BUS AUDIO/GPS THINGY: Magic in Motion : Messed up?

[CanadianGuy]

During my most recent trip, it appears that any number of bus drivers have completely abandoned this for the most part .. returning to manually delivered spiels from the driver to cover a lot of the same points - to the point of actually cutting off the MiM messages and then going on the bus PA to do their spiel.

This wasn't like a once or twice thing - but on darned near every bus ride we took.

I'm guessing this is because the GPS triggers for the messages just aren't working as intended or some other fatal flaw has prevented the idea from reaching its intended potential.

I did notice on several bus runs that the triggers were messed up and then the messages were 'cut' ... on other bus runs they appeared to trigger fine but were still cut off.

ANYWAY you slice it - I will say this - only ONCE could I hear and understand the bus driver doing the manual spiel. The other 10 or 12 times they really may as well have not bothered. Not a single word could be heard or understood by ANYONE on the bus... either because it wasn't near loud enough or they weren't talking appropriately into the microphone or both.

It very much felt like something half baked this time around.. like drivers were straddling this no-mans land of the automation and the manual spiel either without proper direction or being told "Just figure it out and make it work."

However it is - this was some pretty 'awful' guest presentation and whatever they are going to do I just wish they'd pick something and fix it to the point where it's useful.

Knox

 

[airplanegod]

I think Disney does this to save money because they would probobly have to spend more money training the bus driver to remember the message. Don't forget though, Disney Transportation is not owned or operated by Disney, it is by Mears. Hope this helped.

 

[CanadianGuy]

For clarity, I'm not talking about the DME buses.. but the parks to resorts and back buses..

And this was a system for which there was much bally-hoo when it was introduced ... and yeah I think you're right - they did it for consistency of presentation and let's face it -- not all bus drivers are created equal when it comes to running a spiel.

All that said -- I can't figure out for the life of me why it's pretty much abandoned less than 18 months after it's introduction.. ?

 

[joelkfla]

Actually, it's been 3 years since introduction ... my 3rd anniversary as a driver is coming up, and MIM started just before I did.

Yes, there are still a lot of problems with the recorded spiels. They usually trigger correctly if the bus has a functioning GPS and if the driver is following the programmed route, but they sometimes break up, pause mid-word and resume, or partially repeat. And there are some valid reasons not to follow the programmed route (construction, traffic problems, the bus filling up before the last pickup, etc.) in which case the spiels may not trigger at all.

For some reason, it practically takes an act of Congress to get a spiel updated. The DHS spiel was taken off a year ago, and still hasn't been replaced. The MK spiel was still talking about Wishes and "Share a Dream Come True" parade when I drove for MK last week. (It's been "Celebrate a Dream..." for over a year.) The monorails get their spiels updated every few months; I don't know why the bus spiels can't be, too.

Drivers are all supposed to be able and ready to do their own spiels, but are not supposed to override the automated ones if they'e working properly. We are encouraged to spiel things like park hours, load zone numbers, and any addded tips we'd like to offer. The reason you can't hear them is that the driver has no control over the the PA volume: it's controlled by the MIM box and is usually set way too low. The one that you were able to hear was probably on one of the new buses which doesn't have MIM installed yet, so the volume control still works. Some of the newer buses that do have MIM also have a different PA system on which we can control the volume.

Management says they are still working on MIM, including getting bus scheduling and dispatch to be done real-time by computer.