Spirited News and Observations and Opinions ...

[Jimmy Thick]

Er, um, what if NextGen becomes a industry standard that all other companies in the hospitality industry try to emulate?

What if NextGen is truly the next big thing and people are too quick, and ignorant, to pass judgement?

Um, didn't I read somewhere the whole NextGen experience can be decided upon by the guest on how much information the want devuldged? Such big brother tactics...

People are such followers, think for yourself.


* Chuckles *


Jimmy Thick- Calling Jesse, really.

 

[WDW1974]

This type of thing is very prevalent. It points back to anyone idiot can have a blog or a podcast and any idiot can post on a message board. There is no PR training required. There are two sides to this though. The lack of PR training means that things like internal documents and blueprints get put on the internet now because people don't know how to protect a source. The other side of it is that when people at Disney (or any other company) are interviewed by these "reporters" there is no real journalism going on. It's a conversation between a primary source and a fan, and a fan isn't skilled enough to ask the probing questions. That same fan is looking to get hits to their website more than exhibit any level of journalistic integrity.

I myself was guilty of this very recently. My site ran a story on Avatar (and as far as I know it was the first story) with information on the attractions. Fastforward several hours and my story is buried because someone else posts blueprints online. This taught me that being first is actually far less important now, it's really a matter of who is willing to burn sources and potentially cost people their jobs.

No, Tim. Ultimately, what matters and what has always mattered is NOT who is first and NOT who burns sources, but who gets it RIGHT.

I sit on a load of information that I don't put out for a variety of reasons. Often, it's because I don't feel confident in the source or because I can't get others to confirm it.

I agree the Avatar deal was a circus, but that was because way too many people got involved, put a little spin on it and went with it. What's amusing to this day about that is TWDC didn't seem to give a damn at all, which spoke volumes about whether they think Pandora will ever be built.

 

[Disneyhead'71]

Er, um, what if NextGen becomes a industry standard that all other companies in the hospitality industry try to emulate?

What if NextGen is truly the next big thing and people are too quick, and ignorant, to pass judgement?

Um, didn't I read somewhere the whole NextGen experience can be decided upon by the guest on how much information the want devuldged? Such big brother tactics...

People are such followers, think for yourself.


* Chuckles *


Jimmy Thick- Calling Jesse, really.

Yeah, you can choose to opt out if you like standing in 2hr lines for popular attractions and 40 mins for rides that were previously walk ons.

Or you can really choose to opt out and just go to Universal and Sea World for you know, new rides.

 

[RSoxNo1]

"Hey Billy, Happy Birthday. Why don't come with me for a special Birthday treat? You like Mickey Ice Cream Bars don't you?"

What could possibly go wrong.

Hey Billy... have you ever been in a Turkish Prison? Well according to our information you have...

 

[flynnibus]

Disney is going to war, but they're using a different weapon

That's probably the best way you can put it.

I'm not advocating that this is the be-all-end-all thermonuclear weapon that will win it all - just explaining what it really is to people who can't see it for what they are trying to do.

It is a stop.. stand up.. look around.. and maybe head a non-traditional direction as a way to reestablish a lead. Is it going to work? I think it has potential - but like many changes, it has a lot of risk, and there is a risk guests won't buy in at all. Those are all the decisions the big boys get paid to ponder and decide.

I don't have to believe in the effort to understand what it is - but many people in the fan community are getting all worked up and are confused all to hell because they can't see the forest for the trees.

The problem is there's no rational reason to believe that weapon will harm the competition and protect Disney's market share.

I think there are reasons - but will they win out? Only one way to truly know.. and they are close to start seeing if it sinks or swims

So, again, flynn ... where you see no one winning a traditional park race, I see Disney losing by trying to reinvent the game.

This is New Coke. I'm not drinking.

Thats fine - as long as we see it for what it is.. and not just some emotional mudslinging

 

[RSoxNo1]

Er, um, what if NextGen becomes a industry standard that all other companies in the hospitality industry try to emulate?

What if NextGen is truly the next big thing and people are too quick, and ignorant, to pass judgement?

Um, didn't I read somewhere the whole NextGen experience can be decided upon by the guest on how much information the want devuldged? Such big brother tactics...

People are such followers, think for yourself.


* Chuckles *


Jimmy Thick- Calling Jesse, really.

This is a much easier sell if the parks weren't in need of new attractions. If the selling point of this is, "You can book your ride on our brand new Imagination LPS ride 60 days in advance" that's a much easier sell. Instead, this comes off as, if you want to get on an attraction that was previously a walk on at 1 PM, now you get to book it 60 days in advance or wait 30 minutes.

 

[awoogala]

Are you implying that the child's eyes don't "go wild when the character of their dream" meets them at the current Meet-and-Greets?

Kids like meeting the characters. How many of them notice that the characters don't know their names? They believe there's one Belle, one Mickey, etc.

My exaggeration was no less ridiculous than your exaggeration.

Yeah, any character knowing my kids name would freak him the hell out. It isn't santa. Why in the world would Cinderella know my child's name? It doesn't make any logical sense, unless they make a new movie "Mickey, the omniscient Mouse"

 

[WDW1974]

Just as you've posted, it's not so much the data mining because Disney has been doing that for sometime in many other ways, rather the endless scheduling and turning a vacation into, well, a chore. It's already become a mess with the dining reservations. Sorry, I don't want to schedule meals, rides, and everything else months in advance. When everything becomes calculated and/or scheduled, you lose so much enjoyment.

A dining reservation or two, that's OK, but everything planned out, UGH. Not to mention that it's so darn hard to get a reservation where you want it as it stands. Essentially pre-booking your rides. Really? People are overscheduled and absurd enough as it is, now we'll have the masses running around to make their ride times. (In much greater numbers than the current FastPass.)

That's the great LIE about MyMagic+ ... instead of making a vacation less of a chore, it will turn one into just that. When I go to WDW, I do what I want, when I want. I have since I was old enough to not have to go with Mother Spirit and Father Spirit. That was both before FP and post FP. Before the horrible DDP and now. I could go to the parks and do as little or as much as I wanted with very little planning. Now? Now, I'm going to have to plan, plan, plan or risk wasting time and money to drive or fly up and see very little because PoC, which is never more than a 15-wait for me at MK, will soon have regular waits of an hour or more. Things like the Peoplemover, always a walk-on, will require me to stand out and bake in the sun for 20 minutes if I haven't planned ahead to ride. ... Everything, including staffing levels (which are already too low), will be based on whatever the algorithims of this new program pop out.

This is so far removed from what a WDW vacation used to be about, I honestly question anyone's sanity who ever visited pre-Y2K and thinks this is a good idea.

The bracelet? Not for me personally, but at least you can just use a plastic card instead. I don't want to wear a bracelet and I don't care to collect yet some other junk from Disney. It's novel, but I just might want to walk in, go on an attraction, see the audio animatronics actually work, and just maybe, while it's cool that a character can so called talk to a kid by name, well, isn't that part of the problem in our culture today? Catering everything to children, creating these little narcissistic monsters, making them think they're the best and greatest, it goes on and on. Check out a BBC magazine piece this past weekend about this subject, it's quite interesting. In a nutshell, our kids (Note: American kids) are scoring worse on testing than in the 60's, but they think they're better than ever and can do anything. Ugh, I see these kids and their parents, and as a sane parent, it's nauseating.

Totally different subject, but so true. And they get it from their parents who have never left the country except maybe to visit a third world island on a cruise, so they have this strong belief that we are the best country in the world at everything. The sad truth is we aren't the best anymore at very much, misplaced 'tude would certainly qualify.

Legal challenges to this? Sometimes I wish I finished the track to law school , but just as previously noted, nearly every consumer or privacy act in this country can be loopholed around. Legal would not have proceeded if it wasn't abundantly clear that this would not violate any current standing statute.

Why do you think Disney was lobbying hard to get COPPA changed? How much do you think they spent and have set aside for legal challenges? Of course, anything can be loopholed and Disney will be doing its best. But as someone stated earlier, what prevents the rules from changing down the road? It has been a decade of Wild West anything-goes mentality when it comes to our privacy (certainly 9/11 provided great fodder for the government to spy on us all at any whim), the pendulum usually swings on these matters and if it does, it will be swinging in a direction that is not in Mickey's favor.

 

[dhall]

They will have a hard time selling your personal data to a third party without your consent. It's in their privacy policy now. I posted it somewhere back a few pages. I don't see them amending it for this. Again this is just my opinion.

The Walt Disney Company's Corporate Privacy Policy says this:
Sharing Your Information with Other Companies
We will not share your personal information outside The Walt Disney Family of Companies except in limited circumstances, including:

• When you allow us to share your personal information with another company, such as:
  • Electing to share your personal information with carefully selected companies so that they can send you offers and promotions about their products and services

...

You keep pointing at this policy as if it's there to protect you or something. It's only there to reassure you without carrying any actual meaning. The hurdles here are almost trivially low.

"When you allow us to share your personal information" could be applied any time you opt in to anything Disney does, up to and including your MyMagic+ login, signing up to a newsletter, download an App to your smartphone, join ESPN Insider, etc. Unless your diligent about unchecking all those 'Please Market to me' checkboxes, any of them can constitute you allowing them to share your personal information.

"Carefully selected companies" already includes all of the sponsors & partners, but could include anyone who carefully selects to buy Disney's list. While I expect that Disney won't sell the list to anyone & everyone, this does allow them to become a provider of information as well as a consumer.

 

[awoogala]

You keep pointing at this policy as if it's there to protect you or something. It's only there to reassure you without carrying any actual meaning. The hurdles here are almost trivially low.

"When you allow us to share your personal information" could be applied any time you opt in to anything Disney does, up to and including your MyMagic+ login, signing up to a newsletter, download an App to your smartphone, join ESPN Insider, etc. Unless your diligent about unchecking all those 'Please Market to me' checkboxes, any of them can constitute you allowing them to share your personal information.

"Carefully selected companies" already includes all of the sponsors & partners, but could include anyone who carefully selects to buy Disney's list. While I expect that Disney won't sell the list to anyone & everyone, this does allow them to become a provider of information as well as a consumer.

Or, you know, sign up for a sweepstakes they just announced and forgot to uncheck the "share my info with disney and assorted companies" You don't think sweepstakes are for our benefit, right?

 

[Jimmy Thick]

This is a much easier sell if the parks weren't in need of new attractions. If the selling point of this is, "You can book your ride on our brand new Imagination LPS ride 60 days in advance" that's a much easier sell. Instead, this comes off as, if you want to get on an attraction that was previously a walk on at 1 PM, now you get to book it 60 days in advance or wait 30 minutes.

Couldn't you book Soarin' instead?

Toy Story Midway?

Rides where Fastpasses run out? Without fact checking, Iam sure you will be able to.

Jimmy Thick- And if Universal was doing NextGen people would be saying Disney was a dinasour. Wait, can I book a Fastpass for Dinasour 60 days out?

 

[WDW1974]

This.

Look, for those of you that say that we are on Disney's property and it is their right to monitor us, you are correct. However, Disney has an obligation to safely handle any data they gather, and also the obligation to ensure the safety of the guests on property.

We have all seen the stories of the animals that prey on children being in the employ of the Mouse - no, not the Mouse's fault, there are evil people everywhere. So, lets say that one of them is a DBA for WDW and has access to the data warehouse that stores this information. All that guy has to do is write a relatively simple query (trust me, it's simple - I write code every day, including database queries), execute it on the database (or data warehouse) and find that little Jimmy, the bright eyed 12 year old kid, is hanging at the game center at Fort Wilderness. His 14 year old sister is also there, but with a group of 16 year old boys keeping her distracted. So our creep grabs a roll of quarters and heads to the game room, finds Jimmy....and the rest is all bad.

Disney CANNOT guarantee they do not hire these criminal creeps any more than any other company can. Would you trust your children to that? Not me...

That is one HUGE issue that no one really raises. I wonder if they ever will or just wait for something bad to happen.

If I were Disney, I would have thought that issue out and made sure no one could ever access that type of info, but wouldn't that stop the project in its tracks? If you want to know how Jimmy is spending his money, people have to know where he is. And if that means some sicko takes him out in the woods and goes all Sandusky on him, well, that's what legal cash reserves are for, right?

I am sure Lou Mongello will address this on his next podcast. Y'all tune in now ya hear!

 

[Jimmy Thick]

Can anyone actually show me facts Disney will force people to use NextGen when they come to the parks, or is this elective?

I would safely assume you will need the wristbands for your room and as park passes, but everything else in regards to information collection, people knowing your name and all the other things people need to complain about will be by choice.

So basically, eveyone is getting worried about...

Absolutely nothing.


Jimmy Thick- Big bad Disney, such big brother tactics...Sob!!!Sob!!!

 

[GenerationX]

My boys are all teenagers now, so if we were to pass Belle and she addressed any of them by name, I can assure you they would be thrilled.

I'm just looking forward to the NextGen team making sure there's always a cart selling Mickey Ice Cream Sandwiches and Diet Coke within 15 feet of me at all times.

 

[Disneyhead'71]

Couldn't you book Soarin' instead?

Toy Story Midway?

Rides where Fastpasses run out? Without fact checking, Iam sure you will be able to.

Jimmy Thick- And if Universal was doing NextGen people would be saying Disney was a dinasour. Wait, can I book a Fastpass for Dinasour 60 days out?

Actually Universal is rolling out a tech program with in park free wifi and related app. But it is a passive system that arms you with info without the whole big brother overtones.

 

[WDW1974]

Welcome to the debate of how the American government collects data and this exact same premise of a rogue operative(s) using data for a variety of wrong/unlawful reasons. The problem with everything, though, is do we run on the premise of not doing something because a what if someone does something that's not the purpose of use of the information. Go through any major American city (and our British friends well know about it from their CCTV) and you have networks of countless cameras with people being watched. Now because of the premise of a rogue operative, do we not have that because of what could be done with it or do we have it because the pros vastly outweigh the cons? I'm not positioning on either side here, rather just saying that Disney data mining in the manner that they're doing it falls into the category of discussion we're having a lot here in America.

Unlike the grocery store that knows what you buy, the Disney system is knowing what you buy, and can know exactly where you are, so it's quite the hybrid, more than just knowing you like doughnuts at the store.

True, but I am old enough to recall when we didn't have cameras everywhere and when privacy was treated very seriously and the government couldn't just spy on you and you could simply go to the airport walk through a metal detector and have lunch if you wanted (I did this as recently as 8/01 btw).

With all the security safeguards in place the country feels more like a prison and one with a lot of violent cons, then it ever did when we truly were pretty damn close to free.

So, I hate the excuse that 'Google does it' ... or 'Starbucks does it' ... or 'Kroger does it' as an excuse for Disney taking this to a whole 'nother level.

If they weren't, rest assured, Tom Staggs wouldn't have attempted damage control today before any of this has even started.

 

[ParentsOf4]

Um, didn't I read somewhere the whole NextGen experience can be decided upon by the guest on how much information the want devuldged? Such big brother tactics...

There seems to be a few different aspects about what Disney will collect vs. divulge, many of which are still fuzzy.

In order to participate in FP+, you'll need to upgrade your ticket to an RFID device. It has been mentioned by several sources that the wristbands contain active RFID transmitters. I've read conflicting reports about the tickets. Eventually, everyone will need to upgrade their existing tickets. There will be a phase during which both the old and new systems are supported.

It appears onsite guests will be issued wristbands by default. It's unclear if they can request devices without RFID transmitters.

With an active RFID device, Disney should be able to collect whatever information it wants. Where have you been, what did you purchase, which characters did you meet, etc. Disney has stated you'll be able to customize your NextGen experience. Really, this means simply customizing what information is disclosed to front-line CMs. For example, if you don't want them to know your name or birthdate, you should be able to control that. However, this seems to be the only control over the information you'll have. Disney still will collect the information.

It's unclear how much or what type of information Disney might disclose to companies outside the "Disney family of companies". Yes, I know they have privacy policies but I also am aware how these can be circumvented. It should be expected that there will be full disclosure within the "Disney family". It's also possible Disney could disclose general patterns in order to, for example, seek sponsorship at the parks.

Fundamentally, Disney will want to use this information to maximize revenue and profit margins. It's what NextGen is all about. Any thought that they won't is simply ignoring the business realities they face. The warnings issued during the 2012 financial conference call and announced reactionary layoffs suggest a management team that, frankly, is panicking. Their numbers are heading in the wrong direction and they don't like what they see in the future.

Corrections would be appreciated.

 

[WDW1974]

One of the many posts I made today in this thread was about spending more time in Disneyland. The appeal to me is that I can dine at my favorite restaurants without reservations made 180 days in advance and I can hop back and forth between parks, maximizing Fastpass usage if I so desire and there's no penalty for late returns.

This makes my vacation easier, and if I want to go back to the hotel for a couple of hours, or better yet, just walk around for a couple of hours without going on a ride, I can do that.

Yes, but understand that the second place slated for the NEXT GEN experiment... oops, I mean experience is DL ... and if George K winds up with Meg's oversight position and not simply the WDW Presidency then you are more likely to see Disney try and force the system on DL.

George did try and bring E-Ride nights to Anaheim with disasterous results his first go-around ... one of many times he tried to put the WDW model on the DLR product.

Now, I wouldn't get all worried because I don't see it succeeding here enough to ever even reach full implementation and I suspect the legal hurdles would be much greater AFTER it has cleared them here in a state where pretty much anything goes and Lord Voldemort rules from Tallahassee when he isn't in his mansion in Naples.

 

[docnabox]

OK, we'll need one of those when I take @Expo_Seeker40 on his little journey (sorta) to sea.

I love apple pies, but do you make others pies as well? I will trade pins or vinyls or EPCOT 94 guidemaps for pie!

I am throwing down the gauntlet! I make an apple pie that will, without doubt, blow the Mom's pie out of the water! Consider yourself served Mom, there is a new pie baker in town!

And you like pie you say??? Cream pies, fruit pies, fried pies....you name it, I am the pie guy!

 

[HMF]

True, but I am old enough to recall when we didn't have cameras everywhere and when privacy was treated very seriously and the government couldn't just spy on you and you could simply go to the airport walk through a metal detector and have lunch if you wanted (I did this as recently as 8/01 btw).

With all the security safeguards in place the country feels more like a prison and one with a lot of violent cons, then it ever did when we truly were pretty damn close to free.

So, I hate the excuse that 'Google does it' ... or 'Starbucks does it' ... or 'Kroger does it' as an excuse for Disney taking this to a whole 'nother level.

If they weren't, rest assured, Tom Staggs wouldn't have attempted damage control today before any of this has even started.

So Nextgen is essentially more or less a Disney Version of the Patriot Act.