Back then I was fooled, Disney always boasted about perfection and flawlessness, how they hid all utilities, the concrete was pressure washed every night and every time you enter the parks the place will look brand new. They boasted how the audio was perfect everywhere you stood, Epcot has that one on point in the world Showcase but how many times have you heard Baroque Hoedown blasting way to loud on a fuzzy speaker? Was this ever a reality or have we been fooled, did they trick us into thinking all this to drawer us there? All I can say is my local mall looks better than Disney World.
Back at this mythical time:
- It was never perfect or flawless, people just didn't have anywhere near the level of information of the day-to-day of everything they have now feeding negativity on a daily basis. People just went on their annual or once-in-a-lifetime trip and enjoyed it
- WDW was a much smaller, less complex beast at a scale that it was much easier to achieve that standard. As it continues to grow larger and larger, it becomes more and more difficult to keep up with everything to the same degree- no matter how many people you throw at it.
- Everything is getting older and older and continues to cost more and more to maintain and refurbish with each passing year.
- Guests were not brandishing smartphones and their cameras looking to find something wrong and breathlessly jumping to post it to social media platforms. During this mythical period, if an animatronic broke on Splash Mountain you didn't know anything about it unless you happened to be there at the time.
- Environment Health & Safety regulations weren’t as strict back then so somebody could just walk out on a roof to swap a failed bulb. Nowadays it takes a month of approvals and a mountain of safety equipment and extra staff to perform the same activity so the frequency of the effort is dramatically reduced.
- Guests were far less ‘entitled’ than they are today which means Disney was spending a whole lot less money on ‘guest recovery’ for stupid selfish things. That also meant massively less money spent on frivolous lawsuits filed under the premise that ‘Disney always settles’ so you're guaranteed a payout.
Having said all of that, it can also not be denied that the financial pressures of Wall Street have forced Disney into the same sort of short-term thinking pretty much every publicly traded company is under. And that isn't likely to change any time soon. Those shareholders own the company and they demand financial performance or they sell off lowering the value of the company.
