A Spirited Perfect Ten

TP2000

Well-Known Member
@TP2000 needs to see those pics!

I see your circa 1972 attractive, well dressed and not morbidly obese middle-class family at Walt Disney World, and I raise you a circa 2015 attractive young couple at Dapper Day at Disneyland onboard the Steamship Mark Twain in Frontierland. (With two hundred well-dressed young hipsters on the dock waiting to board.)

And for those who aren't familiar with legit Walt-era history, the Steamship Mark Twain was a 1955 opening day Disneyland attraction, and Walt and Lillian Disney celebrated their 30th Wedding Anniversary on this boat on July 13th, 1955, five days before Disneyland opened to the public. This romantic Disneyland couple circa 2015 aren't too far removed from Walt and Lillian circa 1955.

9557140.0.jpg


Just when the sloth and laziness and http://www.peopleofwalmart.com of the depressing 21st century was about to send me over the edge during the 2000's, those darn kids from Southern California turned it all around and invented Dapper Days at Disneyland in the 2010's... Dressing up in jackets and ties and hats and gloves and shoes and hairdo's and then going to Disneyland USA as Walt himself intended.

I even hear that Dapper Days has finally jumped the continent and now happens out at Walt Disney World, although in a much smaller and more limited fashion than it does in California. Will wonders ever cease?!?

The kids are alright. At least in Southern California. :cool:
 
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CaptainAmerica

Premium Member
My interest in Marvel started with MSHI (1999) and the Toby Maguire Spider-man (2002). Picked up with RDJ as Ironman (2008). Liked Avengers and GotG. Now I'm pretty much bored with the whole thing.

But I'm sure that if Age of Ultron doesn't reignite my passion for men in spandex and alleviate my superhero fatigue then this surely will
2015:
July 17: Ant-Man
August 7: Fantastic Four (Fox)

2016:
February 12: Deadpool (Fox)
March 25: Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice
May 6: Captain America: Civil War
May 27: X-Men: Apocalypse (Fox)
August 5: Suicide Squad
October 7: Gambit
November 4: Doctor Strange

2017:
March 3: Untitled Wolverine sequel
icon1.png
(Fox)
May 5: Guardians of the Galaxy 2
June 2: Fantastic Four 2 (Fox)
June 23: Wonder Woman
July 28: Marvel Studios co-produced Spider-Man film
(Sony, new addition)
November 3: Thor: Ragnarok (new date)
November 17: Justice League, Part 1

2018:
March 23: The Flash
May 4: Avengers: Infinity War, Part 1
July 6: Black Panther
(new date)
July 13: Untitled Fox Mystery Marvel film
July 27: Aquaman
November 2
: Captain Marvel

Holy spit. Thats a bit much.
Only nine of those are MCU films. Nine films in four years doesn't seem particularly outrageous to me.

I see your circa 1972 attractive, well dressed and not morbidly obese middle-class family at Walt Disney World, and I raise you a circa 2015 attractive young couple at Dapper Day at Disneyland onboard the Steamship Mark Twain in Frontierland. (With two hundred well-dressed young hipsters on the dock waiting to board.)

And for those who aren't familiar with legit Walt-era history, the Steamship Mark Twain was a 1955 opening day Disneyland attraction, and Walt and Lillian Disney celebrated their 30th Wedding Anniversary on this boat on July 13th, 1955, five days before Disneyland opened to the public. This romantic Disneyland couple circa 2015 aren't too far removed from Walt and Lillian circa 1955.

9557140.0.jpg


Just when the sloth and laziness and http://www.peopleofwalmart.com of the depressing 21st century was about to send me over the edge during the 2000's, those darn kids from Southern California turned it all around and invented Dapper Days at Disneyland in the 2010's... Dressing up in jackets and ties and hats and gloves and shoes and hairdo's and then going to Disneyland USA as Walt himself intended.

I even hear that Dapper Days has finally jumped the continent and now happens out at Walt Disney World, although in a much smaller and more limited fashion than it does in California. Will wonders ever cease?!?

The kids are alright. At least in Southern California. :cool:
Dapper day people are the worst. A manifestation of the "look at me" narcissism of the millenial generation. No longer is it sufficient for people to live out their "all the world's a stage" fantasies on social media; they have to do it in real life.

ETA: I'm not talking about REAL Dapper Day. That's fine and well. But the trend at WDW is for the Disneybounders to dress like that ALL the time. They're mostly CPs.
 

bhg469

Well-Known Member
how the hell they missed the pistol?
dont they check the bags and stuff in the hollywood parks?
Waist band, pocket, ankle. No park checks those things. You can definitely wear a sizeable full frame pistol and no one would be the wiser.

With how people love these parks, I am shocked that this hasn't happened before. I can definitely see a disturbed individual thinking they would take their own life where they are the most comfortable. It's disturbing and sad that people witnessed it though.
 

clsteve

Active Member
As have I but in the data center the plumbing gets very complex very quickly, Especially rules like one is none, two is one and 3 is enough, and needing 3 sets of hardware (virtualization does not help you much here) Production, Backup and Staging plus the test infrastructure.
Definitely large complexities on that side - you can't build a house without a strong foundation, there's no doubt about that.

I just thought it was important to point out how and why a significant portion of NextGen's largest expense was not a capital expenditure which, unfortunately, caused so much of the cost overruns and budget raiding that caused many of the project holds and other trickle down issues that impacted all of us.
 

DisneyOutsider

Well-Known Member
Only nine of those are MCU films. Nine films in four years doesn't seem particularly outrageous to me.


Dapper day people are the worst. A manifestation of the "look at me" narcissism of the millenial generation. No longer is it sufficient for people to live out their "all the world's a stage" fantasies on social media; they have to do it in real life.

ETA: I'm not talking about REAL Dapper Day. That's fine and well. But the trend at WDW is for the Disneybounders to dress like that ALL the time. They're mostly CPs.

God forbid anyone go to a theme park dressed to a theme and have fun...:rolleyes:
 

CaptainAmerica

Premium Member
Definitely large complexities on that side - you can't build a house without a strong foundation, there's no doubt about that.

I just thought it was important to point out how and why a significant portion of NextGen's largest expense was not a capital expenditure which, unfortunately, caused so much of the cost overruns and budget raiding that caused many of the project holds and other trickle down issues that impacted all of us.
But those other projects that were raided were capital projects. OpEx overruns wouldn't have resulted in capital funding cuts elsewhere. And as @ParentsOf4 pointed out, OpEx was not being cut from other areas to fund NextGen. The fact that FY15 is reporting savings over FY14 due to the lack of rollout expenses is proof of this.
 

ford91exploder

Resident Curmudgeon
Definitely large complexities on that side - you can't build a house without a strong foundation, there's no doubt about that.

I just thought it was important to point out how and why a significant portion of NextGen's largest expense was not a capital expenditure which, unfortunately, caused so much of the cost overruns and budget raiding that caused many of the project holds and other trickle down issues that impacted all of us.

And because this was a boardroom project they never brought in people who had done this before, I led a team which redid the provisioning systems for a very large organization and it took months of interviews to capture all the business rules especially the manual and backdoor ones which were used to paper over limitations of old system.

MM+ has all the hallmarks of a system where managers thought they knew all the details yet never bothered to communicate with the front line people.

I used to have weekly meetings with the front line people in a auditorium where we would demo what we had done. More than once team took heat but we fixed it and in the end the front line loved it and they still do as I still chat with my team from that project.

The sad truth is no amount of money will fix a bad design.
 

PhotoDave219

Well-Known Member
That's not the problem. The problem is acting like they own the place and posing with guests like they're part of the show. It's inappropriate.

See other posts in this thread about the behavior of off duty CMs, especially CPs. It's a big problem.

So I was part of the first dapper day that happened in Florida… It was nice to dress up fancy and just walk around. We didn't do any of what you're describing…
 

CaptainAmerica

Premium Member
Isn't that why they have a rule banning adult guests from going to the parks dressed as a character? They don't want other guests thinking those people are a tally working for the company. I'm not sure this is exactly the same thing though.
Yeah that's the technicality. It's not REALLY a character per se.
 

tirian

Well-Known Member
@WDW1974 @ParentsOf4 @Lee

Getting back on that slow boat to China...

The Chinese government is shutting down golf courses because the sport is considered too elite and capitalist. Some of the greens fees are as high as $250, but other courses are much less expensive. It doesn't matter. Golf isn't "Chinese"; it's Western, and the government is shutting it down.

This sounds like the ideal political climate for a Disney park built under the Iger Era of Corporate Greed.

http://usat.ly/1FsZVsM
 

BrerJon

Well-Known Member
I even hear that Dapper Days has finally jumped the continent and now happens out at Walt Disney World, although in a much smaller and more limited fashion than it does in California. Will wonders ever cease?!?

The kids are alright. At least in Southern California. :cool:

Yup, WDW has embraced it too. Dapper Day at MK was on March 14th.

I was at DHS for the previous one which co-incided with the last day of the Backlot Tour. Everyone looked amazing, and what was interesting is everyone was happier, were talking to each other in lines more, and the atmosphere was far friendlier and less stressful.

There's definitely a reaction against slovenliness going on, and dressing smartly seems to make people behave and carry themselves far more pleasantly than when everyone is just in cargo pants and T-shirts.
 

clsteve

Active Member
But those other projects that were raided were capital projects. OpEx overruns wouldn't have resulted in capital funding cuts elsewhere. And as @ParentsOf4 pointed out, OpEx was not being cut from other areas to fund NextGen. The fact that FY15 is reporting savings over FY14 due to the lack of rollout expenses is proof of this.
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough on that. That response was referencing my original reply to you where I was pointing out how and why a significant portion, if not the largest portion of NextGen expense wasn't capitalized - opex and SG&A as ParentsOf4 pointed out and that those expenditures went back several fiscal years.

When a project overruns its original estimate by hundreds of millions for an FY or 2 and much of that expense cannot be capitalized, other projects and operational budgets are going to be significantly impacted in order to keep operational and capital percentages in line with what is expected. And why it seems they've worked hard to hide that huge overrun by spreading it out into every reportable line item they could including always hard to quantify SG&A.
 

ParentsOf4

Well-Known Member
But those other projects that were raided were capital projects. OpEx overruns wouldn't have resulted in capital funding cuts elsewhere. And as @ParentsOf4 pointed out, OpEx was not being cut from other areas to fund NextGen. The fact that FY15 is reporting savings over FY14 due to the lack of rollout expenses is proof of this.
I believe several posters mentioned that other budgets were being affected in 2013 or 2014 as a result of MyMagic+ overruns, but I'm unaware of any official Disney statement for that. IMO, there is little doubt that corporate Disney has focused a great deal of effort on cost reductions in recent years as a way to improve margins (Can I please have my printed napkins back?), but I cannot be sure that these are directly related to MyMagic+ overruns.

The thing is, a budget is a budget. When something starts to seriously overrun, it's my experience that senior executives often go on a hunting expedition to cut costs wherever they can find them.

In the first quarter of 2015, domestic P&R capex is low, only 7.4% of P&R revenue. IMO, this is because of the money being spent in Shanghai. Unlike Eisner who sometimes let P&R capex run wild, Iger seems intent on capping P&R capex in the low 20% of P&R revenue. With all the money being spent in Shanghai right now, I'm not surprised (but I am disappointed) that domestic P&R capex is suffering.

Regarding expenses, Disney reported the following for P&R for the first quarter of FY2015:

Operating expenses include operating labor, which increased $87 million from $1,032 million to $1,119 million, cost of sales, which increased $23 million from $346 million to $369 million and infrastructure costs, which decreased $16 million from $423 million to $407 million. The increase in operating labor was primarily due to inflation, higher pension and postretirement medical costs and higher volumes. The increase in cost of sales was due to higher volumes. The decrease in infrastructure costs was driven by the absence of costs that were incurred in the prior-year quarter for the dry-dock of the Disney Magic and lower information systems expense. Other operating expenses, which include costs for supplies and commissions, increased primarily due to higher volumes, inflation and higher pre-opening costs at Shanghai Disney Resort.​

Selling, general, administrative and other costs increased $27 million from $408 million to $435 million driven by higher marketing costs.​

The increase in depreciation and amortization was driven by new attractions.​

It's possible that the "lower information systems expense" mentioned above is somehow linked to MyMagic+ but, unlike in 2014, Disney did not explicitly state this for the first quarter of 2015. Maybe they don't like people reading their SEC filings and commenting about them on this website? :D

By the numbers:
  • P&R Operating Expense: $2,283M, up 6.1%
  • P&R Selling, General, Administrative, and Other: $435M, up 6.6%
  • P&R Depreciation: $387M, up 5.7%
Disney also reported a domestic theme park attendance increase of 7% and a domestic hotel occupancy increase of 8%, the primary driving forces behind a P&R revenue increase of 8.7%.

Disney's domestic P&R operations had a fantastic quarter; revenue was up 10.6%. It's Disney's international P&R operations that are sucking wind right now.
 
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CDavid

Well-Known Member
That's not the problem. The problem is acting like they own the place and posing with guests like they're part of the show. It's inappropriate.

See other posts in this thread about the behavior of off duty CMs, especially CPs. It's a big problem.

There's definitely a reaction against slovenliness going on, and dressing smartly seems to make people behave and carry themselves far more pleasantly than when everyone is just in cargo pants and T-shirts.

Posing with guests or otherwise "acting" as CM's or part of the show is clearly inappropriate. That said, given the absolutely slothful way typical guests dress these days (and not just at a theme park... :banghead: ), I cannot condemn almost anything which improves the attire of park visitors (need a reasonable but enforced dress code, frankly, unpopular though it might be).
 

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