Rivers of Light opening delayed

[LaidBackDad]

I really think you are exaggerating this. RoL delay is disappointing yes but it's not a public debacle. It has not tarnished the company image if anything is doing that it's ESPN and Shanghai. People aren't cancelling trips because RoL is delayed. Yes it's a problem but only a small one. This isn't something like Disney closing a theme park because of a delay or something. This is nowhere near brand suicide. You are looking way to far into this delay. It happens it's okay.

Definitely agree to disagree on the exaggeration. There is a 500+ page thread on another page filled with people who I think would tend to side with me on whether or not the delay is a big deal or not. The problem is you don't have to be a DISer to be disappointed about the delay and wonder what the heck is going on with the folks at Disney and why they won't get their act together? That's a bad look for the COO.

 

[Nancyg56]

The delay is the failure. A public debacle, that tarnished the magical image of the company. No ones life were ruined, or lives changed because they won't see RoL when they thought they were going to. It did however, make their vacations a little less magical than they thought it was going to be. That is getting close to brand suicide; or, at least not inspiring the kind of confidence you want in a future CEO, or being just another company. We aren't even talking about "what ifs". What if they can't fix the technical issues, or if the issues drag on for months or longer? The delay is a much bigger issue than some people want to admit.

I doubt that this is an epic fail, and I really do not think it is a public debacle and does not come close to brand suicide. Now if during the creation of ROL, animals had been hurt or abused...yes...brand suicide. But a delay in the opening of a piece of entertainment? Outside of Disney fan pages, not many people even think about ROL, never mind who are so invested in it's opening on time that the Disney image is tarnished even a little.

To be honest, as much as I enjoy AK, and as much as I am looking forward to all of the new attractions and entertainment that will be offered there, this is a non issue for me. I am much more critical of the moneys spent outside of the US Disney parks that have impacted and will impact Disney's image. All of the upcharges, reduced hours and staffing, and increases across the board are more troubling than a delay in one park.

If I can speculate, I would say that the financial drain is much more profound than anyone has been led to believe, and Mr. Skaggs is the Scapegoat in Chief who will be blamed. But Disney will say "He is gone, problem solved."

 

[Nancyg56]

I'm not convinced that the Disney Board sees the need for a fall guy at all. I think they are perfectly happy with the way the company is going.

I'm much more inclined to believe this is just the usual corporate level politicking. Staggs would hardly the first senior executive to be cast by the wayside because he didn't mesh with the corporate vision.

Yep, it could be as simple as he was not a good fit. He would not be the first one, would he?

 

[rteetz]

Definitely agree to disagree on the exaggeration. There is a 500+ page thread on another page filled with people who I think would tend to side with me on whether or not the delay is a big deal or not. The problem is you don't have to be a DISer to be disappointed about the delay and wonder what the heck is going on with the folks at Disney and why they won't get their act together? That's a bad look for the COO.

I know about the thread I participate in it and gave a lot of info regarding why it's delayed even before the official announcement. Yes those people are disappointed but if you haven't noticed they have all moved on and are still very excited about their trips none of them have cancelled or anything. You are definitely over exaggerating this. Nothing, absolutely nothing I have seen or read lists RoL as something that made staggs leave.

 

[LaidBackDad]

I know about the thread I participate in it and gave a lot of info regarding why it's delayed even before the official announcement. Yes those people are disappointed but if you haven't noticed they have all moved on and are still very excited about their trips none of them have cancelled or anything. You are definitely over exaggerating this. Nothing, absolutely nothing I have seen or read lists RoL as something that made staggs leave.

People move on because there isn't anything else they can do about it. That doesn't mean they still aren't disappointed or wonder about the competency of people running the company when they have the rug pulled out from under a major part of their vacation plans. In the grand scope of life, no it's not such a big deal. In the bigger picture of how big businesses run, it is a huge deal. If you don't meet a deadlines, you make mistakes that leave disappointed customers, or you generally fail to deliver on assigned projects and cost the company money, you don't end up in that job for long. Unless Iger or board members send out a press release or write a tell all book years from now, all we really can do is speculate or listen to whispers from unnamed sources as to what really happened. Other than that it's about reading in between the lines and making your own judgments. After all, outside the Disney bubble, who really cares the COO resigned anyways?

 

[rteetz]

People move on because there isn't anything else they can do about it. That doesn't mean they still aren't disappointed or wonder about the competency of people running the company when they have the rug pulled out from under a major part of their vacation plans. In the grand scope of life, no it's not such a big deal. In the bigger picture of how big businesses run, it is a huge deal. If you don't meet a deadlines, you make mistakes that leave disappointed customers, or you generally fail to deliver on assigned projects and cost the company money, you don't end up in that job for long. Unless Iger or board members send out a press release or write a tell all book years from now, all we really can do is speculate or listen to whispers from unnamed sources as to what really happened. Other than that it's about reading in between the lines and making your own judgments. After all, outside the Disney bubble, who really cares the COO resigned anyways?

If people aren't cancelling vacations over RoL Disney isn't losing money and everything is going to be okay. Your point is that this is some sort of catastrophic problem because the show was delayed when in fact it absolutely wasn't.

Those people are more worried about the cuts taking place due to Shanghai. To ignore that is just wrong.

Disney is a huge business. This really isn't a "huge" deal in the grand scheme of things as long as it debuts later this year like it's supposed to. Again remember test track.

After all who cares about the COO outside of the Disney bubble? Wall Street sure does. When he announced his resignation Disney stock dropped and that's one thing the Disney CEO cares most about more than anything.

 

[LaidBackDad]

If people aren't cancelling vacations over RoL Disney isn't losing money and everything is going to be okay. Your point is that this is some sort of catastrophic problem because the show was delayed when in fact it absolutely wasn't.

Those people are more worried about the cuts taking place due to Shanghai. To ignore that is just wrong.

Disney is a huge business. This really isn't a "huge" deal in the grand scheme of things as long as it debuts later this year like it's supposed to. Again remember test track.

After all who cares about the COO outside of the Disney bubble? Wall Street sure does. When he announced his resignation Disney stock dropped and that's one thing the Disney CEO cares most about more than anything.

People aren't cancelling there vacations to WDW because of bad news out of Shanghai either. That's kinda a silly statement. I would be willing to wager 99.9% of people who vacation at WDW don't have the slightest idea what the problems in Shanghai are. Absolutely it has effected the company and Staggs reputation but that has nothing to do people spending money on vacation. Will people cancel vacation plans they have already made and paid for because of RoL delay? Probably not, but, I wouldn't doubt others have at least delayed booking trips, and I wouldn't rule out that some have cancelled. In terms of disastrous screw ups, it's hard to top the delay. You have to look at what is really happening. Yes, they actually closed one of the parks. AK was supposed to have extended hours in a few weeks, now it's remaining closed. What if they close AK half the day because the Yeti wasn't working on EE? The PR people will never admit they are spending an inordinate amount of time on the RoL fiasco, but, you know they are.

The stock dipped because the COO of a major company resigned because of serious operational issues under his purview and the companies lack of confidence in him. The major issue was, why couldn't they open a park on time in the largest vacation destination in the world. Such a public embarrassment and reaction is more likely what Wall Street reacted to.

 

[rteetz]

People aren't cancelling there vacations to WDW because of bad news out of Shanghai either. That's kinda a silly statement. I would be willing to wager 99.9% of people who vacation at WDW don't have the slightest idea what the problems in Shanghai are. Absolutely it has effected the company and Staggs reputation but that has nothing to do people spending money on vacation. Will people cancel vacation plans they have already made and paid for because of RoL delay? Probably not, but, I wouldn't doubt others have at least delayed booking trips, and I wouldn't rule out that some have cancelled. In terms of disastrous screw ups, it's hard to top the delay. You have to look at what is really happening. Yes, they actually closed one of the parks. AK was supposed to have extended hours in a few weeks, now it's remaining closed. What if they close AK half the day because the Yeti wasn't working on EE? The PR people will never admit they are spending an inordinate amount of time on the RoL fiasco, but, you know they are.

The stock dipped because the COO of a major company resigned because of serious operational issues under his purview and the companies lack of confidence in him. The major issue was, why couldn't they open a park on time in the largest vacation destination in the world. Such a public embarrassment and reaction is more likely what Wall Street reacted to.

I never said people were cancelling trips because of Shanghai.

Disney has topped this delay. It was called test track. Sure some might have delayed trips but they are still going to Disney. If they cancelled a trip due to this that's just silly in my opinion.

Since AK opened in 1998 it's never been open as long as the other parks. Delaying that a month or two doesn't change anything that they did before. You can see they are spending time on the RoL. It's been testing during the day something that should never be done.

No Wall Street doesn't even likely know or care about what RoL is. They know about Shanghai though and they know about ESPN. You can tell that's the case from every single article that has been written on the Staggs departure.

 

[LSLS]

People aren't cancelling there vacations to WDW because of bad news out of Shanghai either. That's kinda a silly statement. I would be willing to wager 99.9% of people who vacation at WDW don't have the slightest idea what the problems in Shanghai are. Absolutely it has effected the company and Staggs reputation but that has nothing to do people spending money on vacation. Will people cancel vacation plans they have already made and paid for because of RoL delay? Probably not, but, I wouldn't doubt others have at least delayed booking trips, and I wouldn't rule out that some have cancelled. In terms of disastrous screw ups, it's hard to top the delay. You have to look at what is really happening. Yes, they actually closed one of the parks. AK was supposed to have extended hours in a few weeks, now it's remaining closed. What if they close AK half the day because the Yeti wasn't working on EE? The PR people will never admit they are spending an inordinate amount of time on the RoL fiasco, but, you know they are.

The stock dipped because the COO of a major company resigned because of serious operational issues under his purview and the companies lack of confidence in him. The major issue was, why couldn't they open a park on time in the largest vacation destination in the world. Such a public embarrassment and reaction is more likely what Wall Street reacted to.

Of course people aren't not going to Disney World because of Shanghai (well, I take that back, you can find lots of posts of people cancelling trips due to budget cuts, but different story). These are two different things. Shanghai is $800 mil over budget with no revenue coming in. Wdw is taking no hit to it's current revenue when people are still coming out despite the missed opening date (they could take a hit to their forecasted revenues if the forecasts included a hard opening date of April 22, but that's only assuming they had created their forecasts with that specific date). Animal Kingdom (and especially WDW) is still making money. Shanghai is not. That is why in the grand scheme people say that RoL being delayed is not a massive deal with huge ramifications. RoL not opening is not putting the books in the red (aside from the construction which would be going on regardless of if they had made their announcement of a firm opening date). Shanghai on the other hand is all red. Look, the day after the announcement of the delay, the stock price went up. I can't imagine there was too much worry about this being an epic fail or being a massive hit on revenue.

 

[LaidBackDad]

Of course people aren't not going to Disney World because of Shanghai (well, I take that back, you can find lots of posts of people cancelling trips due to budget cuts, but different story). These are two different things. Shanghai is $800 mil over budget with no revenue coming in. Wdw is taking no hit to it's current revenue when people are still coming out despite the missed opening date (they could take a hit to their forecasted revenues if the forecasts included a hard opening date of April 22, but that's only assuming they had created their forecasts with that specific date). Animal Kingdom (and especially WDW) is still making money. Shanghai is not. That is why in the grand scheme people say that RoL being delayed is not a massive deal with huge ramifications. RoL not opening is not putting the books in the red (aside from the construction which would be going on regardless of if they had made their announcement of a firm opening date). Shanghai on the other hand is all red. Look, the day after the announcement of the delay, the stock price went up. I can't imagine there was too much worry about this being an epic fail or being a massive hit on revenue.

Of course this is all true but misses the point. Not once have I denied how all of those things contributed to the eroded confidence in Staggs. What is missing is that ESPN and Shanghai are all relatively old news to those who pay attention to those things and relatively unknown to the broader public and especially those concerned about their family vacations plans. If a resignation was solely because of ESPN and Shanghai then it could have happened anytime over the last several months. It wasn't until they had the largest public relations disaster since the Griswold's arrived at WallyWorld that action was finally taken (Sorry folks, the Moose / Mouse out front should have told ya. The parks closed.) While it isn't the massive money drain the other things are, it is still undeniably lost revenue. What's makes it worse is that the disaster occurred in full view of a broader base of its core customers. That kind of black eye to the brand is harder to recover from than all of the other things you mentioned combined. He absorbed the financial hits and still remained. The public failure of one of your most visible projects is a tough nut to swallow. You can't have a COO that embarrasses your company and the perception of the broader public is that Staggs failed.

 

[rteetz]

Of course this is all true but misses the point. Not once have I denied how all of those things contributed to the eroded confidence in Staggs. What is missing is that ESPN and Shanghai are all relatively old news to those who pay attention to those things and relatively unknown to the broader public and especially those concerned about their family vacations plans. If a resignation was solely because of ESPN and Shanghai then it could have happened anytime over the last several months. It wasn't until they had the largest public relations disaster since the Griswold's arrived at WallyWorld that action was finally taken (Sorry folks, the Moose / Mouse out front should have told ya. The parks closed.) While it isn't the massive money drain the other things are, it is still undeniably lost revenue. What's makes it worse is that the disaster occurred in full view of a broader base of its core customers. That kind of black eye to the brand is harder to recover from than all of the other things you mentioned combined. He absorbed the financial hits and still remained. The public failure of one of your most visible projects is a tough nut to swallow. You can't have a COO that embarrasses your company and the perception of the broader public is that Staggs failed.

ESPN and Shanghai are not old news they are both still very fluid situations.

 

[shakes]

Not sure if I agree on how big of a "disaster" Rol not opening is in terms on disney's image. I live three hours away. Most of the people on my kids baseball team go multiple times a year/have annual passes. While watching the kids take 30 minutes each to finally hit a ball, I asked what they thought about Rol being delayed. They had no idea what I was talking about. I had to explain what Rol was and how Ak is supposed to be open later. They were excited to hear about it but weren't in the know. To me Disney really didn't market it well.

Yes everyone on the boards is irritated, myself included, but I seriously wonder what percentage of Disney patrons read fan sites such as this to even know to get upset about it.

 

[LSLS]

If it was such a huge issue, stocks would reflect that. Some insider would point to this as having some sort of an impact on something. The guy was involved in a $5.5 billion project that was $800 mil over budget and bringing in no revenue. There is no way the board would make missing a projected opening on a tiny project that will have very little if any impact on revenue the final straw. And I mean come on, it's nowhere near the PR disaster you are making it out to be. Once again, stocks and attendance would reflect this. People are disappointed. Disappointed does not equate to a PR disaster. Blackfish was a PR disaster. A PR disaster means people will no longer go. Core fans are not alienated from this. There is much more alienation from the rise in tickets/cuts in cast/rise in food costs. Heck a question on a survey about "What if there was a Resort Fee" caused a bigger PR backlash. The only way this could blow up at all is if it comes out that somehow this delay is due to budget cuts.

 

[LaidBackDad]

You all keep trying to find the smoking gun. There probably isn't one. The simplest answer is usually the correct one. It didn't need to be a the biggest PR nightmare like Blackfish with Staggs track record. Plus, do you really have any doubt the delay is entirely budget related. You realize "technical issues" is code for "we didn't have enough resources to do things right in the first place so now we are scrambling to fix things at the last second". People aren't going to stop going to WDW over this. When / if RoL is finished, people will turn out in droves like nothing ever happened; but, the damage done cannot be understated. It's quite possible Staggs didn't think delaying RoL was that big of a deal either and that's why he is gone.

 

[rteetz]

You all keep trying to find the smoking gun. There probably isn't one. The simplest answer is usually the correct one. It didn't need to be a the biggest PR nightmare like Blackfish with Staggs track record. Plus, do you really have any doubt the delay is entirely budget related. You realize "technical issues" is code for "we didn't have enough resources to do things right in the first place so now we are scrambling to fix things at the last second". People aren't going to stop going to WDW over this. When / if RoL is finished, people will turn out in droves like nothing ever happened; but, the damage done cannot be understated. It's quite possible Staggs didn't think delaying RoL was that big of a deal either and that's why he is gone.

How can you compare this to blackfish? This is completely different. At this point I am done with this discussion because you simply cannot compare delaying RoL to Blackfish and SeaWorld.

 

[Eoghann]

You all keep trying to find the smoking gun. There probably isn't one. The simplest answer is usually the correct one. It didn't need to be a the biggest PR nightmare like Blackfish with Staggs track record. Plus, do you really have any doubt the delay is entirely budget related. You realize "technical issues" is code for "we didn't have enough resources to do things right in the first place so now we are scrambling to fix things at the last second". People aren't going to stop going to WDW over this. When / if RoL is finished, people will turn out in droves like nothing ever happened; but, the damage done cannot be understated. It's quite possible Staggs didn't think delaying RoL was that big of a deal either and that's why he is gone.

But yours isn't the simplest answer. That's pretty much the point that I and others have been repeatedly making. You're stretching desperately to make a connection when there's not a jot of evidence it exists.

And no I tend to think the RoL issue was technical. If it was budget they'd never have announced that start date.

You keep trying to make everything connect together. Sometimes things are just separate events.

 

[LaidBackDad]

How can you compare this to blackfish? This is completely different. At this point I am done with this discussion because you simply cannot compare delaying RoL to Blackfish and SeaWorld.

For the record I didn't compare it to Blackfish, that was LSLS. I compared it to National Lampoons Vacation. That said, both companies lost high level executives over operational issues. It's very hard to deny to the timing was more than a coincidence when the COO resigns at nearly the exact same time the company had a humiliating operational problem. It's nearly impossible for them to be unrelated.

 

[rteetz]

For the record I didn't compare it to Blackfish, that was LSLS. I compared it to National Lampoons Vacation. That said, both companies lost high level executives over operational issues. It's very hard to deny to the timing was more than a coincidence when the COO resigns at nearly the exact same time the company had a humiliating operational problem. It's nearly impossible for them to be unrelated.

Disney didn't lose a high level executive over an operational issue.

 

[LSLS]

For the record I didn't compare it to Blackfish, that was LSLS. I compared it to National Lampoons Vacation. That said, both companies lost high level executives over operational issues. It's very hard to deny to the timing was more than a coincidence when the COO resigns at nearly the exact same time the company had a humiliating operational problem. It's nearly impossible for them to be unrelated.

I only compared the two to show what a true PR disaster is. Point is RoL not opening at the scheduled time is not a PR Disaster, Blackfish was.

FYI Staggs leaving also coincides with a Security guard at Disney being arrested in a sex sting and DVC eliminating the perks for buying resale, but I highly doubt those had any influence on the COO being fired. Like Egohann stated, coincidence is not causation. The simplist explanation is the one most are reporting. It was politicing.

 

[LaidBackDad]

I only compared the two to show what a true PR disaster is. Point is RoL not opening at the scheduled time is not a PR Disaster, Blackfish was.

FYI Staggs leaving also coincides with a Security guard at Disney being arrested in a sex sting and DVC eliminating the perks for buying resale, but I highly doubt those had any influence on the COO being fired. Like Egohann stated, coincidence is not causation. The simplist explanation is the one most are reporting. It was politicing.

There are different types of PR disasters. Blackfish was worse from a moral stand point. RoL was worse in terms of guest satisfaction or confidence. The Blackfish controversy was spearheaded by a very small, well funded, minority. The overwhelming majority of guest could have cared less about the plight of the whales for the entire history of Sea Worlds existence. Most people still don't care or think the treatment of the whales is that big of a deal. The RoL effects nearly every WDW customer. Blackfish made execs look cold and heartless. RoL makes execs look incompetent and uncaring about guest experiences. They are not the same but ultimately had the same effect, in Disney's case, Staggs resigned. My point isn't to compare the two, just that execs don't get to pick what they think should be a PR disaster. No way Iger or the board were okay with the RoL delay. It's a way bigger deal than some people want to admit.