EPCOTCenterLover
Well-Known Member
Old Disney- subtle exteriors, where nothing (much) competes. New Disney- In your face exteriors that scream for attention to make up for lack of substance. See Pixar Pier, Avengers Campus and now San Fransokyo.
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News Pacific Wharf to be Reimagined into San Fransokyo
- Thread starter DCBaker
- Start date
MarvelCharacterNerd
Well-Known Member
Not sure rubber stamping checks is "shaping modern Disney". But it still doesn't make him leadership material for the company. May be a nice guy and kept a sharp eye on expenses, but still not Disney CEO level leader. Bob knew that and it's why he took him off the leadership path.
People have this idea of him who just believe "the internet" who make him out to be something that he's not.
He's not Frank Wells (though he may be somewhat akin in keeping Iger in check for a while). But Frank Wells alone would not have been the right choice for the company either. It needed the ambition and charisma of an Eisner, and yes, an Iger. That's not Staggs (who, again, may be a great guy. Doesn't make him leader of one of the largest entertainment companies in the world.)
That requires the rare trifecta of someone who can inspire Wall Street, the company (from lowest level cast member up to board member) and the public. If Staggs could do that, he'd already have the job.
Architectural Guinea Pig
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
If they really wanted San Fransokyo bridge, they should’ve done this:
Image Courtesy of [Parklore]
Image Courtesy of [Parklore]
Consumer
Well-Known Member
Losing the beautiful Trattoria just to build a different Golden Gate Bridge would've been a shame. Calling the land San Fransokyo Wharf instead of Square seems like a no brainer, though.
No Name
Well-Known Member
But that would cut into Performance Corridor!
TP2000
Well-Known Member
How much do you think we'd have to pay a college kid from the art department at Fullerton Junior College (Go Hornets!) to start making us t-shirts that say Performance Corridor with an artsy drawing of the Golden Vine Winery on it?
McMickeyWorld
Well-Known Member
Thanks, I hope you have a good time here.Your English is just fine, and even much better than some native English speakers who have been educated by American public schools in the last 20 years.
Welcome to the Disneyland forum, by the way. Do you live in Baja California? I'd always thought it would be fun to have a few folks from Baja here to join in the discussions, since they get the SoCal Locals Discount tickets any way.
Sadly no, im currently living in CDMX, but i hope to one day live near or next to the parks of the city. Thanks so much for your patience in my reply.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Thanks, I hope you have a good time here.
Sadly no, im currently living in CDMX, but i hope to one day live near or next to the parks of the city. Thanks so much for your patience in my reply.
Ah, Mexico City. Although you don't get the Locals discount tickets for Disneyland, still one of the world's great capital cities.
I apologize, but my Spanish is very bad. Like an old white guy fresh off The Love Boat hailing a cab in Ensenada bad.
But I became a permanent fan of Mexico City after the great temblor of '85. Some friends and I sponsored a family there who needed help rebuilding their life. Truly lovely and appreciative people. I still get, and send, a Christmas card from/to that family's son and his family. Mexico offers a wonderful culture and inherent kindness to the world.
As the kids say now, I was apparently "Paying it forward" back in 1985. When the Big One hits SoCal and people here are in need, I have no doubt some of the fastest prayers and relief will come from our good neighbors to the south in Mexico.
But I'm mostly familiar with northern Baja California, Mexico. Incredibly gracious and attractive people, fabulous food, gorgeous weather, beautiful Talavera pottery, and a wonderful outlook on life is to be had there. I must be honest with you, years ago when Disneyland started offering the Locals discount to residents of Baja California in zip codes 21000 to 22999, but NOT offering it to Americans living in Las Vegas or Arizona zip codes, I chuckled at that.
I think Southern Californians sometimes have more in common culturally with a Mexican from Baja California than with an American from Phoenix or Las Vegas. Funny how that works. Sometimes state borders are more impactful than international borders.I'd love to hear your thoughts on DCA's only Mexican restaurant, Cocina Cucamonga Mexican Grill, becoming part of San Fransokyo and existing in a fictional world that is Japanese-American.
I'm a huge fan of both traditional Japanese and Mexican cuisines. But combing them? I'm not so sure.
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CaptinEO
Well-Known Member
Tom Staggs was in charge of Disney Parks from 2010-2015. Maybe not the best time for Disney World but was absolutely great for Disneyland and California Adventure. Even Star Wars Land (the ambitious version his successor cut down last minute) and Pandora were greenlit under Staggs.
Not saying he's the one who personally worked on these projects as he's the executive, not a creative, but the company's output declined exponentially when Bob Chapek took over his job.
Josh D Amoro has been responsible for greenlighting some of the worst projects in WDI history. But he is a "nice guy" so people like him.
shambolicdefending
Well-Known Member
It's probably wrong to paint anybody as either all bad or all good, but Staggs falls firmly into the "more bad than good" category for me. He had the main leadership role in the MyMagic+ implementation that I consider the single worst thing to happen to Disney parks in the last 20 years - maybe longer.
If you haven't watched Defunctland's related YouTube documentary, you should. I initially balked at the length, but it's a high quality production and well worth the time.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Pandora was sprung on everyone by Iger.
Anyone with a basic familiarity with operations would have seen the issues with sustaining Galaxy’s Edge.
Staggs was also involved in setting the overall corporate strategy that defined the late Eisner years and the Iger years.
CaptinEO
Well-Known Member
They couldve had the bantha ride, restaraunt, and more walk around characters. Not sure why that's an ops difficulty especially give how huge the land is. They even tested the interactive portion at Fronteirland.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
The Bantha ride was cut by Walt Disney Imagineering because they spent the money elsewhere. Same with the restaurant.
All of those characters and interactive bits are an ongoing operations expense.
CaptinEO
Well-Known Member
It's sad considering for years it was being promoted as in interactive land. The ops would've been expensive but this was the experience Disney promised. I was excited to have a world with all these actors and characters and randomness that could play out.
It would've been a pretty new experience for Disneyland.
Instead we got cashiers telling you that you crashed the falcon (but only during the first month).
A case of them overpromising and underdelivering.
To be honest I expected like most themepark rides or shows for things to be scaled back as time went on, but was surprised they cut all the interactive elements before the place ever opened.
CaptinEO
Well-Known Member
I have seen this. Great video that confirmed what we all knew (Fastpass makes standby worse amongst many other great data points).
Fastpass and preplanning them have always been bad and the MyMagic was such a waste of money that never saw return on investment.
Disney World prebooking your rides 2 months in advance at 3am is outrageous. I heard they want to bring this back too.
mickEblu
Well-Known Member
The pre booking the rides i think was a nice advantage for vacationers. I can’t keep up with the Genie + system in Florida but when I was flirting with a WDW vacation last year I think the alternative was waking up really early and running to the park to book your first return time as the return times book up really fast and you may only get to use Genie + on 2 rides otherwise. I’d rather wake up one time at 3am a couple months in advance than worry about running to the parks everyday at 7am while on vacation.
Maybe I’m not not remembering all the details but it would be nice knowing you have the Top 2-3 rides at every park waiting for you with minimal wait times. Then you can loosely plan the rest of your day around those pre-booked rides.
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lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
You weren’t allowed to prebook the top 2-3 rides for a single day in most parks.
chadwpalm
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
When I went back in 2014, they let us book 3 fastpasses ahead of time, but we couldn't book anymore until the last one was used, and SDMT was new at the time and so it sold out because I didn't get up at 3am (or it wasn't allowed, I don't remember), and by the time we used our 3rd FP all the good remaining ones were gone for the day. We ended up waiting 3 hours for SDMT and I would never wait that long for that ride ever again.
mickEblu
Well-Known Member
So how did it work then?
Some new form of Fastpass + with some ILLs would be better than whatever was going on when I was looking into a WDW vacation last year. If I could get 1-2 top tier rides per day and then pay for individual Lightning lanes for the likes of FOP, Cosmic Rewind, Tron etc that would work for me. On a vacation where you’re most likely spending anywhere between 5k-10k a few more hundred dollars to guarantee the top rides seems like a good investment.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
The issue there is that the stuff that was added to DCA in 2010-2012 was all designed and funded back in 2007 when Jay Rasulo was the Parks Chairman. Not that Jay Rasulo was a fun guy, but that was still when the non-creative execs knew their job was just to give the creative execs enough money to do good work in the parks.
Tom Staggs just happened to land in his Parks gig as the final touches were being put on DCA's rebirth. The fabulous glitter that TDA offered up in 2015 for Disneyland's 60th should be credited to creative execs in the Entertainment department.
Agreed, and Bob Chapek really took the Parks division in a weird direction as he tried to wring out as much money as possible from the
Bob Chapek is like that boring, grumpy uncle at Thanksgiving that no one really wants to sit next to. But if he had taken a Jay Rasulo route with the creatives and trusted his Operations leaders to make the right calls for the guests, he could have been forgiven and ignored. And probably would still have a job.
Josh is an interesting story. He's Mr. Cool, and the ladies love him. He does seem genuinely like a nice person (you can't fake that), and he comes across as very likable. But he's had his job long enough that we should have seen more improvements now than we have. He hasn't really fixed anything that Bob Chapek did with the parks in the 2010's, and now there's no new construction happening on either coast.
It will be interesting to see what gets announced this Saturday morning when Josh gives his Destination D23 presentation at WDW.
If there's no new night parades or park expansions (not just reskinning existing stuff, real acreage expansions) announced and it's all just fluff and another round of vague WDI concept art for blue sky stuff that hasn't been approved, then I think that seals the deal on Josh D'Amaro and his ability to bring real change and improvement to the parks.
Or perhaps his inability to bring real change and improvement to the parks. Tune in Saturday morning to find out.
