The Spirited Sixth Sense ...

[spacemt354]

That's an article speaking of the already released Dark World movie which has grossed 644m worldwide with a 150m budget. Not a failure.

I was about to say. The "new" Thor movie was released last November. This article that was linked was published 66 weeks ago.

 

[doctornick]

http://www.denofgeek.us/movies/thor/18448/patty-jenkins-quits-thor-2

So, you are citing a 2011 article about a movie that has already been made and was released in 2013 and made $650M worldwide (on a budget of $170M)? And you basis for calling this a failure is that a director left early in the production cycle (which happens all the time in Hollywood)? Um, okay.

Disney has certainly had their share of monster flops with live action productions in recent years, but they've also had a large number of truly massively successful films as well -- especially the Marvel productions. And all the Marvel films are completely in house now, in terms of production and distribution, so Disney gets al the profits -- Disney doesn't have to pay off Paramount like they did for the first few films in order to get back the rights.

 

[ParentsOf4]

Haha, the valet girl at the POLY taught it to me Thanksgiving 2012! I spent the entire week gauging how busy I thought the parks would be by how many were checking out versus checking in at the POLY...I know not very scientific of me. I think it was busier in 2012 than 2013. Probably related to the prices overall having jumped so dramatically.
I was so jealous when I saw @WDW1974 post you were at WDW on spring break!!! I loved my spring break trip! Great weather compared to summer! How is AKL??? I keep toying with staying there again. I want some soup from BOMA!!!
Yah the deluxes are just pricey, and I am spoiled and want to be on property but who can really afford the rates if they aren't discounted?!?

AKL really is a beautiful resort, much more enjoyable than any of the WDW theme parks. I guess after you've been to the theme parks many times, the idea of dealing with crowds loses its luster, especially MK at night when both guest and CM nerves are frayed after a long day, and then everyone crowds in for the parade and fireworks.

The Grand Villa is lovely. The rooms are larger than they appear online. Even the 12 of us feel comfortable. It's 6 rooms and 4 bathrooms for 12 people so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

DW squeals with excitement each time the giraffes walk by.

The extra large (and well-shaded) balconies of the Grand Villas encourage sitting outside and enjoying the animals.

For what they are, WDW's hotel prices are pretty bad. It's why I purchased DVC points through resale when prices were cheap. (Always buy in a bad economy. )

Our teenagers and their friends enjoyed both WDW water parks. The weather has been beautiful with a high around 80 and low humidity. Since they went to both Blizzard Beach (BB) and Typhoon Lagoon (TL) during the week, crowds were light. With the exception of Summit Plummet, the water slides at both parks were walk-ons. In recent years, we prefer TL but the overwhelming consensus among the teenagers was that BB was more fun.

Obviously, Universal's thrill rides appeal to them much more than WDW's kiddie rides. When I was in my twenties and it was just MK and Epcot, WDW was so much more attractive to young adults. Now that the parks have been rethemed to be more child-friendly, I wonder if teenagers and young adults will ever develop the same loyalty to the current WDW. I am reminded of what Walt Disney said:

"You can't live on things made for children or critics. I've never made films for either of them. Disneyland is not just for children. I don't play down."

When I see the Magic Kingdom stuffed with strollers at 10 PM at night, I begin to question how adults are raising their children and how the current Disney plays down to them.

Enjoying a quiet day with the DW while the kids play elsewhere. Heading home soon.

 

[spacemt354]

The cool billion they lost on the 'Lone Ranger' and 'John Carter',

The Avengers/Thor were made FOR Disney not BY Disney.

Since the next Thor movie will be made BY Disney the director and producer and even the composer for the score have bailed out of the project a real vote of confidence there in Disney's live action skills. (ie they want no part of a large scale failure).

The last 2 PoTC movie(s) were lets face it pathetic and did not even recoup production and distribution costs so yeah I would say they were financial failures, As a result the 5'th in the series has not been greenlit.

Didn't the 4th Pirates movie (imo the worst) make over $1 Billion in the box office?

There's a lot to criticize Disney of, but one thing I don't think is deserving is their films.

When your studio, either creates or distributes 7 films out of the 18 in history that have grossed over $1 Billion in the box-office, you have to be doing something right.

I'm not a film or a studio expert so I don't know the saber-metrics of production/distribution/marketing costs. i'm just a simple movie fan who has enjoyed a majority of films that Disney has produced, including some of their "flops" like the Lone Ranger.

And as for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I could honestly care less whether its by Disney, for Disney, or Disney isn't involved at all. It's one of the most ambitious film projects I've ever seen. And not only does it reach comic book fans like myself, but to greater audiences who before 2011, might not have even known who Thor or Captain America was.

Speaking of Captain America, The Winter Soldier currently has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Can't wait to see that tomorrow!

 

[CDavid]

How much individuals do can now be more accurately tracked. That information can then be compared to satisfaction surveys.

Before they could only say 'X riders got on Space Mountain' - now they can attach demographics to those counts as well. How many old people, how many young, men, women, kids, etc. Then you have all the ability to track bodies outside the attractions to do things like crowd modeling. You can do things like track how bodies move THROUGH the park (guests go clockwise, or go through the hub, etc). Those are just examples of things that can be done in aggregate. Then there are countless things they can do when profiling individual's behaviors, etc.

There is a huge difference between counting anonymous blobs and blobs you can identify as a specific blob.. and one that someone has provided demographic data on prior.

There is no doubt that the bands provide important demographics and the tracking capabilities will gather a wealth of information on guest movements through the park, some probably guest friendly and potentially some more nefarious. How useful or valuable this tracking information proves to be remains to be seen. However, MM+ wasn't necessary just to know how many people were riding a particular attraction - that data had always been known, along with which rides or types of attractions were more popular. I would tend to argue that the $2-$2.5 billion spend to get the advanced tracking data appears to be a poor investment, at least as opposed to investing a similar amount in new attractions, but it certainly wasn't necessary to develop a way to count heads.

 

[Cesar R M]

I think translation caused you to miss the point.

I was being sarcastic, hence the face

I've tirelessly tooted this horn. So, I'll toot it again...

How about they build a parking structure between EC and HS and link it to both park via monorail or automated people mover?

Okay, I've said my piece. I feel so much better now. I'll crawl back into my hole and stay quiet for a while...

Shouldn't it be easier if they just changed the monorail for a normal train with the chassis of a monorail and increased its length and width??

Yes! Now you "start" with 3 pre selected fast passes, and once you use those, you get a revolving 4th FP that can be used again and again afte each time u use it, thus creating an "unlimited" number of FPs for each guest! Sounds confusing huh! LOL

Just think of the poor people who don't read these forums and know how all this works! I feel sorry for them! (As I silently laugh to myself as I pass all those standby guests in line!)

I mean, I'm glad we get more now, but the process is just so overly complicated for simple minded people...which just isn't necessary!

hang on.. unlimited? Weren't they gonna sell the extra ones?

 

[Cesar R M]

Anything has to be better than last month. At least they will be able to pick more than meet and greets... I hope.. Their system isn't sophisticated enough to know that I'm a grown man and have no desire to watch parades and meet Belle.

HERESY!
Why you dare to say you dont want to meet with Pooh for the 54363640x time in your 534th visit?

I wonder how long until some people have to be brainwashed a la scientology lol.

Unfortunately they will probably build a garage... Or a DVC

My bet is on DVC!

@ford91exploder - just curious, does Disney do anything right in your book?

In his defence, a lot of the recent disney movies that are live action.. have been... bad.
Even the last pirates movie felt rushed and badly done... only good thing was obviously Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush.

IMHO, the article was balanced, recognizing that any Disney representative and any financial analyst is going to have nothing but positive things to say publically at this juncture. (If they want to stay employed. )

Regarding budget, the proof is in Staggs' own words:

“Certain things have taken longer to make broadly available than we initially would have liked, but our rollout was designed to be flexible to ensure that the guest experience was always our first priority.”

Anyone who has managed a multimillion dollar budget knows that delays result in overruns.

Besides, I've been guilty of saying that a program is within (its current) budget, never mind that it grossly overran its first two budgets. It all depends on how you define budget.

I wonder if they're ones that say "The Sky The limit". until the thing reaches 5 billion wasted.

 

[Cesar R M]

Alice took in over a billion dollars globally and ranks 16th on the all-time list. Success like that makes up for the flops. Animation was hit and miss too for awhile but now seems to be hitting on all cylinders. I expect the same to happen with live action. As I have oft said, it takes time to change corporate culture and Disney was a mess. Iger continues the amazing turnaround.

Alice is a great example of how people only see the failures and conveniently ignore the hits.

And the buzz on the new Captain America is compelling. Due to a weak slate of summer movies I expect it could be the biggest hit yet for Disney's Marvel division.

Carry on.

Define on "biggest hit".
Captain America did not do very well.. neither in the foreign market (It honestly was hated by many people I know)
I do not see "The winter soldier" do much better, maybe domestically yes..
Compare it to THOR or IRON MAN.. these always take way more from foreign fans than local.

and in my opinion Captain America is the weakest of the Avengers groups.. Iron man being the strongest(400M+807M).

I don't see any scenario where Ep7 makes less the $1 Billion world wide. Ep1, widely considered the worst of the SW movies, released 15 years ago still managed to make $1 Billion world wide.

These figures were due of EP1 having VERY HIGH EXPECTATIONS... everyone wanted to check them.
I honestly seen a lot of people walk out of the borefest Episode 2 was.
Episode 3 was campy but tolerable due of good action scenes.
So it all depends on public perception.

Just like the new monstrosity of Michael Bay's TMNT.. the reviews are mixed.. the chars are outright ugly and it just looks like TRANSFORMERS but with turtles (everything in the trailer looks the same substance and style than transformers, they even used the same sound effects!)


(edit) sorry for the reply barrage!

 

[PeterAlt]

I was being sarcastic, hence the face



Shouldn't it be easier if they just changed the monorail for a normal train with the chassis of a monorail and increased its length and width??



hang on.. unlimited? Weren't they gonna sell the extra ones?

I just want a fixed link grade separated system done Disney style. I really don't care what type of system it is.

 

[lazyboy97o]

There is no doubt that the bands provide important demographics and the tracking capabilities will gather a wealth of information on guest movements through the park, some probably guest friendly and potentially some more nefarious. How useful or valuable this tracking information proves to be remains to be seen. However, MM+ wasn't necessary just to know how many people were riding a particular attraction - that data had always been known, along with which rides or types of attractions were more popular. I would tend to argue that the $2-$2.5 billion spend to get the advanced tracking data appears to be a poor investment, at least as opposed to investing a similar amount in new attractions, but it certainly wasn't necessary to develop a way to count heads.

The data available now is far more detailed.

I still the data mining aspects are more of the hook that helped secure funding for an otherwise boring systems upgrade. Walt Disney World was going to need to be spending a small fortune on a lot of this regardless of MyMagic+. And given Disney's attitude since 1992, new attractions were never going to be on the table.

 

[danlb_2000]

These figures were due of EP1 having VERY HIGH EXPECTATIONS... everyone wanted to check them.
I honestly seen a lot of people walk out of the borefest Episode 2 was.
Episode 3 was campy but tolerable due of good action scenes.
So it all depends on public perception.

Just like the new monstrosity of Michael Bay's TMNT.. the reviews are mixed.. the chars are outright ugly and it just looks like TRANSFORMERS but with turtles (everything in the trailer looks the same substance and style than transformers, they even used the same sound effects!)


(edit) sorry for the reply barrage!

I think this one will also have high expectations since it has proven writers and directors and especially if the some of the original cast are back that will really raise expectations. Since you bring up Transformers, the third movie management to bring in $1.1 Billion world wide, and personally I felt that movie was unwatchable.

 

[Lee]

Speaking of Captain America, The Winter Soldier currently has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. Can't wait to see that tomorrow!

I'm seeing that tonight.
Everything I'm hearing about it sounds great. And Cap is my favorite Avenger.

 

[sshindel]

I'm seeing that tonight.
Everything I'm hearing about it sounds great. And Cap is my favorite Avenger.

I'm pumped to see it, though have to wait until Sunday. I'm also excited to see how it interplays with Agents of SHIELD in the next few weeks (and into next season hopefully!).

 

[stevehousse]

Sorry @Cesar R M , but Capt America is 100x better than the Thor movies! I haven't heard a single person ever say anything bad about the Captain until ur post!?! The sequel will do well seeing as how it's the lead in movie for Avengers 2 and will set the tone of that movie!

And yes, so far they are NOT charging for more fast passes! Thats the new way for now with how it will work!

 

[HM Spectre]

Money quote buried in the article:

“We have a positive view of the project, and technology this complex always takes longer than you expect to roll out,” said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at the research firm MoffettNathanson. “But we’re still trying to figure out how to measure the return on what is a rather large investment. That’s where the frustration is.”

I don't know why the analysts continue to hold their breath. If Iger/Staggs/Rasulo had a legitimate answer they could give to stop the analysts from asking this question on every call, they would give it.

I'd be stunned if any project of this magnitude made it through a strategic planning group (who would demand specifics) without knowing "what success looks like" and how to measure it. I'm no insider, but the fact that they won't put that out there concretely to analysts suggests a couple things already hinted at by some here:

- The project is wildly over-budget and whatever financial benefits were presented initially have been eaten by the increased cost.
- MM+ is not having the financial impact that was originally presented and promised.

Essentially, they're playing "the dog ate my homework right now" and throwing out fluff like reducing entry time by 25% and possibly accommodating 3,000 people on a random day last year to delay judgment day while they figure out how to pretend MM+ is profitable.

I'm just curious how long of a leash the analysts are willing to give them before calling the boondoggle a boondoggle. Right now, the execs are being given the benefit of the doubt... but that won't last forever.

 

[wdisney9000]

Obviously, Universal's thrill rides appeal to them much more than WDW's kiddie rides. When I was in my twenties and it was just MK and Epcot, WDW was so much more attractive to young adults. Now that the parks have been rethemed to be more child-friendly, I wonder if teenagers and young adults will ever develop the same loyalty to the current WDW.

My 14 year old nephew who has been to Disney since he was a kid just visited Orlando for a school band trip. They visited Universal for a day (his first time). I asked him how he liked it compared to WDW. He said he LOVED it. He liked all the big thrill rides and thought HP was awesome. He bought some wands, puzzles and candy from the HP shops. He said he was hoarse from screaming on all the big rides. As much as he liked it though, he said it was missing that "secluded, tucked away from reality" feeling that you get at WDW. At 14 yrs old he recognizes that magical feeling Disney gives you.

I think the way a family tours the parks makes a big difference nowadays when it comes to how much children appreciate WDW for what it is. My parents used to take time and point out all the special things, like the hair on the pirates leg on the bridge at POTC, or Cinderellas horse on the carousel, the chess pieces incorporated into the HM design, and how you dont see the outside world when you're there. Now my brother and sister and I pass on these things to the kids in our family and they love it. We show them pictures of us as kids at MK or EPCOT and they love taking a picture in the same spot.

ITs not just a theme park, its almost a right of passage in some families. Taking a picture as you drive under the Disney arch, turning on the "must do" channel as soon as you walk in your room, sharing a Dole Whip, seeing Tink fly down from the castle, wondering what is inside that great big golf ball at EPCOT as you enter the park, and if you show the kids all those little touches that make the difference it helps them understand what separates WDW from Six Flags or even Uni. The families that just rush all over the parks and squeeze as many rides in as they can miss the point of what the parks are all about, what Walt wanted them to be about, and their children never know what they missed and WDW is just a fancy Six Flags to them.

 

[GLaDOS]

Since the next Thor movie will be made BY Disney

Thor: The Dark World was made completely under the Disney banner.

 

[Cesar R M]

Sorry @Cesar R M , but Capt America is 100x better than the Thor movies! I haven't heard a single person ever say anything bad about the Captain until ur post!?! The sequel will do well seeing as how it's the lead in movie for Avengers 2 and will set the tone of that movie!

And yes, so far they are NOT charging for more fast passes! Thats the new way for now with how it will work!

Must be because I'm not american?, also I sort of liked the movie.. despite all the propaganda it had.
My sister and her family? loathed it..

In the other hand... Thor was a big hit in my country. Hell, they always release MARVEL movies in our country before the US to see how it gauges on popularity and boxoffice.

as for FP+ free thing...
Wouldn't it make the system clogg again?
Everyone will be hyper rushed to get their FP+s..

Or are the tiered FP+ limited?
Example 3 FP+ for E-attractions.. and free for normal attractions and M&G ?

Thor: The Dark World was made completely under the Disney banner.

It received way lower score than the first Thor.

 

[flynnibus]

How useful or valuable this tracking information proves to be remains to be seen.

The value in analytics and business intelligence is already well established. It is just used in ways that most customers do not see or come into contact with.

However, MM+ wasn't necessary just to know how many people were riding a particular attraction - that data had always been known, along with which rides or types of attractions were more popular.

Correct , but like we just said... Ride counts alone are not the entire picture... And tell you nothing about many other important aspects like guest flow, concentrations, aborts, etc

I would tend to argue that the $2-$2.5 billion spend to get the advanced tracking data appears to be a poor investment, at least as opposed to investing a similar amount in new attractions, but it certainly wasn't necessary to develop a way to count heads.

When you keep creating the same straw man... Yes you will be correct. But what you are claiming is neither factual nor the intent.

 

[Cesar R M]

When you keep creating the same straw man... Yes you will be correct. But what you are claiming is neither factual nor the intent.

I honestly refuse to believe the 2+ billion on the mymagic+bands+fp+ is exclusively for these tech.
There must have been a huge tech backbone upgrade and systems upgrade (to handle the new systems).
And I know someone else already mentioned the tablets, training and the "cabins" for the support guys.