You know, I'm fine with it.
The way Disney, Univseral and etc did the cast dirty.. let them struggle a bit to find good qualified folks.
Laying them off or something else? If its the former, see my comment below. I'm not sure we can fault them for making that decision.
Yes WDW does have challenges ahead, but did one really expected to keep the bus drivers on the payroll instead of laying them off last year?
Seems like it may have been a good idea to do just that....
I don't know. People tend to charge in with torches lit when WDW does things like layoffs. Honestly, no one knows what the right move was except WDW. There was someone here who clearly had an accounting/econ background, cant remember who...but he was dropping some convincing posts explaining Disney was bleeding a near fatal amount of cash last summer. When something like that happens, you stop the bleeding first. Then you worry about whether or not your business is going to be hampered by a decision you make while saving the business.
All of this hinges on how serious the bleeding was. I'm not saying it was right or wrong to trim staff....but I'm not sure any of us were equipped to say what was a good idea or not.
One thing's for certain. It's now going to cost more to shuttle guests around the resort......
.....Actually, let me rephrase that. It's going to cost guests alot more for WDW to shuttle them around the resort (because we all know that cost increase will be passed to us somehow)
One word... Staffing. You think the busses are the only transportation method that is short on cast? If the Epcot monorail were to open up tomorrow it would cut deeply into the cast that are needed for the other stations. So instead of being able to efficiently move guests from MK/Resorts to the TTC consistently, it would be a barebones operation at all the stations and then you would be complaining about the poor guest experience there.
So train new pilots right? Yeah, not going to happen until distancing and time constraints in a confined space are removed. 2 weeks of being in a train cab with another person for 8 hours a day isn't possible right now.
Epcot will reopen when Epcot reopens. Simple as that. You can agree or disagree with the reasoning, but your stance on the matter is completely pointless in the grand scheme of the situation.
I almost mentioned this yesterday, but held back. Largely because I don't know enough about how WDW's transportation team is staffed. I had the thought that maybe the lack of trained bus drivers on WDW's payroll is impacting other aspects of Disney's Transportation dept. Perhaps CMs working the water shuttles and the monorails are now needed to get the busses running. You know....all hands on deck.
But I held back, because I don't know how cross-trained the transportation CMs are. Can the monorail and water shuttle CMs actually drive the busses? (I legitimately dont know - anyone care to comment?). Maybe its cheaper/easier to cross train them than people off the street.
All I can say is that I find this fascinating. It speaks to the fact that economic forces aren't straight cause/effect lines with no intersections or unintended consequences. For example. I'm a guitar player. I'm also a bit of a DIYer - I build guitars, guitar tube amps, pedals, etc. So during the pandemic, while working from home -- all those hours not spend commuting had given me a great deal of time to take on some projects. So I started building some stuff. A few amps, a few guitars, a gaggle of pedals. Problem is, all of my usual sources of parts, whether it be amp chassis/transformers, guitar bodies/necks, hardware like tuning keys or bridges.....all of those sources were bone dry on stock and they had lead times going out 8-12 weeks, when it was usually 1-3 weeks. What was the reason? The pandemic caused alot of guys like me to be stuck home with idle time. I thought I was the only one. Turns out, there are alot more like me than I originally thought.
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