NBA Experience at Disney Springs

Gitson Shiggles

Gitson Shiggles

There was me, that is Mickey, and my three droogs
DisneyOutsider said:
It's important to understand that Bob Iger's corporation pays Adam Silver's corporation BILLIONS of dollars every year for the broadcast rights to NBA games via ESPN including the NBA Finals (the championship series) exclusively on ABC.

Bob Iger showed up to the opening of this facility because if Adam Silver is in town you damn well better make an effort. They are business partners on a multi-billion dollar level. I don't really care to argue whether the experience is a failure or why DisneyQuest failed, but discussions about why it exists in the first place need to be viewed through this lens.
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Me to this special relationship:
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Iger is so risk-aversive, maintaining broadcast rights must outweigh to where this is inevitably headed.
 
SWGalaxysEdge

SWGalaxysEdge

Well-Known Member
Did anyone watch the "grand opening" online? WOW that was sad. Very forced when it came to the hype. The crowd had to be prompted to clap when someone said something. It felt very cringy to watch the "ceremony"
Who will lose their job over this bad idea?
 
note2001

note2001

Well-Known Member
SWGalaxysEdge said:
Did anyone watch the "grand opening" online? WOW that was sad. Very forced when it came to the hype. The crowd had to be prompted to clap when someone said something. It felt very cringy to watch the "ceremony"
Who will lose their job over this bad idea?
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Nobody. See what DisneyOutsider posted above. Assuming the paid admissions can cover the cost of employees, insurance and utilities, Disney is willing to take a wash on this to make millions elsewhere. Broadcasting revenue is no small joke.
 
R

RKpb

Member
Well, I was sad to see Disney Quest go, all my friends and family loved it. I couldn't at the time imagine what they were thinking by replacing it with the NBA experience, but I guess a lot of people felt the same about it as I did in the end. Disney Quest was really the main reason to draw us to Downtown Disney when we got sick of the parks or on a good rainy day. It seemed to have something for everyone to enjoy, it had variety, but I assume it wasn't bringing in the draw they wanted. In reality, you can play basketball anywhere on the street I don't see the draw. Maybe they will bulldoze this one and bring in something better.
 
flynnibus

flynnibus

Premium Member
techgeek said:
Disney operated or not, do we know who’s actually responsible for the lackluster ‘experiences’? Was it actually designed and installed by Disney / WDI, or did NBA themselves come up with this and executed it through a 3rd party? It certainly doesn’t have the feel of a WDI product.
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It was promoted as being designed by WDI with the NBA
 
MrPromey

MrPromey

Well-Known Member
Tom Morrow said:
I'll preface this by saying I have zero interest in the NBA or sports in general. I had very little knowledge about what the NBA Experience even was, but I got in free thanks to some CM friends.

I found the explanation of the activities inside to be a bit misleading. I assumed it was some sort of personalized coaching experience/tournament/whatever where you pay a flat fee and participate in a bunch of activities intended to mimic training, honing in on skills, etc, and you'd leave with a personalized video of your experience or something. This made me not even want to go in as I would feel like a fool going through that. However, I was way off, it's more like DisneyQuest But For Basketball. Personally, I have a hard time seeing how even a big NBA follower would be entertained enough inside to justify the admission price. There just isn't really that much to do, and the games/attractions that are there are very one-and-done. Either you already play basketball and the activities are nothing special, or you don't play and you'll stumble through them awkwardly if you even want to try them at all. So in other words its simultaneously not casual enough for non-fans/basketball players and not in-depth enough for those who do follow/play. Not a good fit for Disney Springs, I think, and I do think Disney Springs severely needs more entertainment venues to balance out the retail and dining.
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As another person who is not a sports fan I ask, do you think this is just a mistake that can't be salvaged or something that's going to need major tweaking to work going forward?
 
MrPromey

MrPromey

Well-Known Member
Disstevefan1 said:
So in Disney’s extensive research they thought it made better business sense to demolish Disney quest and put up this NBA experience instead of simply giving Disney quest a refresh?

I don’t get it, but then again I don’t get pandora, Disney’s version of Star Wars, or the skyliner...
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Disneyquest's days were numbered as soon as they threw in the towel on the nationwide rollout. The business model for that was only ever going to work if they could spread development costs for new attractions over multiple locations.

Being designed as a box, there was never any room for expansion so it was always going to need updating to remain fresh and no way Disney was ever going to make an ongoing effort to do that for just this one location.

Over all the years it was open, what did they do? Replace the Hercules attraction with the Pirates one? Fill the place up with arcade machines and make it largely an all you can play classic arcade? Close down some of the marquee attractions when they became outdated without replacements?

In its prime, I loved Disneyquest but the last time I went (a couple years before closing) it was a sad shell of what it opened as and it was never going to be anything better the way Disney wanted to manage it.

Maybe if they'd redone it and put the all-you-can play on one level and kept the bumper cars but done other stuff with the rest of the space like opened it up to 3rd parties for things like the Void and other tech-like experiences that would have been separate charges that could have been managed sort of like the co-op of things coming and going but tech related, it might have stood a chance but that would have been keeping the same name and replacing what was there with something totally different and I'm not sure with the amount of space there, they'd have been able to fill most of it, anyway.
 
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xdan0920

xdan0920

Think for yourselfer
note2001 said:
Nobody. See what DisneyOutsider posted above. Assuming the paid admissions can cover the cost of employees, insurance and utilities, Disney is willing to take a wash on this to make millions elsewhere. Broadcasting revenue is no small joke.
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The very idea that broadcast rights come down to anything besides the highest bid is laughable. If Disney designed, operates, and paid for this, then it is nothing short of a colossal failure.

Operating a half-arsed NBA promotional experience will have approximately zero point zero impact on Disney’s relationship with the NBA when broadcast rights come up again.
 
Bocabear

Bocabear

Well-Known Member
Because the NBA and Basketball players are known for their culinary skill? That is similar to the failed concept Motown Cafe and the failed Model's Cafe opened by a couple supermodels...
the LAST thing I would want to do after spending a hectic chaotic day at Disney is go to a restaurant with blasting video monitors showing basketball games... but I admit I am not the target audience for this...
 

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