A Spirited Perfect Ten

Darth Sidious

Darth Sidious

Authentically Disney Distinctly Chinese
WDW1974 said:
Phenomenal post 783 (on page 50 for those as behind as myself) by MAGIC's official numbers guy (and usually that's a bad thing!) @ParentsOf4 ... don't know what else to say. You explain the numbers better than anyone I've seen here (and better than most people in the business!)
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Not all numbers people are just looking to cut corners at the expense of creativity and product. :) @ParentsOf4 Is certainly not one of them, he understands business and fiscal responsibility. I'd think many of us here are that way because we actually care about the product, but I work with tons of people who you'd truly despise (and I do).
 
WDW1974

WDW1974

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Gabe1 said:
I feel the same way about the CM discounts. If historically there is a 60% occupancy rate, fill some of the 40% with CM's. Their families are still paying a chunk for the room, eating, drinking and purchasing in the parks.

Foolish Mortals.
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I can tell you that I have tried (or friends have) to book me CM rates at WDW for at least 5-6 different trips in the past three years or so. None with success. And, usually, when they looked they could find no CM rates at all, even if they played around with the dates and resort levels. And I don't travel at the busiest times, so clearly Disney would rather have a resort filled to 60% capacity, instead of taking and adding 25% more guests at 50 or 60% off rack rate (where they still make a HUGE profit!)

Just a shell game ...
 
WDW1974

WDW1974

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
BTW, one quickee on the Us vs Them fandom debate started in that blog post by Foxxy.

I've often felt that the battle is akin to the one on global warming (or climate change if you let Frank Luntz mold the debate).

If WE win and get Disney to live up to its Legacy, its history, its standards, its PR, then WE all win. The quality goes up and the vast majority of everyone (Us, Them, Casual visitors etc) all benefit from a higher caliber experience and more bang for all our bucks. That likely also makes shareholders who are in for the long haul benefit too.

But if THEY win, we all suffer. We all pay the price for less, for lower quality, for a worse/Walmarted product. And, at some point, it's like global warming and it's too late to do anything ... and all those profits that went to companies, who didn't have to live up to stringent environmental laws, while the planet was getting destroyed won't matter much when we're all under water.

Your thoughts?
 
WDW1974

WDW1974

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
ChrisFL said:
As much that has been said about SDMT being disappointing or too short, the fact that they were so effectively able to give the dwarfs animated faces (Screens) while still using animatronics should be greatly commended.
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True. And largely a small scale test for what will come to DL this spring and down the road to Shanghai and Paris.

No, don't ask me about the MK.
 
Phil12

Phil12

Well-Known Member
He has a nice smile:
jay-rasulo.jpg

 
WDW1974

WDW1974

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Rrrrrrrrrrrghhhh ... time for a Spirited note from Davy Jones.

A note on the upcoming Pirates rehab. A kind member on the Black Pearl got Captain Jack's approval to send along some comments.

Basically, as anyone who has ridden in the last 10 years knows, the attraction is a disaster. WDI has had numerous plans to go in fix what's wrong and add a few things along the way dating back to the late 90s.
Instead, the ride has just become a bigger disaster with the 2006 Jack Sparrow add coupled with the new boats coupled with FP+ making it truly on the verge.

Apparently, the work should take 8-9 months to do it all right. Phil 'The Counts Are Too High' Holmes has told them to do it four months or not do it, but it appears that folks above him are going to step in for a six month closure.

As to how much can/will be done, well, we'll all just have to wait and see ... HoP and Mansion (interior, not crazr queue) show they can do things right, but ... other things ... you know the rest.
 
the.dreamfinder

the.dreamfinder

Well-Known Member
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/japan-box-office-big-hero-764648
Big Hero 6, or "Baymax" as it's called, has done quite well in Japan grossing over $50 million. It may not be another Frozen, but a solid box office performance from a tough crowd of moviegoers is still laudable. The film has a handful a major markets left to open in including the UK, South Korea and China so $500-600 million worldwide seems very likely at this point.
 
Nubs70

Nubs70

Well-Known Member
WDW1974 said:
Rrrrrrrrrrrghhhh ... time for a Spirited note from Davy Jones.

A note on the upcoming Pirates rehab. A kind member on the Black Pearl got Captain Jack's approval to send along some comments.

Basically, as anyone who has ridden in the last 10 years knows, the attraction is a disaster. WDI has had numerous plans to go in fix what's wrong and add a few things along the way dating back to the late 90s.
Instead, the ride has just become a bigger disaster with the 2006 Jack Sparrow add coupled with the new boats coupled with FP+ making it truly on the verge.

Apparently, the work should take 8-9 months to do it all right. Phil 'The Counts Are Too High' Holmes has told them to do it four months or not do it, but it appears that folks above him are going to step in for a six month closure.

As to how much can/will be done, well, we'll all just have to wait and see ... HoP and Mansion (interior, not crazr queue) show they can do things right, but ... other things ... you know the rest.
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As long as there is not a controlling job with a duration longer than six months, with proper planning and staffing, the six month deadline can be met.
 
WDW1974

WDW1974

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
ParentsOf4 said:
Thanks for the well thought out response. You probably are right. Iger almost certainly doesn't have the same growth opportunities as Eisner.

Conversely, most questioned the wisdom of the original Disneyland. Many questioned the wisdom of building a theme park on central Florida swampland. I vividly recall Wall Street criticizing Epcot, having close ties there. Disney-MGM Studios was questioned as being one theme park too many in central Florida, especially with Universal Studios being built concurrently. Yet there was considerably less pushback from Wall Street on DAK and DCA, Disney's biggest domestic disappointments. (The current Disney management team deserves credit for the DCA redo, their biggest success to date.)

The thing is, conventional wisdom often is wrong. Wall Street is dominated by number crunchers, and most number crunchers don't have a clear understanding of how to run a business. As a result, they tend to follow conventional wisdom. They are needed as voices of reason, but the person running the show needs more imagination and better instinct.
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The word you are looking for is VISION.

And while it's easy to see that's what's lacking at Disney, what's been lacking ... it isn't something you can simply go down to the Walmart and pick up. You either have it, or you don't.

Iger's lasting legacy for WDW right now? Three letters ... first is N ... second is G ...

ParentsOf4 said:
Right now, those calling the shots at Disney are a group of "sharp-pencil guys" that Walt Disney complained about. Their jobs are made more difficult by a concentration on data of questionable value, such as the Guest surveys being discussed on this thread. There are all sorts of ways to manipulate Per Room Guest Spending, one of their favorite metrics, without actually improving the business.
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Manipulate like a chiropractor they do.

ParentsOf4 said:
Let's not forget that Disney's current executive management team passed on Harry Potter, handing their competition the single biggest theme park success of the 21st Century. Yet they approved MyMagic+, which has yet to realize any appreciable gains.
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Do you think anyone will ask Iger/Staggs/Rasulo about this in San Francisco? Do you want to bet that Zenia and her crack(ed) corporate proaga...communications team already are drafting all sorts of answers if someone happens to ask?

ParentsOf4 said:
When it comes to Parks & Resorts, Iger and his team are out of their comfort zones, so they stick with conventional wisdom. Fortunately for the company, their instincts beyond Parks & Resorts are much better.

My opinion is that long-term domestic Parks & Resorts growth capex should be at about 4-to-5%, less than half of what it was under Eisner but roughly double where it is today.

Disney's leadership has recognized this. This is why there will be more big projects at WDW in the coming years.

But did it really need to take Iger's team 9 years to figure this out?
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Apparently. And that is if you believe they/he actually get it now ... after all, New Fantasyland was simply a capacity project ... Frozen is a cheap way to further kill EPCOT Center while failing to give the No. 1 animated feature of all time a proper place at the flagship resort ... Pandora is a vanity project for Bob after JK used him like an Imagineer uses a young fanboi. ... Only the possibilities coming to the rebranded ... let's call it Disney's (Fill in With Something Not Florida) Adventure Park actually show the desire to spend and add (of course, let's not forget all that has been closed at that park over the past 18 months first) substance.
 
WDW1974

WDW1974

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
flynnibus said:
Careful... you're blurring lines here. The Eisner period included an agressive EXPANSION period that included multiple new locations, new parks, and new businesses. Growth due to nurturing and growth due to Expansion are very different things.. and we know Expansion is not infinite, and it often has negative consequences.

Eisner came in and they recognized that the parks were highly under valued and ripe for aggressive expansion. That is a point in the business that isn't universal nor necessarily repeatable over and over. I applaud that they had the guts to go and do all that stuff (even if the Disney Decade fizzled) but that was a moment in time that isn't necessarily 1 to 1 to another period in time afterwards. This is where stats comparisons start to tell muddied stories.
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Touche.

Yet, no one, and I'll speak for @ParentsOf4 here would expect Eisner levels of expansion or even spending now.

But it is very fair to look at how Iger hasn't nurtured the product very much or very well. All he has done is manipulate numbers through raising prices on everything year after year.

The last major addition that drove attendance at WDW was Everest, on the heels of Soarin and LMA. All that was Eisner's doing.

In other words, in nine years as the head of TWDC, Bob Iger has done absolutely nothing to make people want to visit WDW ... nothing to grow the business beyond people who would have come no matter what.
 
StageFrenzy

StageFrenzy

Well-Known Member
the.dreamfinder said:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/japan-box-office-big-hero-764648
Big Hero 6, or "Baymax" as it's called, has done quite well in Japan grossing over $50 million. It may not be another Frozen, but a solid box office performance from a tough crowd of moviegoers is still laudable. The film has a handful a major markets left to open in including the UK, South Korea and China so $500-600 million worldwide seems very likely at this point.
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South Korea fears the house of the rising sun though.
 

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