It took me a while, but I finally finished the article late last night. My head is spinning at all the information that it contained. Well done to the author,
@AustinC ,and thanks for joining and discussing it with us.
A few things stood out for me:
Referral to WDW as a "burning platform". It's interesting to read that they (Disney Exec's) knew they had a problem with the product becoming stale, yet, they chose a different path rather than the traditional for trying to fix things. Rasulo seems to get most of the credit (or blame) for this, but, I have to wonder what else led to their decision to jump into this like they did? Were they trying to find an alternative way to improve the parks without actually investing big capital by adding attractions? Or, was it more driven by finances and an aversion to taking a risk on a big new attraction, only to watch it fail, as in the case of Expedition Everest's Yeti?
The part that grated on me the most was the choosing to go around Imagineering and bring in an outside group. Did the issue with the Yeti cause some fallout or mis-trust with Imagineering? That's the only conclusion I can draw that would make sense as to why they didn't include them in the project. Regardless, what were they thinking? How do you just cut out the very team who is not only tasked with, but lives and breathes and dreams of ways to make the parks better day and night, and are in many instances just begging for the opportunity? Of course they were ed off, they were left out of the process and then forced to work with a product they didn't agree with!
Infighting! It's amazing this thing made it out as it did, when it did! But, looking at all the outside "partners" and money they spent, it sounds like they bought the emperor a new set of clothes. Sure, they gave him (us) MM+ and a shiny new app with the ability to schedule FP in advance of our trip, but overall, they just shrunk the KTTW plastic card and made it into a wristband.
On the whole issue with the budget thing that everybody keeps mentioning and the $1Billion costs. Going out on a limb here, but I would venture a guess that the costs of it were probably spread creatively across all of the different groups such as resorts, merchandising, transportation, IT, ops, etc. so the NGE team budget was kept within that number, but the other groups were saddled with additional costs to support and implement it. Bottom line, the total cost is only known by a few tight-lipped individuals in Finance and higher up, regardless, I'm not buying that it was kept within a billion.
If anything, the end story was quite revealing and left me with a happy/sad sort of feeling. I'm left with the impression that this "project" cost a lot of money and heartache and achieved very little of what they were hoping for, except maybe a slight improvement on guest satisfaction, which is kind of sad. It seems they're now struggling with what to do with it for the future, and not too eager to invest a lot more in it as-is, which is also sad, but maybe a good thing as we can hope they learned that in the end it wasn't really worth it.
