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Disneyland Game Plan
While DCA heads into an unprecedented period of expansion and makeovers,
Disneyland will continue to be the engine that drives the whole Resort. Tony
Baxter being in charge of the creative direction for Disneyland should prove
interesting to say the least. The most current plans for Disneyland are more
about tweaking what is already there, and adding back some of the things that
were lost over the last ten years.
Lines for the revamped Submarine ride can
still run up to three hours.
Tony spends lots of time at Disneyland, and he sees lots of areas that could
be reinvigorated and brought back to life. The PeopleMover beam is an obvious
choice, and new proposals drafted for it two years ago continue to gain
momentum. The 3-D version of Star Tours originally proposed for Tokyo Disneyland
may also be heading stateside, and Tony would like to tackle that one
especially. The Disneyland Opera House, the Rivers of America and the Tahitian
Terrace are also areas that have caught Tony's eye.
This time they didn't wait for the paint to
peel, Toontown gets some TLC last Sunday.
For now, the bigger plans to push out the park boundaries with new rides in
the Big Thunder Ranch area or beyond Toontown are on the back burner. Instead,
the plan is to add even more ride capacity to Disneyland and keep the visitor
experience fresh over the next few years by filling in currently dormant areas
of the existing park. While DCA may be getting the biggest budget, Disneyland
won't go into a deep freeze by any stretch.
Aurora returns to her Castle
Building off of the success of the Dead Man's Grotto walkthrough created for
Pirate's Lair, there's now a tentative plan to revamp and reopen the Sleeping
Beauty diorama walkthrough in the Castle. Using new lighting and audio
technology, the walkthrough would reopen as a 21st century take on the 1957
original Eyvind Earle version of the attraction. No major structural changes
would be made to the facility, as that would void the grandfather clause the
Castle walkthrough has to get around modern ADA laws. But the end result would
be a cosmetic upgrade to the basic concept of the original 1950's
walkthrough.
For the record, our contacts state the walkthrough was closed in October,
2001 due to security concerns in the wake of the September 11th attacks. The
thought is now any concern about security for this Disney icon could be
alleviated by placing a few hidden cameras in the corridors of the walkthrough
to monitor any mischief. But in the Fall of 2001 when DCA was an utter failure
at the ticket booths and the entire travel industry was spiraling into deep
recession, the last thing TDA was going to spend money on was cameras for a
dusty old walkthrough that few customers visited. The easy and cheap thing to do
back then was to simply close the Castle walkthrough "temporarily."
Luckily, it now looks like that temporary closure may end in 2008.
Hotel Name Game
Meanwhile, outside the parks, there's even more in the pipeline. The Disney
Vacation Club (DVC)
units that were slated to begin work this year at the Grand, and then put on
hold while the DCA budget saga worked itself out, are now back on the front
burner. The Disneyland Hotel also is slated for a massive makeover that would
freshen up the 1960's era towers.
The first part of the hotel project is an easy one, and it begins later this month
by ditching the names the current facility has had since it was built by the Wrather Corporation in the 1960's and 70's. The Marina Tower is to be renamed
the Magic Tower, the Sierra Tower becomes the Dreams Tower, and the Bonita
Tower, named for Jack Wrather's wife Bonita, is rechristened the Wonder Tower.
The attached convention center facilities all get new Disney names as well,
with the El Camino conference hall renamed the Frontier conference hall, the
Marina Ballroom becomes the Magic Kingdom Ballroom, the Marina Sundries shop
becomes Donald's Gifts & Sundries, etc., etc.
While Disney history buffs may miss the connection to Walt's friends Jack and
Bonita Wrather and that lesser known chapter in Disneyland history, the new
names may make more sense to the vast majority of hotel and convention center
visitors.
Backstage at the Haunted Mansion?
Longer term for Anaheim there is of course the massive new Disney Cruise Line
ship to be based out of Los Angeles at the end of the decade, and shorter term
there will be a lot more tour groups trooping through Disneyland. The tour
groups won't be the traditional type led by a pretty girl in a plaid skirt, but
instead these will be Adventures by Disney tours headed into the Park.
We've mentioned the struggles the Adventures by Disney organization has had
getting its concept of Disney organized tour itineraries off the ground. The
customer feedback is very positive, but the connection to Disney on the tours
has been nonexistent aside from the perky tour guide wearing a nametag, and that
tends to confuse people. To try and boost the exposure and strengthen the
connection to traditional Disney vacations, Adventures by Disney is planning on
offering itineraries that include visits to the existing theme parks. The
current plan is to let the groups head "backstage" and see some of the behind
the scenes magic that is traditionally off limits in Anaheim.
Can't wait for
Adventures by Disney to start those backstage Mansion tours? This unofficial
item has popped up online for downloading, and on eBay for sale, and it has
been excerpted on YouTube. Please do not e-mail me about it, as all I know
is that it's out there.
The Guest Relations department in WDW has been taking guided tours backstage
for years, but it's always been a concept that was off limits in more
traditional Anaheim. That's about to change however as the business success of
Adventures by Disney is very important to Jay Rasulo and the Disneyland managers
have been outranked on this one. Jay has been told that there's a huge base of
Annual Passholders in Southern California that would pay practically any price
for an Adventures by Disney tour if it included a walk through of the Haunted
Mansion, or an after hours peek at how the spinning boulder effect on Indiana
Jones works, or a hike up the inside of the Matterhorn.
Many of the Adventures by Disney tour guides are drafted from the ranks of
Disneyland tour guides, so they're already familiar with most of the Anaheim
locations they'll be showing off. This concept is still rather controversial
however, and some folks in Anaheim are trying to keep a very tight rein on the
Adventures by Disney tours.
Year of a million... Thugs?
While the future of Anaheim gets hashed out over the next few weeks in
Glendale and TDA, there's plenty of work to do this summer for those in the
parks. The Casting Department has been holding a non-stop series of job fairs
over the last few months to try and get ahead of the curve when it comes to all
of the open positions at Disneyland. During the last two months the Casting
folks took a page from the Pentagon's play book and literally flooded the Resort
with a surge of new hires. The surge seems to have worked on paper, as most
operations departments are fully staffed for the first time in over a year. It
may have looked good on paper, but the results in the parks and hotels
themselves are varying degrees of disastrous. While standards have been slipping
for years, the surge seems to have rounded up some of the most desperate job
seekers in Orange County, which is saying something in a place where the
unemployment rate hovers around 3.5%.
The nose diving standards for this latest batch of new hires stems from
several factors. Word has gotten out that Disneyland doesn't do any form of drug
testing for most of their positions, not even for CM's who operate attractions.
A growing number of ride operators are quitting Knott's Berry Farm, or are fired
after failing a drug test there, and heading over to TDA's Casting Center to
pick and choose from practically any position they want without fear of a random
drug test. The big signing bonuses Disneyland has been handing out, up to 500
dollars per person for some departments, have also been bringing in a crowd that
is well, how shall we say this... a little rough around the edges.
And then once those new hires settle in, over a hundred of them in June alone
are quickly fired after they get caught selling their main gate sign-in
privileges out in the Esplanade. Disney used to make a new hire wait over 90
days before they received their sign-in card and limited them to only 12 uses
per year. But now the sign-in card arrives two weeks after they first visit the
Casting Center, and its good for up to 16 uses per year. That means many new
hires head right out to Harbor Blvd. or the middle of the Esplanade and try to
hit up tourists with an offer to get them into the Park for half the cost of a
park hopper ticket. What they don't realize is that tactic is easy to observe by
undercover Disneyland security guards, and on Saturdays in June it was like
shooting fish in a barrel for security as they picked off a dozen or more CM's
per day trying to make some extra cash.
Those Cast Members that aren't immediately fired, or eventually fail their
background check that takes up to a month for Disneyland security to complete
while the Felon works in the park, generally fall into two categories; a large
majority that range from simply bad to barely mediocre, and a tiny slice of
clean-cut folks who still resemble the Disneyland Cast Members that gave the
park its sterling reputation for customer service back in the 20th century.
All the good news from DCA then gets dulled
with dumb corporate sponsorships like this.
The whole mess is all due to the fact that Casting, as an arm of the
dreadfully mismanaged Human Resources Department, simply has no accountability
for the types of people they hire in off the street. The only thing that matters
to the managers and lower level executives responsible for Casting is the number
of people they hire each week. It's all about the numbers, and not much else.
And if that weekly number includes convicted felons with arrest warrants who
will be hauled away from their Star Tours training in handcuffs two weeks later,
or surly young ladies who can't land a job anywhere else and spend their entire
shifts text messaging their thug boyfriends instead of stocking shelves, then
Casting doesn't care just so long as they meet their weekly hiring quota.
As we've been detailing here, the entire Casting system has spiraled out of
control in the last year, and this latest surge only stemmed the tide with a
wave of lowered expectations. Casting has become the laughingstock of the entire
Resort at this point, as they all pat themselves on their backs for making their
latest weekly hiring quota.
It's no secret that most of the CM's hired this June will be gone by
December, and the whole process will begin again. In an attempt to stem the
tide, Human Resources is now trying out ways to not hold the new hires
accountable for their actions during their first month on the job in an attempt
to get them to stick around a bit longer. For the first 30 days on the job, new
Cast Members no longer get marked late when they are tardy for a scheduled
shift. While older Cast Members get docked 1.5 points on Disneyland's attendance
policy, a new Cast Member doesn't get any points charged to them regardless of
how late they may be to their shifts.
As you can well guess, this has infuriated the unions, as the end result is
dues paying union members get disciplined for being late too many times, but new
hires who aren't yet paying any union dues now get unlimited tardies during
their first month and won't be disciplined for being consistently late. As hard
as it may be to believe, TDA's Human Resources group has decided that the best
way to improve the amount of new hires who don't show up to work on time from
being disciplined in their first few months on the job is to simply stop
disciplining them. Bingo, problem solved!
That's how bad it's gotten this summer for TDA, and that's how misguided the
policies from HR to try and fix the problems are. The more dedicated and tenured
Cast Members in Anaheim can only shake their heads in dismay as yet another
summer brings an even lower standard of new hire to their work locations.
This rather special map/sign can be found
hidden away on the grounds of the Disneyland Hotel. It must be for either
disorganized tour groups or chronic multi-taskers. Special thanks to
Darkbeer for pointing it out to me.
And yet again, the executives leading Human Resources insist they are looking
at all sorts of long term options to improve the caliber of Cast Members and the
pathetic retention levels. At Ed Grier's last salaried update in the Hyperion
Theater, the senior vice president of Human Resources even stood up and had the
nerve to tell the audience that she was "looking at pay and compensation for
both hourly and salaried Cast Members" as a way to increase retention. Yes, the
lower ranks of management have seen increasing turnover, and TDA is aware of
that. But that tired old line has been tossed out by TDA's Human Resources
department regularly year after year after year, with not an inch of real action
to follow up the hollow words. But somehow the senior vice president of HR still
thinks it's a comment that might fool one or two people in the audience and she
had the audacity to trot it out one more time.
Either she was really stupid for attempting the line, or really gutsy for
thinking someone in the audience might actually believe it this time.
The Dish on Dining
The one thing that has improved this summer for Cast Members though is the
cafeteria food service. The contracted group from Sodexho has already opened
several of the new cafeterias, and the response has been overwhelmingly
positive. The food prices are all about the same, and yet the service and food
quality is dramatically better. The overcooked and mushy slop that was the
hallmark of the old Star Dinerz cafeterias has been replaced by fresh, quality
food cooked properly and served professionally. Somehow Disney's own Foods
department could never master feeding their fellow Cast Members, as if the
concept of running a basic cafeteria was rocket science and that was beyond
their abilities.
Where Disney failed, Sodexho has gone in and remodeled and freshened up the
tired and dirty dining rooms in the last month. With each cafeteria that reopens
under the new Sodexho format Cast Members are freed from the tyranny of runny
macaroni and cheese, surly service that would never be allowed out in the park,
and dingy dining rooms.
The only problem Sodexho now faces is a huge rush on their new facilities. In
the first week of operation for the Eat Ticket cafeteria serving TDA, the
facility saw transactions that were almost triple the amount the location saw
when it was operated by Foods as Star Dinerz. Cast Members in TDA and in the
parks and hotels had given up on the cafeterias years ago, and Sodexho had been
told by Disney that they would only see numbers that were half of what they've
actually been serving in their first few weeks of operation. Even Ed Grier has
been seen repeatedly dining at the Eat Ticket in recent weeks.
Bravo to TDA for finally throwing in the towel and trying another tactic for
the Cast Member cafeterias. Sodexho has proved that it didn't need to be the
Ritz-Carlton, it just needed to be edible.
Behind the Scenes
While John Lasseter sets up an executive structure in the creative ranks that
seems to only hold good things for Anaheim over the next five to seven years,
there is still massive fundamental change that needs to happen in Anaheim's back
of house areas. The suits running Human Resources couldn't be more out of touch
with the reality in the parks and hotels if they tried, and yet they continue to
go right on feeding a system that has proven itself to be broken beyond repair.
Without a solid foundation of smart, caring front line Cast Members who not only
have the ability to show up on time, but also want to help Disneyland visitors
enjoy their stay, the most amazing new attractions WDI can add to Anaheim won't
bring in the same profits to Burbank without good customer service behind it.
It became a cliché in the last decade as it was used too often, but Walt's
famous old quote seems genuinely valid in this case; "You can dream,
create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it takes
people to make the dream a reality." Let's hope Burbank can do
something about getting some better people in to operate all of the snazzy new stuff
coming to Anaheim in the years ahead. There's a new dream on the drawing boards
for Anaheim that warrants good people staffing it.
David Koenig's Newest Book: Realityland:
True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World
I wrote the following as an Editor's Note in Kevin Yee's column last week, an
am repeating it here (along with Kevin's own review) just in case you may have
missed it.
David was kind enough to send me a copy of his new book and it arrived just as I
was headed out the door for a few days out of town. I've read through a lot of
it and find it his best yet, as his writing (as well as his reporting skills)
have significantly matured and developed since his first book, "Mouse Tales."
But what is most important to note about this effort is that
Disney's Parks and Resorts arm gets woefully
neglected in major media and business books on the company such as
the best-selling "Disney Wars" (among many others). David is really
the only one out there covering this unique division of the Disney
Company in any kind of detail.
If you want to understand what the underlying problems are at
Walt Disney World currently are, and how they have adversely
affected the end product currently offered, David's latest book details why
things have gotten so stale out in Orlando.
Believe me it's a formidable task that he has set for himself to
call it as it is, especially when so many others who do not
understand or comprehend what the Disney Company is actually capable
of will be quick to happily excuse away the many declines and
setbacks the east
coast resort has suffered over the last few decades.
Without reservation I can say David's book is essential reading
for both the experienced and casual Disney parks consumer. One can
only hope his critical eye will focus some attention on the
solutions necessary to once again make Walt Disney World a premium
resort destination.
Its official release to
bookstores and Amazon is on October 1st, and you can pre-order it now at the
following Amazon link:
Kevin had this to say about the book:
Clocking in at a hefty 334
pages and an attractive hardcover, the book first catches your eye with the
cover, whose designs feature a stylized, almost 1950's-era Googie look (and that
enormous monorail that never ends!)
What's in the book? Seventeen chapters that cover all sorts of topics, from
Walt's dreams and the building of the Magic Kingdom, what it was like to work
for the park in those early days, expansion through the three newer parks, and
right up to the modern era. One notices that this book is much more determined
by history and the timeline than the earlier book Mouse Tales, which had
been divided by thematic categories rather than organized chronologically.
As such, even though you might be expecting an East coast version of Mouse
Tales, you'll find something different. Realityland instead tells the
story of the resort's history. You may have heard many of the particulars
before, but never quite with this perspective.
Koenig did extensive interviews
for this book, so you can expect quite a few 'inside' stories about the design,
construction, and history of the parks. And there are stories, in true Koenig
fashion, of history from the 'bottom up,' a.k.a. the minor anecdotes told by
ancillary players on the stage. Some examples:
How did Lindquist choose the 'first family?'
What happened with Nunis's plan to create Surfrider Beach at the
Polynesian?
Where is the sinkhole in Epcot?
Why did they have to re-do the lobby of the Polynesian?
How did the resort react to the gas crisis of the '70s and '80s?
Some chapters will seem familiar to readers of Mouse Tales. There's an
extensively-researched section on accidents, deaths, and disasters, a chapter on
what it's like working on the front lines, and a chapter on the Security
department. These bits are every bit as juicy as Mouse Tales, and will
satisfy wholly.
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