actually i agree with much of what has been written here. i know from my extensive reading here that there are a great many issues with the "quality" of the product that WDW in general has been putting out lately. i have read about the CM issues, the cleanliness issues and now with the popular
DDP, food quality issues.
when WDW raised the standards or wants the buying public to believe the standards dealing with all services are higher at WDW and you encounter something that isnt up to par, yes, people are going to be shocked and very dissapointed and angry. especially those of us who have been fortunate to enjoy the parks over many years.
i can think of a few reasons for this. the "quality" of some of the CM's may not be up to what was considered WDW standards is because of staffing issues. i have a friend in the orlando area and she has told me that the area is in a bit of a bind now because there are simply not enough people applying for jobs in the service industry. the lack of applicants will prohibit you from staffing your business with an appropriate amount of quality employees. you have to hire people who might not be up to your standards. hence IMHO this may be why some of us have had unfortunate encounters with apathetic and rude CM's.
i work in retail management and i know of this first hand. i live and work on long island new york and the competition for employees does exist. with all of the chain stores and chain resturants that are popping up all over the place, you often wonder where are all of the employees going to come from. businesses are often saddled as to how are they going to enitice employees to come work for them. offer good benifits or good salaries or even a good working environment. sometimes you have to hire that employee you know from experience may not be right for the job but you hope once they get started that they will like it.
its not as simple as offering a higher rate of pay to attract better employees. when you have a publicly held company like Disney is you have to ultimately answer to stockholders. as management will so often mention , especially at contract time, that the highest costs of running a business are the labor costs and these are the ones they can control the easiest. this can be a bit of a problem for current WDW management. if they want to keep up with the standards that Walt set you need quality people to sell a quality product. quality of any kind does not come cheap.
hopefully Eiger and his team will realize that if they want to keep the throngs of people flocking to WDW that more salary and more extensive training of their employees, may be as important then adding another attraction.
