Disney Parks laying off 28,000 cast members

[RivShore]

How would you specifically run things differently?

I also seriously beg to differ that he “destroyed” the Star Wars franchise. I am a lifelong SW fan and love Star Wars land.

Also, remember that you used to have to pay by the ride at Disneyland/WDW — talk about nickel and diming! Who invented that system? Walt.

And let's not forget that Walt brought the company to near bankruptcy more than once.

 

[WorldOfPooh]

NBA experience CM all gone, I believe photopass down to 90% at WDW

To be honest NBA experience is a big fail anyway with the $34 cost.

 

[BrianL]

And Frozen Sing Along will reopen Monday without Ben, he wasn't fired he quit. My absolute favorite historian

Oh, Ben was GREAT (at least if he's they guy I am thinking of but I'm pretty sure he is). He will be missed, but at least he left on his own terms. I can respect that. I really wasn't all that excited to watch the Frozen Sing Along at first but I had time to kill. He made it absolutely delightful!

 

[rteetz]

To be honest NBA experience is a big fail anyway with the $34 cost.

Doesn’t mean all the CMs deserve to be let go though. If Disney had just closed it outside of all this they likely would’ve given them opportunity to move elsewhere if space allowed.

 

[tlmadden73]

I honestly don't think that it would be a bad thing. They need to go back to Walt's values of treating the guest as king, providing a value and not nickel and diming every single thing. Eger basically squeezed every single cent they could from the Disney loyalists and now with the reduced offerings, it's just not a value to have to pay for hotel parking, reduced Annual Pass value, etc, etc, etc.

Agree .. like I've said before .. maybe this can be looked at like trimming the fat. Trimming all the nickel and dime things that Disney had -- that guests would spend money on .. but they had to have the extra staff to produce that product.
(Unfortunately I don't ever see hotel parking going away. That is free money that costs them nothing, except a bad taste in the mouth of guests).

So ... yes .. maybe this will be a wake-up call to Disney to make sure the staff they do have left is top-notch quality focusing on customer service (like Chick Fil-A does).

Service matters. Unfortunately Disney probably feels they are top of the food chain and can let that slide even more (to save money) until their competitors begin to catch up with them.

 

[MichiganScott]

Cutting off so many people who worked there, moved here to do so, dedicated their LIVES...ugh. It's just business, right?

Whatever Disney was before all this, now they are just another company

 

[rteetz]

Whatever Disney was before all this, now they are just another company

They’ve been one of those for a while.

 

[circus4u]

The good thing about pay per ride was people who weren’t interested in rides/many of the rides could still come in and enjoy the park with their family without paying a ton of money. I’m not advocating for a return to that system, just saying there were advantages.

We were a young, newly married couple when we first went to the Magic Kingdom in 1971. At the time, I could not understand why someone would want to go to WDW and not ride. But now, in our 70s, I would love to be able to just get an admission ticket (and I believe, you had to have a separate transportation ticket) for the then price of $5.00. My wife and I have been there more times than I can remember, so rides are not important to us anymore. However, we love to be there just for the ambiance and people watch. We still have some of the left over, ride tickets from those days. Even have a few of the military "key" tickets which were valid for any ride, A through E. As an aside, food was much cheaper than too. We were military at the time and a hamburger was cheaper in the park than at the snack bars on base. Ahhh, the good ole days!

 

[rteetz]

https://blogmickey.com/2020/10/disn...epVS5ruxndogkTQ_7fOFzBGVbkmTlvsldBCjf3ildUJSs

 

[TheMaxRebo]

Agree .. like I've said before .. maybe this can be looked at like trimming the fat. Trimming all the nickel and dime things that Disney had -- that guests would spend money on .. but they had to have the extra staff to produce that product.
(Unfortunately I don't ever see hotel parking going away. That is free money that costs them nothing, except a bad taste in the mouth of guests).

So ... yes .. maybe this will be a wake-up call to Disney to make sure the staff they do have left is top-notch quality focusing on customer service (like Chick Fil-A does).

Service matters. Unfortunately Disney probably feels they are top of the food chain and can let that slide even more (to save money) until their competitors begin to catch up with them.

or they go the other way, knowing they will have capacity restrictions for quite a while and thus need to get more $ out of each person and even more court the people that are willing to pay for the extras.

Wanna see fireworks? You *have* to pay for a dessert party, etc.

 

[tlmadden73]

To be honest NBA experience is a big fail anyway with the $34 cost.

As much as I think the NBA Experience was a waste of space/money with way too limited of an audience, it is just another unfortunate victim of this virus. Just a bad time to open an expensive add-on "experience" that didn't even have a full NBA season to help promote it. We'll never know though if it would have been a failure on its own merits, or a failure because of poor timing.

 

[WorldOfPooh]

How would you specifically run things differently?


Also, remember that you used to have to pay by the ride at Disneyland/WDW — talk about nickel and diming! Who invented that system? Walt.

I would create a point based loyalty program for the resorts and hotels.
I would get rid of parking fees at the resorts.
I would install security gates for everyone like they have at Universal.
I would remove blackout dates from the Premium no blackout date APs by allowing them to attend Mickey not So Scary/Christmas/After Hours for free.
I would redress Starwarsland to the New Hope Trilogy
I would fire Kathleen Kennedy and replace her with Kevin Feige/Jon Favreau with George Lucas as consultant emeritus and bring back Mark Hamill
I would create an employee town with affordable housing to the west of WDW

 

[BrianL]

As much as I think the NBA Experience was a waste of space/money with way too limited of an audience, it is just another unfortunate victim of this virus. Just a bad time to open an expensive add-on "experience" that didn't even have a full NBA season to help promote it. We'll never know though if it would have been a failure on its own merits, or a failure because of poor timing.

I never really got to check it out, but it seemed like it really just needed a little something more. They could have always made some tweaks and such, but it had potential.

 

[WorldOfPooh]

Doesn’t mean all the CMs deserve to be let go though. If Disney had just closed it outside of all this they likely would’ve given them opportunity to move elsewhere if space allowed.

Isn't the NBA experience, the NBA? Why would they use Disney CM's if it's not Disney?

 

[rteetz]

Isn't the NBA experience, the NBA? Why would they use Disney CM's if it's not Disney?

NBA put some funds in for it and obviously was a partner but no it was owned and operated by Disney.

 

[teruterubouzu]

I don't think photopass is a planned restructuring. Photopass brings in a lot of money for Disney and it's basically free advertising when people post pictures on their social media. It's probably more due to the fact that masks are here to stay for a while so people won't pay extra to have mask photos generally.

We had a preview of cuts to this department when they started experimenting with automated cameras replacing photopass photographers. If this product's primary customers were annual passholders then it probably wasn't as profitable as they would like. It was probably a similar situation in Disneyland where it's also rolled in with MaxPass.

Likewise there is the full elimination of their in-house ad agency Yellow Shoes. I'm not sure if they already had another agency of record, but that isn't a department they would completely eliminate if they had the intention for it to return.

Some of the cuts are covid-related but it's clear they are also using this situation to make other long considered changes.

 

[Eric Smith]

I would create a point based loyalty program for the resorts and hotels.

This would just cost Disney money. It's also really close to what DVC is. Pre-pandemic, Disney didn't have problems filling up hotels. Historically, Disney offers room discounts if they're having trouble filling hotels.

I would get rid of parking fees at the resorts.

I don't see any way this changes.

I would install security gates for everyone like they have at Universal.

Disney already has security gates at the entrance to every park. What gates are you looking for them to install?

I would remove blackout dates from the Premium no blackout date APs by allowing them to attend Mickey not So Scary/Christmas/After Hours for free.

Removing blackout dates are nice, but there is no reason to give away after hour party tickets for free.

I would redress Starwarsland to the New Hope Trilogy

This would be prohibitively expensive. Both rides would have to be-rethemed. Galaxy's Edge is well done and seems to be very popular.

I would fire Kathleen Kennedy and replace her with Kevin Feige/Jon Favreau with George Lucas as consultant emeritus and bring back Mark Hamill

I agree that Kennedy needs to go, but it's not like Lucas did a stellar job after the original trilogy. Feige is already busy with Marvel and what Kennedy does is at a totally different level than what Favreau has done at this point. Honestly, I'd like to see them move Star Wars away from the Skywalker saga in to something new.

I would create an employee town with affordable housing to the west of WDW

This is a good idea. I'd like to see them do something similar to what they've done for the college program.

 

[WorldOfPooh]

I never really got to check it out, but it seemed like it really just needed a little something more. They could have always made some tweaks and such, but it had potential.

I think if it was like $10 it would work.
$34 is just too high when you are competing with restaurants and food at Disney Springs on top of having spent a fortune on Disney. One didn't come all the way out to WDW to do NBA experience. They came to enjoy the Disney Parks, Universal Parks, their hotel/resorts and food. Something like a $35 NBA experience is going to be one of the last things on people's list to do in Orlando.

 

[Eric Smith]

We had a preview of cuts to this department when they started experimenting with automated cameras replacing photopass photographers. If this product's primary customers were annual passholders then it probably wasn't as profitable as they would like. It was probably a similar situation in Disneyland where it's also rolled in with MaxPass.

Likewise there is the full elimination of their in-house ad agency Yellow Shoes. I'm not sure if they already had another agency of record, but that isn't a department they would completely eliminate if they had the intention for it to return.

Some of the cuts are covid-related but it's clear they are also using this situation to make other long considered changes.

I don't think photopass's primary customers were AP holders. Everyone that I know who goes down to Disney World pays for photopass.

 

[BrianL]

I think if it was like $10 it would work.
$34 is just too high when you are competing with restaurants and food at Disney Springs on top of having spent a fortune on Disney. One didn't come all the way out to WDW to do NBA experience. They came to enjoy the Disney Parks, Universal Parks, their hotel/resorts and food. Something like a $35 NBA experience is going to be one of the last things on people's list to do in Orlando.

I do think the price was high, but if it offered something extra then it might not be. It should at the very least have been included in the ol' "Plus" option like how DisneyQuest was included in "Waterpark Fun and More" - that would have driven more traffic. There are a lot of NBA fans out there though.