Splash Mountain falling apart (literally?)

[monothingie]

That's just a crock. Plain and simple. I've been visiting since 1974. I've been an APer since EPCOT Center opened. I've spent countless days on property. I didn't need the Internet to tell me that WDW was an amazing product in 1983 or 1993. Just like I didn't need it to tell me that it was a stale resting on its laurels product in 2003 and remains so a decade later.

Actively looking? You'd be blind to not see much of what is wrong at WDW and you don't even have to be a regular with some of the very obvious things.

You're defending mediocrity and making excuses for management. Think about it.

And you're not being realistic. You can lecture me on making excuses and defending mediocrity or whatever you want to say, and it's very easy to say the parks are in crap condition and management sucks and just wants to make a quick dime and not look at the difficulty of the situation. That being the parks are getting old, preventative and routine maintenance doesn't get the same bang for its buck that it may have 15 or 20 years ago. So what do you do?

These parks need to open and running at the max operational level to remain competitive. Shut down Space Mountain for a week or two every other month to freshen it up? Sure it can be done but it would certainly upset a lot of guests. But who cares about guests right? Especially those that can easily take a short drive up to USO. Are the parks and attractions not as shiny and glistening as they were 20 years ago? Absolutely, but they are also 20 years older, along with everything else in the park. Your points would hold more water if there was no refurbishment work being done anywhere on property, but there is. It's probably not as much as you would like to see, but when considering the difficulties involved in balancing guest needs for open attractions and the need to present good show, you can see it will always be a no win scenario for TDO. (especially for those who are looking to point out any mistep or failure) If that means that I'm a flunky for TDO, so be it.


Oh and don't even try to say that in the 80's and early 90's you had parks under the same level of scrutiny that you do today with everybody feeding off of one another in a frenzy like manner to point out what they find wrong with the place they love to go to.

 

[articos]

And you're not being realistic. You can lecture me on making excuses and defending mediocrity or whatever you want to say, and it's very easy to say the parks are in crap condition and management sucks and just wants to make a quick dime and not look at the difficulty of the situation. That being the parks are getting old, preventative and routine maintenance doesn't get the same bang for its buck that it may have 15 or 20 years ago. So what do you do?

These parks need to open and running at the max operational level to remain competitive. Shut down Space Mountain for a week or two every other month to freshen it up? Sure it can be done but it would certainly upset a lot of guests. But who cares about guests right? Especially those that can easily take a short drive up to USO. Are the parks and attractions not as shiny and glistening as they were 20 years ago? Absolutely, but they are also 20 years older, along with everything else in the park. Your points would hold more water if there was no refurbishment work being done anywhere on property, but there is. It's probably not as much as you would like to see, but when considering the difficulties involved in balancing guest needs for open attractions and the need to present good show, you can see it will always be a no win scenario for TDO. (especially for those who are looking to point out any mistep or failure) If that means that I'm a flunky for TDO, so be it.


Oh and don't even try to say that in the 80's and early 90's you had parks under the same level of scrutiny that you do today with everybody feeding off of one another in a frenzy like manner to point out what they find wrong with the place they love to go to.

I appreciate your reasoned comments, but you're making some incorrect assumptions. The parks don't get the same bang for the buck as 15 or 20 years ago when it comes to maintenance due to changing times or age? Not true. The parks don't get the same bang for the buck because policies and procedures have changed, old habits have been lost, and the resources are not plowed in to doing the maintenance. They could, but the company has decided they don't want to. And it's not a business decision due to not being able to make a solid profit, it's a business decision due to the culture changing. The company could spend what it needed to on the maintenance and still make a solid margin.

The parks need to (be) open and running at the max operational level to remain competitive? Also not true. It's Disney. If they cut back on hours or decide to shutter an attraction to do required maintenance, people would still come. Some might complain, but in the scheme of things, if it's better for the rest of the guests all year round, and more importantly, better for show, they could easily do so and not have to shut the doors because they'd be operating in the red. Far, far from it. It's a choice the company makes to not bother worrying about keeping everything shiny and new. There are no difficulties in balancing guest needs - if the company needs to do something, they will, regardless of the guests. You are using an example of they shouldn't shutter Space for a week every other month, which is admittedly more than they need to, but don't forget, the maintenance dept used to schedule to take rides down for 2 or 3 days randomly at least a couple times a year if they needed to to do touch-ups and fixes, and then they'd do more extensive maintenance when necessary. Key attractions got annual maintenance, even while night crews did specific fixes keeping everything running. What the people around here are saying is that the pendulum has swung way too far to the side of 'just stay open, to heck with the quality', and that's a cultural problem. In the 80s and 90s, there wasn't as much open scrutiny on the internet because there was no open forum on the internet like this until the mid-90s, although there were places like CompuServe and Prodigy that had active Disney forums. But there wasn't as much need for scrutiny, because the company scrutinized itself, with divisions like SQS and Ops training that no longer exists, that kept things much sharper than they are today. There were maintenance schedules that were cut starting in the 90s, that if they were still enforced today, the parks would be in much better shape, because they did do preventative maintenance. Guests complained then, but it was looked on as necessary evil, not something that needed to be kowtow'd to. I agree the level of barking does get a bit loud here, and feeds upon itself, but at the core of it all, where there's smoke, there's a fire somewhere deep down. It's not just smoke for smoke's sake.

 

[articos]

And you're not being realistic. You can lecture me on making excuses and defending mediocrity or whatever you want to say, and it's very easy to say the parks are in crap condition and management sucks and just wants to make a quick dime and not look at the difficulty of the situation. That being the parks are getting old, preventative and routine maintenance doesn't get the same bang for its buck that it may have 15 or 20 years ago. So what do you do?

These parks need to open and running at the max operational level to remain competitive. Shut down Space Mountain for a week or two every other month to freshen it up? Sure it can be done but it would certainly upset a lot of guests. But who cares about guests right? Especially those that can easily take a short drive up to USO. Are the parks and attractions not as shiny and glistening as they were 20 years ago? Absolutely, but they are also 20 years older, along with everything else in the park. Your points would hold more water if there was no refurbishment work being done anywhere on property, but there is. It's probably not as much as you would like to see, but when considering the difficulties involved in balancing guest needs for open attractions and the need to present good show, you can see it will always be a no win scenario for TDO. (especially for those who are looking to point out any mistep or failure) If that means that I'm a flunky for TDO, so be it.


Oh and don't even try to say that in the 80's and early 90's you had parks under the same level of scrutiny that you do today with everybody feeding off of one another in a frenzy like manner to point out what they find wrong with the place they love to go to.

Also, one other thing I'd like to point out because I'm thinking about Ops training. In the 70s, 80s and early 90s the training for the R&S Ops Cast was a different animal, as was Disney University. The ride ops and leads who knew and cared about their rides were trained to ride their attractions morning and night (and hop on every so often during the day) and could point out details in AAs, audio, lighting, etc. that would get called in and fixed, sometimes on the spot, sometimes within a few hours, sometimes overnight. Now, our attention levels have changed and the way R&S cast members operate has changed - they may work multiple attractions or get shuffled around...they don't feel as valued or part of a close-knit family as the company has gotten larger and more impersonal. Now, many leads can't tell you if a show effect is working properly or not in their own attractions, and if they can, they don't care as much, as it's just not the same...they'll put problems on the report log, and that's the extent of their job. It may get fixed that night, or maybe not. If not, they may or may not follow up. When the opening ops people ride in the morning, they may be texting. I'm not saying everyone is like that, but it's just a different world, literally. There are some Cast who are old school and really do care, but there are a lot who just haven't been trained the way it used to be, and the corporate culture is not go out of your way to make sure things are fixed the way it used to be. Ops has gotten powerful - if something goes down during the day, you don't take the ride down to fix it, because counts are all powerful. Everything that doesn't get fixed builds up. More that builds up, more for less people to do at night. It's a cascading problem that is very different from the way the parks used to operate. And I can tell you first hand that managers don't know the parks or rides the way they used to or should - I've walked the parks with them and was shocked how clueless some of them are. Not on purpose, but because they haven't been given the training or time to dig in, and they just look at it as a 9-5, so they won't take the time after hours to get up to speed.

 

[All Disney All The Time]

If I was in charge of the World, there would be full-time, night crews that not only did the routine stuff (trash, paint, lightbulbs, etc.), but well-trained techs to fix effects and rides.

Just my 2 cents worth.

 

[steve2wdw]

Walls are down at Splash....some ladders are hanging out in the queue. Not nearly enough CM's around to suggest a soft open this morning...maybe later today.

 

[Mammymouse]

We were at Magic Kingdom over the past 4 days and the rumor is Splash will be open Wednesday. We'll see. They were putting the ride through its paces Sunday, and although the big drop was dry the logs were running, and had the non-people (white plastic containers) in one, too. We heard safety announcements being made to the workers inside and also heard some of the characters going through their speaking parts inside. The curtain was still up on the view from the train ride though. That's all I know.

 

[All Disney All The Time]

We were there when Splash was going through it's original testing. We were sooooo jealous of the CMs that were getting to test it out.

 

[The Empress Lilly]

Also 20 years ago the parks were 20 years newer. HS was baby, EPCOT had little of what is does now (FW anyway), AK didn't exist, MK was just getting Splash. 20 years is a long time, things will stop working and when they do it will be noticeable because people are actively looking for it.

You can't continue the previous maintenance model because it just becomes to overwhelming to be efficient and practical given the size of the current operation.

I'm afraid neither of these two arguments hold up.

1) DAK is only fifteen years old. Yet(i) it is in a much worse condition than the MK was at fifteen in 1986. With the exception of KS, none of DAK's rides are in an acceptable state. In 1986, the MK still functioned almost flawlessly.

2) WDW has grown indeed. This however does not mean that therefore it becomes 'overhelming and inefficient to maintain'. On the contrary. For one, maintenance simply grows with WDW (going from one to four parks does not mean the lighbulb guy now has to work four times as hard. It means WDW grows from one to four lightbulb guys). Secondly, size means you get all sorts of advantages through economy of scale. It is more efficient to maintain a huge resort than a small one. You can specialise personnel, buy specialised equipment, share management. The exact reverse is true of the oft heard argument that WDW has become too large to maintain properly.

 

[flynnibus]

That being the parks are getting old, preventative and routine maintenance doesn't get the same bang for its buck that it may have 15 or 20 years ago. So what do you do?

These parks need to open and running at the max operational level to remain competitive. Shut down Space Mountain for a week or two every other month to freshen it up? Sure it can be done but it would certainly upset a lot of guests. But who cares about guests right? Especially those that can easily take a short drive up to USO. Are the parks and attractions not as shiny and glistening as they were 20 years ago? Absolutely, but they are also 20 years older, along with everything else in the park. Your points would hold more water if there was no refurbishment work being done anywhere on property, but there is. It's probably not as much as you would like to see, but when considering the difficulties involved in balancing guest needs for open attractions and the need to present good show, you can see it will always be a no win scenario for TDO. (especially for those who are looking to point out any mistep or failure) If that means that I'm a flunky for TDO, so be it.

You're entire post is invalidated by the other operating Disney parks.. even Disneyland after the 50th.. who not only regularlly takes down major attractions, but does fix things.. on attractions that are MUCH older than WDW's.

If an attraction is so old it can't be realistically maintained - rebuild it so it can be.

 

[the-reason14]

I think as far as shutting down rides for maintenance/refurbishments go, it wouldn't be an issue to close space mt for a month, or splash mt for a few months if there was more e tickets and actual rides that can be used as "substitutes." I remember my first trip to Disneyland, I think Pinocchio and a few other rides here and there were closed, but you barely noticed it because of the sheer amount of other rides they have in their fantasyland alone. I know Disneyland and wdw are in different boats with the whole local vs tourist and DL lacking the space to where it needs to have more in its magic kingdom then wdw does, but if the mk had a few or even one new mountain on par with the 3 they currently have, then closing one down wouldn't be an issue.

 

[All Disney All The Time]

Maybe Disney could maintain the parks like "back in the good old days", maybe they can't. But if it's true that staff to "fix stuff" and "maintain stuff" has been cut, I do know this: If they hired them back then prices across the board at WDW for everything would increase. And we all know how folks here feel already about "costs at WDW".

 

[wm49rs]

Maybe Disney could maintain the parks like "back in the good old days", maybe they can't. But if it's true that staff to "fix stuff" and "maintain stuff" has been cut, I do know this: If they hired them back then prices across the board at WDW for everything would increase. And we all know how folks here feel already about "costs at WDW".

I'd rather pay to know that ride an attractions were being kept in the best condition and maintenance possible, rather than still paying top dollar for many of the situations we're seeing across the parks now.....

 

[Lexxweb]

I'm sorry, who confirmed the lack of third shift ride & show technicians? There's overnight techs that maintain the attractions at Universal and ticket prices are the same as Disney's. You can't be serious about their not being any ride technicians maintaining the rides after hours.

 

[lazyboy97o]

Maybe Disney could maintain the parks like "back in the good old days", maybe they can't. But if it's true that staff to "fix stuff" and "maintain stuff" has been cut, I do know this: If they hired them back then prices across the board at WDW for everything would increase. And we all know how folks here feel already about "costs at WDW".

The prices would not have to increase. Disney chose to cut some muscle because it was an easy way to meet ridiculous growth expectations.

 

[AngryEyes]

Why not? Sorry but I like to come up with my own conclusions based on facts and not conjecture or speculation. I don't doubt that 71 is well informed (love the site btw), and if proven wrong I'm a big boy and will take it and move on, but I will not be told to accept something as valid just because someone else says it so.

You just were.

 

[xdan0920]

If I was in charge of the World, there would be full-time, night crews that not only did the routine stuff (trash, paint, lightbulbs, etc.), but well-trained techs to fix effects and rides.

Just my 2 cents worth.

There used to be....

 

[monothingie]

I'm afraid neither of these two arguments hold up.

1) DAK is only fifteen years old. Yet(i) it is in a much worse condition than the MK was at fifteen in 1986. With the exception of KS, none of DAK's rides are in an acceptable state. In 1986, the MK still functioned almost flawlessly.

2) WDW has grown indeed. This however does not mean that therefore it becomes 'overhelming and inefficient to maintain'. On the contrary. For one, maintenace simply grows with WDW (going from one to four parks does not mean the lighbulb guy now has to work four times as hard. It means WDW grows from one to four lightbuulb guys). Secondly, size means you get all sorts of advantages of scale. It is more efficient to maintain a huge resort than a small one. You can specialise personnel, buy specialised equipment, share management. The exact reverse is true of the oft heard argument that WDW has become too large to maintain properly.

First I'm not even going to touch that Yeti thing. It was done wrong from the start, so it's a bad example.

Second, you're missing my point. You can have 100 guys going around changing lightbulbs, but when the wiring that provides the electricity to the lightbulbs if shorted because of age, you have a bigger more complex problem. My point is that as things age, (and invariably all the news stuff will not age as gracefully as the classic stuff ) "stuff" breaks down. ( "Stuff" that was put in 20 years ago was way more complex than "stuff" done 20 years before that). Even with the most loving of maintenance things will stop working and need significantly more attention than they may have need a couple of years before that. You can't expect Splash, with it's numerous updates and upgrades to over the last 20 years to need the same level of upkeep that it did when it was 2 years old.

Now if you think that that would be reasonable to shut the ride down routinely for a week or two every couple of months, or maybe for a day a week, you wind up with two things: unhappy guests, an excuse to defer larger refurbs. Yes, you may have some more animatronics that work, but you're really shortchanging yourself in the long run. It's an inefficient use of resources and wasteful. You wind up killing yourself trying to put out every spot fire, while ignoring towering inferno right in front of you. (I knew I could get a fire service reference in here, take that brothers at the firehouse)

 

[monothingie]

You just were.

Must have missed it in the stampede of sheeople headed my way.

 

[xdan0920]

First I'm not even going to touch that Yeti thing. It was done wrong from the start, so it's a bad example.

Second, you're missing my point. You can have 100 guys going around changing lightbulbs, but when the wiring that provides the electricity to the lightbulbs if shorted because of age, you have a bigger more complex problem. My point is that as things age, (and invariably all the news stuff will not age as gracefully as the classic stuff ) "stuff" breaks down. ( "Stuff" that was put in 20 years ago was way more complex than "stuff" done 20 years before that). Even with the most loving of maintenance things will stop working and need significantly more attention than they may have need a couple of years before that. You can't expect Splash, with it's numerous updates and upgrades to over the last 20 years to need the same level of upkeep that it did when it was 2 years old.

Now if you think that that would be reasonable to shut the ride down routinely for a week or two every couple of months, or maybe for a day a week, you wind up with two things: unhappy guests, an excuse to defer larger refurbs. Yes, you may have some more animatronics that work, but you're really shortchanging yourself in the long run. It's an inefficient use of resources and wasteful. You wind up killing yourself trying to put out every spot fire, while ignoring towering inferno right in front of you. (I knew I could get a fire service reference in here, take that brothers at the firehouse)

You are really going out of your way to defend the indefensible.

We have folks here, who have told us with certainty that maintence has been slashed. And that's why we have tons of show scenes all over property that are either broken, or shut off.

Why are you making excuses for that?

 

[monothingie]

You're entire post is invalidated by the other operating Disney parks.. even Disneyland after the 50th.. who not only regularlly takes down major attractions, but does fix things.. on attractions that are MUCH older than WDW's.

If an attraction is so old it can't be realistically maintained - rebuild it so it can be.

But thats what refurbs are for. Do you think Pirates has the same ride control system that it did back when it opened? At some point daily maintenance can't keep up, and you need to do major work. Unfortunately, the more complex and/or older the ride is, the more complicated the work is. Its at that point that the maintenance model falls apart and becomes burdensome, inefficient, and insufficient.