If I could send you a bottle right now, I’d send you a full cellar.
Eagerly awaiting tonight’s dishing! I’m parched.
Not to worry, I have a nice bottle of Pinot Grigio I opened yesterday when it was still springlike. But since the weather is quickly crashing into cold temps and rain this week, that will force me to switch to a robust red, so I need to finish this bottle of Pinot Grigio off anyway.
I went to a soiree' last night. There were people there who know what they are talking about when it comes to the topics of this thread. The party and its conversation was light and sparkling, but without much prodding the conversation turned towards Coronavirus and Disneyland. Now, be forewarned that the party guests were all older folks who have seen alot, and the general consensus there was this Coronavirus is just a tad bit overblown in the media. Yes, people have died (mostly the very elderly in nursing homes). Yes, people have been sick and inconvenienced. But this was not a group of Millennials sitting around getting their news from Twitter with lots of
"OMG!" emotion ladled over it.
That said, Coronavirus and its impact on Disneyland is very unknown at this point. There are people in charge inside TDA who really don't know where this is going. That may be disappointing to some folks who would like to think there is some grand strategy planned out weeks in advance, and that big corporations like "Disney!" have all sorts of pre-planned response scenarios just ready to go. Disney in general, and TDA in particular, does not have a response scenario for this current Coronavirus panic. The people in charge in Burbank and Anaheim are literally playing it by ear, day by day, and changing thoughts and plans as the days progress and the information changes.
The current hope is that the panic in the USA over this is just about to peak, or has already peaked, and as more information comes in this week and next regarding mortality rates and effects of the virus that things will begin to calm down. But that is just a hope. TDA is in contact with government officials, and TDA has the benefit of having an entire office of Government Affairs with senior TDA management who have long-term good working relationships with officials at the state and federal level. And Disneyland has the benefit of being a major cultural icon which would cause perhaps more panic and alarm than it is worth if the state government asks it to close for the public good.
But again, there is no rulebook for this situation and no pre-planned response ready to go. They are playing it by ear. The situation with the Grand Princess being barred from California ports by Governor Newsom was not comforting to TDA. They hope to be able to ride this out and keep Disneyland open. But again, the situation can change quickly and three days or a week from now they could be forced to close the parks. TDA is currently hoping they dodge that bullet and things begin to calm down this week and next. But there's no telling what may happen, or what the public mood may be like, a week from now.
And with that, there have been some decisions from Burbank that have thrown into question the future development of the Anaheim parks. I was told that the plan to build the Avengers E Ticket is now on hold. The construction of Mickey's Railway continues because contractors have already been paid for the current phase of construction, but it will be easy to wind down construction on that attraction shortly. The building being built behind Luigi's Roadsters is a new park administration building that looks bigger than it is. Apparently there was a huge and deep basement level built to the southeast of the Luigi's ride where the new building is going up, and that deep basement level held the giant fan machinery that made the original Luigi's ride work. The new building going up on that site has a very deep basement and is designed to replace the cheap pre-fab office buildings built behind Tower of Terror a decade ago as part of DCA expansion.
It was at this point in the conversation where the topic turned to how cheap and tacky many Anaheim offices are. Apparently the DCA senior management works out of those green buildings behind Tower of Terror, and they are very cheaply decorated, furnished and outfitted, looking more like the office of a used car dealership or strip mall insurance office than the executive suites of America's premiere entertainment company. The theme park division is at the very lowest spot on the totem pole of Disney's corporate hierarchy, and their management offices reflect that, even though the Parks division routinely provides Billions in after-tax profit to the corporate bottom line.
Speaking of cheap, that brings us to Bob Jr. Boy, does that guy have a lot of enemies in Anaheim! No one at the party had nice words to say. Many of the words are unfit to print here. But suffice it to say that the parks folks really dislike the guy. He's apparently even more clueless and more stiff and stifled in real life than he appears at D23 Expo and in schmoozy media events.
It was at this point that the commercial real estate folks at the party steered the conversation towards Bob Jr's. decision a few years ago to NOT buy GardenWalk and use it to make the Cast Member experience better. Back in 2017 the old owners of GardenWalk put the mall up for sale at fire sale prices. There is a woman in TDA named Kristine Theiler who is now the VP of Disneyland park who really wanted that mall and the potential it holds to improve the CM experience. Michael Colglazier and Bob Jr. were convinced to put in a bid, but because both men are cheap and don't think much of the average Disneyland CM they really low-balled their bid for the mall. An investment group out of Dubai won the bid originally, but then their financing fell through. Disney was the second highest bidder and was legally allowed to make a new and slightly higher bid to buy GardenWalk. But Bob Jr. thought the idea was dumb and didn't want to invest in the property and concept of turning into a CM benefit.
The plan was to buy GardenWalk and keep the first floor used for dining and retail that would help support the two hotels and timeshare condos the site was zoned for. But the upper level of the mall, and some basement uses, would be turned into a "Cast Member Campus" that would have all sorts of amenities and facilities for the 30,000+ Cast Members now working at the Disneyland Resort. A gym and health club, children's daycare, pharmacy and health clinic, banking, company store, and other amenities were planned to be offered in this Cast Member Campus, along with a couple thousand extra spaces of Cast Member parking. It would be connected via skybridge to the future Eastern Gateway, which would connect to Disneyland property by the skybridge over Harbor Blvd.
But Bob Jr. had a very low limit on how much he was willing to spend on Cast Members in Anaheim, and even though the entire GardenWalk property was falling right into his lap a couple years ago, he simply refused to purchase it and invest the money into Cast Members and their work experience. This was all back when Michael Colglazier was still the President, and he was notoriously out of touch with CM's and was no help in trying to convince Bob Jr. to spend the money on this once in a lifetime opportunity to grab this property. If Josh Damaro had been in charge of Disneyland at the time he might have been able to convince Bob Jr. of the soundness of that investment, but Mr. Colglazier was of a very different mindset and thought of Anaheim CM's as eternally expendable and not worth the investment.
So GardenWalk, which could have been purchased by Disney in 2017 at a very reasonable price of around $20 Million, slipped through their fingers and was purchased by a run of the mill retail developer instead. This infuriated many senior management types in TDA, and made it obvious that Bob Jr. has no long term vision for the Parks division in general or Disneyland specifically. His vision for WDW, which he visits even more infrequently than Anaheim, is even less sound and forward looking.
In short, Bob Jr. is thought of as a man with no vision and no idea what he is working with. That he is now the CEO of the entire company is not calming anyone down. The thought of a few party guests was that there may be another shoe to drop regarding Bob Iger's sudden and immediate departure, but that was nothing more than conjecture on their part. The whole thing struck everyone as very weird, but the fact that Bob Jr. is now in charge has created a mild panic in Anaheim. No one there trusts the man, and at least the short and mid term prospects for Anaheim have dimmed considerably in the last 30 days.
So that's what I learned last night at a party. It may not be as juicy as you'd hoped, but the fact is that TDA is playing this day by day. The situation is unlike anything Disneyland has faced before, and the current era of Social Media and politicized mass hysteria is not making it easy for TDA to plan more than a few days out. In short, stay tuned!
Guess we shouldn't trust the medical professionals anywhere.
