Spirited Spring Break News, Observations & Thoughts ...

PhotoDave219

PhotoDave219

Well-Known Member
LithiumBill said:
I stopped including AK in my trips, and swapped it for a second day at Uni. So on a 7 day visit to Orlando we do 3 Disney days and 2 Uni days. Where as before it would have been 4 and 1. I'm nostalgic for Disney, and it has a total different emotional impact for me to be in those parks than it does in the Uni parks (more so since the passing of my father...lots of memories).

Uni is bettering their parks, and I bet my kids will have those emotional feelings for the uni parks, that I have for Disney Parks. My son begs for IOA to be our second day visit (MK is always first). That says a lot. Disney will react. They have fallen behind in the build up, and innovation. It will take time, but they will build up. The fact that they have a new Star Wars Crew working should be the first sign of that.
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Star Wars will not come until after Disney Springs is finished. And after the parking lot main entrance is realigned.... Assuming those things happen.

So if it happens? 2020 at the earliest.
 
LithiumBill

LithiumBill

Well-Known Member
Mike S said:
Yeah, I don't think Disney would be in panic mode until the Uni parks overtake DHS and AK in attendance. But maybe it would be too late by then.
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I'm no expert, I don;t know the 2013 numbers, but IOA was at like 7.7 million in 2012, and US like 6.9million. They are about 2 million away from AK and DHS. This new potter bump might get them there. Families like mine will be skipping DHS or AK to visit the new attractions, so subtracting from DIS and adding to UNI.

Hopefully this will spark faster and more thoughtful reactions. Plus the DIS board of directors will be taking notice, the MM+ bs will surely roll some heads. This is what we want as Disney fans! Change and forward thinking.
 
bhg469

bhg469

Well-Known Member
LithiumBill said:
I stopped including AK in my trips, and swapped it for a second day at Uni. So on a 7 day visit to Orlando we do 3 Disney days and 2 Uni days. Where as before it would have been 4 and 1. I'm nostalgic for Disney, and it has a total different emotional impact for me to be in those parks than it does in the Uni parks (more so since the passing of my father...lots of memories).

Uni is bettering their parks, and I bet my kids will have those emotional feelings for the uni parks, that I have for Disney Parks. My son begs for IOA to be our second day visit (MK is always first). That says a lot. Disney will react. They have fallen behind in the build up, and innovation. It will take time, but they will build up. The fact that they have a new Star Wars Crew working should be the first sign of that.
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I like that you're definitely right down the middle and actually go to both parks. That nostalgia I have is almost gone. 20k leagues fascinated me as a young kid and even when I was older I saw it was a little cheesy but it was so easy to forget you were on a track and never went under water.

My grandmother took me to epcot for the first time and she never got around too easily so we only visited future world attractions. Nothing is left from that time with the exception of the physical aquarium of living seas.

Nostalgia doesn't seem to matter anymore and it breaks my very manly heart. As a matter of fact, that trip was the same one I visited universal for the last time when I was about 13 over 20 years ago. The only ride I remember was ET, rode it with my grandmother and it's still there. It's still a fun ride today and I thought about her taking me.

I'm not saying universal cares more about nostalgia but it crushes me to know that Disney doesn't care much anymore.
 
Kman101

Kman101

Well-Known Member
Oh, they "care" about nostalgia .... as long as it suits their purposes. Otherwise, they don't care and they do what they want and think anyone who doesn't appreciate their changes can take a seat. That's the impression I get. It really is sad.

It's just unbelievable the things that have been proposed for Epcot and DHS that have never been built when the parks are desperate for new offerings. It's mind boggling to keep hearing they just don't see a problem with these parks. And the fact that it really could be six years (if we're lucky) until a POSSIBLE Star Wars Land is even more mind boggling. They should be starting construction immediately or at least in 2015.

I think the "OneDisney" mentality is stupid. Why should what the overseas parks or even Disneyland do affect WDW, and vice versa?
 
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Omnispace

Omnispace

Well-Known Member
bhg469 said:
I like that you're definitely right down the middle and actually go to both parks. That nostalgia I have is almost gone. 20k leagues fascinated me as a young kid and even when I was older I saw it was a little cheesy but it was so easy to forget you were on a track and never went under water.

My grandmother took me to epcot for the first time and she never got around too easily so we only visited future world attractions. Nothing is left from that time with the exception of the physical aquarium of living seas.

Nostalgia doesn't seem to matter anymore and it breaks my very manly heart. As a matter of fact, that trip was the same one I visited universal for the last time when I was about 13 over 20 years ago. The only ride I remember was ET, rode it with my grandmother and it's still there. It's still a fun ride today and I thought about her taking me.

I'm not saying universal cares more about nostalgia but it crushes me to know that Disney doesn't care much anymore.
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It's amazing how important nostalgia is. Even for something new like Cars Land, it has a lot of elements to it that sparks nostalgia for a lot of people. For Harry Potter, the journey has been such a long one through all the books and the movies that it has become a journey of nostalgia as well. One cannot say that is true of every IP.

Epcot unfortunately had a built-in self-destruct mechanism when it came to nostalgia. The very idea that it gets continually updated flies in the face of nostalgia and a sense of permanence. Trying to preserve it means that it never evolves. It's a very difficult line to walk as one needs to be able to make the improvements that guests expect while maintaining those specific elements that resonated with people.

Your last line pretty much sums it up though -- people need to feel that those in charge actually do care. It's the primary goal of customer service.
 
CDavid

CDavid

Well-Known Member
Goofyernmost said:
First rule of show business... keep um wanting more!
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Next rule, don't deny them so much they starve while sitting around wanting more. ;)

LithiumBill said:
that will not last for long... If AK and DHS loose to IOA or US, heads will roll... We should be hoping for that.
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One would hope. However, if heads haven't rolled (with one exception, thus far) over the whole MM+/NGE debacle, if they didn't roll over letting a parade simply rot away (and then scrapping instead of fixing it), if they failed to roll over letting the center of your main shopping district sit empty and abandoned for years, and if they haven't rolled over dozens of other even more compelling examples, do you really think the executives will truly be held accountable now?

Things may have to get much, much worse before that happens. At which point it will be a hundred times more difficult to undo the damage. As @lazyboy97o pointed out, the very foundation of WDW's dominance in Central Florida has been undermined, and yet in response from The Walt Disney Company comes the sound of snoring.
 
Goofyernmost

Goofyernmost

Well-Known Member
CDavid said:
One would hope. However, if heads haven't rolled (with one exception, thus far) over the whole MM+/NGE debacle, if they didn't roll over letting a parade simply rot away (and then scrapping instead of fixing it), if they failed to roll over letting the center of your main shopping district sit empty and abandoned for years, and if they haven't rolled over dozens of other even more compelling examples, do you really think the executives will truly be held accountable now?

Things may have to get much, much worse before that happens. At which point it will be a hundred times more difficult to undo the damage. As @lazyboy97o pointed out, the very foundation of WDW's dominance in Central Florida has been undermined, and yet in response from The Walt Disney Company comes the sound of snoring.
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Part of that problem is that it is pure conjecture that MM+ is a debacle. We simply do not know. It did some things that we didn't like so therefore it was a failure. Meanwhile, crowds continue to show up at the gates paying big bucks to get in. That is the true test of failure, not that we wish it were. Concerning Spectro, again we are forgetting that they may have wanted to trash that parade for whatever reasons they might have, we do not know that. Once again, I have to question what harm came from not doing anything with Pleasure Island. Seems like they have now taken that opportunity, planned or otherwise, to do much more then what was originally thought.

The only thing that I see as unadulterated stupidity is letting attraction buildings stay empty and giving the appearance of a ghost town in the parks. That is something that registers subtly in the minds of people without them even being aware of it consciously. It shows up both in Epcot and DHS, but as a real target for concern is DHS. It is a park without a focus. I don't think that they really know what to do with it. It was originally built to compete with Uni, but, Uni had the good fortune of not being shackled by expectations and could do anything they wanted to do. I think that they really intended to make DHS (Disney MGM) a working studio which would have completely changed what we are looking at today. Someone didn't do their homework and didn't stop and think that if all the talent lives in California, they are not likely to spend a whole lot of time in the "where people go to die" State of Florida. That was a major miscalculation.

They know that they have a big head start on Uni. They know that they can take their time in building new stuff, accumulate profits and then build something and always stay ahead in quantities and draw. It is a situation that all companies would like to find themselves in.
 

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