Spirited News, Observations & Thoughts Tres

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PhotoDave219

PhotoDave219

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Taylor said:
I like some older movies like the Star Wars originals but gosh the old superman movies are dang near unwatchable (but are still better then the Brandon Routh superman movie)
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Oh dear young one.... Citizen Kane is older. On the Waterfront is older. The Public Enemy is older. Casablanca is older. Ben Hur is older.

But referring to the original trilogy of Star Wars as "older movies" lacks a certain perspective.
 
Taylor

Taylor

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PhotoDave219 said:
Oh dear young one.... Citizen Kane is older. On the Waterfront is older. The Public Enemy is older. Casablanca is older. Ben Hur is older.

But referring to the original trilogy of Star Wars as "older movies" lacks a certain perspective.
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Let me clarify old to me like 20 years before I was born. There not old to you. And yes Citizen Kane is one of greatest movies of all time, and Casablanca is the most quotable of all time.
 
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stlphil

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RunnerEd said:
Staying at Paradise Pier next month. Any advice or experience there?
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Sorry, never stayed there so no direct experience with that hotel.

You should probably experience Disneyland first by the regular entrance and walking up Main Street, but after that I would definitely suggest using the DTD monorail station to enter in Tomorrowland.
 
devoy1701

devoy1701

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RunnerEd said:
Staying at Paradise Pier next month. Any advice or experience there?
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We stayed their for our first trip to DL, Tom. It was a good trip, nice clean hotel, but we have decided that if we ever stay on property again it'll be at DLH or GC. The hotels on Harbor Blvd are closer than Paradise Pier is and for less than half the price...breakfast included in most cases! I momentarily considered staying there again this past March, but the price difference was over $1,000 more than staying on Harbor Blvd. Nothing against the hotel personally except for how far away it is. Not to mention it's not in the middle of everything like the other two on-property hotels. The only thing you'll gain is you won't have to walk by the street beggers and hobos that hang out right outside of Disneyland's Harbor Blvd Gate. Though that might be worth $1,000 if you're trying to escape the "real world."
 
devoy1701

devoy1701

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alissafalco said:
Please do tell why? I'm curious
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Talk about a hotel stuck in 1992. The rooms were very clean, I'll give them that. The bathroom was immaculate, I don't even remember seeing any mold around the bathtub. But the decor was awful, the TV was an old (and very loud) tube set from who knows when, and the walls seemed pretty thin, you could hear quite a bit of noise from outside and from other rooms. We also had a very loud A/C. They don't have central air so the units are on the outside wall, but they also have wooden shutters on the windows right about the A/C unit...and when that freight train started up at night, we had a whole wall of shutters rattling us awake. I tried to set the A/C so it would stay on instead of it turning on and off all night long but the setting wouldn't work, so it woke us up about every hour. Lastly, when anyone flushed a toilet within a few rooms or floors from you in the middle of the night it seemed to whooooosh through every wall in the place. The only things we liked were the breakfast room (though the buffet itself could us some help), the proximity to the parks, and being on the 5th or 7th floor (don't remember which now), we had a great view when standing outside of the mountains to the east and of DCA to the West.

The place needs a full rehab and remodel...the Tropicana Inn just 2 doors down looked much nicer.
 
GLaDOS

GLaDOS

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tirian said:
I'll crawl out of the shadows to add and confirm a few things.

Disney is concerned because Guests aren't spending money, but unique merchandise has vanished from Walt Disney World. I visited Universal Studios over the weekend and spent over $200 on one-of-a-kind HP and Transformers gear, and other people had bags of souvenir crap. Yet I haven't purchased anything other than food on Disney property since Christmas. That includes Epcot, which is obsessed with women's T-shirts, and Hollywood Studios, which has been overrun with identical plush toys. Heck, you can't even get a Test Track keychain or antenna topper at Test Track. Everything costs too much, everything is generic, everything is sold everywhere. Disney needs to fix this ASAP if they want Guests to start spending money again. Right now you can walk through the parks and see very few merch bags.

There's not much to add to the Hollywood Studios discussion, except that several departments have been notified they should prepare to move their offices away from certain areas that are marked for expansion. Oddly enough, the Beauty and the Beast contract renewals are up in the air, but Disney is hiring more stunt men for Indiana Jones.

Cameras, microphones, and speakers have been installed in Mickey's meet and greet rooms in the MK and DAK. The talking heads should go live within a few months.

Now to add my two cent's worth to the Magic Band NextGen discussion. More than anything else, the promise of crowd management sold execs on My Disney Experience ©®™. The explanation goes like this: crowds have reached almost unmanageable levels, and any new attraction will only drive attendance and add to the chaos. Look at how much busier the MK got based on one restaurant and a simple dark ride! Instead of building new rides, the plan is to force Guests to plan each day in advance; eventually Disney can phase out Standby queues at certain attractions and keep people moving all day. The data mining will help schedule CMs, target merchandise to specific demographics, and improve sales pitches.

Is the Magic Band completely horrible? No. But it is being touted as the solution to Ops problems. That, my friends, is the crux of the issue. Execs aren't planning exciting new attractions for the MK and Epcot to increase revenue and drive Guest satisfaction. They are depending on a glorified ride reservation system. Yes, you can use the bands for admission and purchases, but the real goal is to spread Guests throughout the existing attractions. This will take years to implement. Don't expect it next month or even next year. Meanwhile, hope that WDI gets to play with Frontierland (one Imagineer called it "the area you walk through to get to Splash and Thunder") and Tomorrowland, because the goal isn't to improve the MK's attraction roster. The goal is to redistribute crowds to existing locations and hope they spend enough money on Photopass and merchandise to justify the NextGen initiative. That's why Photopass paid for half the bracelet budget, and why a chunk of the billion-dollar price tag went to merch register systems.

Money has been dumped into helping Guests schedule every single ride and spend money on stuffed Mickeys. It's not a bad business plan, it's just not what the average Guest wants to do after all the stress already associated with a Disney vacation.

Meanwhile, a few miles away, Uni is building incredible rides. You know, the things that make people actually want to go to a theme park.
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Well, this makes it easy to decide where to allocate my vacation dollars.
 
CDavid

CDavid

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tirian said:
Is the Magic Band completely horrible? No. But it is being touted as the solution to Ops problems. That, my friends, is the crux of the issue. Execs aren't planning exciting new attractions for the MK and Epcot to increase revenue and drive Guest satisfaction. They are depending on a glorified ride reservation system. Yes, you can use the bands for admission and purchases, but the real goal is to spread Guests throughout the existing attractions. This will take years to implement. Don't expect it next month or even next year.
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If they want to do a ride-reservation system, then just do a ride-reservation system; You don't need all the (unnecessarily) flashy and expensive Next-Gen tech to make that happen. Just make sure you can still reserve a space on at least a few experiences even into the afternoon and evening on the park's busiest days. Why the need to make something as simple as making an ADR, but for attractions, as complex as doing your taxes?

Of course, the solution to getting people spending money is just as simple; Give people items they want to buy, and they'll spend freely. You don't have to sell people on something when they line up to buy enthusiastically. That means (much) greater resort and attraction specific merchandise and shops which sell (many) items unique to that particular merchandise location. Sure, the Emporium and World of Disney selection may be similar, but we shouldn't see the same stuff in World Showcase or outside Kilimanjaro Safaris.

I know its slightly cheaper for WDW to buy all one t-shirt design than 20 different shirts, but the difference can't be much, and with more options maybe I'll want more than one shirt. Indeed, I'd much rather pay a couple dollars more for a particular (resort or attraction) design than get a generic Disney design for a marginally lower cost.
 
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Sneezy62

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tirian said:
Meanwhile, hope that WDI gets to play with Frontierland (one Imagineer called it "the area you walk through to get to Splash and Thunder") and Tomorrowland,
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Somehow I'm not sure whether to hope for that or not. Once upon a time Frontierland had no mountains and it was fine! It had river and island adventures and a state of the art Audio Animatronics show. There was also Pepsi-Cola :) and unique shops and street shows. I'm not saying Splash and Big Thunder ruined the place, just that turning imagineers loose on it may not be thing best thing. On the other hand if they bring back Aunt Polly's and don't rely on Woody and Tonto too much it might not be a bad thing.

Thanks for popping in @tirian!
 
truecoat

truecoat

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All I know as far as merchandise is, I can't find any magnets like I used to. I tried to buy a space mountain shirt but they didn't have my size. Funny that they aren't properly stocked the Wednesday before/during Easter/Spring Break week. I wanted to buy one of 2 Star Tours shirts at Disneyland during Christmas but they only had kid sizes.

An aside to this is I did buy a Captain America shirt....at Islands of Adventure.
 
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