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MiceAge on the latest news regarding MyMagic+ : Read it and weep.
- Thread starter marni1971
- Start date
BubbaQuest
Well-Known Member
Al Lutz isn't the messiah?? I don't care if the article is entirely true or false. I go to MiceAge to get a feel for what is happening in the parks -- specifically DLR. And the feeling I get is not good and has little to do with MiceAge.
The only things I know based on press releases:
1. Avatar in AK in 2017
2. Iron Man (assumed re-skinned Star Tours) in HKDL in 2016
Nothing announced for DLR except some vague Star Wars "promo"-speak. Of course this can change, and I hope it does, but as of right now Knotts Berry Farm(!) has more exciting press releases for next year than DLR.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
When are the Cinderella and Aurora meet and greets opening in Fantaslyland? How is Hyperion Wharf coming along?
RunnerEd
Well-Known Member
I'm a military guy and believe very strongly in leading from the front. If you want to fix things, put the leaders where the problems are and strongly encourage them to change it. For example, during a busy season, require the head of transportation to stay at a distant resort with his/her family (All Stars/Animal Kingdom Lodge would do) and stay in the Magic Kingdom until about 30 minutes after Wishes begins...then they MUST leave. I think we would be amazed at how much better the bus situation would get.
ChrisM
Well-Known Member
Otherwise known of as the myth of "omnicompetence".
Skill or expertise in one area does not imply skill/expertise in others.
Californian Elitist
Well-Known Member
Just because some of these didn't happen doesn't mean they never existed as concepts and weren't considered for specific parks. It's called cancellation.
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PhotoDave219
Well-Known Member
Wait. 11%?!?!? Are you kidding me?!? Where did they come up with that?
Holy crap that so funny/sad
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
doctornick
Well-Known Member
Indeed. Though it works both ways. Just because something is not planned today (or is put "on hold") doesn't mean it is never going to happen. Things change.
As an aside related to this news, I wonder if it means the third theater for Soarin' in Epcot is postponed/cancelled or is that still a go? I'm assuming it is cancelled for now, though it was a fairly recent leak from WDW1974 (after the WDW leadership meeting) so maybe it is still happening. Is Epcot supposed to get the digital upgrade slated for DCA? The miceage article states that was budgeted as part of Shanghai so maybe it is the same for Epcot.
good point (as usual) it seems like the first hit at wdw would be expanded soarin
alphac2005
Well-Known Member
Look at the size and scope of the company. These massive corporations are several large companies rolled into one and Iger has made it very clear that he likes each division's head to act as though they are CEO/President of that wing of the company and report back. He's clearly not the micro-manager that Michael Eisner was and to be honest, the company has exploded in size so much from even the moment that Eisner left that micromanaging something of this sort would be nearly impossible.
The amount of b.s. that must have been shoveled at him by Mr. Rasulo and company might have been mind numbing for any that see the disaster that this all would pan out to be. Rasulo, Staggs, etc., clearly have ambition, or they wouldn't be in the positions that they are, and when you are, you'll do and say anything to sugarcoat, make yourself out to be doing a great job., etc. You don't get close to power without scheming any which way to keep yourself there. An outsider would be that the [blank] hit the fan with those boys and that's what these meetings ended up being about. Dog eat dog, throwing any and everyone under the bus for their own gain. Anyone with a grain of commonsense knows that these execs down to those executing the technology knew this was a mess. The Sentinel announced several execs leaving last week and we'll see if any more prominent heads roll.
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
OUTSTANDING, Great post the problem with WDW and TWDC is the managers are not even CLOSE to the front lines. I work for a moderate sized high tech firm and let's just say I have immediate access to Sr Director level management. Our CEO is likely to materialize anywhere and anywhen - I've seen him visit our labs when it's 3AM and we are pulling all nighter #3 trying to replicate a customer issue. Not surprisingly resources are made available because he knows his best teams are on the problem and HIS job is to give them the tools to make customer happy.
This is NOT the case in too many companies when the CEO is surrounded by a cloud of yes men and they NEVER talk to the people actually making it happen.
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
Reminds me of an engineering joke, Rocker asking about amplifier settings, Engineer 'Oh 1-10 is just an arbitrary number allowing you to repeat setup', SMART engineer "I'll build you one that goes to 12..."
vonpluto
Well-Known Member
Sorta' like that old unwritten rule for us occifer types:
"The Mission, The Men, Then Me"
SirLink
Well-Known Member
So no Star Wars, Monstropolis, or any stuff worth note coming to Disney American Parks - I hope they realise the movement away from Disney parks is still going on especially with International visitors, and getting stronger every day. 2016 is going to be the best year Iger goes...
Mr Bill
Well-Known Member
I played around with the numbers a few months ago and with a $2 billion price tag, found that it would take a 12-13% increase in food and merch revenues to break even in five years. How they could ever accomplish that much of an increase in ways that are directly attributable to MM+ is beyond me.
PeterAlt
Well-Known Member
I had a troubling feeling this would happen. You know that feeling that something ain't just right but you ignore it, thinking that, if you listen to it, you'll empower it to manifest into reality? Well, if that wasn't you, that was definitely me over the past months.
I assume Avatar isn't being affected by this.
They didn't say if Soaring upgrades at EC were also being worked on and if the crisis will have no effect on either of them or not.
The best way for Iger to handle this would be to just fire everyone accountable, write it off as a loss (like what Eisner did when he was made CEO in 1984 by declaring certain line items in the budget as initiatives by the previous management team that were being shut down and not included as a measurement of the current management team's performance).
Iger could threaten to have park ops completely shut down and contracted out to a company such as OLC.
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
Sorta' like that old unwritten rule for us occifer types:
"The Mission, The Men, Then Me"
In modern corporate America that is re-written Me, The Mission, The Men
rct247
Well-Known Member
From an inside view, NextGen really is a disaster. So many things haven't worked as planned.
- Interactive queues - No further investments on changing queues. Either they are an operations nightmare or things break or things just aren't used thus not worth the money spent.
- Gateless Turnstiles - In a perfect world, these do make it quicker and easier to get into the park, but everyone with old tickets has to wait in line to get new tickets which doesn't make people happy. On top of all that, during this year's party season they have realized that every single paper e-ticket for the Halloween & Christmas parties requires assistance from a Guest Relations cast member which is over half of the party visitors. As the article pointed out, during phase closing there isn't much preventing guests from storming the gates or lack there of.
- Wi-Fi & Mobile Networks - WDW has had to create a wi-fi network equivalent to an entire cities worth of wi-fi hot spots. The problem is both mobile and wi-fi connections can be spotty and heavily overloaded resulting in slow connections and dead areas. On the plus side, this is improving greatly, but at a huge cost. Also all of those touch points are using a mobile or wifi connection. Even the grounded touch points are not hard wired.
- Confusion & Learning Curve - As with any new system, there is going to be a learning curve, but many cast are finding out that guests don't want to necessarily learn. They want someone else to do it for them or for it to magically happen. Some guests aren't customizing their MyDisneyExperience accounts or their MagicBands. Guests are entering the park with no Fastpass choices selected and no knowledge of how to do so. The ones that do are having trouble navigating the app or learning how it works. You think the guest complains for Stitch's Great Escape are bad, this is much worse.
- Lack of Help - Need help with your Fastpass+ selections, simply visit a kiosk.
4 kiosks at Magic Kingdom with Frontierland and Tomorrowland not currently having one. Guests are coming up to legacy FP kiosk to get FP and can't with a MagicBand. They either don't speak English, don't have a smartphone, or can't seem to get the app to work. So they have to walk all the way to a kiosk on the other side of the land to get help. Only a hand full of cast seem to know exactly how it works too. That's because Disney hasn't rolled out the experience to cast members. They all haven't experienced it themselves or had time to work through the system as a guest. - Technical Difficulties - Want to change your FP+ reservation to an earlier time that is maybe 30 mins from now! Sure! Good luck having it read correctly when you show up. Parties are showing up with screenshots of their selections to have to prove they made their choices. Some members of the party have a FP and others have issues. Extra Magic Hours over the past two weeks has been a nightmare too. New devices are supposed to read each MagicBand, but instead the batteries are dying, the apps are freezing, and it works when it feels like it.
- Slowing Things Down - While MyMagic+ has made things quicker to enter the park (in general) and quicker to pay (in general), it has really slowed down operations. First we now have FP+ installed at attractions that never had it resulting in growing standby lines. The average time to get a family of 4 in through a Fastpass Return point with paper tickets is maybe a second or two. The average time to get family of 4 through with MagicBands for FP+ is about 10 seconds (in general). You can see it this holiday season already, there are lines to get into the Fastpass queues resulting in some situations where there is FP line outside of the return point, but not one inside. God forbid, guests have troubles at the touch points. In fact, DAS has be the least of operations' nightmares since it has been rolled out. FP+ is the major problem with guests getting upset.
- Poor Choices & Feeling Tricked- The choices for guests using FP+ are terrible. At two of the four parks, guests can only pick one headliner attraction and then are forced to use their remain 2 FP+ choices on trivial selections some of which are a complete joke. Guests are also discovering this, especially first time visitors. Sure Monsters Inc Laugh Floor, Journey into Imagination, American Idol Experience, and its tough to be a bug are all attractions a first time visitor might want to enjoy, but on a typical visit (not peak capacity), these attractions don't hardly have waits. Guests use their FP+ and realize it wasn't needed and think they wasted their FP+ choice, which they did. Again the problem is that they really didn't have any other choice. Limiting it to three is also making guests quite angry. They are seeing non-MagicBand guests walk up to kiosk to get FP how they want and multiple headline attractions sometimes exceeding three in a day and they realize they can't do that. They don't care that they can book ahead or do it on their smartphone. That doesn't matter once they are in the park and see the wait times. Let's be honest, adding FP+ was an terrible idea, especially when many attractions were hardly using or removing legacy FP such as Haunted Mansion, Stitch's Great Escape, Mission:Space, LIghts Motors Action, Voyage of the Little Mermaid, MuppetVision3D, Captain EO, and its tough to be a bug.
asianway
Well-Known Member
It doesn't have to be directly attributable, so long as a with a PowerPoint and a fictitious excel sheet can make a convincing argument that it did