Like not reading certain threads. Or using the Ignore feature. Or discovering forums where Disney is more thoroughly worshipped.....
-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
Spirited News and Observations and Opinions ...
- Thread starter WDW1974
- Start date
Like not reading certain threads. Or using the Ignore feature. Or discovering forums where Disney is more thoroughly worshipped.....
haha, I'll survive. But thanks, I'm so much more prepared for the Internet now.
ParentsOf4
Well-Known Member
Perhaps these people, after visiting WDW for nearly 4 decades and enjoying it tremendously for the first 3, are tired of TDO treating its guests like disposable inventory. Perhaps these people are tired of attraction stagnation, 10% Annual Pass price increases, 12.5% Disney Dining Plan price increases, non-functional animatronics, and pieces falling off major attractions. Perhaps these people recognize and appreciate that Universal is treating its guests the way WDW used to.
Perhaps these people want WDW to be the way it used to be.
Perhaps.
@flynnibus is the expert here ... but Disney has contracted with the Accenture & Cisco Business Group to impliment NEXT GEN at WDW.
I'm sure he knows all the details as to who is doing what and why ...
I can't even program my new phone ... or negotiate my way around WDW's new web site.
dhall
Well-Known Member
Another peeve.. one day a word gets inserted into the lexicon (value engineer) and before you know it, it's attached to everything
I just love the term, tho -- it so perfectly captures how management at so many of my previous employers (or customers thereof) have treated the projects & products I've seen. There's a reason why so many IT projects end up failing: scaling back on the resources without similarly adjusting expectations.
It's funny you mention Target.. since they were a focus of heated attention in this area about a year ago regarding data mining and analytics
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
My comment was more about unique to the application of theme parks and mixed customer service+data gathering. We we talk big data, obviously national retailers have big data needs too.. but I can't comment on how centralized or not they really are. But if we look at their sales.. 69 billion last year for target.. assume some quaint average price.. say $10/unit for sanity's sake. That is 6.9 billion items to log. And real-time aspects I would assume to be related to purchases and returns.. not much need for real-time querying or analytics there. Pull up the batch for the transaction, and look it up. Customer buying history isn't likely exploited at the store.
Compare this to Disney.. using your numbers.. if you had 55 transactions to log per guest and 50k guests.. that's over a billion transactions a year. Less than one order of magnitude difference for target
But in the sense of big data.. I had a friend who used to work for AOL in the hayday. He said they logged EVERYTHING you typed and clicked.. and that's a lot of data. But that was nothing he says compared to how blown away he was when he went to work for the IRS as an architect
Your $10 sanity number is where your misleading yourself a little. WIthout getting more specific, I can tell you (without speculation) that a some big retailers like Target have databases that get traffic levels on the order of 1 billion new records every day. That's obviously distributed among several systems, but it's still one virtual database for data mining purposes, and it's all kept -- they don't know in advance that it'll turn out to be unscented lotion that helps identify pregnant women.
The Target story got discussed pretty heavily around several companies that I've worked in. I don't happen to know if any of my employers produced software used in that specific case, but if they didn't, their competitors did.
---
Obviously I have a fairly strong appreciation for the technical aspects of all this. I'd love to see this project from the inside (although I'd probably be driven a lot more nuts by threads like this one if I knew the details specifically). The combination of math & psychology that drives this stuff seems like magic when you see it in operation. I do know personally that this stuff moves the numbers in large retail operations in a big way.
But here's the thing, for me. For as much as I've explained (and in some cases defended) the technology on this and other threads, the thing I can't get away from is the appropriateness of it and how awful the presentation of it has been.
There's a large cohort of management at Disney that are Pressler/Harris wannabees: they're basically retailers at heart. They see systems like this in places like Target and salivate over how it drives sales (and they also know that they need experience with systems like these in their next jobs, wherever they may be). From a retail perspective, it makes perfect sense. But only if the park is just a big mall with very expensive bling that brings in traffic.
Beyond that is the appearance: on one coast, they sunk billions into improving the product and reaped enormous benefits. On the other, they're sinking billions into infrastructure that should never have been in the public eye and taking all kinds of heat over it. For a company whose very soul is in touching audiences' emotions, they've screwed this up more ways than I can count.
Maybe, at the end of all this, some one will be able to take $1.5B worth of detailed numbers to upper management and prove once and for all that theme parks are not primarily retail operations, and we can clear out this herd of shopkeepers running the parks into the ground.
Have you ever been to UNI? SW? BGT? Any Disney theme park not in the FL swamps?
Or are you just a WDW pixie dust addict looking to stir things up?
BryceM
Well-Known Member
Yes, there are forums out there that are more geared to Universal (Orlando United), but there is nothing wrong in the fact that tons and tons of people love Universal equally or more than Disney. That isn't to say that they don't like Disney, but it is quite obvious that Universal offers top-quality hotels, parks, services, rides, etc.
There will be more fireworks than Illuminations:NYE!!
To be fair, they cut and swapped out pyro from RoE and the show I saw in December would have been utterly dreadful if not for the holiday tag.
Do you really believe everything that Disney says?
Monty
Brilliant...and Canadian
- In the Parks
- No
Do you really disbelieve everything Disney says?
Or should I wait to respond once Al Lutz has validated your question by stealing it?
They no longer, much like with the 'Escape from Tomorrow film, CONTROL the narrative. For a company that has always thrived on control (even before they were an evil $88 billion media goliath), the idea that this gets further away from them with every reader on the Internet ... every Tweeter ... every discussion ... it could cause some IBS to break out in the exec suites.
The worst thing: anyone with a clue (not some special Spirit) could have called this. How they didn't would result in heads rolling in a perfect world. Good thing we live in the opposite.
While that may be your opinion, I don't see this playing out that same way.
This is Disney and this is marketing and tracking children.
If you think that Zenia's team will be able to blow Markey's letter off and that will be the end of it, then I think you need to get up from the keyboard once in a while and get some fresh air.
That's the only thing you're going to respond to? Priceless.
And Flynn, if you think the BoD is going to be anxious to throw any money WDW's way for anything after spending well over $2 billion so far on NEXT GEN, Fantasyland and AoA in the past few years, you have no idea how that company operates.
This thing either shows immediate HUGE impact on the bottom line or WDW continues to crumble ... even while tracking guests and making everyone plan every minute of their visits.
Is that the best you can do? Answering a question with one?
Unlike you, I'll answer. I take everything any corporation the size of Disney says with a dose of skepticism, but then I look deeper and decide whether there's a reason for concern.
With MyMagic+ ... there are plenty of reasons.
Al steals from others on the 'net, Monty. And he's been using my info liberally. He had no clue George was leaving Anaheim for WDW until I reported it ... and he still didn't run with it until a day before and was afraid to even suggest what job George was leaving for.
If you showed as much skepticism for Disney as you did for me, then you might actually be an informed guest.
Yes, I snort it while I "ogle" tinkerbell (how old is she anyways?) [kidding] Again, was just annoyed with how it's said, not what is said. Have never said anything disparaging about Uni, and it's not in the cards.
Darth Sidious
Authentically Disney Distinctly Chinese
The list of companies that fit that mold is staggering.
drew81
Well-Known Member
Amen!
Monty
Brilliant...and Canadian
- In the Parks
- No
You posted an obviously rhetorical question in my view to take a dig at me because my actual post cast question on your whole premise that you couldn't respond to without proving you're actually as bad as your tin-foil wearing sycophants, so I took a poke back.
Or you can interpret it "your" way if you like...
GoofGoof
Premium Member
This really sums up the whole thing. The concept of FP+ doesn't work for a lot of people (especially regular visitors). It's bad enough by itself. Compound this with the fact that over $1B that could have gone to any number of new attractions or desperately needed upkeep of what exists was spent on this experiment. The whole privacy thing, while an interesting debate, is mostly academic for anyone (including people with kids). The pre-planing aspect of FP+ along with potential longer standby lines is the real issue IMHO.
dhall
Well-Known Member
Laws like COPPA are not thick black lines around what's allowed and what's not, any more than Disney's privacy policy actually prohibits them selling personal information. They're more like thick, fuzzy, indistinct grey lines marking the types of behaviors that are out of bounds. There's a lot of wiggle room for the both the parties involved and for regulators/law-enforcement, if they decide they want to make an example out of someone.
From the legal perspective, Disney's probably pretty well covered with their policies disclosed in the right amount of legal armor and their actual willingness to let someone correct/delete their personal information (assuming anyone ever actually takes the trouble to look up & correct such information). I'm also thinking they can scale this back somewhat and still make it worth their while for future installations. How much the experience is degraded to those that opt out will probably be the longer term issue for those of us with serious concern for privacy (along with how much more we'll have to pay).
From a PR perspective, this is a foul-up of monumental proportions. Disney had to have known that they couldn't push this nearly as far as Big Wolf/Kings Island/any casino you care to name -- they're way too much a part of popular culture and getting too close to even the fuzziest edge risks a huge scandal. "Is Disney World Stalking Your Children? Tune in at 11 for the ActionLive Express News team on Your Side for the answers".