The Spirited Sixth Sense ...

[Gabe1]

I see we still have a thread going about CMs seeking a pay increase. You have to love the simple-minded 'tudes about ...

BOB AND WILLOW OSCAR SIGHTING!

... about poor people without the advantages that many here have discussing what these people have to do for themselves when there isn't one of them that didn't receive help from family, parents, friends, teachers etc to get where they are today. Nobody does it alone. Nobody.

Every day or two, against my better judgement I relent and peek at CM pay increase thread. I agree and believe many quickly forget how they got to where they are today. Those who take their blessings for granted are those who are the most likely to kick others feet out when they are struggling to climb a single step on a ladder.

The naive ignorance is pretty wide spread and demonstrates history does indeed repeat itself, oppression just morphs it never fails to exist.

 

[WDW1974]

Aspirational, and yet Accessible.

WDW of the past, and EPCOT Center in particular.

The Living Seas was a several hour attraction for me, for instance.

They all were. Seas absolutely filled us with wonder and amazement. We'd spend a few hours in there ... same with Land and Imagination ... even Motion.

There was a reason Disney said guests should allot 2-3 days to see the place. Now, they want you to do that, but only so you can eat and drink around the world.

 

[BrianLo]

Those bois at Micechat sure have been quiet this year.

This is the longest hiatus since Al's handover. I guess there just isn't much to talk about, or no one to talk to them about it...

 

[lazyboy97o]

This is the longest hiatus since Al's handover. I guess there just isn't much to talk about, or no one to talk to them about it...

Or a reader base that is now hostile to the site's origins...

 

[WDW1974]

I think the high cost of the park with the poor performance of the Studio combined to create an image of failure that never really existed due to the EPCOT Center. The project exposed other issues within the Company and family and got the blame. Like with the original non-franchise attractions at Disney's California Adventure being blamed for that park's poor performance.

Yes, EPCOT was never unpopular and never a failure. Take a look back at its numbers, numbers from an era when they weren't manipulated and twisted in so many ways.

Walt Disney Productions was on the verge of disaster, that really could have had the company sold in pieces, and because it had just spent $1 billion to open EPCOT Center, it was a popular thing to blame it. Was not the case. No more than developing the Disney Channel or TDL or starting Touchstone Pictures were unpopular and causes for Disney's issues.

The company was already in a near death spiral when all of this good stuff happened. It was too little, too late to save Ron Miller and Co ... but it did help save what became TWDC.

 

[TalkingHead]

I did spend Friday night watching nominee Nebraska and it is a fine piece of film making. What's so wonderful beyond the amazing work of Bruce Dern, Will Forte and June Squibb is that the film is really just a simple one about simple people living simple lives. If for only that reason, I hope it gets some love tonight.

My personal favorite of the Best Pic nominees, but I'm a huge Alexander Payne fan. (Still think Sideways is one of the great films of this century.) Thought Bruce Dern and Will Forte were great. Great black-and-white cinematography.

I'm guessing Gravity or 12 Years a Slave wins Best Picture tonight. Either one is deserving IMO. I guess I'd lean toward Gravity considering its tech achievements and the experience of seeing it in a cinema. (But 12 Years a Slave was phenomenal -- and put to shame QT's "slave-film-that-wasnt-really-about-slavery.")

 

[WDW1974]

For all the tech that we have today, people by and large don't seem to be very interested in knowledge and that was the heart of EPCOT. Tech isn't making our society more intelligent, heck, most people use their smartphones to check Facebook and email. I think the simple answer in the US as it generally boils down to ignorance.

Look at the astonishingly scary polls/surveys and the answers that Americans give regarding science. We have a lot of a flat Earth type crowd all over the place now. There is always amazing and new technology, things that even with what we have today are stunning. We've just become a society that doesn't value intelligence, learning, and yearning for the future. When I hear our politicians and their "we're the greatest country" or "we've never been stronger," it's pathetic. America has become a lazy and uninterested country where most people are out for only themselves and to hell with any/everything else. I think that's a strong case for why the BRILLIANT, original EPCOT CENTER would have trouble today, not so much that we have such amazing technology. Ignorance continues to rule supreme. When leaders in Uganda try to justify sickening positions by stating that Arizona and other states are (was in AZ's case) looking to bring legislation that isn't too far away from their train of thought, we have major problems.

Love this post. And sickened and saddened by it at the same time because I know how true it is.

 

[asianway]

My personal favorite of the Best Pic nominees, but I'm a huge Alexander Payne fan. (Still think Sideways is one of the great films of this century.) Thought Bruce Dern and Will Forte were great. Great black-and-white cinematography.

I'm guessing Gravity or 12 Years a Slave wins Best Picture tonight. Either one is deserving IMO. I guess I'd lean toward Gravity considering its tech achievements and the experience of seeing it in a cinema. (But 12 Years a Slave was phenomenal -- and put to shame QT's "slave-film-that-wasnt-really-about-slavery.")

I found Spacecamp to have a more plausible plot than Gravity...

 

[Goofyernmost]

Might be interesting to see what comes of that Ratatouille ride.

Indigestion?

 

[WDW1974]

Does TDR have a dress code or is it more of cultural thing?(Leaning more towards culture)

I think the only way to address WDW's guests current attire would be to create a strictly enforced dress code.

Culture ... and are you outta your mind?!?!

Disney keeps making it easier to look like a pig ... especially at their alleged high end dining locales.

 

[WDW1974]

I just heard from hatetofly that the cost of the beauty & the beast meet and greet in Fantasyland was greater than the transformers e ticket that universal recently opened in Orlando. Is that true? If so Disney needs to literally shut down imagineering and start over from scratch because Jesus that's mismanagement to the extreme. No wonder the disney parks are turning into ghettos while their competitors are quickly catching up and in universals case now exceeding them.

If you add Be Our Guest to it, then that statement is accurate ...

 

[71jason]

That's because other hotel operators take the role of a concierge seriously. Disney looks at the concierge level as a chance to take more money from rubes who think the few things they get for 'free' are worth paying an extra $100-300 a night. The CMs are interchangeable ... they don't seem to get any special training. Many are way too young to have those jobs (and wouldn't at any big city Hilton).

It's telling that Pop Century has a concierge, same as the Grand or Poly. I've had a couple friends fill the role--maybe 2 days of training. In terms of pay and prestige, it's essentially equivalent to front desk. In other words, TDO uses the term, but it doesn't mean what it means elsewhere in the industry.

Then again, as we've discussed before, most signature restaurant managers look like they wandered over from a Tri-Delt semi-formal. TDO doesn't seem to value experienced management.

 

[WDW1974]

OK, time to go give Ellen my full attention ... I hope she dances ...

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Been meaning to post this for some time. I finished rereading Bob Thomas' "Walt Disney: An American Original" the other day. I can say after this that Neal Gabler's biography of Walt, "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination", comparatively is a poorly written piece of garbage. I know not meeting the man himself on multiple occasions and his friends, family, and colleagues (the ones no longer with us) would make a project of this scale especially difficult, but weighing your prose down with every little detail, with many errors might I add. It's not impossible either as quality biographies/history books on deceased subjects exist; ever heard of Dorris Kearns Goodwin or Gordon Wood? Perhaps one day Michael Barrier will be given access to the Disney Archives and can further improve his book with a second edition. Insert comment about Disney Editions shutting down Amid Amidi's biography on Ward Kimball.

Disney Editions should be ashamed "Walt Disney: An American Original" is not available for eReaders. Thankfully, D23 was able to push through a republishing of "An American Original" recently, probably with a lot of flack as the folks who care and know what they're doing seem to have a hard time getting stuff done. Now I love reading physical books and often prefer it if I have the option, but a growing number of folks, including most importantly young children, use them as their primary means of reading books and by not releasing on those platforms you limit the availability of a quality biography as the book will inevitably go out of print and interested readers and institutions like schools and libraries will not be able to buy new copies (you know, the ones you make MONEY on?) and as we've seen with "The Illusion of Life" prices of used copies will increase.

Here are some passages from the book that illustrate some of the differences in the culture of Walt Disney Productions that seems to have fallen away as Wall St. and the Strategic Planners have damaged TWDC. I know a small independent production company like The Walt Disney Studios of Walt's day is a far cry from mass media behemoth or as Steve Huelett puts it "Berkshire Hathaway of the entertainment industry", but shouldn't TWDC still strive to operate in the same SPIRIT that Walt and Roy ran WDP with a focus on quality and constantly striving to improve oneself?

He refused to be treated as a special person because of his position as head of an growing enterprise. He allowed no one to light his cigarettes, help him on with his coat, or hold doors open for him.

Walt acknowledged the need for sound economic policies at the studio, but he emphasized to the bankers that slashing of production would be suicidal; the only way back to financial health, he was convinced, was to “lick ‘em with product.”But what kind of product? The “package” pictures were not the answer. Walt realized that he had to return to the full-length cartoon. Pg 209

“I’ve always been bored with just making money,” he said. “I’ve wanted to do things, I wanted to build things. Get something going. People look at me in different ways. Some of them say, `The guy has no regard for money.’ That is not true. I have regard for money. But I’m not like some people who worship money as something you’ve got to have piled up in a big somewhere. I’ve thought of money in one way and that is to do something with, you see? I don’t think there is a thing that I own that I will ever get the benefit of, except through doing things with it.” Pg 276

On October 3, 1955, Disney introduced a new concept in children’s programming, The Mickey Mouse Club.
It was the first entertainment that Walt Disney had ever designed expressly for children. “But we’re not going to talk down to the kids,” he told his staff. “Let’s aim for the twelve-year-old. The younger ones will watch, because they’ll want to see what their older brothers and sisters are looking at. And if the show is good enough, the teenagers will be interested, and adults too. …
The Mickey Mouse Club produced an audience response that television had never seen before. Three-quarters of the nation’s television sets in service between five and six o’clock each weekday were tuned in to the Disney show. Children and adults everywhere were singing the club’s anthem— “M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E.”…
Never before had quality programming for children been attempted on television, and the venture proved profitable for ABC; $15,000,000 in sponsorship was sold in the first season. The returns for Walt Disney Productions were not as good… The Mickey Mouse Club proved valuable in other, less measurable ways. By the mid-1950’s, cartoon shorts had become unprofitable, and Disney was producing only half a dozen a year. A whole new generation was growing up with little acquaintance with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and the other Disney veterans. Now, because of television, the Disney cartoons were being seen by a larger audience each day than had seen them during their entire theatrical releases. Pgs 274-276

Walt disliked being forced to turn out product to fit an audience formula. He found himself competing with two dozen other television Westerns, and that wasn’t the Disney style. He argued that his product had always succeeded by its uniqueness, not in following trends. But ABC told him: “Just keep giving us Westerns.”
Despite its immense popularity, The Mickey Mouse Club ran into trouble. ABC claimed it couldn’t find sponsors who wanted to appeal to the juvenile audience, and the show was cut to a half hour for its third season, then discontinued. It had been a brave experiment, an attempt to present important programming to the young television audience; never again would it be done in commercial television. What killed The Mickey Mouse Club? Walt Disney hinted that it was greed; he believed the network’s overloading of commercials caused viewers to lose interest. Pg 286

 

[the.dreamfinder]

BOB IGER SIGHTING!
Looks like John Lasseter is a no show.

 

[Californian Elitist]

BOB IGER SIGHTING!
Looks like John Lasseter is a no show.

Lasseter is there.

 

[the.dreamfinder]

Lasseter is there.

Guess I missed him. Bob certainly lives up to his Teflon reputation.

 

[flynnibus]

This is the longest hiatus since Al's handover. I guess there just isn't much to talk about, or no one to talk to them about it...

Or simply a change in focus. Dusty/Fishbulb and friends have been running tons of events, have their minions writing content on the weekly updates of various parks, etc. They put out tons of content weekly. They even had Michael C stop by one of their recent events... these guys have always been on a trajectory to improve their 'access' to the friendly side of the company and they put on tons of fan centric stuff. Al was the opposite of that.. never dealing with events, just doing his gossip line. There is the problem of 'time to do it all' and combine that with it's tough to get warm and nuggly with the PR side of the company and get access to individuals/events while playing rumor-mill and critic. They're doing a lot.. just not in the classic 'miceage' sense. I think a large part of that is where they put their energy.

 

[aladdin2007]

Guess I missed him. Bob certainly lives up to his Teflon reputation.

yeah his nonstick coating sickens me

 

[the.dreamfinder]

yeah his nonstick coating sickens me

But Willow likes that he is machine washable.