Originally Posted By AutoPost This topic is for Discussion of: <a href="http://www.laughingplace.com/w/article/2013/12/05/christmas-at-the-magic-kingdom-including-castle-dream-lights/" target="_blank"><b>12/5/13: Christmas at the Magic Kingdom Including Castle Dream Lights</b></a>
Originally Posted By TDLFAN Castle Lights are nice. Where I have an issue is with the corny show that precedes it. Horrible and with too much blah blah blah. Just get to the point and light up the castle already. Take a cue from DLParis' more elegant character-less approach. And it's also time for the MK to spend some money on new decorations and state of the art lighting to create wow effects like those used in the new DLParis Xmas tree and lighting show. All other Disneyland parks have one UP over the MK when it comes to Xmas decor. And yeah.. same xmas parade this year.. big yawn.
Originally Posted By sjhym333 I guess I am confused at this point TDLFan. Why keep going back if it all is so terrible?
Originally Posted By Mickeymouseclub But he knows the truth about Disney property. I guess it just depends upon speaking an emotional truth or intellectual truth. My emotions have spent a lot of money at Disney over the last 10 years. My intellect tells me it is time for a change. WDW has really changed in ways that I find boring= character meetngreets and Magic Bands in particular. I wish we could all discuss on LP without making personal remarks. I like to hear the good and the bad about Disney; Not so much about people I don't really know on a discussion forum.
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORWEN: I wouldn't fault Disney Management for the way they handle character meeting and greetings, though. Back in the day before the parks were as popular as they are, now, it was easier for characters to roam around for those spontaneous photos. But now days they'd be mobbed to death by an over-zealous public so Disney HAD to come up with some way of creating specific areas for guests to meet them all. I do agree they shouldn't replace existing attractions, though--not when it would be just as easy to build a special area for them.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I do blame management for the problem, since it's their fault in large part. The marketing department has pushed character meet & greets for years, despite them having an incredibly low capacity; an E ticket can easily pull 1,000 riders in an hour but most meet & greets struggle to get 100 guests through, due simply to their nature Yes, they're unique experiences and can be a lot of fun. But at the same time if you know that you'll never be able to have a huge quantity of guests experience it, don't feature it in every single advertisement; if it's really popular, they'll continue to bring in the crowds regardless of advertising. When was the last time you saw them advertise Le Cellier or Victoria & Albert's? Yes, they've done a reasonably good job controlling them, but it still baffles me that there is such a huge focus on things that only a tiny portion of guests will actually be able to experience And for the record, I just like to complain
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORDDU: We get that. ORWEN: Ferret, I don't think you realize just how popular the Disney characters are because if they weren't wildly popular Disney wouldn't go to the trouble to make room for them. ORGOCH: Got autograph books?
Originally Posted By Mickeymouseclub Back on topic ===Has anybody been lucky enough to see the new Castle Show and fireworks for the Holidays? My last trip was for Halloween so I am guessing it is kinda the same with new Frozen and holiday projections with holiday music. I do love that they take the time to show respect to Walt Disney in this modern artistic interpretation. I wonder if the narration length is needed to settle crowds down at WDW and check safety features imbetween the duration. I like to think there is a reason and logic behind everything in life. Just looking for the puzzle pieces to make sense as I search for the answer to a question I haven't quite figured out yet .
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>ORWEN: Ferret, I don't think you realize just how popular the Disney characters are because if they weren't wildly popular Disney wouldn't go to the trouble to make room for them.<< I know that they're incredibly popular with a certain population of guests. Tons of people are willing to wait for an hour or more for a quick interaction with them. But why are they so popular? Is it because the experience of spending a few minutes with a 20-something in a costume is really that great? Or because, through years of marketing, they've decided it's some rite of passage that everybody must do while they're at the parks? I think it's a little bit of both, but given how much mroe popular the characters are now than they were ~10 years ago, I have to think that the marketing has played a big role in it And yes, they're creating dedicated character spaces in the parks, but all things considered they really don't take up much space. They're mostly in underutilized corners of the parks that really couldn't serve any useful purpose otherwise. I guess some of them like the Belle experience are fairly large, but most of them (Frozen in DL, Character Conenction in Epcot) are in awkward spots
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>Has anybody been lucky enough to see the new Castle Show and fireworks for the Holidays? My last trip was for Halloween so I am guessing it is kinda the same with new Frozen and holiday projections with holiday music.<< I haven't seen the show, but does it have different seasonal variations? I know the old castle projection show had parts that changed throughout the year, but I was under the impression that the current version was designed to be permanent. I would guess that the Frozen segment is probably like the Peace On Earth tag to Illuminations, and will be removed once the film leaves theaters and/or after the holidays
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORDDU: Disney really SHOULD market their movies and characters. It would be insane of them not to. It all started with a mouse and that just the way it's always been. Walt marketed Mickey all over the place and most Disney fans seem to approve. If you don't like the characters you're in the wrong park.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I'm not saying that they shouldn't advertise their characters or movies, but that the character experiences shouldn't be as big of a focus of the advertisements for the parks. How many commercials include a small child giving a character a hug? Nearly all of them. The corn dog wagon on Main Street and the Dole Whip stand in Adventureland also have low capacity and are quite popular, but they don't seem to include it in any of their advertising. If they know that there's no extra capacity available for a certain experience, why do they keep promoting it so heavily? And it's not that I don't think the character interactions are fun; it's just not something that makes Disney especially unique. The experience of meeting a lady in a ballgown or an oversized animal really isn't all that different at Disney than it is at Six Flags. But look at the interpretation of a Victorian street full of shops, and you'll immediately see the differences between the two. Yes, only Disney has the Disney characters, but if you put corporate branding aside I think most kids wouldn't care much; I know I would have been just as happy to meet Bugs Bunny as Mickey Mouse (though I guess Mickey has more of a TV presence now than when I was growing up) And if we're trying to play "What Would Walt Do?", just remember that when he ran the park, the animated characters were confined to Fantasyland. Davy Crockett was in Frontierland, but he was an actual historical figure long before his Disney-made popularity (which was due to the TV show created specifically for the park)
Originally Posted By TheRedhead "How many commercials include a small child giving a character a hug? Nearly all of them." Of course. It's a heart warming image. And they've been doing that since forever. They're not advertising character experiences. They're advertising love. "If they know that there's no extra capacity available for a certain experience, why do they keep promoting it so heavily?" I wouldn't say they're promoting it more, but they're definitely making it a focus. And for good reason. They can sell autograph books and overpriced Photopass pix. They don't get extra money from you if you ride the Tea Cups. "The experience of meeting a lady in a ballgown or an oversized animal really isn't all that different at Disney than it is at Six Flags." You really can't be serious. And I'm assuming you don't have kids. The experiences are night and day. Six Flags isn't in the business of courting little kids. The teen in the Foghorn Leghorn suit is an after-thought to entertain the little brother of the kid they're actually getting money from. And if you're getting technical, the Tea Cups is just a spinner and Big Thunder is just a runaway train coaster. Six Flags has those too. And yet there's something -extra- that Disney seems to do that makes more people wait in such long lines. Same with character greets.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>I wouldn't say they're promoting it more, but they're definitely making it a focus.<< And that's where I take issue. The experiences are such low capacity that they shouldn't be the focus of anything. Think about how painfully slow the queue at Dumbo was before they added the second spinner; now make it literally 5 times slower, and you've got the capacity of a meet & greet running at optimal capacity. I'm not against people wanting to meet characters, I just have a hard time understanding the logic behind the way that they're promoting things that only a tiny fraction of guests can experience within the park's operating hours >>You really can't be serious.<< Yes, I am >>And I'm assuming you don't have kids.<< No, I don't. But I know it's miserable enough for me to wait in one of those lines by myself. I can't imagine having to do it while keeping a kid entertained and behaving himself >>The teen in the Foghorn Leghorn suit is an after-thought to entertain the little brother of the kid they're actually getting money from.<< Until about 15 years ago, the teen in the Mickey suit was also an afterthought, since Disney already had their money when they walked in the front door. The focus in the past seemed to be on the bigger experiences that were high capacity and consistent; today it seems to be on making everything interactive and unique to each guest, for better or for worse One of my favorite WDW commercials of yore ended with a helicopter shot over Epcot, with Mickey waving from the top of SSE. It made me want to go visit Epcot, not because Mickey was there and might wave to me, but because it looked like an incredible place. The focus today seems to be on the small individual experiences; while I agree that those are important (talking with CMs while waiting for the monorail always stands out in my mind), I don't think they're the most important element that you need to try and get across in your 30 second advertisement. The parks seem to be performing well (though the financials have been murky lately), so I guess they must be doing something right, but for me it's not the direction I would take >>And if you're getting technical, the Tea Cups is just a spinner and Big Thunder is just a runaway train coaster. Six Flags has those too. And yet there's something -extra- that Disney seems to do that makes more people wait in such long lines.<< Yes, that's exactly my point. Disney takes thing that are fairly mundane for the industry, and presents them in a way that is significantly better. To me, this is what Disney's about. Excellence. And to create excellence in a busy theme park, you need to be able to have a reasonable hourly throughput; attractions like Adventure Thru Inner Space, Pirates of the Caribbean, the PeopleMover, and Carousel of Progress all succeeded large part by the ability to get tons of guests on them each day. Character meet and greets are fine, but they seem to be an axillary element that has somehow shifted into the spotlight >>Same with character greets.<< Perhaps, but this brings me back to my initial question that sparked this whole tangent: why are they putting such a big focus on something with such incredibly low capacity? Even when there are 2 or 3 rooms to meet characters (Belle in MK, Mickey in DL), the capacity is still significantly lower than nearly any ride, and painfully far below the number of guests in the park on any given day
Originally Posted By TheRedhead " I can't imagine having to do it while keeping a kid entertained and behaving himself." All of the lines are torture with wee ones. But at these meet and greets the payoff is spectacular. Seriously. Tinker Bell being overly chatty with my daughter. Stitch rubbing our autograph books in his armpit. A whole show with Belle. It's clear these are not the character experiences that existed when I was a kid, but I don't know for sure which came first: Disney pushing them or people clamoring for them. My guess is that Disney started doing them better (as Disney does) and people just expected that level from then on. "why are they putting such a big focus on something with such incredibly low capacity?" The capacity is low, but the return is huge. Photopass Photopass Photopass.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>The capacity is low, but the return is huge. Photopass Photopass Photopass.<< But the overhead is also much higher. The typical meet & greet uses at least 3 CMs (greeter, character, Photopass), and has a much lower hourly throughput than the rides in Fantasyland that are typically operated by 1-2 CMs. And when you figure that the character performer and Photopass photographer earn a higher wage than the average CM, the costs really seem to add up quickly. Toss in another greeter or two, and you could practically be operating an E-ticket with the same labor force Clearly, Disney has no intentions to change this any time soon, so they must be happy with the return. However, I still just can't wrap my head around so much investment in something that so few guests can actually experience
