MiceAge on the latest news regarding MyMagic+ : Read it and weep.

[Wilt Dasney]

I have given WDW $37.33 in the past 3 years (I had to try the pork shank and LaFrou's Brew). And I suspect that is the last they will get from me in quite a while.

But this requires entering the MK. The way I see it, if a person sets foot in the parks (even with free admission), he forfeits any ability to judge the people who paid to be there. The fact that he knows the right people shouldn't give him an exemption to enjoy the parks while expecting the less well-connected to make a "statement" with their dollars (i.e., stay out). The only way you can have clean hands on this is to stay out.

(I hope you don't take this as a personal attack, because for all I know you may have never written a word of criticism about another Disney guest. I just thought your post was a good opportunity to illustrate a general principle.)

 

[BlueSkyDriveBy]

Wouldn't more gullible customers mean less effort to get their money? That seems counter to their mindset of spending more.. or do the TWDC see that as 'double waste'?

I didn't state that Burbank was being logical here, for clearly they miss the point of spending more to get more.

I've heard the excuse dozens of times over the decades about how the Japanese tourist is very gullible and can't spend their money fast enough and that's why OLC is so profitable. And of course, it's simply a stupid lazy excuse to justify not taking American parks CAPEX to the same level as Tokyo's.

Truth is, the Japanese tourist is just as selective as the American tourist. Offer them better entertainment with higher quality and they'll bail on you. OLC needs to spend the higher CAPEX to stay in business and remain profitable. But Burbank continues to ignore this and still insists that the markets are vastly different requiring different operating models. Hogwarts should be proving this fallacy in their thinking but they're too arrogant to let that truth sink in. Or at least too arrogant to publicly admit it.

But that was kind of my 'business success' question. Do they still end up with good margin even tho they spend more? Or do they accept a lower margin than what P&R expects from the parks?

Margins aren't lower per se. They need to spend more to keep those margins above a certain level. There's a threshold of return in Japan that's dependent upon that higher CAPEX spending. Without the higher spending, they get basically nothing back.

Burbank thinks their American parks are mature and immune to higher spending but Hogwarts up the road in Orlando proved them wrong. So now Burbank is backpeddling with Avatar and SW additions which may or may not turn the tide on increased revenue because of the fiscal black hole of TragicBand. My personal suspicions are that Uni got the jump on them when they were too busy messing around with NGE and has now permanently stolen a significant chunk of Disney's devoted visitor base. But time will tell.

 

[Jrn14]

Everyone should stop being so high and mighty about people paying to go to Disney.. this is a fan site after all... I mean I do agree that part of the problem is that people are still paying to go and lapping up anything Disney throws their way despite the higher price and lesser quality, but life is too short... should parents not take their children to Disney just because they don't like the way the park is being managed right now... when their 25 do you sit down with them and say ..."Oh yeah... the Disney I fell in love with as a child is back.... I'm sorry we didn't take you but it wasn't really up to my standards back then... maybe it will still be decent for your children" ... or do you tell Gramps and Grandma that you're boycotting Disney for now and maybe in 10 years we can go back... and we can push you around in a wheel chair... We are taking a family trip coming up...my parents really want to go... and they aren't getting any younger... someday they might not be able to walk around the world... Life is short... and people want to make the best of it... However I do think there is a problem when mombloggers and the Disney diehards orgasm over substandard offerings... but that is the mentality of the business... I used to work there and the management would like you to believe a mickey sticker can write any wrong a guest is having with their Disney vacation.... What i will do is try to persuade people to spend more time at Uni and Seaworld because they deserve to be recognized for what they have done in the past few years... but life to short to completely cut Disney out... at least for me... granted we don't live close to Orlando and we don't get to go often anyway... ... for locals boycotting is probably less painful and more impactful.

 

[TP2000]

The article does seem a tad melodramatic. They come to conclusions that don’t make sense. For example they mention that Iger is angry about the delays in My Magic + which I don’t doubt is true, but shutting down virtually all WDI projects until MM+ is profitable is over the top.

That's not what the Miceage article said. It said some projects like DCA Monstropolis was "Cancelled", while other stuff like Star Wars Tomorrowland and the 60th Anniversary plans were "On Hold". And the things "On Hold" were said to be on hold for 90 days while Burbank regroups on what it's spending where.

I just re-read the article today, and it's one of those where you can't skim. You need to read the entire article. Not everything for Anaheim is "Cancelled", but instead is on hold for a few months to buy Burbank some time. After all, Iger said back in August that we would have news by now about Disneyland. So obviously something is at least on hold.

 

[GoofGoof]

Fiscal year is over, we are at the beginning of the next year. This is to goose the Q1 numbers and keep the stock bubble inflated - except you can only do these tricks so long

Yep. It's a pretty simple accounting shell game. The labor cost of the WDI people being redirected to China can be capitalized as part of the project and a portion of that spending is absorbed by their partners. If the same employees continue to work on domestic projects which are in the early stages of development their pay would most likely be expensed in the current quarter. By deferring some of these expenses for Q1 you can effectively "hide" some of the cost overruns from NextGen. Now if we start seeing layoffs or downsizing within WDI I think its time to panic. For now it's probably just a delay. If anything, we are very familiar with waiting...some more patiently then others

 

[TP2000]

I know fans adore OLC's theme parks... but if they truely are a business success (and not just a fan success)... why wouldn't the board look to recruit from OLC to run it's theme park divisions?

Too much of the success behind Tokyo Disneyland is owed to the Japanese culture, not just OLC stewardship of the Disney brand. Admittedly for Disney fans who go visit Tokyo (like me!), it's like a visit to a perfect Disneyland. But so much of it can't be replicated in America, simply because the Japanese culture doesn't translate well here.

If Disney tried to tell people with visible tattoos they couldn't be in the park, and couldn't swim in the Disneyland Hotel pool, like they do in Tokyo Disneyland, the blubbery tattooed American honey-boo-boo hordes, and the hipster moms with "tasteful" back tattoos, and the "cool dad" with his NFL team tatted on his calve because he's still so bad- at 38, would all scream bloody murder to the press. After they screamed at the CM enforcing that rule, obviously.

And just try to find person in a rented ECV on a busy day at Tokyo Disneyland. Just try. They don't exist. That makes theme park operations infinitely easier and more gracious. But that's just not going to happen in 21st century America.

 

[Goofyernmost]

Too much of the success behind Tokyo Disneyland is owed to the Japanese culture, not just OLC stewardship of the Disney brand. Admittedly for Disney fans who go visit Tokyo (like me!), it's like a visit to a perfect Disneyland. But so much of it can't be replicated in America, simply because the Japanese culture doesn't translate well here.

If Disney tried to tell people with visible tattoos they couldn't be in the park, and couldn't swim in the Disneyland Hotel pool, like they do in Tokyo Disneyland, the blubbery tattooed American honey-boo-boo hordes, and the hipster moms with "tasteful" back tattoos, and the "cool dad" with his NFL team tatted on his calve because he's still so bad- at 38, would all scream bloody murder to the press. After they screamed at the CM enforcing that rule, obviously.

And just try to find person in a rented ECV on a busy day at Tokyo Disneyland. Just try. They don't exist. That makes theme park operations infinitely easier and more gracious. But that's just not going to happen in 21st century America.

They apparently still manage to lock away their less then perfect. That does make it easier.

 

[asianway]

They apparently still manage to lock away their less then perfect. That does make it easier.

It's a matter of personal pride. I walked behind what had to be a 95 yo man who definitely would have been wheel chair bound if he was an American all the way up the hill to Mysterious Island

 

[Pentacat]

I can't think of one example where a major IT infrastructure was injected into a big corporation and it worked. (Please correct me if I'm wrong). There is a reason all the success stories (Amazon, eBay, Apple, Microsoft, PayPal, etc.) are driven by young visionaries - it takes someone who understands these projects to make them work, and it takes strong leadership and vision to execute. What is the vision for NextGen? 11% more money a year?

"Rasulo joined The Walt Disney Company in 1986 as a director within Corporate Strategic Planning and later rose to senior vice president, where he led development for Disney's real estate-based businesses. After two years as a senior vice president of Corporate Alliances and three years with Disney Regional Entertainment, Rasulo became executive vice president of Euro Disney, which operates Disneyland Resort Paris. He served as president and chief operating officer before taking over as chairman and CEO of the French resort in 2000."

He knows nothing about huge IT projects. Neither do the folks behind the Obamacare fiasco.

One need only look back to Disney buying "go.com" to get into the internet business to realize how little they understand about the nuances of bring a major IT revolution into their industry.

Walt had the foresight to have industry giants like GE and RCA bring animatronics into his parks. Imagine if Google, Samsung, Amazon, and Apple had been brought-in to bring NextGen to life. We might have had something far more imaginative than a talking Mickey who says your name.

Managers count beans; visionaries change the world.

First off, there are no Visionaries in middle management. The vision has either been beat out by of them by the system or they've been promoted to a level where they are too busy counting their money to have any vision left. That said, I've yet to meet an senior executive from a non-tech focused company (and I've met plenty) that have ANY reasonable grasp of IT Infrastructure, implementation or even building a basic set of end user requirements. They all consider the minutiae of large scale IT projects as being beneath them and that's what they're paying all those underlings for anyway. So your large scale, make or break IT project is now reliant on project managers and middle management taking the crazy idea of the "visionaries" and finding a way to make it work.

When talking about TWDC specifically they have a reputation within the IT community of being cheap and well behind the times from a management culture perspective. They lack the talent (or the commitment to hire the talent) to pull off a project of this magnitude which means that they have contracted the majority of Nextgen out to a number of external providers. Now I won't litter this post with my low opinions of contracted IT services but they CAN produce a functional system when they are PROPERLY managed. Having project managers within your own organization that have the ability AND authority to demand quality from the contractors is critical. This is where most IT projects grind to a screeching and expensive halt, either the project managers can't keep up and effectively manage the external providers or their concerns are constantly overruled by upper management in the name of moving the project along. The latter almost always ends up causing the biggest issues which then result in huge cost overruns. That's also the point where the "visionaries" panic and start throwing money at the problem and/or start sacking the "incompetent" project managers.

The companies that have technology tightly integrated into their business take it very seriously. You'd never see someone like Amazon, Google or Walmart pulling back the curtain on how they handle their operations. It's so valuable to them as a business that they routinely sue each other for poaching high ranking tech executives from one another to keep that knowledge from being transferred to a competing business. They would have no interest in sharing with anyone what they spent billions on developing for their own use.

 

[Travel Junkie]

That's not what the Miceage article said. It said some projects like DCA Monstropolis was "Cancelled", while other stuff like Star Wars Tomorrowland and the 60th Anniversary plans were "On Hold". And the things "On Hold" were said to be on hold for 90 days while Burbank regroups on what it's spending where.

I should have added temporarily shutting down but the rest of my post addresses that many of these projects could come back. The tone of the article however remains "the sky is falling!" I'm sure they are pleased with the reactions and traffic they got as a result of the article.

Eventually I think they will have to backtrack a little or follow it up with a someone came in and saved the day and many of these projects are back on article in the coming months. DLR is simply not going to be without something new for as long as the article suggests as a result of MM+ overruns. Especially with the boy wizard moving in up the road.

 

[EOD K9]

Who is going to be the first to post an Eisner, "Miss me?" meme?

 

[flynnibus]

My personal suspicions are that Uni got the jump on them when they were too busy messing around with NGE and has now permanently stolen a significant chunk of Disney's devoted visitor base. But time will tell.

Thx for sharing your insights.

I think Disney's lure is strong enough, and they are still contemporary enough, to keep loses from being permanent. I don't think they can put the Genie back in the bottle wrt to Uni's legitimacy.. but look at how quickly people started drooling once some impressive art for Avatar was put out. Disney to me looks like the theme park division that is resting on their history and has lost focus. A not uncommon position for companies to find themselves in.. but is a position that many have pull themselves out of with strong direction and focus. It just seems like the motivations and objectives are all out of whack. Far too business oriented vs 'do well, and the rest will take care of itself'. I'm not trying to be idealist and forget about the realities of operating the place.. but they really have gotten too big and too distracted IMO.

 

[doctornick]

I should have added temporarily shutting down but the rest of my post addresses that many of these projects could come back. The tone of the article however remains "the sky is falling!" I'm sure they are pleased with the reactions and traffic they got as a result of the article.

Agreed. While the details of the article may be factually correct (or perhaps not, as per WDW1974 earlier in this thread), the tone of the article is designed to create a sense of fear. In my experience, Mice Age has a tendency to do this -- they use weasel words to create a negative tone for thing they want to slam and can be overly effusive to build up items they favor. Whatever, it's their business, but there's certainly a propaganda element to it.

It sucks that approval of new projects may be delayed for 90 days or longer, but it is not the end of the world.

 

[flynnibus]

Agreed. While the details of the article may be factually correct (or perhaps note, as per WDW1974), the tone of the article is designed to create a sense of fear. In my experience, Mice Age has a tendancy to do this -- they use weasel words to create a negative tone for thing they with to slam and can be overly effusive to build up items they favor. Whatever, it's their business, but there's certainly a propaganda element to it.

This should be no shock at all... Al was a sensationalist writer all along. He used all the classic tricks like... dropping something new mid-sentence acting like it was something nonchalant to make people do a double-take, etc. The guy ALWAYS wrote with that kind of flavor and never missed an opportunity to blame Florida for something, etc. When 'staff' took over writing the columns, they mimicked his writing style in trying to keep it looking like everything was the same. That trait continues.. in both their 'grab your starbucks..' openings to the over the top sensationalism and taking jabs. It's par for the course and has been that way for a decade+. Only when they stop trying to pretend to be Al and take on their own identity will that change.

 

[ChrisFL]

Too much of the success behind Tokyo Disneyland is owed to the Japanese culture, not just OLC stewardship of the Disney brand. Admittedly for Disney fans who go visit Tokyo (like me!), it's like a visit to a perfect Disneyland. But so much of it can't be replicated in America, simply because the Japanese culture doesn't translate well here.

If Disney tried to tell people with visible tattoos they couldn't be in the park, and couldn't swim in the Disneyland Hotel pool, like they do in Tokyo Disneyland, the blubbery tattooed American honey-boo-boo hordes, and the hipster moms with "tasteful" back tattoos, and the "cool dad" with his NFL team tatted on his calve because he's still so bad- at 38, would all scream bloody murder to the press. After they screamed at the CM enforcing that rule, obviously.

And just try to find person in a rented ECV on a busy day at Tokyo Disneyland. Just try. They don't exist. That makes theme park operations infinitely easier and more gracious. But that's just not going to happen in 21st century America.

Agreed, there's a lot of differences that make TDR exceptional.

Although Tokyo Disneyland is relatively similar to what we have in the U.S., when I walked through DisneySea for the first time, I kept finding things that I knew wouldn't work as well in the U.S....specifically how many places to walk up and down with stairs. Anyone who has traveled around Tokyo knows that is a very common thing...train stations, walking bridges, within 4 days I'd walked more steps than I would in a month at home. You will hardly find many elevators or escalators (I wouldn't want to be wheelchair bound in Tokyo).


Also, quality of service overall in Tokyo is just so much higher than most anywhere else to begin with, everywhere you go you get service that's more like the top Disney we expect in the U.S.

There's also a large Arabian themed section which I'm sure some idiot radio host these days would claim the taliban were moving in or something.

It is a much more adult park than most of Disney's parks as well, with very few rides with cute themes or no height requirement (thought that's been changing)

sorry for the off-topic rant, but this is WDWMagic after all

 

[SirLink]

There could a person even worse than Iger being the CEO when Iger leaves the position.

The fact is Jay Rasulo could be the CEO of Disney when Iger leaves. Jay Rasulo is the person is responsible Mymagic plus, the original new fantasy land plans, and for J.K. Rowling turning down Disney's offer for theme park attractions.

The Harry potter blunder by Rasulo is huge. Jay decided to show a concept of Toy Story Midway Mania with a Harry Potter theme instead of the concept Tony Baxter had for Potter. By Jay's action, Harry Potter became a huge success for Universal and is the reason Universal is spending a lot of money each year in their theme parks.

The best thing you could hope for is Rasulo and the others involved in Mymgaic plus leaving before Bob Iger leaves.

Jay Rasulo won't be getting CEO position, neither will Tom Staggs. No one in house will get the job, before an outsider gets a crack at it.

 

[PhotoDave219]

Burbank thinks their American parks are mature and immune to higher spending but Hogwarts up the road in Orlando proved them wrong. So now Burbank is backpeddling with Avatar and SW additions which may or may not turn the tide on increased revenue because of the fiscal black hole of TragicBand. My personal suspicions are that Uni got the jump on them when they were too busy messing around with NGE and has now permanently stolen a significant chunk of Disney's devoted visitor base. But time will tell.

Correct, that the theme parks are a "mature business" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Its only that way because of how they neglect them and refuse to continually invest in them.

 

[Jimmy Thick]

Gonna call shenanigans on the article due to the fact MM+ has not been rolled out in full or has been completely implemented 100%. If you look at what MM+ is really about, I doubt it will ever be completed and will always be evolving. To call it a failure or waste of money is just completely ignorant as it will more than likely redefine the whole theme park/hospitality experience and set the future standard.

In other words, sure the money could have built a couple rides, but in the long run, people will wonder how they lived without it.


Jimmy Thick- Quick, can anyone really describe in detail the full effect of MM+? Um glow with the show...

 

[AndyS2992]

Too much of the success behind Tokyo Disneyland is owed to the Japanese culture, not just OLC stewardship of the Disney brand. Admittedly for Disney fans who go visit Tokyo (like me!), it's like a visit to a perfect Disneyland. But so much of it can't be replicated in America, simply because the Japanese culture doesn't translate well here.

If Disney tried to tell people with visible tattoos they couldn't be in the park, and couldn't swim in the Disneyland Hotel pool, like they do in Tokyo Disneyland, the blubbery tattooed American honey-boo-boo hordes, and the hipster moms with "tasteful" back tattoos, and the "cool dad" with his NFL team tatted on his calve because he's still so bad- at 38, would all scream bloody murder to the press. After they screamed at the CM enforcing that rule, obviously.

And just try to find person in a rented ECV on a busy day at Tokyo Disneyland. Just try. They don't exist. That makes theme park operations infinitely easier and more gracious. But that's just not going to happen in 21st century America.

I personally think Tokyo Disney Resort is actually the worst Disney Resort.

Tokyo Disneyland Park
- Tomorrowland is a complete mess
- Land transitions are non existant
- Fantasyland is in need of a huge update and makeover
- Large empty spaces and walkways
- Glass ceiling over the Bazaar can be seen from Adventureland and Tomorrowland and ruins the theme
- Crowded most of the year
- Bad layout, Critter Country is a complete dead end at Splash Mountain
- Fireworks are to the left of the castle not behind, same show shared by both parks, cheap

Tokyo DisneySea
- Lacking rides for such a big park

 

[Sue_Vongello]

In other words, sure the money could have built a couple rides, but in the long run, people will wonder how they lived without it.

I think you meant Disney is going all in on this and it's not going away so we're stuck and in a few years people won't remember what life was like before it (sadly).