Accessorize, accessorize. If they save money on a pair of pants or shirt by making it the same as another attraction (while in itself being somewhat close to what it was before), then great. But the saving can also allow them to add some embellishments to the costume as well, perhaps, and still save money.
In most cases, a black pair of pants is a black pair of pants. Sure, the cut might be a little different. Sure, might be cuffs at the bottom, sure might have tassles. But in the end, it's still black pants. The part I take a little exception to is the comment about the apron. How they are leaving a tab off of them. Alright, not a big change, but still one that means a real detail is being left off. In most cases guests would not notice that a cast member is wearing #13 black pants versus #4 black pants, but might notice that details are left off of aprons.
And yes, going to unimaginative marketing napkins that barely work as a table-prop, let alone as a napkin, that's not a good thing.
My biggest complaint is that they are doing to the parks what they did to animation. After a period of decline Disney just decided the public is not all that interested in the animated movies and now parks. So they are settling in to wring as much out of the parks while they figure they can. This is bad thinking. Princess & The Frog demonstrated that if you deliver what the public wants, they will come in droves. Just make your product unique, and do a good job with it.
Did anyone see the Pixar special on CNBC where they pointed out Disney was quite happy with Toy Story 2 being a low quality film, but Pixar folks were not? Just so long as TS2 made money, Disney was happy. You can only fool the public for so long.
Oh, and one of my pet peeves about people who complain about how Disney does things is they see it from the wrong perspective. The problem is that their stock price is low. Why is it low? For two reasons, really. Supply, and demand. With low stock price Disney does what they can to increase demand, which brings down supply in the long run. Perhaps if more Disney fans owned Disney stock, a couple things could/would happen. First, the demand has gone up, and that has brought supply down. So price must go up accordingly. Second, a stockholder telling management how they want the company run has some added value. Tell them you are not happy with how the company is run. Complaining that something they did sucks is kind of pointless.
I own about 4000 shares of Disney stock. I had been an annual passholder for about 12 years. About 18 months ago, when my and my girlfriend's passes were up for renewal, we decided to not renew. I then proceeded to write them a letter and explain why. I sent it to 8 or 9 addresses at Disney. I explained that I liked the parks, but since attractions have not changed that much the last few years, and they have been dumbing down attractions, I decided it was not worth it to have annual passes any longer. I would thus be cutting back from 3 trips (each about ten days long) a year, to about 1 trip every 2 or 3 years now. I could easily see everything and still easily see the changes. I did get one reply back regretting my decision and offering to call me if I wished to discuss it further.
