I think you were the first person to share that SDD was a Mack coaster in the first place. Do you have any insight into why the gap is so large between Silver-Dollar City and Disney? Sometimes defense contractors will extract enormous sums from the government because they know government has huge budgets. Is Disney getting ripped off like the DoD? Or does Mack deliver both products at similar prices and Disney just manages to add tons of bloat?
Obviously, any physical entertainment company is going to be thrilled to work for Disney because of their scope and reputation. But do these companies also look at Disney as a sucker? Or is the industry just as confused by Disney’s ineptitude as anyone?
One day, you should write up an essay and delve into this topic. This issue is super interesting and super impactful. I still struggle to wrap my head around it...
Steel roller coasters are typically sold ex-works, the parts will be waiting for you at the factory and it is your responsibility to pick them up, get them to your park and assemble them into a coaster. The costs are fairly well known and easier to compare. It makes sense that Disney would have a higher base cost for a very similar roller coaster due to their demanding operating schedule and even location, but they would be easily aware of a large difference and would be able to go elsewhere for a better price.
In terms of vendors, it is actually the opposite when it comes to Disney and Universal. So many want the work that they will struggle to make money because of the prestige of being a Disney or Universal vendor, the scale of the work and promises of more work.
@whylightbulb had a good post years ago discussing how Universal used to be particularly adept at squeezing free and discounted work from vendors who used to be responsible for more of the design of the product.
The big problem is the number of people involved and the inability to make decisions. This is not something that is easy to fix because so many stakeholders often became involved in the first place for a reason. There are plenty of stories from across the industry of designs that had to be reworked because they just didn’t work with the realities of operations but could have been avoided if the operating team had been consulted. Of course in a large organization you eventually start to get layers who all want to stay involved. A new store in a land may have someone from that land’s retail team who is directly involved, but he may have a boss who gets a say, and there is probably a person/team at the park level who gets a say, and a person/team at the resort level who gets a say and maybe even someone at the global level who gets a say. That’s a lot of people giving input and as you move up the ladder there is an inverse correlation between degree of involvement and weight of input. Even worse, in too many cases these people further up don’t know how to read design documents so you get Disney building large mock-ups like entire hotel rooms and that is the first time some executives are seeing the design and they can and will reject all of the work that went into it. That means starting over but the project completion date doesn’t change. In
The Imagineering Story there is a clip of Iger asking for more trees in Cars Land. I know I and some others laughed at this being highlighted as Iger’s big creative contribution, but depending on when in the process it occurs even something as simple as adding trees can have a ripple effect impacting things like below ground utility locations. Early in the thread I have a post going into the details of all of the potential impacts of moving a toilet. The later in the design process, the bigger the potential ripple of seemingly innocuous changes. It’s not just small things though. Look at Ratatouille where a whole building was moved and a dining venue added after permit drawings were done, submitted and approved. While the actual restroom building itself may not have changed too much, there is still a lot of surrounding work that goes into placing a building. On top of the lost work in the change, that new building had to be rushed through development so that it opening as closely as possible with everything else. Each little change has a cost and Disney will make big changes with a big cost.
Then on the design side increasing specialization increases the number of designers involved. Even in areas where Disney is relying more on vendors, there are design managers supervising their work who are themselves specialists. Disney is also a lot more controlling and involved in outsourced work, so you need more labor to do that greater level of specific and detailed work. This used to be where Universal Creative had a time and cost advantage. They outsourced a lot of work and entrusted their vendors to do a lot of design; they had a small team that more managed than designed. Universal Creative has exploded in size in many of the same ways, the days of an entire attraction being outsourced are over. They could not do another Transformers: The Ride - 3D which required repeating mistakes and cutting out most of the layers of management.
This sort of thing happens to organizations as they grow. It makes sense in a lot of ways but it becomes problematic. For Disney, years of stagnating capacity have become a problem but they are simply incapable of adding the sort of small scale attractions that would really help by offering something to do without inducing more demand. A $100 million C-Ticket just doesn’t make sense. Disney compounds the problem by insisting on leadership without experience. Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission: Breakout! is the direct result of Chapek trying to something done fast and cheap. Even then, he didn’t really repeat the strategy or make drastic changes to Walt Disney Imagineering. Same with Staggs before him. It makes sense though, they wouldn’t know who to cut out of the increasingly complicated process of developing world class attractions. It would take a level of knowledge, responsibility and ownership that could easily go sideways and sink a career.
I am quite impressed with the person who did this. It must have taken a lot of time to do!
