No Monorail Service Aug until 2007. I am upset.

[Dznefreek]

There's also the fact that it has the only AAA 5 diamond restaurant in central Florida (V&A obviously).

Maybe it is me but I do not think a restaurant makes the entire resort. . . .

 

[mking624]

Maybe it is me but I do not think a restaurant makes the entire resort. . . .

I didn't say it made the entire resort. That was one of the various things I listed. That said, the type of dining a place offers can give a big clue into what type of place it is. You're not going to find a KFC in a Ritz Carlton, for example.

 

[YoHo]

The Grand Floridian was designed to be a 4 star (minimum) resort for rich folks. It was built with the intention of being better then the other resorts on the loop and it has always maintained a price premium because of that.

Equating the GF to the Contemporary shows a gross ignorance of the history of the place.



The flip side being that the entire point of the Grand Floridian is insulting to everything Walt stood for, but that's a discussion we've been having for the better part of 7 years.

 

[mking624]

The Grand Floridian was designed to be a 4 star (minimum) resort for rich folks. It was built with the intention of being better then the other resorts on the loop and it has always maintained a price premium because of that.

Equating the GF to the Contemporary shows a gross ignorance of the history of the place.

ITA!! This was my point when trying to show that it's not specifically the monorail that makes the price what it is.

 

[Another Voice]

They have no reason to discount their prices if other means of transportation are readily available (except that people would rather complain instead of realizing that there IS another way to get to the park that they refuse to acknowledge).

Busses are not “resort transportation”. Real transportation is efficient, clean, and as much fun to use as everything else I am doing on vacation. I’m supposed to be at a “resort” – a place that’s different and better than my dull, dreary, everyday life. That’s why I am chucking out five thousands dollars to Disney rather than spending my salary wisely.

Like the “wand” over Spaceship Earth, DVC sales booths in the parks and princess dresses being sold in the Tomorrowland shops – busses are a sign that WDW’s management hates us and thinks we’re stupid.

Fortunately there are still some places at WDW that have managed to remain unsoiled. That includes the resorts located on the monorail system. People are willing to pay a premium for that, and Disney is certainly eager to add that premium on. For a lot of people (I’d say most people), the monorail is as important as the pool and restaurants. Are you going to say that Disney doesn’t charge more for the Yacht and Beach Club because of Stormalong Bay? And do you think that if the Animal Kingdom Lodge was serviced by the system that the rooms would be as cheap (and as empty) as they are today?

Of course not. So should Disney take out a central and important feature of a resort, its monorail, the hotel’s become less attractive to guests. When a product becomes less attractive consumers, its price generally falls. So guests have ever right to expect reduced room rates. Otherwise we’ll go somewhere else.

 

[YoHo]

View of the Castle and Fireworks isn't listed as an Amenity for the MK resorts either. That doesn't mean it isn't factored into the price.

 

[mking624]

Busses are not “resort transportation”. Real transportation is efficient, clean, and as much fun to use as everything else I am doing on vacation. I’m supposed to be at a “resort” – a place that’s different and better than my dull, dreary, everyday life. That’s why I am chucking out five thousands dollars to Disney rather than spending my salary wisely.

Hate to break the bubble, but EVERY hotel on Disney property is referred to as a Resort, whether you're paying $5000 or $500. Regardless of what you expect transportation to be with it's effeciency and cleanliness (which I'm sorry, but until you've ridden public transportation in a large city, you have no idea what inefficient and dirty is on a bus), it doesn't make the bus any less of a resort transportation. Just because it doesn't measure up to your standards and expectations doesn't mean they're not providing (for free) a way to get to a park and/or resort. Not to be mean, but you're really fishing for any excuse here.

Like the “wand” over Spaceship Earth, DVC sales booths in the parks and princess dresses being sold in the Tomorrowland shops – busses are a sign that WDW’s management hates us and thinks we’re stupid.

Give me a break. That's such a weak argument.

Fortunately there are still some places at WDW that have managed to remain unsoiled. That includes the resorts located on the monorail system. People are willing to pay a premium for that, and Disney is certainly eager to add that premium on. For a lot of people (I’d say most people), the monorail is as important as the pool and restaurants. Are you going to say that Disney doesn’t charge more for the Yacht and Beach Club because of Stormalong Bay? And do you think that if the Animal Kingdom Lodge was serviced by the system that the rooms would be as cheap (and as empty) as they are today?

Stormalong Bay is a pool...pools are considered an amenity of the resort you're staying at. The monorail is convenient, but not an amenity. Is it an amenity for *you*? Obviously it is. Is it an official amenity of the resort? No.

So should Disney take out a central and important feature of a resort, its monorail, the hotel’s become less attractive to guests. When a product becomes less attractive consumers, its price generally falls. So guests have ever right to expect reduced room rates. Otherwise we’ll go somewhere else.

The monorail is not the number one reason why people stay at the specific resorts. Go to the Resorts forum and you'll see why people love the resorts they're staying at. Yes they may like the monorail, but that's not the number one reason why they chose to stay there (I mean really, what if you hated all the monorail resorts...are you still going to stay there because of the monorail? Something tells me no). If the monorail was all it required to make a resort more expensive, do you really think they'd put all those other things in place knowing that people would drop all that money because of the transportation? I don't think so. When Disney is still providing everything they promised for that particular resort (and the monorail is not a promised amenity of the resort), then no, the right to a discount doesn't exist. Especially when you can't even take the monorail to more than a couple of parks and a couple other resorts (so exactly what other means of transportation are you taking that is so exciting as your vacation to get to places like MGM, AK, and DTD? Does Disney offer you a free limo or something or do you exclusively go to Epcot and MK to avoid taking such "dull and dreary" means of transportation).

Sorry, but your arguments are just not convincing. When there are so many varying factors (including such a wide range of price gaps even between actual monorail resorts), there's absolutely no way that the only reason or even the primary reason why a resort cost is so high is because of the monorail alone. I mean going by your logic, should I then expect a discount admission at Epcot if the monorail is down and I can't take it from the MK? I mean after all, the monorail does stop there and the MK and Epcot are both monorail parks....

 

[mking624]

View of the Castle and Fireworks isn't listed as an Amenity for the MK resorts either. That doesn't mean it isn't factored into the price.

They are known as preferred rooms...and you know upfront that the cost of a preferred room is higher. That said, if hypothetically the preferred room wasn't available, would you then demand a discount on a room that was available? Disney isn't likely to give a discount just because the room you originally wanted wasn't available.

ETA: I'm bowing out because apparently even actual price and amenity differences with a resort isn't enough to prove that there's more to a resort than its means of transportation. It honestly amuses me that people have such a mentality of entitlement because of the transportation that is ridden for free by ANY resort guest...not just the guest of a specific resort.

 

[Another Voice]

Is it an official amenity of the resort? No.[/qupte]
I forgot – which section of the Constitution lists what is an official amenity?

Sorry, but there’s a basic rule of the free market that when the money is in my pocket that I get to decide what’s important to me and what isn’t. It’s a fact that Disney – and sadly most of the fanbase – have forgotten. The whole idea of charging more and offering less might work on the people who are dazzled by snowglobes and like to dress up their cats in princess costumes, but the normal public actually expects to get what they paid for (something Disney has a real hard time offering lately).

When a normal person gets there vacation video and sees twenty-eight shots of a gleaming monorail whisking the advertisingly correct “family” about – that’s kinda of what Joe Sixpack expects. If he shows up and is told to stand in the back of a vomit-smelling bus without air conditioning while Jason Yuppielarva cries his head off because Aunt Twoton just sat and crushed his Winnie the Pooh plush ($49.95) – they have every right to be upset.

I think it’s just a sign of how far the “fans” have grown away from the average guest that some are demanding we accept whatever Disney gives us without question. One only has to look at the attendance at California Adventure to how well that attitude works.

Does Disney offer you a free limo or something…

I’ve had cast members at the front desk of four different resorts tell me to take cabs instead waiting for the bus. If WDW itself thinks their busses are bad, maybe you ought to rethink “amenity”. And actually, when I took a “class” at the Disney Institute, they paid for the cab from the Yacht Club.

or do you exclusively go to Epcot and MK to avoid taking such "dull and dreary" means of transportation

Looking at the attendance figures there seem to be millions and millions and millions of other people that don’t ride the bus to Animal Kingdom either.

because of the transportation that is ridden for free by ANY resort guest

Pray tell, what charity runs the monorails? I had always assumed that part of the five hundred a night that I cough up for the hotel room helped pay for the monorail. Or even a piece of the seventy bucks a day to get into the parks. All these years I thought Disney was a business...

Maybe they should be put those coin collecting charity boxes on the busses.

 

[DancingBear]

I'm not a huge anti-bus guy, but I wnat to point out that if you go to the page on the official site for Grand Floridian (or any other monorail resort), although "monorail" is not listed in the "amenities" list, there is a separate heading for "Transportation" that says this resort is served by the monorail (and buses and boats). So it certainly is a selling point (witness the early posters to this thread that consider the existence of the monorail to be important to their resort choice).

http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/wdw/resorts/resortLanding?id=GrandFloridianResortLandingPage

 

[Allan]

Just because it doesn't measure up to your standards and expectations doesn't mean they're not providing (for free) a way to get to a park and/or resort.

He has those standards and expectations because it is advertised as such. If monorail service were added to Pop Century, do you believe room price and demand would remain the same? If guests arrived subsuquently expecting that service only to find it wasn't operating during their stay should they be expected to pay the full price?

The whole idea of charging more and offering less might work on the people who are dazzled by snowglobes and like to dress up their cats in princess costumes, but the normal public actually expects to get what they paid for (something Disney has a real hard time offering lately).

And there appears to be a steady increase in the number of royal kitties these days! If you expect less from a large corporation they will do everything in their power to deliver.

 

[YoHo]

They are known as preferred rooms...and you know upfront that the cost of a preferred room is higher. That said, if hypothetically the preferred room wasn't available, would you then demand a discount on a room that was available? Disney isn't likely to give a discount just because the room you originally wanted wasn't available.

I wouldn't demand a Discount, because they wouldn't be charging me the same price, they'd charge me the price for a Garden view instead. If they tried to make me pay for the room with a view and then give me a room without a view, then you're damn right I would complain....loudly.....to a manager.

 

[mjstaceyuofm]

Sorry, but there’s a basic rule of the free market that when the money is in my pocket that I get to decide what’s important to me and what isn’t. It’s a fact that Disney – and sadly most of the fanbase – have forgotten. The whole idea of charging more and offering less might work on the people who are dazzled by snowglobes and like to dress up their cats in princess costumes, but the normal public actually expects to get what they paid for (something Disney has a real hard time offering lately).

When a normal person gets there vacation video and sees twenty-eight shots of a gleaming monorail whisking the advertisingly correct “family” about – that’s kinda of what Joe Sixpack expects. If he shows up and is told to stand in the back of a vomit-smelling bus without air conditioning while Jason Yuppielarva cries his head off because Aunt Twoton just sat and crushed his Winnie the Pooh plush ($49.95) – they have every right to be upset.

I think it’s just a sign of how far the “fans” have grown away from the average guest that some are demanding we accept whatever Disney gives us without question. One only has to look at the attendance at California Adventure to how well that attitude works.


I’ve had cast members at the front desk of four different resorts tell me to take cabs instead waiting for the bus. If WDW itself thinks their busses are bad, maybe you ought to rethink “amenity”. And actually, when I took a “class” at the Disney Institute, they paid for the cab from the Yacht Club.


Looking at the attendance figures there seem to be millions and millions and millions of other people that don’t ride the bus to Animal Kingdom either.


Pray tell, what charity runs the monorails? I had always assumed that part of the five hundred a night that I cough up for the hotel room helped pay for the monorail. Or even a piece of the seventy bucks a day to get into the parks. All these years I thought Disney was a business...

Maybe they should be put those coin collecting charity boxes on the busses.

Boy AV... Could you once make your point without insulting Joe Sixpack? (Or the rest of us average Disney fans for that matter?) Not everyone has to know the inner workings and history of Disney to an exacting degree to enjoy a vacation there. Nor do you have to exclusively like monorails over the buses to be considered a *true* fan. I don't mind the buses - maybe it is because am from DETROIT. I've never had an issue with the AC not working or the bus smelling like vomit.... In fact, in my own personal experiences, I've often thought the monorail had more of a funky smell to them than the buses. More often than not any *smells* aboard a bus or monorail have more to do with the cleanliness of "Joe Sixpack" than the actual machinery itself... You have such good points to make and are knowledgeable about many things Disney, but you stumble in your delivery of the argument by hurling insults. It ruins your credibility.

I've never had a CM tell me to take a cab vs. taking the bus.... Maybe it's because I've never complained to a CM about the bus service before.

 

[DancingBear]

For the record, although A-V and I have disagreed on many things over the years, I hope that his posts do not become less colorful. Don't take it personally, just enjoy the read.

 

[YoHo]

Joe Six pack smells funny.

 

[manning]

You have to forgive Anothervoice. He suffers from .. you got what you paid for ..that was experienced back in the beginning.

Anything to that rumor about the cutbacks at the resorts....they are taking a bed out of each room so they can hire less maids.

 

[raidermatt]

mking, all you're really doing is highlighting the fact that different aspects of the resorts mean different things to different people.

V&A adds absolutely nothing to the value of the GF for me (A) because I doubt I will ever care to eat there, and (B) I can still eat there if I stay somewhere else. The spa does nothing for me as well, for the same reasons. The monorail, on the other hand, would absolutely be a factor if I booked at a monorail resort. To a lesser extent, the boats are a factor in what I think the BW area resorts are worth.

You can't tell me I'm wrong, because its a personal preference. Just like I can't tell someone else they are wrong if they view V&A or the spa as reason to pay more for the GF.

Whether they are listed as amenities, features, or simply modes of transportation is merely semantics. The guest or potential guest determines what they they are willing to pay and why.

So regardless of what each of us would do, there are most certainly a number of guests who would either not want to book during that time, or who would not be willing to pay as much, no matter what the monorail is listed as. Just as some would react the same way if V&A's or the spa were closed.

You have such good points to make and are knowledgeable about many things Disney, but you stumble in your delivery of the argument by hurling insults. It ruins your credibility.

Whether one views his takes as credible is actually their choice. Just as you point out not every guest minds the busses, not every reader focuses on the hyperbole instead of the point.

I've never had a CM tell me to take a cab vs. taking the bus.... Maybe it's because I've never complained to a CM about the bus service before.

He didn't say every guest had been told this. Just that he had. Nor did he say it was while complaining about the bus service.

For example, both my wife and I have been told the very same thing as AV mentioned, and on neither occasion were we complaining. I was asking about the best way to get to Hoop Dee Doo, and my wife on the best way to get to the Saratoga Springs Spa. In both cases we were told with no uncertainty that a cab was the way to go.

True, there are no direct routes to those places from the BW resorts (where we were staying on both occasions), but that is part of the problem.

And while I don't have the same aversion to the busses as Joe Six Pack, I can definitely say they are not my favorite form of transportation. No, they aren't as bad as the urban transit busses I have been on, but that's hardly the standard I'm looking for at WDW.

 

[Another Voice]

…but you stumble in your delivery of the argument by hurling insults.

I prefer to think of it as painting an evocative mental image.

The scene on the bus is something that happened to me about five years ago. I could go on and talk about the time the driver skipped the stop at Typhoon Lagoon “to keep on schedule”, or the time the driver left a bus load of people at Downtown Disney at midnight so he could go on his break (he did come back twenty minutes later), or the time we got lost on the way to the Wilderness Lodge.

I have every respect for Joe Sixpack. He and his family are why I hang around here. I believe that Disney and the “true Disney fan” have forgotten what it’s like for the vast majority of guests at WDW. Disney has spent so many years chasing the easy money of the frequent visitor that they have lost touch with the wants and desires of the average visitor; the “true fan” is so wrapped up in their own fantasy bubble that they assume WDW is a private club just for their “right kind of people”.

Disney didn’t get where it did by offering what everyone else offered or by focusing on the needs of a small collection of fanatics. What made WDW is successful, what made WDW a place that millions and millions of people wanted to visit was that it was so unique. It was a place that you rode monorails while everywhere else had you riding in busses. It was a place that had attractions so beyond what anyone had that thought possible that they truly seemed like magic. It was the other places called themselves “Dino-rama” and offered dressed-up carnival rides.

Yea, the fan will scream about “feeling the magic the moment I drive onto the property” – but that’s not a normal person’s reaction. Most normal people don’t get their self-esteem from a brand’s embrace; they don’t get warm and fuzzy seeing a guy in a rubber mouse costume. The “fan” doesn’t get upset when ‘The Wonders of Life’ is closed because they’ve ridden ‘Body Wars’ 300 times. But Joe Sixpack walks around the park and wonders why so many buildings are empty when he plunked down $300 bucks for his tickets.

Most fans don’t care about Joe Sixpack. But that’s a problem. There are a lot more Joe’s out there than there are DVC owners. Without them, Disney ain’t nothing. The fans loved shopping at The Disney Store, but Joe said it offered nothing but cheap princess dresses. The Disney Stores were given away. Fans thought Atlantis was a wonderful movie, Joe thought it was a boring mess. Now there’s no Disney Feature Animation. The fans said California Adventure was a swell place for an entire day; Joe thought it was a cheap, empty amusement park. Now all of Disney’s parks have their capital budgets slashed to pay for that sink hole in Anaheim.

So in the end it’s important that “fans” stop making excuses (“it’s not an official amenity”) and start holding Disney up to standards. There is nothing that mandates Disney will always be successful. It’s up the public to make that call.

I've never had a CM tell me to take a cab vs. taking the bus.

The first time I asked the front desk at the Contemporary they had a direct bus from the TTC to the Coronado Springs resort (I figured I could take the monorail and catch the bus). They told me to take a cab. The second time I was waiting for the bus at the Wilderness Lodge. A cast member walked by and I asked what time it was (I refuse to wear a watch on vacation). They asked where I was going to, I said Pleasure Island. She said take a cab because it will be quicker. Another time I was trying to leave the Disney Institute. The people there said take a cab. The last time was actually at Epcot. I was traveling with several people, two of whom were in wheelchairs. The bus driver said she’d only take one at a time – I said we didn’t want to be split up. She said we should take a cab then.

 

[mjstaceyuofm]

Well said AV. I said I don't mind the buses, not that I like them. The last few times we've gone we've rented a car. We'll use the bus/resort transportation at peak times to get to/from parks when the bus system typically does run smooth and at decent intervals. I think Disney does a decent job with that (at least that's been my experience at OKW since 1999). Resort to resort or to/from the waterparks or places like DTD or mini-golf, we typically use the rental car. You could waste hours hitching a ride to DTD and then to a resort or to venture to out of the way places such as Fort Wilderness (HDD Revue). Not magical at all.

Sorry about the credibility quip - the whole don't insult your opponent/audience goes back to HS and college debate classes. You want people to focus on your substance and delivery, not an insult. People will drone out the message if they focus on the insult.

 

[freediverdude]

Oh my gosh, AV's posts have me laughing so hard I know this thread is starting to get like WAY off topic, but I just wanted to add, the Contemporary has some plusses that the GF doesn't have too. Try walking out in the rain the equivalent of 2 blocks to get to the GF fitness center some afternoon instead of just taking the elevator to the 3rd floor of the Contemporary. Try walking out in the rain or any harsh weather from all of the rooms at the GF except the main building, to get to the main building and monorail, versus walking inside the building (or under a short covered walkway) to the air-conditioned/heated monorail station at the Contemporary. Does the GF have a Racquet Club? Does the GF have the Sammy Duval water sports, including parasailing and waterskiing? Does the GF have a boat over to the Wilderness Lodge and Ft. Wilderness right from it's dock? If you take out the standard view rooms in the wing buildings from the picture, which are priced lower because they are directly on a parking lot, the rest of the rooms are a lot more comparably priced with the other monorail resorts.
But anyway, yes, I agree that Disney should have developed a better transportation system at the same time that they were building all these resorts. Buses are not magical, and now it's going to take a lot more money to implement a new transportation system if they do implement one (which I think they should).