Sure. Just to understand, so CM's ripping off the collectibles and putting them on eBay, in your opinion, has ruined the incentive for the merchandise folks to replenish the stock of antique driven places like Sid's and perhaps turned the collectors to that venue instead of the shop itself. Ok.
Perhaps in addition, I tend to believe that when you have a captive audience that automatically buys souvenir items in huge volume, the incentive to find unique low volume stuff evaporates. It's about how many people you have on a fixed budget to buy for the park, and what will you buy in those hours that delivers the most bang. It may require too much time and effort to assign someone to buy weird stuff at estate sales for one or two stores that lose money and those items may move at a snails pace by comparison, so they use their buying resources wisely on the Disney product that is easily quantified and moves faster. I think the merchandise people would love to have an antique shop or something like that as a one off, but the business model they probably live in does not have much room for that.
Like political regimes, Merchandise regimes change too and it determines a policy. It's funny as when a new head comes in they have to show improvement to make a splash. So one time I saw the new person come in and clear out most of the old SKU's that didn't sell well and sort down to the top 10 to 20% souvenir items. Then they start infilling what they like and redoing the assortment, but with less non character stuff. Then that person left and the next one comes in and does a similar editing job. Distilling the whole thing to less and less unique product. Then we see consolidation into the Disney Parks concept, or supporting an anniversary, etc. So on and on there is this evolution of stuff driven by new management. Eventually someone redoes it all and makes it good again. The 50th at DL is a good example.
In the 30 years I've been doing this I've seen a funny "cycle" at theme parks with food and merch, but mostly food. At Knott's it went like this.
The new Foods guy is hired to run the Restaurants and wants to impress, so they come out with Mega Nachos and they are huge and really good. I had them. Tons of cheese, homemade style chips, etc. I'm impressed and so everyone loves the new Foods guy. The price goes way up, but who care's? It's big and it's great and it sells. Over time once the newness has worn off, management says they want more profit from the same attendance. The heat is way on, but what can Nacho man do? The Foods guy, puts his menu into a Waring "Blander" and hits the switch called "Death by 1000 Cuts"...He slowly begins to cheapen the nachos, smaller portions, a bitter tasting factory made chip, loses the real cheese and uses squirtable fake cheese. This happens across the board with everything but popcorn, (they just shrink the box), but all at a deceptively slow pace until the food is
reduced to cardboard.
Alas! the AP's and locals stop eating at the park, profit is way up but volume is way down. The report hits the bosses' desk. "Hey! what the heck is going on out there?" Management finally goes out into the park and actually tastes the food and says "Boys! This food tastes like cardboard! It's that idiot Foods guy, my kid makes better Nachos than this!, I bet guests would come in droves if we only had.... great food! Forget the margins, what if we served food they'll actually eat? Home Run! We'll make it up in volume! We need a food item we can market!" They secretly interview a new Foods guy who has a name because he worked on a Cruise Ship or at a 4 Seasons Hotel, the guy demos some cheap piece of meat on a stick buried in cheese and claims it's the new "Grubstake" that guests will fawn over. They taste it and in unison they wipe the grease from their collective mouths and promptly fire the old Foods guy who is gone faster than you can say "Chalupa". (The names and items were changed to protect the innocent)
The "quality pendulum" swings magically back for a short time from "correctional facility" back toward "Margaritaville" and we are back to chip one. The food improves and they bring back Mega Nachos "now with more cheese and better chips" till management squeezes that new guy for more and more profit and things go south. Merchandise swings like that too to a lesser degree and the quality radically shifts only temporarily. Just my observation.
Tony tells a similar story of how the "Mint Julep" (bar mix and soda) at DL NOS slowly eroded into something detestable for those same economizing reasons. Some products never make it back.
Interesting thoughts.
I have watched similar situations with Food and Beverage in Orlando. It's sad too. I generally tell folks to eat at new locations because they tend to not only be the best value when they open, they also tend to innovate and dare to try new flavors, items etc ... only after they've been open a while do they start getting dumbed down. Sadly, this has happened much greater since the 'cruise line' dining plan aka DDP has taken over WDW ...
There's less choice, less variety and much higher price points (to convince people that they're really getting a deal on the DDP).
I just look at Dixie Landings/Port Orleans as an example. When they opened they had great, reasonable full-serve restaurants that served breakfast and dinner in Boatwright's and Bonfamille's as well as two quality food courts.
Over the years, they dumbed the offerings down at the food courts (for a while they stopped grilling fresh burgers -- they used to be GREAT -- in favor of boil in a bag before they went back, I assume because of many complaints). Then they used 9/11 as an excuse to kill Bonfamille's, which made it the only moderate resort without a full serve locale. But Disney had an answer for that, they simply combined the resorts into one (also dropping a name that some felt was politically incorrect).
Over the years, the quality at Boatwright's also fell. When it opened (and for years to come) they served a wide variety of entrees (many southern specialities) and every meal came with a bottomless bowl of great salad with homemade Cajun ranch dressing. Well, at some point they decided to stop advertising the salad refills on the menu, so you had to ask ... then they decided to stop offering ANY salad entirely. You wanted salad, you paid an extra $1.99 for a small plate (no endless refills). Pretty soon, the homemade dressing was gone. Every year prices went up. Last I checked, a salad would set you back $6 plus the cost of your dinner.
Boatwright's also had one of the best breakfasts on property.I can actually taste their pancakes now (and I am NOT a breakfast guy). It was great food and reasonable. And always packed. Well, they decided to eliminate it early this year. Not because it wasn't profitable. Not because people weren't waiting to get in most mornings. Simply because they could consolidate and some manager could show a net savings in labor.
So now, if someone wants a full service breakfast at either Port Orleans or Dixie Landings they need to travel. Most on-site guests will just go elsewhere, so they'll be inconvenienced but Disney will still get their $$$. And that's what it's all become about. Constantly pushing profit margins up, regardless of quality.
Dining used to be a huge part of my WDW visits, but not so much the past 2-3 years.
It's a dumbing down process. Much like taking details ... layers away ... at say MK.
This is again part of the business model. Being profitable isn't enough. You must meet certain numbers ... numbers that get more absurd by the year.
Oh, and to go back to the merchandise part of the discussion, I happened upon a record-book from MK Ops showing the numbers for 1987-88 at all MK attractions, retail and dining locations ... it's fascinating really ... and I can't even understand all of it!
I can tell you that Emporium was the No. 1 profit center of MK merchandise for the year ... and the perfume shop in LS was the least (but it WAS profitable). Of course, in those days, show mattered in every aspect.
