Spirited News, Observations & Thoughts IV

[the.dreamfinder]

I hope most folks here realize that many Disney execs are outwardly contemptful and dismissive of the products they sell to the masses.

 

[Funmeister]

Is Beastly Kingdom considered a evolution of Night Kingdom or was it always just intended (conceptually at least) as a "land" for DAK?

What about the "Disney Villains Park"? Or was that just the fever dreams of the fanboy community?

IMHO a ABD style "behind the scenes" tour or exhibition at Canaveral would be pretty awesome...at least it could have been 10-15 years ago, maybe not so much today.

Beastly Kingdom was never built so no.

To my knowledge I have never seen or heard any tangible proof that a villains park was ever in blue sky stage much less development.

The cape canaveral attraction had nothing to do with the cape. That was just the location.

Nothing to see here....move along...move long

 

[wdwmagic]

Guys, I am wasting my time deleting irrelevant nonsense in this thread - please keep it on topic and stop insults and trolls accusations.

 

[WDW1974]

Yes, something else seems to be going on here. When have you ever heard of a project in Orlando that wasn't value engineered to death? We can only wish that would happen with NGE, but the exact opposite seems to be happening here, they can't seem to throw money at this fast enough.

And I don't think that elusive "something" is Iger's ego, or Avatar wouldn't have had the budget constraints we've heard about put upon it, since Avatar is pretty clearly an Iger play.

THIS!!!

Simple common sense and knowledge of how Disney runs its P&R unit (and WDW in particular) would have you wondering what exactly is going on here. I may have more of the picture than most here, but I am in no way claiming to have the entire picture. But I am going to keep searching for it because I am a guest, fan, stockholder AND curious Spirit.

So to my friends at TWDC, one Jason Garcia piece won't end the discussion. Nope, not by a longshot.

 

[MattM]

Some of the answers he seeks are right in front of him on that damn screen. Then again, he 'had to make room for Disney's 80 percent claim.' Now, help me out here, is he still maintaining that he is a journalist?

A journalist is supposed to allow room for both sides of the story, no?

 

[MattM]

THIS!!!

Simple common sense and knowledge of how Disney runs its P&R unit (and WDW in particular) would have you wondering what exactly is going on here. I may have more of the picture than most here, but I am in no way claiming to have the entire picture. But I am going to keep searching for it because I am a guest, fan, stockholder AND curious Spirit.

So to my friends at TWDC, one Jason Garcia piece won't end the discussion. Nope, not by a longshot.

As @lazyboy97o said, just because something is "value engineered" doesn't mean that there cannot be a ton of waste.

You guys claim that VOTLM (or New Fantasyland, in general) was way to expensive for what we got as the final product and has been labeled here as "value engineered."

Just wondering what the difference would be?

 

[the.dreamfinder]

THIS!!!

Simple common sense and knowledge of how Disney runs its P&R unit (and WDW in particular) would have you wondering what exactly is going on here. I may have more of the picture than most here, but I am in no way claiming to have the entire picture. But I am going to keep searching for it because I am a guest, fan, stockholder AND curious Spirit.

So to my friends at TWDC, one Jason Garcia piece won't end the discussion. Nope, not by a longshot.

In the grand scheme of things, the Sentinel is a tiny paper that isn't very relevant. It sort of reminded me of Al Lutz's saying "bending over for pennies while dollars fly over their heads". CP may be all happy that they won with Jason's article. However, when far more critical outlets, ones with far larger audiences, come to check on NGE, they won't be so lucky.

Also, my mother went to a dinner party with her coworkers recently and the topic of WDW came up. Lots of Harry Potter/UNI first talk as well as someone who did a MM+ trial comparing it to a 180 day out ADR.

 

[WDW1974]

This thread (and this thread only) was declared "enter at your own risk" a few hundred pages ago, as there are participants who feel that they can moderate it better than the mods. So they were told to have at it.

As I recall, I said something about not crying to me if someone felt hurt, insulted, offended, attacked, etc. If you don't like the responses you get in this thread, then back away.

But this behavior will NOT be tolerated in other threads! Fair warning.

I would hope this wasn't directed at me because I never asked, requested or suggested this thread not be moderated. Indeed, because of the nature of what I often post, tempers often flare. I absolutely appreciate the job you and the other mods do on this site largely.

my only concern was having NEWS disappear because some folks get nasty, so I said a lighter moderating hand would be appreciated. That is all.

Again, I am putting news out here that can't be read anywhere else and, beyond the page clicks, one would guess that makes the site look better. Anyone can pull next week's LTM event off the Hub and call it news, or report on a weather-related closure (such as the ones which happened last night). Reporting hard news to a fan community isn't easy or everyone here would be doing it. Folks that claim to do so as a job or as a secondary vocation (like @KevinYee ) would be hard-pressed to come close to the stories I have broken on this site from UNI's massive expansion to George Kalogridis taking over as WDW Prez To NGE diverting funds and delaying attractions etc...

So, thanks for the job YOU do!!! And please moderate this thread ..at least a bit!

 

[TalkingHead]

A journalist is supposed to allow room for both sides of the story, no?

Since when did Disney's totally bogus statistics (2% negative feedback) qualify as the "other side of the story"?

That qualifies as PR-level crap. What I don't understand is Garcia said himself more than half of his poll was negative, so how does that not figure into the story? Did he not push Disney on their percentage? Of course he didn't, that might hurt Mickey's feelings, the poor thing.

 

[MattM]

Since when did Disney's totally bogus statistics (2% negative feedback) qualify as the "other side of the story"?

That qualifies as PR-level crap. What I don't understand is Garcia said himself more than half of his poll was negative, so how does that not figure into the story? Did he not push Disney on their percentage? Of course he didn't, that might hurt Mickey's feelings, the poor thing.

Agree with that. I was only referencing the complaint of needing to "leave room" for certain parts of the story. Unfortunately print only allows for so many characters due to limited space.

Won't get any disagreement from me that there should be a little more thorough vetting.

 

[orky8]

and how dare they run a business and provide value to stockholders

hey I don't agree with everything they are doing (and especially everything they aren't doing) but at some point we have to come to reality and see that they aren't designing the parks based on comments from us on these forums...they are running a business and theme parks are just a part of that global business whether we like it or not... and unfortunately we all aren't imagineers on the disney payroll

With regard to P&R, and WDW in particular, are you really providing value to shareholders by extracting the present value from the investments? It may look good on the balance sheet, but eventually all the cutbacks and lack of investment is going to hit the bottomline -- big time. Indeed, I already think it has started to do so.

Nearly every successful company was founded and made successful by a fan. Eventually, the fan passes, an MBA takes over, shares spike as the company is raided, creating the apperance of steller (but unsustainable) quarterly reports, and then . . .

 

[Soarin' Over Pgh]

Excuse this non-sequitor but I had a very unusual incident happen to me over the weekend at a Disney Store.

My wife and I were shopping for some Magical slippers for the little ones at the Disney store in our mall in NJ. We decided on the 2 we wanted to purchase and I told my wife to go ahead and get in line at the pretzel joint down the road. I waited at the registered and was greeted be a very friendly CM. We had a few nice words but during the transaction I took out my card and was going to swipe. She told me "here I'll do it for you" and started to swipe it at the register. She turned the card around and said it's not signed I need to see ID. I explained that this was my wife's card(we like to use a seperate account for miscelaneous purchases-and the card is in her name) and she doesn't sign it for security reasons. She said well we'll put the purchase to the side and wait for her to come back or use a different card.

So I called my wife to come back and show ID so I could make the purchase. Now, I know if you go to some states this occurs from time to time. In NJ this is unheard of. In the last 10 years I have been asked for ID a total of never. It doesnt matter signed, different gender name...it's just not a priority for NJ merchants.

Waiting for my wife to come back I approached the manager and asked her the deal. She said it for security. when I explained how this never happens she told me, we started doing this so we make sure we have "accurate information".

Any CMs out there at a Disney Store know about this new "precaution" did I just stumble upon the wrong cashier? Just a little strange considering all the other data mining coalescing at the parks.

I have "see id" on the back of my debit card.... Disney store is one of very few places that actually ask for my id.

Personally, I have it written there for a reason, I wish more places actually asked to see my id.


Edit because autocorrect hates me

 

[nytimez]

Excuse this non-sequitor but I had a very unusual incident happen to me over the weekend at a Disney Store.

My wife and I were shopping for some Magical slippers for the little ones at the Disney store in our mall in NJ. We decided on the 2 we wanted to purchase and I told my wife to go ahead and get in line at the pretzel joint down the road. I waited at the registered and was greeted be a very friendly CM. We had a few nice words but during the transaction I took out my card and was going to swipe. She told me "here I'll do it for you" and started to swipe it at the register. She turned the card around and said it's not signed I need to see ID. I explained that this was my wife's card(we like to use a seperate account for miscelaneous purchases-and the card is in her name) and she doesn't sign it for security reasons. She said well we'll put the purchase to the side and wait for her to come back or use a different card.

So I called my wife to come back and show ID so I could make the purchase. Now, I know if you go to some states this occurs from time to time. In NJ this is unheard of. In the last 10 years I have been asked for ID a total of never. It doesnt matter signed, different gender name...it's just not a priority for NJ merchants.

Waiting for my wife to come back I approached the manager and asked her the deal. She said it for security. when I explained how this never happens she told me, we started doing this so we make sure we have "accurate information".

Any CMs out there at a Disney Store know about this new "precaution" did I just stumble upon the wrong cashier? Just a little strange considering all the other data mining coalescing at the parks.

I'm a little surprised that you use your wife's card regularly and never get stopped/questioned by cashiers. IMO the problem in this instance is certainly not the "wrong cashier."

 

[Goofyernmost]

The above is from the aforementioned John 's website - it's concept art for a now-defunct project called "Disney's Enchanted Forest".

Just look at that. LOOK AT IT. It's a Tree Castle. That's what could have been, folks. Man, I think I'm gonna cry...

You know what would be really cool. When it gets to it's 25th anniversary they could do an overlay and make it look like Cinderella's Castle. Then everything would be equalized.

 

[alissafalco]

Disney should just put a going out of business sign at all the parks and liquidate items now before it's too late

You are making a sarcastic joke out of this because that may not be the case today. The decisions that are made today will profoundly affect the parks in say 15-20 years from now and your sarcastic joke just may become a reality. In today's economy with everything that is going on with once successful large companies shutting their doors, why do you think Disney is "magically" untouchable??

 

[WDWDad13]

You are making a sarcastic joke out of this because that may not be the case today. The decisions that are made today will profoundly affect the parks in say 15-20 years from now and your sarcastic joke just may become a reality. In today's economy with everything that is going on with once successful large companies shutting their doors, why do you think Disney is "magically" untouchable??

well let's put it this way... it wasn't long ago Uni was the low many on the totem pole with not much excitement... so IF the pendulum has truly swung, why couldn't Disney "come back" with their new projects down the road just as Uni apparently has?

 

[Pentacat]

debatable

Is it really? I mean there are rumors that appeared on these boards (and other hilarious forums previously attended) posted by @WDW1974 before they were anywhere else in the "public" sphere. Things that certainly turned out to be true.

I've asked the question before...why continue to subject yourself to something you don't want to hear or worse yet respond in such a confrontational/non contributing manner?

 

[MattM]

You are making a sarcastic joke out of this because that may not be the case today. The decisions that are made today will profoundly affect the parks in say 15-20 years from now and your sarcastic joke just may become a reality. In today's economy with everything that is going on with once successful large companies shutting their doors, why do you think Disney is "magically" untouchable??

Because it is an extremely well diversified company. Focus here tends to be on WDW, and that's fine, but there is much more to the greater Walt Disney Company (or, $DIS for @GiveMeTheMusic I kid I kid)

Take a minute and breeze through their 10k, which in its most basic sense, is just a statement that shows how a company makes their money (not trying to be snarky, but I think it would truly give an idea of the scope of the company):
http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/sites/default/files/reports/q3-fy13-form-10q.pdf

Not that it couldn't happen, but I think you probably have a better chance of getting struck by lightning and winning the lottery on the same day.

 

[MerlinTheGoat]

'74 providing good news isn't debatable at all. Regardless of whether you like his opinions or choice of words, the news he provides is generally very consistent and accurate.

well let's put it this way... it wasn't long ago Uni was the low many on the totem pole with not much excitement... so IF the pendulum has truly swung, why couldn't Disney "come back" with their new projects down the road just as Uni apparently has?

They could. Leadership and/or ideas on how to conduct business can indeed change. That's not to say Disney will change, their massive egos present a huge obstacle for such a thing, but it's probably not completely impossible. But a major worry at this point is that next gen is eating into budgets that would go to said big new projects they have planned. Possibly delaying, dumbing down or perhaps even canceling them entirely...

Obviously this can and often does happen with any project, it's quite often that plans get scaled back or canceled regardless of what else is going on. But having a 2+ billion dollar ongoing disaster with a good chance of completely crashing and burning upon arrival is hardly going to do the projects any more favors either. The board after all wants them NOT to spend money on the parks.

Still I don't rule out miracles (or rather extreme luck). No one here wants WDW to be any less than a stellar place that is consistently getting world class new rides and attractions. Unfortunately that is not seeming like the current reality until something major changes. And were I a betting man, I wouldn't risk money on the assumption that there will be anytime soon.

 

[Goofyernmost]

Magenta Panther said: ↑

The above is from the aforementioned John 's website - it's concept art for a now-defunct project called "Disney's Enchanted Forest".

Just look at that. LOOK AT IT. It's a Tree Castle. That's what could have been, folks. Man, I think I'm gonna cry...
Click

You know what would be really cool. When it gets to it's 25th anniversary they could do an overlay and make it look like Cinderella's Castle. Then everything would be equalized.

I just thought of something that would be even cooler. On the 25th they could do an overlay where the trees have all been cut down and they have built a shopping center. How much of an ecologically laden message would that be?