Have the Trams gone to Yesterland?

[el_super]

Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought that’s what you were suggesting as a solution.

Not at all... I think the price of Toy Story is still the same as Mickey and Friends (it should be). It's typically a shorter walk to the bus area than the walk across Mickey and Friends (even though it's in the sun) and it's a pretty short/air conditioned bus ride to the park.

In fact if you and everyone else started using Toy Story more, they would be more financially motivated to return Tram service to the other side of the park to recoup the capacity.

 

[mickEblu]

Here is what was shared via by David Koenig via Twitter

Per a CM: “The tractors that pull the tram guest cars are trashed. During the entire resort closure, no work was done on them. When it came to restart them, engines were ruined. Rats made nests in them and chewed up the wiring, batteries were dead, and other mechanical issues

Even if true, how long does it take to buy new trams?

 

[Stevek]

Even if true, how long does it take to buy new trams?

Who knows. Not sure if they are made on demand vs there being a big supply available. Ultimately, could just be that Disney doesn’t want to incur the expense right now.

 

[Tamandua]

Even if true, how long does it take to buy new trams?

It's not true. As others have mentioned, even if they were in worse condition than you could imagine for non use over a year and a half, they can be repaired. Wiring and batteries are not a big deal. "Mechanical issues" can be resolved, although that's so vague that it just sounds like something made up.

The same team that won't change light bulbs on splash mountain aren't going to spend money to run trams if they don't have to.

 

[Disney Irish]

For what its worth, I suspect this "story" of the Trams being rat infested messes that can't be fixed it just the stuff of urban legends.

If its anything like WDW the Trams are only down due to staffing. Beginning of this month WDW started hiring for new parking and tram operations and suspect that DLR will start doing the same soon:

https:///2021/08/parking-trams-disney-hiring-lp1/

 

[TP2000]

Here is what was shared via by David Koenig via Twitter

Per a CM: “The tractors that pull the tram guest cars are trashed. During the entire resort closure, no work was done on them. When it came to restart them, engines were ruined. Rats made nests in them and chewed up the wiring, batteries were dead, and other mechanical issues

This reminds me why I'm not on that cesspool known as the Twitter.

I can easily imagine that the trams were neglected during Disneyland's sudden 14 month long unplanned closure. I can easily imagine there are rats nets in the cabs and engine bays.

But anyone who has ever restored an old car knows that's common. You can buy new wire looms, you can buy new parts, you can even rebuild entire engines and machine new parts that are no longer made. I know a guy who rebuilt a pre-war Jaguar a few years ago, with time left over to maintain and drive a post-war Triumph on the side. Luckily his wife has a Lexus, so they still had a working car.

The parking lot trams are not some unknown alien technology that is unable to be back-engineered by earthlings. If wiring is shot, or pistons are seized, or water pump seals have gone bad, all of that is fixable. Especially when you have the budget of Disneyland.

Does it delay things by a month or two? Of course. Does it prevent a parking lot tram from ever operating again in Anaheim. Of course it doesn't.

 

[TP2000]

It's not true. As others have mentioned, even if they were in worse condition than you could imagine for non use over a year and a half, they can be repaired. Wiring and batteries are not a big deal. "Mechanical issues" can be resolved, although that's so vague that it just sounds like something made up.

The same team that won't change light bulbs on splash mountain aren't going to spend money to run trams if they don't have to.

Oh, woops. You already said exactly what I just said.

 

[TP2000]

For what its worth, I suspect this "story" of the Trams being rat infested messes that can't be fixed it just the stuff of urban legends.

If its anything like WDW the Trams are only down due to staffing. Beginning of this month WDW started hiring for new parking and tram operations and suspect that DLR will start doing the same soon:

https:///2021/08/parking-trams-disney-hiring-lp1/

I have a hunch you are right. It's the issue of staffing them up with $15 an hour CM's rather than cleaning out the rats nests and back-engineering the mysterious alien technology used to make parking lot trams.

 

[MarvelCharacterNerd]

Has anyone actually calculated the length of the route from the car, through security, along their current path and into the park? It’s not acceptable to just let the trams stay broken and keep swiping credit cards all day. Forcing guests to walk 1+ miles to the car, especially in the evening after doing 20,000 steps in the park, is crazy. I hear other guests on the path complaining about the tram situation every time we have been there since it reopened and some look totally miserable. It doesn’t sit right with people. It feels as blatantly rip-offy and abusive to the guest as Genie+.

It's a mile from the car down through the winding queue to security and then to the park gate. From park gate back to structure it's about 3/4ths of a mile.

It's basically stealing almost two miles of your walking ability from your day at the park. And it sucks. And they ask about it on their post-visit surveys - but saying it "negatively impacts my experience" doesn't seem to make them in any hurry to bring them back.

 

[Ne'er-Do-Well Cad]

Sure... but it's not really stopping people from going and it's a pretty minor issue in the grand scheme of things.

In fact if I were Disney, I would absolutely be prioritizing the return of the Monorail, since right now the people staying at Disney hotels, have a longer walk than the people paying $25 for parking. At least people parking have the option of going to Toy Story and taking the bus, what do people at PPH have? The option to take an Uber? The Monorail, doubles as an attraction so even more people would get value out of having it open than having the parking lot trams open.

I hope the parking lot trams come back, but if it were me, I would definitely want to wait until a better solution for the Cast Members were in place. If that means waiting a year or two for electric trams, then so be it. There are thousands of little operational difficulties occuring right now, and a lot of fires to put out and a lot of the complaints expressed here tend to not take those into account or properly weigh the severity of those criticisms.

If the choice was between having trams or having Disneyland closed again, would this be such an obvious answer?

It's certainly a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but it's the first and last thing guests experience during their visit. And somewhere around 70% of visitors are locals, so it's safe to say there is a broad expectation that there will be a tram.

Consider all the dads, disinterested in Disney, somewhat begrudgingly taking their kids to the park, already grumpy about the price of the tickets, learning that there's no tram and the family is going to have to walk each way. A typical visitor doesn't care about how much the Disney company has on its plate. This is the kind of thing people will go home and complain to their friends and family about.

 

[TP2000]

Consider all the dads, disinterested in Disney, somewhat begrudgingly taking their kids to the park, already grumpy about the price of the tickets, learning that there's no tram and the family is going to have to walk each way. A typical visitor doesn't care about how much the Disney company has on its plate. This is the kind of thing people will go home and complain to their friends and family about.

Consider that any Disney executive above the Local Vice President level gets free valet parking at the Grand Californian as part of their employment contract. Those execs literally don't even get near the parking facility and trams the peasants have to use before they pay their way into the park using actual cash money.

Now is it any wonder the parking lot operation is always so miserable even on good days, and the last thing anyone of any decision-making importance is worried about after a long unplanned closure?

Parking lots? Trams? Lines? The leadership in charge of Disneyland literally has no earthly idea what you are talking about. For real.

And yet, TDA actually has a man on the payroll who is the "Vice President of Guest Arrival Experience". Pre-Covid he was Patrick Finnegan, the same guy in charge of Downtown Disney and repurposed spinner C Tickets at DCA. I wonder if he still has that gig? I wonder if he even knows how a guest arrives and what that experience is like? Has he ever been to Mickey & Friends on a Friday evening? The Esplanade on a Saturday morning?

Disneyland Esplanade Entrance Lines - June, 2021

 

[Disney Irish]

This continues to remain such a joke. Disney is once again leveraging their past reputation to save money in the present. This has been a continual trend since the 90s and its been getting really bad the last few years.

As I mention to people, everyone that defends the company and mentions covid, the company was making cuts before covid. This happened even when the company was posting record profits and their CEO was boasting about what a huge success Galaxy’s Edge was.

Now you have things like no trams, and expensive restaurants like Blue Bayou and Carthay Circle charging guests 10 dollars for bread.

We aren’t talking about a mom and pop store that has no money and needs to recoup funds. We’re talking about a company that has tens of billions of dollars laying around in bank accounts.

I know that people like to complain a lot about Disney being cheap at the Parks. But corporate budgets don't work in the way that a lot of people assume. Its not like a normal household where if you have money left over at the end of the month you can splurge on buying a new TV or go out to dinner. Things are budgeted out a year or more in advance, and each division only gets so much money allocated for the entire year. So they have to make it last, if they fall short they have to find ways to either increase revenue or make cuts. So the budgets that Parks and Resorts have now was allocated to them back in October 2020 when TWDC new fiscal year started. And that has to be spread among all parts of P&R, not just DLR. And if you remember that was also when several Parks around the world including DLR were still closed. Just because DLR is opened now doesn't mean DLR now gets more budget allocated to them during the middle of the year. They don't get a new budget until October this year.

This is not to "apologize" or to defend them, its to try and explain that its a lot more complex then a lot of people actually understand.

 

[Stevek]

Consider that any Disney executive above the Local Vice President level gets free valet parking at the Grand Californian as part of their employment contract. Those execs literally don't even get near the parking facility and trams the peasants have to use before they pay their way into the park using actual cash money.

Now is it any wonder the parking lot operation is always so miserable even on good days, and the last thing anyone of any decision-making importance is worried about after a long unplanned closure?

Parking lots? Trams? Lines? The leadership in charge of Disneyland literally has no earthly idea what you are talking about. For real.

And yet, TDA actually has a man on the payroll who is the "Vice President of Guest Arrival Experience". Pre-Covid he was Patrick Finnegan, the same guy in charge of Downtown Disney and repurposed spinner C Tickets at DCA. I wonder if he still has that gig? I wonder if he even knows how a guest arrives and what that experience is like? Has he ever been to Mickey & Friends on a Friday evening? The Esplanade on a Saturday morning?

Disneyland Esplanade Entrance Lines - June, 2021

While I believe the entry experience pre covid was an absolute cluster (I had to deal with it one day), I don't believe it's remotely like this. It was poorly managed at best but I'm not sure what other option Disney had at that time.

 

[Stevek]

Not at all... I think the price of Toy Story is still the same as Mickey and Friends (it should be). It's typically a shorter walk to the bus area than the walk across Mickey and Friends (even though it's in the sun) and it's a pretty short/air conditioned bus ride to the park.

In fact if you and everyone else started using Toy Story more, they would be more financially motivated to return Tram service to the other side of the park to recoup the capacity.

There is no difference in price. We use TS lot 100% of the time though we have not had to use one of the lots since the parks reopened.

 

[John park hopper]

Sung to Peter Paul and Mary where have all the Flowers Gone
Where have all the trams gone, long time passing?
Where have all the trams gone, long time ago?
Where have all the trams gone?
Disney destroyed them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the trams gone, long time passing?
Where have all the trams gone, long time ago?
Where have all the trams gone?
Gone for scrap everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the trams gone, long time passing?
Where have all the trams gone, long time ago?
Where have all the trams gone?
Gone for junk everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the trams gone, long time passing?
Where have all the trams gone, long time ago?
Where have all the trams gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the people gone, long time passing?
Where have all the people gone, long time ago?
Where have all the people gone?
Gone to Universal , everyone.
Oh, when will Disney ever learn?
Oh, when will Disney ever learn?

​

 

[MoonRakerSCM]

Staffing issues. Engines that have not run for a year and a half aren't beyond repair by any slightly competent mechanic.

 

[Nirya]

If Disney consistently can't reasonably meet their budget (especially pre-covid), and always has to do cuts year after year it means a few things.

1) Their financial planning skills are terrible and unrealistic

or

2) They purposefully set themselves up for failure with a low ball budget and are always in a state of emergency

I think 2 is the most likely scenario. The more they can reduce operating costs and increase revenue the more profit the company makes.

Remember, companies are expected to increase profit year over year. This is what investors of any company want.

Some companies do this by improving their product to attract more costumers or higher prices, some do it by cheapening their product to reduce costs.

I wouldn't dismiss #1 out of hand, however. Disney has been hit time and again with unreasonable financial expectations for their new offerings (Disneyland Paris, Disney Quest, more recently SWL at DL), and as far as I know those people still remain in their jobs.

 

[flynnibus]

I know that people like to complain a lot about Disney being cheap at the Parks. But corporate budgets don't work in the way that a lot of people assume. Its not like a normal household where if you have money left over at the end of the month you can splurge on buying a new TV or go out to dinner. Things are budgeted out a year or more in advance, and each division only gets so much money allocated for the entire year. So they have to make it last, if they fall short they have to find ways to either increase revenue or make cuts. So the budgets that Parks and Resorts have now was allocated to them back in October 2020 when TWDC new fiscal year started. And that has to be spread among all parts of P&R, not just DLR. And if you remember that was also when several Parks around the world including DLR were still closed. Just because DLR is opened now doesn't mean DLR now gets more budget allocated to them during the middle of the year. They don't get a new budget until October this year.

This is not to "apologize" or to defend them, its to try and explain that its a lot more complex then a lot of people actually understand.

Budgets are only plans.

when things go off the rails you don’t roll up and die because of a budget- you goto your finance people and make a case for needing to change the plan. They advise leadership on what compromises or consequences there will be… and leaders make choices.

budgets are just plans - they can be altered when circumstances require it.

 

[aaronml]

Staffing issues. Engines that have not run for a year and a half aren't beyond repair by any slightly competent mechanic.

If this were the case, wouldn’t there be a job posting up for DLR to hire parking tram-related staff?

 

[MoonRakerSCM]

Could come down to the park prioritizing programs with staff and the trams being at the bottom of the barrel. A lot of staff for little return for their buck, thus, other things will be filled/prioritized first. So they're not even thinking about it right now.