevin Kidney tiki bowl for $24.99 (I believe I heard a CM yell to another to put one on hold for this site's No. 1 poster of all time, my pal and yours, the
@EPCOT Explorer.)
Seeing stuff like that wind up at the outlets so quickly tells you that it will only stay on shelves at WDW for a very limited time. They do not intend to keep selling it beyond a period of months when they can reasonably expect every crazy Lifestyler, fanboi blogger, OCDer will buy rather than wait.
Wasn't impressed by Soup and Salad Sandra's lame a-r-s-e piece on people dying at WDW. Sandy, baby, if you want to be hard-hitting why not focus on real safety issues that could affect guests and/or cast? Newsprint is pricey and wasting on people whose time sadly expired when they were at Dizzy World ain't newsworthy by any stretch.
Speaking of lame, the new(??) censorship filter on these boards is a bit much. Are we now going to censor any/every word that some special person finds offensive?
You know what I like most about the BAH coming down at The Park Soon To Be Renamed Something Else With Both Disney and Adventure in it? That it slowly will fade away as a discussion topic and will be relegated to the trash pile of Disney fandome/history where it should burn in hell.
Anyone excited to see Cinderella? Yeah, didn't think so.
Speaking of which, Into the Woods flamed out very quickly.
OK, so I was supposed to think Jason Surrell was talented and now I'm supposed to think Jason Grandt (who?) is too? I guess that's today's lesson from the Disney Twitverse.
I really like what I'm hearing about Disney's plans for sprucing up DLP and making it ''shine like new'' (a quote from someone high up the food chain) in time for its 25th Anniversary. Funny what playing hardball can get you ... in this case, exactly what the folks in Burbank wanted all along.
Oh, and HKDL ... nah, we'll leave that for another time as I need to fly.
