Too bad WDI can’t do anything at this point about the lift hill, where Charita’s team apparently shrugged and gave up. “Good enough. If we leave now, we can be home by 6.”
Hey, once you get to actual production and the Immersion Trips to the New Orleans Ritz-Carlton are no longer being approved by the executive suite, why
would today's Imagineers stay past 5 o'clock? Their lush and immersive work is done, and it was all stunning and brave.
I’m not much of cruise guy, but this sounds fantastic.
Me either, actually. Until lately, when friends kept raving about Viking and how well they nail it down. So I tried, and I'm hooked. I can't imagine going on any other cruise line though.
But Viking Cruise Line? It's like what Disneyland used to be compared to other amusement parks. I wouldn't have gone to Six Flags Astroworld in 1985, but I went to WDW and Disneyland a lot in the 80's and 90's and 00's.
It’s sad to see. But to your point, high standards are alive and well elsewhere. Disney is practically begging us to spend our money at those places instead.
Yes. It's really interesting that obviously tastes have changed as we roll deeper into the 21st century now, but so many big companies are
really, really good at high quality service with very precise standards delivering excellent products. Off the top of my head recently, besides Viking I can also think of... Air France, Ritz-Carlton, Gump's, and Harmons grocery store. All big companies who make it seem as though
you are the most important customer in their world.
Also In-N-Out. I mean honestly, if In-N-Out can still replicate that sunshiny polite, impeccably clean, and clean cut visage as their empire grows nationwide, there is absolutely no excuse for why Disneyland let their CM standards crash into the basement the past few years.
No excuse at all, other than a willing attempt to lower labor costs by TDA and TDO.
Apart from maybe Universal and parks that almost no one here actually cares about like Dollywood and Silver Dollar City, where are these high standards alive in the amusement park industry in this country that are stratospherically higher than Disney's? Who is objectively beating Disney at their own game?
That's just it. You've already forgotten the first 60 years of their existence when Disney theme parks didn't use local amusement parks as a benchmark. In fact, Walt and his team purposely ignored local amusement parks as a benchmark to create an entirely new product that Americans had never seen before; Disneyland.
For decades, Disney theme parks benchmarked major airlines, fancy hotel chains, and top service providers like Nordstrom to create what they called the "Disney Difference". Disney even used to sell corporate packages to the Disney Institute to teach other companies how to exceed expectations like Disneyland and WDW does. (Or did)
Can you imagine a management team from Delta Air Lines or In-N-Out today paying Disney to teach them how to lower expectations for service and showmanship like Disneyland and WDW now do? Nope.
If you are using Six Flags as your benchmark now in 2024 to compare Disneyland to, the game is over. The sharp pencil boys won and lowered your standards enough the past 5 years to declare victory over costly high standards.
Which is why there's still a few of us left who remember, and say stuff like this...
I remember ‘Disney’ when it was Walt Disney Productions...
And we had Standards we did not stray from.
Back when literally anything and everything was possible.
