Long post, but I will give you a little more insight into DME's thinking if you care to read it.
Yes I understand it, but wish Disney had thrown money at it to keep it going. I'm sure if the price was right for the companies involved it would still be around. Might have required paying them while they did nothing at the beginning of covid. Then again Disney was laying off people left and right so, I'm sure they didn't mind cutting this unpaid perk.
If there is a will, there is a way.......... especially if the price is right. I just think Disney doesn't want to deal with it.
hindsight is 20/20. Disney was closed itself. These is no way to have known bags, inc would go out of business, and I promise you Disney had no visibility into how many other companies were involved. Some of them were subcontractors to subcontractors to subcontractors. We alone were a critical piece and were subbed by Bags. Disney knew who we were.... But we used 2 other companies - at least one which also went under and I know Disney did not know our technology or programming or what libraries and services we had deals with - we did not sell our software to Bags or Disney - we were a service and it was proprietary. More than that, we brought the connections - the Airlines, the TSA.... those were meetings we could arrange. At the beginning of the pandemic, COULD Disney have paid tons of money to prop up other businesses so they didn't go under? I mean I would be richer than Elon if I knew who was going to survive and who was going to flop.
Maybe - but having read the Transportation forum for many years, I'm also sure that DME was losing a lot of riders to Uber/Lyft prior to covid, not to mention when the parks and resorts first reopened.
That's right. Disney did not lie when they made that statement. But it was more than just losing people on getting TO the parks. It was also losing the ability to KEEP people at the parks.
One key selling point to Disney for DME was to create guests as captured beings. That is, they wanted you to NOT rent a car because if you didn't have a car, it was less convenient to go anywhere else. If you were trapped on Disney property, they had most - if not all - of your money. Back in 2005, there was no Uber and there was no Lyft. You had to call a cab and wait, and wait, and wait. Then to come back, you needed another cab. In 2005, only 60% of Americans had cell phones (and less international had phones that would roam). Getting a cab was not an easy thing. It was - frankly - quite difficult to go anywhere else without a car. DME was not just about getting you to the parks, but keeping you there.
Here is another piece.... when DME was created in 2005, a key aspect was the ability to print boarding passes and hang those on your door with a letter that says you can skip the check-in because we did it for you. In 2007 - 2 years later - the first mobile boarding pass was created (by United). Now, checking in at the airport is the exception, not the rule. Many fliers do not need or even want a physical paper boarding pass. In the future, we won't even need mobile boarding passes as they will be replaced by biometric tokens. Another piece of "magic" that is no longer needed for DME.
Except, when DME came back without the luggage service, my understanding is that is because the company that did it changed ownership and was out of business for a bit.
So, I think there were a lot more pieces beside the contract with Mears that lead to it ending. But, in the end, if Disney did not feel that what it would cost to run it made financial sense, then it makes sense to stop it.
And that was not the only issue. A lot depended on cooperation from Airlines, TSA, MCO, and others. As I mentioned, a lot of jobs changed during COVID. I was a technical manager and could be easily replaced. What could not be replaced was the contacts. The agreements for offsite luggage processing. The agreements with airlines for manipulating their systems. The arrangements we had with TSA to bend certain rules... Those are not just money - they take years of negotiations that had been in place but no longer were and the people that championed them were no longer there. Trying to bring them back received a lot of new scrutiny from new directors who wanted to make their mark and were less inclined to break rules or participate in ventures just for the sake of Disney - and as much as I hate to bring this up - Disney right now is not the awe-inspiring customer it used to be. They have expended a lot of their political clout (not government politics, but the desire to say "we have Disney as a customer").
It was not an easy decision to not bring back DME. It was discussed. It was - if anything - assumed it would come back. It's after Disney started getting ramped up again and everyone came back and said "what about this, and what about that, and how do we solve this" that the reality sunk in - there were only 2 options on the table.
The first was to try to cobble together a new system with new vendors and start on those agreements all over again, and that was going to take A LONG TIME. We are talking years. It's possible someone is still working on it, but you wouldn't know it and Disney wouldn't admit it.
Option two was to restart DME as a bus only service. And frankly..... why? Anyone can buy a bus. It lacks "Disney Magic".
There are really 2 things that made DME make sense. One of them was to create guests as captured beings. The second is that piece of "magic" and "wonder". The WOW factor. The "how do they DO that?".
If you break down DME as it would be now....
* Do they keep you on Disney property? NOPE. With Uber and Lyft being so easy to get now, even if you do not have a car, you can still go off Disney property with a tap of your phone. 93+% of the people have cell phones.
* Do they add anything "magical"? NOPE. As I said above, the ability to check you into your flight is no longer a benefit. They could take your bags for you, but that is becoming increasingly common in some destination industries. They lack a sense of "WOW".
For DME to come back, it's not a question of could they form an alliance to do it - I am sure they ultimately could. Even if it doesn't keep you on Disney property, that's not a deal breaker. They can live with that. But it needs to be more than a bus service. It needs to be something that makes you go "WOW" and it needs to be something that only Disney can do. Universal can buy a bus. Disney has to do something uniquely Disney that ties you to their brand because it offers an experience that no one else can do, and right now, they just do not have that for DME.
