A Spirited Perfect Ten

[unkadug]

"Back in the day" there was a three man crew who were solely dedicated to replacing bulbs. They would aim to replace anything at 80% of life expectancy. They weren't always perfect but that was their job.

Public realm maintainence is on the up again it seems thankfully, at least in DHS and the MK, but is still less than it used to be.

I can see how the penny counters could see this as a waste of money, but at the very least the crew should be replacing bulbs at less than 20% life expectancy.

 

[AEfx]

I can see how the penny counters could see this as a waste of money, but at the very least the crew should be replacing bulbs at less than 20% life expectancy.

Or even just the ones that actually are burnt out, LOL.

 

[PREMiERdrum]

Or even just the ones that actually are burnt out, LOL.

The popcorn lights on both the Grand Floridian and the MK's bus loops look awful. Aren't these LEDs now? If so, it isn't as much of a maintenance issue as a cheap fixture issue.

 

[Disneyhead'71]

The popcorn lights on both the Grand Floridian and the MK's bus loops look awful. Aren't these LEDs now? If so, it isn't as much of a maintenance issue as a cheap fixture issue.

I believe at this point the only popcorn lights to make the switch to LED are Main Street's. They are in the process, but you know that at Disney, these things move at a glacial pace.

 

[PREMiERdrum]

Interesting to hear word that IASW is apparently looking better though. It has looked awful and dirty for years now. With tons of missing ceiling tiles even.

IASW looked great. It looks as though at least one of the areas that had ceiling popped up and angled or missing entirely has been replaced with a larger area of metallic grid tiles. While not ideal, it looks *much* cleaner and intentional than the haphazard look from before.

Spaceship Earth was looking fairly decent barring some minor issues last October, I hope it is still that way.

It looked pretty dang good last week as well. The lighting looked like it had recently been refocused and aligned, and the burning Rome smell was nice and strong.

In the descent, all the trash and dust had been cleaned up off of the area above those blasted triangles, but there are still several areas where the chicken wire is still plainly visible (although it looks like at least portions of it has been painted black). Whoever handled the black drops throughout the descent (from the LED infinity lights down to unload) really needs a kick in the pants. They are stretched, pulled, and tied so unevenly, that the light from those awful LCD screens shows off every inconsistency. It looks *terrible*. It's painfully obvious that there are other "things" back there that they're hiding with black curtains. Bad, bad show.

 

[bhg469]

I think that may be where the confusion landed - I have no desire to turn back the clock by 20 years. I believe in tradition and history but in looking back at Disney in both those areas, one value that repeatedly shows up is change. And I also realize that I am not personally the target audience WDW is looking to please (Which is why, say, I have to roll my eyes at at least 1/2 of the posts about Frozen in Norway.)

Now, that said - I still feel like the overall design is poor, in intention if not execution. The intention is to make more exclusive places for people to book six months ahead to watch a 10 minute show.

But what really bothers me the most - what I come down to with each of what little projects WDW actually attempts these days - is the TIME. It's absolutely ridiculous that a project like this is stretched out over years.

I know that contractors/construction companies have collectively decided to slow work down universally (longer it takes = more money they can charge), and how things that 20 or 30 years ago took a few months now take a few years, but Disney has elevated this to a bitter art form. And, conversely, Universal has proven everyone is full of garbage because somehow they can go from breaking ground to a fully built and operational major ride attraction in a year. Disney takes five times as long to build 1/3 as much.

Exasperating all of that is this project in particular, and where it is. I have a realistic view of running a theme park - I completely understand that when the place runs 365, things must go down, it cannot all remain fully operational at all times, etc. That said, what I do miss about 20 years ago is that Disney would realize the incredible impact the Hub in particular has in forming the MK experience, and they would have done it a lot more unobtrusively, and crews would be working on it every single night until it was done.

@marni1971 or someone else in the know can correct me if I am mistaken, but "back in the day" I was under the impression that there were nearly as many folks working in the parks overnight as there were during the day - you know, back when they used to repaint the curbs every few days, that a burnt out bulb would be replaced before the park opens next, and they worked on projects like this so as to keep them as unobtrusive to the guest experience as possible.

That's my overall issue - that no guest has been able to walk into the Hub and into Fantasyland without seeing some sort of obvious construction in this decade. That's the surest sign of how Disney has completely changed their mentality - from creating a magical environment which enchanted guests so much that they spent large amounts of money, to instead becoming exactly what the critics always accused it of - a money pit that expends as little as possible while doing everything they can to manipulate guests in ways that are only advantageous to the Disney company, not the customer experience.

To make a comparison, WDW is a lot like Madonna. As an almost life-long Madonna fan, I've spent the better part of 30 years admiring her and enjoying her work. Back when she was 25, 30, a lot of the antics and irreverence that she got crap for in the general populace were really much more culturally subversive (in a positive way). Sure, she wrapped herself in a flag for a Rock the Vote commercial - which research showed actually got young people to vote. She would do something controversial as the "hook" and then actually had something to say, even though a lot of the media or even general population didn't understand it at the time. (Hell, I saw an interview the other day from the 80's where she used the word "homophobia" - even I had forgotten just how much impact she had in that arena.)

Now, as a woman nearing 60, Madonna has really become what her critics always said she was - she is still doing the same antics, the same thing, but it really is about just getting attention and publicity now. Just like she was always accused of doing, even when that really wasn't the case - of course, it was part of it, but it really did serve a greater good.

WDW is similar in the respect that they have pretty much done the same exact thing - become the monster everyone always unfairly accused them of being. WDW has always been a money-making venture, of course, just like Madonna has always been trying to shock folks into giving her intention - but they used to do quality projects, constantly upped the theme park game, and realized that creating "magic" gave an incredible ROI. They spent a lot and they made a lot.

Now? They do as little as possible, drag out what little they do as long as possible, and clearly after spending 1.5B+ on a program that was only designed to eek a few more cents out of those who already attend, and only a portion of them at that - Disney no longer cares about anything other than increasing revenue, at the expense of all the good will and "magic" which is really what "addicted" folks to begin with. They are completely content with being trounced in the area of theme park attractions by Universal.

That's what I miss about WDW - it's not that I expected the Hub to stay a "museum" of itself, but that as I see it remade - I see it remade with the same lack of values that nearly everything added to WDW over the past decade has been. Not to make things more magical while also making profit, instead concerned about nothing but short-term profits and aren't even pretending anymore to actually be about guest experience.

Not to steal @Cesar R M 's thunder but...

 

[Cosmic Commando]

Episode VII and Age of Ultron will be duking it out for biggest movie of the year (Ep VII's money will mostly come in 2016, of course)... why shouldn't Iger/Disney let everyone know?

 

[Disneyhead'71]

Episode VII and Age of Ultron will be duking it out for biggest movie of the year (Ep VII's money will mostly come in 2016, of course)... why shouldn't Iger/Disney let everyone know?

Because it fundamentally changes the publics perception of what "Disney" is. Whether that's good or bad is arguable. Is trading 77 years of brand building for a giant pile of cash good?

 

[bhg469]

Because it fundamentally changes the publics perception of what "Disney" is. Whether that's good or bad is arguable. Is trading 77 years of brand building for a giant pile of cash good?

According to wall street, you betcha!

 

[aladdin2007]

IASW looked great. It looks as though at least one of the areas that had ceiling popped up and angled or missing entirely has been replaced with a larger area of metallic grid tiles. While not ideal, it looks *much* cleaner and intentional than the haphazard look from before.



It looked pretty dang good last week as well. The lighting looked like it had recently been refocused and aligned, and the burning Rome smell was nice and strong.

In the descent, all the trash and dust had been cleaned up off of the area above those blasted triangles, but there are still several areas where the chicken wire is still plainly visible (although it looks like at least portions of it has been painted black). Whoever handled the black drops throughout the descent (from the LED infinity lights down to unload) really needs a kick in the pants. They are stretched, pulled, and tied so unevenly, that the light from those awful LCD screens shows off every inconsistency. It looks *terrible*. It's painfully obvious that there are other "things" back there that they're hiding with black curtains. Bad, bad show.

If I were Siemens I would be embarrassed. But I guess they are clueless and don't care either.

 

[Cosmic Commando]

Because it fundamentally changes the publics perception of what "Disney" is. Whether that's good or bad is arguable. Is trading 77 years of brand building for a giant pile of cash good?

That's if you think you're "trading" something for your giant pile of cash. Tonally, I think they're both great fits for Disney.

 

[Voxel]

"Back in the day" there was a three man crew who were solely dedicated to replacing bulbs. They would aim to replace anything at 80% of life expectancy. They weren't always perfect but that was their job.

Public realm maintainence is on the up again it seems thankfully, at least in DHS and the MK, but is still less than it used to be.

I was surprised to see an increase in public realm maintenance over my last two trips, I'm hoping it keeps improving.

 

[Quinnmac000]

Episode VII and Age of Ultron will be duking it out for biggest movie of the year (Ep VII's money will mostly come in 2016, of course)... why shouldn't Iger/Disney let everyone know?

Wouldn't say that...biggest movie of the year depends on China and the overseas market. Thats how Transformers was the most successful as of last year and F7 possibly could be this year. Avengers and Star Wars made way more here than overseas it can easily argue that they might not be the biggest. If you check out every single movie in the top 5 of biggest films of the year with the exception of the last Avengers scored with super high overseas in the 65% of gross. However Avengers: AOU is the biggest movie in South Korea right now but that's because its product placement for Seoul as South paid production well not to put them in a bad light, casting of a big name Korean actress and the amount of people who attended the filming set while in SK.

Avengers earned 86 Million in China. It would have to increase its tracking by a lot.

And as to Star Wars, it didn't even do well in the overseas Market....The Last Episode only made 468 million total overseas. Even Ice Age: Continental drift outgrossed with 715 Million made overseas. Its nice to be overconfident but lets put so realism based on trends.

 

[Tigger1988]

The new Avengers movie has already made over 200 mil overseas, and those are just opening numbers...

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

The popcorn lights on both the Grand Floridian and the MK's bus loops look awful. Aren't these LEDs now? If so, it isn't as much of a maintenance issue as a cheap fixture issue.

The bus loop might be LED, not sure but I think I recall reading something like that. Pretty sure GF definitely isn't LED though, that sort of attention can't come soon enough as the hotel has looked ghetto at least since 2010 (I don't even know how long the lights have really been out, 2010 was just my first visit since '97).

Even most of Main Street I believe are still old school incandescent lights. Only the area around the Crystal Palace seems to have been switched to LED so far from what I could tell. The color quality on them looks very good by the way, I didn't realize they were LED's until I looked closely. LED's have come a very long way and some are finally viable incandescent replacements. But the stupid thing is that when I visited in October, there were plenty of those new LED's either broken or switched off on Crystal Palace. A well built LED can last multiple decades, barring the rare defect. Kind of pathetic that there were so many already non working (i'm sure they're less than a couple of years old as I don't recall them being there in 2012), hope it has been addressed by now. It was a real kick in the balls to revisit some of my old home movies from the early 90's, only to see the pristine condition of Main Street, including the lights.

But that was a civilized Main Street for an (arguably) more civilized time (at least in regards to Disney World). Back when the night crews kept the place looking new (lights constantly inspected and changed to prevent them from breaking in the first place, the hub trees were still big and gorgeous and Spectromagic was an awesome new night parade.

 

[Quinnmac000]

The new Avengers movie has already made over 200 mil overseas, and those are just opening numbers...

Okay 200 million but if their isn't a big increase in China or a decrease in Japan per viewing they are going to hit the Billion mark and not much over unless it does extremely well here in the States. Every country its has opened in so far had those numbers expected and is expected to do well. The top three major movie markets are Japan, US, China. We know it will in the US but Japan or China. Japan (45 mil last time) China (86 mil). Negative reviews are already coming out at Age of Ultron not being good as the first so add that possibly detouring people from seeing it in the US, China, and Japan.

Also Avengers opening weekend was $185M. So it only tracked 15 million more USD.

Avengers 92% rotten tomatoes by critics 91% by audience.
Avengers: AOU 79% by critics on rotten tomatoes.

 

[ford91exploder]

Yep. With multi-day tickets, park hopping and special events attendance won't drop off much. However, they have to be seeing a drop in spending. People just don't stay as long because there is less to do. Removing AIE and Backlot tour without replacements reduced capacity at an already low capacity park. People can show up and hop somewhere else or hop in during the afternoon and catch Fantasmic without spending a full day. I think the key to getting an overhaul green lit is to spin it like they spun the Avatar thing. Spin it as making DHS a full day park again. It's not just about gate clicks but about guest spending and money spent at the park.

The real metric is profit per guest IF that does not drop then DHS is doing fine according to glendale

 

[Tigger1988]

Okay 200 million but if their isn't a big increase in China or a decrease in Japan per viewing they are going to hit the Billion mark and not much over unless it does extremely well here in the States. Every country its has opened in so far had those numbers expected and is expected to do well. The top three major movie markets are Japan, US, China. We know it will in the US but Japan or China. Japan (45 mil last time) China (86 mil). Negative reviews are already coming out at Age of Ultron not being good as the first so add that possibly detouring people from seeing it in the US, China, and Japan.

Avengers 92% rotten tomatoes by critics 91% by audience.
Avengers: AOU 79% by critics on rotten tomatoes.

"Importantly, the $201.2M take exceeds the opening of the first Avengers film by 44%" - Deadline

 

[Quinnmac000]

"Importantly, the $201.2M take exceeds the opening of the first Avengers film by 44%" - Deadline

Same Source different article

The Avengers opened to $185M three years ago in a bigger share of the marketplace than Ultron, which nevertheless did not include Russia ($43.4M ultimate cume). http://deadline.com/2015/04/avengers-age-of-ultron-international-box-office-prediction-1201414163/

So if it opened with 185 million last time how the heck is 15.2 million 44%???? Especially without opening in Russia last time which was part of the reason it was so successful in the end game.

 

[Cesar R M]

I believe at this point the only popcorn lights to make the switch to LED are Main Street's. They are in the process, but you know that at Disney, these things move at a glacial pace.

maybe they will wait until 80% of the popcorn are dead in the traditional bulbs before moving to LEDS.
gotta save as many penies as they can.