Don't worry about it so much. This is Disney. it just seems that they don't understand what is available. All of their sites lack in quality because they just assume the people visiting them are potentially quite out of date with their surfin' technology. They use old flash, old QT, and provide almost no community atmosphere.
But they are not alone. Check out www.sixflags.com some time. Their site is horrible. How about Universal Studios, also garbage. These entertainment companies must have a reason for this though. Here are some potential "executive" barriers to entry into this market:
* Copyright worries. So caught up in the fear of p2p that they've totally missed the point. If they provided park albums and other media for purchase online, I'd have quite the credit card bill.
* No shopping. So they just let these other companies do it for them. They would make a killing if they put their product up on the website.
* Fear that people may not come to the parks if they can preview attractions. This is garbage. Someone is going to put up content like this anyway, and it will look like a$$. They have the opportunity to do this with the proper camera equipment and lighting, and they could use DRM technology if it makes them happy.
* They are being incredibly cheap about the bandwidth usage. It is already quite apparent. Look at their DNS records, not using multiple servers to handle the load. Crazy, considering how cheap bandwidth really is. Every time I visit their website, I'm lucky if it doesn't time out or miss one of my http requests entirely.
So now here is my question. What could Disney do on their website that would be next to impossible for 3rd parties to produce? What one-of-a-kind feature could they create to make their website worth a daily visit?
Please discuss, I want to know if anyone else has some creative ideas.
Ryan