The Spirited Seventh Heaven ...

[the.dreamfinder]

Would it be the "value engineered" one in Lake Buena Vista perhaps???

Did one of the Dwarves lose their projected face?

 

[Cesar R M]

Baymax M&G character debuts at "Big Hero 6" premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival.

Per Shiyoon Kim

omg, love how it really acts like the movie
the "hairy baby" hug was hilarious. XD

 

[BrerJon]

Agreed. Staggs and Iger may not care as much, but to the management teams at each park it matters.

It does make me wonder why those management teams seem to be doing their very best to drive guests away.

 

[BrerJon]

New Festival of Fantasy Parade is very visually pleasing but the music needs some work.

Have they not fixed the speaker sync yet? It's a very good parade, but I've never known one where the audio transition between sections is so jarring.

 

[BrerJon]

Did one of the Dwarves lose their projected face?

No-one's losing face in WDW... hence the desperate attempts to deny any problems with MyMagic.

 

[BrerJon]

omg, love how it really acts like the movie
the "hairy baby" hug was hilarious. XD

I remember the Wall-E character they had at that premiere, that was brilliant, rarely to be seen again. I will be amazed if the Baymax that ends up in the parks is anywhere near as good as that one.

 

[PhotoDave219]

Im gonna do our normal detour.... and this video wont get me in trouble either!

Because this site started as an Illuminations fan site, we're all a bunch of pyro junkies. Seriously.



The world's largest firework goes off in this video after the 3:11 mark. Enjoy kids.

 

[PhotoDave219]

It does make me wonder why those management teams seem to be doing their very best to drive guests away.

I honestly think its unintentional. Law of unintended consequences, I suppose. Its just a foreign world to them and they just dont understand it.

Alas.....

Its a result of putting non-creative financial types in charge. All they see is business. All they see is their predictable little world wherein "If A, do B"... they never do anything risky. They never see opportunity for something truely risky or ballsy because those ideas would never come to them. Those ideas arent found in a book or in a class, rather those concepts come scribbled on the back of a cocktail napkin from a bar or jotted down in a notebook left next to someones bed.

 

[GiveMeTheMusic]

I remember the Wall-E character they had at that premiere, that was brilliant, rarely to be seen again. I will be amazed if the Baymax that ends up in the parks is anywhere near as good as that one.

Wall-E never made it into the parks for safety reasons. Apparently the designers weren't too careful with the sharp edges on his tread, and no one wanted Wall-E to cut people like a South Central gangsta.

This is indeed how Baymax will appear in the parks - two versions were not made according to friends who would know.

 

[TP2000]

And the fact that NO ONE PAYS ATTENTION TO THEM except Disney of course, One of the more prominent 'mommy bloggers' had 27 page views in an entire YEAR, Yeah that's a hot site...

Fadra! I forgot about Fadra, the woman I made almost kind of semi-famous by finding and linking to her Mommy Video Blogs from the Social Media Moms Conference earlier this year at Disneyland. Before we found her she had a couple dozen views on her video recaps she posted on her Mommy Blog, but now thanks to the power of this Million view thread at least a couple hundred people clicked the link and watched her video.

One more dose of Fadra the Mommy Blogger. Can we get her to 250 views?!?


There was also the mini-scandal captured at the 0:19 mark in that video showing the crowd of just a few dozen Mommy Bloggers getting ready for their near-priceless dawn run through Disneyland, with complimentary New Balance runDisney running shoes, and then catered breakfast and unlimited use of Cars Land before the park opened. We heard from @WDW1974 that New Balance was furious that they gave Disney all that money and got a few dozen ladies with blogs that garner tens of page views (including husbands and in-laws) to show up.

And who could blame New Balance for being mad? (Or for being snookered by Disney to pay up for the "privilege".)

Disney's Social Media outreach program is truly a wasteful scam, but no one has the guts to tell Bob Iger that the emperor has no clothes and Disney Parks Social Media in its currently administered format is a failure and monumental waste. But at least we got to meet Fadra!

 

[ParentsOf4]

Here's a question for the financial experts - if we take our dollars away from WDW, but only to other divisions of Parks & Resorts like Disneyland, or the Cruise Line, is anyone at Disney remotely bothered? Or does it not matter because wherever we're spending them, Mickey is still getting those bucks?

The bonus package for mgmt most likely consists of business unit, segment, & total company financial targets. So yes, but there is most likely a dilution effect

Bonuses for corporate executives are not like sales bonuses, which often are closely linked to how well that individual sales rep performs.

As @asianway suggests, bonus/stock objectives for mid and senior level managers tend to be broken up into components.

Let's say I'm running WDW's hotels. I might have bonus objectives based on how well my hotels do, how well Parks & Resorts does, and how well the entire company does. However, since I really only have the ability to influence my organization's objectives, I tend to focus on those even though I'm supposed to consider segment and corporate objectives as well.

Back in the old days, executive bonuses were tied to company profits. The focus was: "What can I do to maximize corporate net income?" Sometimes this meant making sacrifices in my organization because I knew it was good for the greater good of the company and, ultimately, my own bonus.

Bob Iger and Jay Rasulo don't think like that. They are modern 'numbers guys' who look at all sorts of metrics, sometimes losing focus on the bottom line.

Let's consider an example.

At the beginning of fiscal year 2003, Jay Rasulo took over as President of Disney's Parks & Resorts.

What metric made its first appearance in the annual report that year?

Per Room Guest Spending (PRGS)

What is PRGS? Disney defines this as "the average daily hotel room rate as well as guest spending on food, beverage and merchandise at the hotels. Hotel statistics include rentals of Disney Vacation Club units."

Under Rasulo (and Paul Pressler before him), the focus shifted from plain ol' profits to more sophisticated metrics. At the hotels, PRGS became king.

It's not a bad metric. It's similar to RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room), a commonly used metric in the hotel industry. Using PRGS or RevPAR honestly to manage the business will produce what should be the end goal: higher profits.

However, when the metric itself becomes the goal, the business starts to be mismanaged.

What happened at WDW after 2003?

In the post-9/11 environment, hotels were difficult to fill. WDW's hotel occupancy was down to 76% after running at over 90% throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

Disney needed to do something to fill those hotel rooms.

How about lowering prices to get more people to stay onsite and increase theme park attendance? No, that might hurt the sacrosanct PRGS.

Better to offer the expensive Extra Magic Hours and Disney's Magical Express to drive up hotel occupancy.

These expensive 'free' onsite perks hurt Parks & Resorts operating income.

Parks & Resorts operating income dropped $200M in 2003 and did not rise above pre-9/11 levels until 2007, by which time both Disneyland Paris and Hong Kong Disneyland had been added to Disney's Parks & Resorts numbers.

What else happened at WDW after 2003?

Disney stopped building hotels and started building timeshares.

Lots of them.

From 2004 to 2009, the number of Disney Vacation Club (DVC) units more than doubled.

But wait. Don't DVC members pay less per night? Wouldn't that hurt PRGS?

You'd think so, but not the way Disney counts DVC.

DVC units are counted as "two-bedroom equivalents". Considering that most DVC units are rented either as a Studio (basically a hotel room) or a one-bedroom (a bedroom with a living room/kitchen), Disney's way of counting meant 2 families occupying 2 separate rooms were counted as a single room. Effectively, Disney double-counted the room rate, meals, drinks, and merchandise purchased at the hotels.

Despite those DVC members paying less, because of the way Disney counted DVC, DVC units improved the sacrosanct PRGS. It made DVC units look better than they were, which only encouraged the construction of more of them. In fact, it encouraged converting existing rooms from hotel rooms into timeshares, combining 3 rooms into a single "two-bedroom equivalent", tripling PRGS.

The focus on PRGS meant that PRGS went up even as revenue per family went down. Even as gross margins went down. Even as operating income bounced around like a yoyo.

When you run a company, you should plan big. You should focus on a growth strategy.

However, when you are a 'numbers guy', you manage by looking at details. You lose sight of the big picture. You focus on pennies instead of dollars.

For the last decade at WDW, there's been too much focus on pennies.

Disney's corporate leadership needs to stop focusing on those WDW pennies and start concentrating on WDW's dollars.

They need to plan big instead of thinking small.

It's time for WDW growth. Real growth. It's time to plan big.

 

[twebber55]

The main reasons Diagonal Alley didn't hit it's targets were 1. They didn't give an opening date until a little over 3 weeks before it opened. And 2. It opened 19 days later than their target date.

19 Days is huge. But after they got it opened, it has been a hit. Some of the stores aren't hitting their target, others are exceeding them. They have also found that quite a few people decided to wait until HHNs to see DA to avoid the craziness surrounding the opening and Summer crowds.

But basically, the fumbled launch is what the problem was.

but it seems to me that this might help DA have a longer "rush" so to speak of people...it wont be over in a summer it may go for a while in terms of crowds...

 

[DougK]

And the quinoa salad over at Tamu Tamu in Africa at AK has got to be the best QS salad on property: lettuce, olives, tomato, cucumber, feta, quinoa, red bell pepper all tossed in a vinagarette type dressing, and with 2 pieces of pita on the side. And best of all it wasn't pre-packed, but tossed to order.

I agree about the salad, yummy. But in today's Disney here is what will happen: in two months it will come with 1 piece of pita instead of 2, then a few months later it will come with 0 pieces of pita instead of 1, then after that the salad will be pre-packaged.

 

[ford91exploder]

Fadra! I forgot about Fadra, the woman I made almost kind of semi-famous by finding and linking to her Mommy Video Blogs from the Social Media Moms Conference earlier this year at Disneyland. Before we found her she had a couple dozen views on her video recaps she posted on her Mommy Blog, but now thanks to the power of this Million view thread at least a couple hundred people clicked the link and watched her video.

One more dose of Fadra the Mommy Blogger. Can we get her to 250 views?!?


There was also the mini-scandal captured at the 0:19 mark in that video showing the crowd of just a few dozen Mommy Bloggers getting ready for their near-priceless dawn run through Disneyland, with complimentary New Balance runDisney running shoes, and then catered breakfast and unlimited use of Cars Land before the park opened. We heard from @WDW1974 that New Balance was furious that they gave Disney all that money and got a few dozen ladies with blogs that garner tens of page views (including husbands and in-laws) to show up. And who could blame them for being mad?

Disney's Social Media outreach program is truly a wasteful scam, but no one has the guts to tell Bob Iger that the emperor has no clothes and Disney Parks Social Media in its currently administered format is a failure and monumental waste. But at least we got to meet Fadra!

Thanks @TP2000 I had forgotten her name the page views stuck because even our driest engineering documents at the office get more page views in a week then Fadra's did in an entire year and for this underwhelming web presence the 'Mommy Bloggers' get thousands of dollars of free swag????

Come on if ANYONE should be getting free swag it should be @wdwmagic as this site does more to inform prospective Disney customers than Disney's own site.

 

[Quinnmac000]

so to kill the Disney/UNiversal/Marvel talk once and for all. SEC Annual report.

Marvel:

"USC has a license agreement with Marvel Characters, Inc. (“Marvel”) pursuant to which UCDP holds a sublicense to use properties and elements owned by Marvel. Marvel receives an annual license fee and a guaranteed annual royalty fee for all merchandise themed with Marvel characters. Pursuant to the license agreement, the Marvel properties are entitled to certain levels of advertising and publicity in connection with the marketing of our theme parks. Our use of the Marvel elements for theming, promotions and other purposes are subject to Marvel’s reasonable approval. We have geographical exclusivity east of the Mississippi River with regard to the specific Marvel characters we utilize. The license for the Marvel properties does not prohibit its assignment and is for the duration of our use of attractions themed around Marvel characters.

On December 31, 2009, the Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel Entertainment. We believe our agreement with Marvel stands and that the transaction will not impact our ability to use characters and attractions currently in use. In addition, we do not expect the transaction to have any impact on our guest experience.

In addition, the applicable NBCU subsidiary executed an agreement with Disney Enterprises, Inc. that maintains the confidentiality of our confidential business information provided pursuant to our and our affiliates’ agreements with Marvel and prevents inappropriate disclosure of our confidential information that could be used by the Parks and Resorts business of The Walt Disney Company, or for any of the theme parks or resorts of The Walt Disney Company (or any of its subsidiaries’ or licensees’), for anticompetitive purposes. After two years, such agreement is terminable by either party on six months notice."

 

[SJN1279]

The main reasons Diagonal Alley didn't hit it's targets were 1. They didn't give an opening date until a little over 3 weeks before it opened. And 2. It opened 19 days later than their target date.

19 Days is huge. But after they got it opened, it has been a hit. Some of the stores aren't hitting their target, others are exceeding them. They have also found that quite a few people decided to wait until HHNs to see DA to avoid the craziness surrounding the opening and Summer crowds.

But basically, the fumbled launch is what the problem was.

That and the fact that Gringotts didn't live up to the hype for many park patrons.

 

[dupac]

That and the fact that Gringotts didn't live up to the hype for many park patrons.

 

[1023]

so to kill the Disney/UNiversal/Marvel talk once and for all. SEC Annual report.

So the line that stands out to me...

"After two years, such agreement is terminable by either party on six months notice."

Based on the way it's written, this is applicable only to the agreement executed for disclosure of confidential information between Marvel and USC. This may explain why Marvel is left in near autonomy for purposes of it's operations, so as not to be sued. It also seems that with 6 months notice, Marvel can tell USC, " we are going to start compromising your secrets".

Am I reading this wrong? Probably. I am not a lawyer.

It can't possibly mean that Disney could have given USC notice that nearly 2 years ago that they needed to abandon their use of Marvel licensed products, attractions, etc... So as I suspected, when USC chooses to relinquish their existing use, Disney can reacquire it for use east of the Mississippi. Right?

*1023*

 

[lazyboy97o]

So the line that stands out to me...

"After two years, such agreement is terminable by either party on six months notice."

Based on the way it's written, this is applicable only to the agreement executed for disclosure of confidential information between Marvel and USC. This may explain why Marvel is left in near autonomy for purposes of it's operations, so as not to be sued. It also seems that with 6 months notice, Marvel can tell USC, " we are going to start compromising your secrets".

Am I reading this wrong? Probably. I am not a lawyer.

It can't possibly mean that Disney could have given USC notice that nearly 2 years ago that they needed to abandon their use of Marvel licensed products, attractions, etc... So as I suspected, when USC chooses to relinquish their existing use, Disney can reacquire it for use east of the Mississippi. Right?

*1023*

That two year agreement has to do with marvel being allowed to look at Universal Orlando Resort's books. It is doubtful Disney will want to rush into letting Walt Disney Parks and Resorts take a look at those numbers as the agreement is something NBCUniversal got the government to support as part of approving the acquisition.

 

[1023]

That two year agreement has to do with marvel being allowed to look at Universal Orlando Resort's books. It is doubtful Disney will want to rush into letting Walt Disney Parks and Resorts take a look at those numbers as the agreement is something NBCUniversal got the government to support as part of approving the acquisition.

Thanks for that. It makes more sense now. Am I at least close on my thoughts of reacquiring Marvel rights as USC abandons them?

*1023*