Rumor Hollywood insiders say there's growing tension at Disney as CEO Bob Chapek chafes at Bob Iger's 'long goodbye'

[Sirwalterraleigh]

And when you can’t meet consumer expectations, lower them! Then charge for the level you used to provide.

It’s the problem with short term management of a company that owes much of its revenues overtime to longterm psychological reinforcement.

Erode the expectations and you take it into a place it’s never really been except maybe 75-85?

So lots of dangerous unknown there. The stock market “won’t like that”


What they have done is basically the application of blue ocean theory. You believe you have “secured your market” and therefore have free reign on pricing. Only the consumer can check that. Wdw consumers do not. They make excuses for higher prices for less things.

…in…3…2…1

 

[Goofyernmost]

Welcome to “fastpass +”…which people cry about around here like their dead grandmother

The original and + had that same problem. I complained about it the first time I experienced it. Running all over the place collecting FP's all day was a total PITA, however we were all trained practically from birth to wait our turn and NO CUTTING and here we're standing still in the heat and watching person after person casually cut in front of us. Apparently no one in Disney had studied human psychology. I sent an E-mail and a few days later, after I got home I got a call from Disney asking me to expand upon my observance of the pure anger in the standby lines. Not the normal frustration of waiting in a moving line but unadulterated anger. At the time I told them that if anyone in the front office had a working brain cell they would have separated the FP and the Standby line so that those waiting at least didn't have to watch others pass by them. I might have cried about my dead grandmother but that was unavoidable, the pile of crap of Fastpass was completely avoidable not really a good comparison.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

The original and + had that same problem. I complained about it the first time I experienced it. Running all over the place collecting FP's all day was a total PITA, however we were all trained practically from birth to wait our turn and NO CUTTING and here we're standing still in the heat and watching person after person casually cut in front of us. Apparently no one in Disney had studied human psychology. I sent an E-mail and a few days later, after I got home I got a call from Disney asking me to expand upon my observance of the pure anger in the standby lines. Not the normal frustration of waiting in a moving line but unadulterated anger. At the time I told them that if anyone in the front office had a working brain cell they would have separated the FP and the Standby line so that those waiting at least didn't have to watch others pass by them. I might have cried about my dead grandmother but that was unavoidable, the pile of crap of Fastpass was completely avoidable not really a good comparison.

You might want to watch that defunctland video about why fastpass and + were actually not at all the same.

But I get your point about the frustration of any system. It all comes back to the same point: they are trying to fit more people into the same or less spots and have been doing that for 20 years.

Growth = Expansion. Period

So we get this stupid Iger “they’re trying to shrink attendance…for ME”…

But that’s crap. Because that can be done in a day. Just double the price. Which blows a hole in the BS.

They’re trying to train everyone to pay more methodically…not get less.

This is kindergarten level stuff

 

[rreading]

As you say, supply and demand is pretty basic. But as been discussed many times on this forum, the expansion that would have been useful was the Main Street Theater. Would improve capacity without creating more demand. Tron may create more demand than capacity, worsening the situation.

There are only so many people who can ride Peter Pan in any day. Either you build more Peter Pans or you raise prices. A real solution would be building more parks but adding more rides just makes Main Street that much more crowded

 

[CaptainAmerica]

As you say, supply and demand is pretty basic. But as been discussed many times on this forum, the expansion that would have been useful was the Main Street Theater. Would improve capacity without creating more demand. Tron may create more demand than capacity, worsening the situation.

There are only so many people who can ride Peter Pan in any day. Either you build more Peter Pans or you raise prices. A real solution would be building more parks but adding more rides just makes Main Street that much more crowded

Is Main Street Theater fully cancelled or is it in COVID purgatory with Mary Poppins?

 

[WizardofDestiny123]

While there will likely never be a perfect choice for CEO, one with extensive training in Parks, film, tv, and other venues, who would make a good leader for the company? I see a lot of complaints about who is leading the company, but never suggestions for who should?

Within Disney, I believe the best possible option would be Peter Rice. He may not have park experience, but he has led 20th Television to considerable success with shows like Modern Family, This is Us, and several others. People in Hollywood know Rice, they like him, and he has extensive years of working with talent. Perhaps he could elevate Josh D'Amaro to the role of President of the company so he can be the Parks and Resorts guy, whereas Peter Rice runs the business side.

Outside the company, I've always felt that Spielberg would have made a great leader for Disney. He almost was. Back in the mid-80s, Disney actually reached out to the likes of Spielberg, George Lucas, and Jim Henson to see about running the company. They said no, but they all recommended Michael Eisner which is partly how he became CEO.

 

[UNCgolf]

Is Main Street Theater fully cancelled or is it in COVID purgatory with Mary Poppins?

I thought it was cancelled well before COVID.

 

[UNCgolf]

As you say, supply and demand is pretty basic. But as been discussed many times on this forum, the expansion that would have been useful was the Main Street Theater. Would improve capacity without creating more demand. Tron may create more demand than capacity, worsening the situation.

There are only so many people who can ride Peter Pan in any day. Either you build more Peter Pans or you raise prices. A real solution would be building more parks but adding more rides just makes Main Street that much more crowded

I think that was more likely to be true 25 years ago than now -- attendance is now increasing regularly even when they do nothing, so they need new attractions just to keep up (this is the main reason they started building a bunch of new lands/attractions a decade ago).

In fact, I'm pretty sure that no additions in the past decade have had a major impact on attendance, including Galaxy's Edge. It's not that attendance didn't increase; it's that it didn't increase significantly more than it already was on a year to year basis. I think the recent evidence suggests that building new major rides actually will make the parks less crowded because it doesn't create enough of an attendance spike to outweigh the capacity increase, at least long-term -- there may be a short spike when it first opens.

It's also not solely ride capacity. They need far more dining capacity (retail wouldn't hurt either) and yet they've barely added anything and have left previous locations shuttered. The handful of QS locations they've added with Galaxy's Edge, Pandora, etc. aren't nearly enough.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

As you say, supply and demand is pretty basic. But as been discussed many times on this forum, the expansion that would have been useful was the Main Street Theater. Would improve capacity without creating more demand. Tron may create more demand than capacity, worsening the situation.

There are only so many people who can ride Peter Pan in any day. Either you build more Peter Pans or you raise prices. A real solution would be building more parks but adding more rides just makes Main Street that much more crowded

Disney parks…actually all Disney products…have never been a first chapter Econ textbook scenario

Here’s the Econ: they’ve reduced their own supply and increased their own price…which means the demand should be reduced by the customer on the curve.

Has that happened? Not at all…negating the “simple” view.

 

[Midwest Elitist]

Disney parks…actually all Disney products…have never been a first chapter Econ textbook scenario

Here’s the Econ: they’ve reduced their own supply and increased their own price…which means the demand should be reduced by the customer on the curve.

Has that happened? Not at all…negating the “simple” view.

This is what happened with graphics cards in the past few years. Gives more credence to "demand side" economics.

 

[castlecake2.0]

I think that was more likely to be true 25 years ago than now -- attendance is now increasing regularly even when they do nothing, so they need new attractions just to keep up (this is the main reason they started building a bunch of new lands/attractions a decade ago).

In fact, I'm pretty sure that no additions in the past decade have had a major impact on attendance, including Galaxy's Edge. It's not that attendance didn't increase; it's that it didn't increase significantly more than it already was on a year to year basis. I think the recent evidence suggests that building new major rides actually will make the parks less crowded because it doesn't create enough of an attendance spike to outweigh the capacity increase, at least long-term -- there may be a short spike when it first opens.

It's also not solely ride capacity. They need far more dining capacity (retail wouldn't hurt either) and yet they've barely added anything and have left previous locations shuttered. The handful of QS locations they've added with Galaxy's Edge, Pandora, etc. aren't nearly enough.

The shopping seems like it should be an easy fix. World Showcase still has several closed venues (see my post in epcot forum for my ideas for Canada) UK, Germany, Mexico, Morocco all have closed shopping still, half of studio’s stores are still closed. Magic kingdom I’ve been blocked out of for months so I dunno what’s going on over there. I know partly is due to lack of merch, but any good merchandiser knows how to fake it until your stock is up. Or, not my first choice, but fill the shelves with props and throw in some seating for people to eat at. There’s constantly people sitting all over the ground at the parks, give them some place to go. And dining like jeezus MK open up tomorrowland terrace for lunch, keep odyssey open with a limited menu and tables. Give people places to go!

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

This is what happened with graphics cards in the past few years. Gives more credence to "demand side" economics.

Not a bad situation for the company if you can get it, right??

Consumer feeds the beast of the other team.

 

[UNCgolf]

The shopping seems like it should be an easy fix. World Showcase still has several closed venues (see my post in epcot forum for my ideas for Canada) UK, Germany, Mexico, Morocco all have closed shopping still, half of studio’s stores are still closed. Magic kingdom I’ve been blocked out of for months so I dunno what’s going on over there. I know partly is due to lack of merch, but any good merchandiser knows how to fake it until your stock is up. Or, not my first choice, but fill the shelves with props and throw in some seating for people to eat at. There’s constantly people sitting all over the ground at the parks, give them some place to go. And dining like jeezus MK open up tomorrowland terrace for lunch, keep odyssey open with a limited menu and tables. Give people places to go!

This is part of the dining capacity problem IMO -- even if there are enough QS windows for people to grab something to eat (I'm not sure there are, but TS dining is definitely a bigger need inside the parks other than EPCOT), there's nowhere near enough seating. Last time I was at WDW wasn't even during a busy time (relatively speaking) and I still saw a ton of people sitting on curbs, planters, etc. to eat. I can't imagine how miserable it must be when it's actually a high crowd level day.

 

[castlecake2.0]

This is part of the dining capacity problem IMO -- even if there are enough QS windows for people to grab something to eat (I'm not sure there are, but TS dining is definitely a bigger need inside the parks other than EPCOT), there's nowhere near enough seating. Last time I was at WDW wasn't even during a busy time (relatively speaking) and I still saw a ton of people sitting on curbs, planters, etc. to eat. I can't imagine how miserable it must be when it's actually a high crowd level day.

Totally. Heritage House in Liberty Square should become searing for Sleepy Hollow. Tortuga Tavern seems to have never ending rooms of tables, but is so hidden it’s never used, maybe add additional signage that it’s there. Friars Nook menu has transitioned to things you really need to sit down with, and nowhere to sit. Cosmic Rays have done a good job of adding extra seating outside I’ll give them that. Would love to see the numbers for Aunt Pollys. Put a “secret menu” over there and promote it on TikTok Im sure it would help drive people over there. Remember when there were two food venues on Tom Sawyer Island? Remember when the train station had a drink stand? There is so much shuttered infrastructure at MK they could add major capacity just by reopening closed venues. But that’d cost money.

 

[Animaniac93-98]

Totally. Heritage House in Liberty Square should become searing for Sleepy Hollow. Tortuga Tavern seems to have never ending rooms of tables, but is so hidden it’s never used, maybe add additional signage that it’s there. Friars Nook menu has transitioned to things you really need to sit down with, and nowhere to sit. Cosmic Rays have done a good job of adding extra seating outside I’ll give them that. Would love to see the numbers for Aunt Pollys. Put a “secret menu” over there and promote it on TikTok Im sure it would help drive people over there. Remember when there were two food venues on Tom Sawyer Island? Remember when the train station had a drink stand? There is so much shuttered infrastructure at MK they could add major capacity just by reopening closed venues. But that’d cost money.

There's also the issue of venues that are open, but have closed off sections or areas that people don't know about like the 2nd floor of CHH.

 

[bcoachable]

The original and + had that same problem. I complained about it the first time I experienced it. Running all over the place collecting FP's all day was a total PITA, however we were all trained practically from birth to wait our turn and NO CUTTING and here we're standing still in the heat and watching person after person casually cut in front of us. Apparently no one in Disney had studied human psychology. I sent an E-mail and a few days later, after I got home I got a call from Disney asking me to expand upon my observance of the pure anger in the standby lines. Not the normal frustration of waiting in a moving line but unadulterated anger. At the time I told them that if anyone in the front office had a working brain cell they would have separated the FP and the Standby line so that those waiting at least didn't have to watch others pass by them. I might have cried about my dead grandmother but that was unavoidable, the pile of crap of Fastpass was completely avoidable not really a good comparison.

Thanks for sending that email- you could have signed our families names to it too…

 

[CaptainAmerica]

Oof have y'all seen the comments on basically every Disney social post?

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Sending letters/comments is pointless

Only a large amount of people switching their brains on and withholding business “speaks”

 

[Goofyernmost]

You might want to watch that defunctland video about why fastpass and + were actually not at all the same.

But I get your point about the frustration of any system. It all comes back to the same point: they are trying to fit more people into the same or less spots and have been doing that for 20 years.

Growth = Expansion. Period

So we get this stupid Iger “they’re trying to shrink attendance…for ME”…

But that’s crap. Because that can be done in a day. Just double the price. Which blows a hole in the BS.

They’re trying to train everyone to pay more methodically…not get less.

This is kindergarten level stuff

I was telling the story of MY experience not the guy that did that video. Most of the WDW guest keep things to a simple level unlike we cult type fans. I used both FP's from the beginning. At first it was tedious and somewhere along the line the CM's went off script and started to ignore windows. Then it was easy, but not how it was designed. It was simple and easy to understand. I always questioned the quicken the lines angle. All it did was put everyone in two lines. Every attraction still had the same amount of people per hour. One line moved faster, the other came to a dead stop most of the time. They promoted it as something that "everyone could get" as if there was one for everyone and there wasn't so those that couldn't get there early were out of luck. Logically if everyone could get one, we would have been back to a single line again. The running back and forth across the park all day to try and get a FP for our favorite ride sometimes was for nothing because all the FP,s for it were already gone. And if they were still available you spent more time back and forth across the park then if you just got into one line and kept moving toward the prize.

Fastpass + saved a lot of running but it did make getting good passes more difficult unless you stayed onsite, but that only lasted for the first three FP's after that the field was leveled a lot. But to make that useless, they made almost every attraction a FP attraction to give the first timers the illusion that they were getting a good deal reserving a FP for things that previously didn't need one at all. It was a cluster, but both were and Genie is a dog and pony show. It's all done with mirrors and even fooled a lot of veteran Disney guests. More money for less and for those of us that could count we knew that overall very little if any time was saved. What happened behind the scenes were of no concern to the averaged park visitor.

My point was that a place that claimed to be so knowledgeable about people couldn't anticipate that going against something that everyone was told was wrong since kindergarten would make people happy. Cutting in line was wrong. If you were the cutter you felt like you were getting away with something, if you were being cut those old childhood lessons bubbled to the surface and fun was replaced by anger. It was stupid to begin with, it still is and some of the competition found a good compromise, but Disney has only continuously made it worse.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

I was telling the story of MY experience not the guy that did that video. Most of the WDW guest keep things to a simple level unlike we cult type fans. I used both FP's from the beginning. At first it was tedious and somewhere along the line the CM's went off script and started to ignore windows. Then it was easy, but not how it was designed. It was simple and easy to understand. I always questioned the quicken the lines angle. All it did was put everyone in two lines. Every attraction still had the same amount of people per hour. One line moved faster, the other came to a dead stop most of the time. They promoted it as something that "everyone could get" as if there was one for everyone and there wasn't so those that couldn't get there early were out of luck. Logically if everyone could get one, we would have been back to a single line again. The running back and forth across the park all day to try and get a FP for our favorite ride sometimes was for nothing because all the FP,s for it were already gone. And if they were still available you spent more time back and forth across the park then if you just got into one line and kept moving toward the prize.

Fastpass + saved a lot of running but it did make getting good passes more difficult unless you stayed onsite, but that only lasted for the first three FP's after that the field was leveled a lot. But to make that useless, they made almost every attraction a FP attraction to give the first timers the illusion that they were getting a good deal reserving a FP for things that previously didn't need one at all. It was a cluster, but both were and Genie is a dog and pony show. It's all done with mirrors and even fooled a lot of veteran Disney guests. More money for less and for those of us that could count we knew that overall very little if any time was saved. What happened behind the scenes were of no concern to the averaged park visitor.

My point was that a place that claimed to be so knowledgeable about people couldn't anticipate that going against something that everyone was told was wrong since kindergarten would make people happy. Cutting in line was wrong. If you were the cutter you felt like you were getting away with something, if you were being cut those old childhood lessons bubbled to the surface and fun was replaced by anger. It was stupid to begin with, it still is and some of the competition found a good compromise, but Disney has only continuously made it worse.

It’s not about your personal experience. The “guy in the video” breaks down the entire history, the theory and the application…and then does a case study in real time to prove the point. It’s about numbers and studying patterns.

So we’ll agree to disagree. We’ll go in circles if the “I think THIS” is used as “evidence”. Have a good one