Originally Posted By fkurucz >>OLC is not privately held - it's publicly traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.<< You are right. They went public in 1996. I believe that its still closely held, however.
Originally Posted By fkurucz >>Unfortunately, there is no transportation alternative that offers any ROI.<< It depends. If one can correlate occupacy rates at the resorts with the amount spent on transportation, then an ROI could be calculated. If they removed the buses altogether the resorts would offer less value to guests and occupancy would probably drop.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<Walt's dead, and the current CEO has to answer to Wall St analysts. Heck, my company is getting dinged by the street because we "spend too much on IT".>> Does anyone find it troubling how often Wall Street types are mentioned on a Disney fan site as an excuse for Disney providing a dumbed-down, lower quality experience. <<Wall St is no longer content with public companies delivering steady growth, it now insists of telling management on how they should run their companies.>> And only companies with weak leaders allow themselves to be beholden to 'The Street' to such a degree they severely damage the name of their companies in an effort to raise the stock a buck in the next quarter.
Originally Posted By leemac <<I believe that its still closely held, however.>> It is and is still effectively controlled by the conglomerates that founded in the company in the mid-'70s.
Originally Posted By leemac >>Unfortunately, there is no transportation alternative that offers any ROI.<< Unless they went the TDR way and began charging for the monorail (although the OLC was forced to charge until arcane city legislation). There is no way to model ROI on a free transportation system. Instead it is all about costs.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< There is no way to model ROI on a free transportation system. Instead it is all about costs. >>> Leaving effects on occupancy aside, what about the effects of room rate premium from being on the monorail? It seems to me that the three monorail resorts undoubtedly are able to charge some premium due to their location on the monorail line.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< Does anyone find it troubling how often Wall Street types are mentioned on a Disney fan site as an excuse for Disney providing a dumbed-down, lower quality experience. >>> I find it troubling, but not because it's offered as an excuse. <<Wall St is no longer content with public companies delivering steady growth, it now insists of telling management on how they should run their companies.>> At first, I was going to take issue with the above and say that Wall St doesn't care one wit about how a company is run as long as earnings growth is delivered, but then I saw this: <<< Heck, my company is getting dinged by the street because we "spend too much on IT".>> This reminds me of a situation from my own personal experience that tells me that this in fact is true: Wall St will ding you if certain aspects of your company aren't run according to the way The Street thinks they should be run, regardless of what your earnings are. Let me share my experience: In a prior life, I worked for a software company that was considering going public. As such, we had IPO consultants come in and recommend changes that we should make to prepare to be a publicly-traded company. One issue was that our level of "scrap" was way too high. In this context, scrap refers to materials in a manufacturing process that don't end up in the finished goods but are instead discarded. In our case, we were selling software for $300-800 a copy, and the manufacturing cost (for the disks, documentation, and packaging) was around $10. Our "scrap" level was very high, as we'd destroy inventory when a new version or patch came out so that the customer always got the latest version (this was before it was common for software to auto-update itself over the Internet). But even if our "scrap" was 50%, it really didn't matter that much because our Cost Of Goods Sold was minuscule compared to what we sold it for. We could move scrap from 50% to 5% and have no material effect on cost or earnings, since the vast majority of the "cost" of the software is not reflected in Cost Of Goods Sold, but in the R&D that goes into developing it. But that didn't matter. We were told that Wall Street would disapprove of our level of "scrap" and that we had to fix the problem. So, we ended up patching the product less frequently and delaying updates until current inventory was exhausted, thus delivering a poorer-quality product to the customer (or requiring them to manually patch a brand-new product), just to meet some metric that Wall Street looked at. This was true even though it had no material effect on earnings. This sort of stuff goes on every day at publicly-traded companies. And I find it a bit ironic that the people driving this are all very intelligent, highly-educated people. But they're so caught up in the numbers and what's developed as the collective wisdom as to what the right way to do things is that they don't see what's actually happening. And, I think that these sorts of things are become more common, not less common.
Originally Posted By fkurucz ^^Its insane. But unless a publicly held company is closely held there is no way a CEO can tell Wall St. analysts to take a flyig leap. They will ding the stock and shareholders will scream. I also believe that the so called "collective wisdom" is a driver for mediocrity. Forget about taking risks, inventing new products or delivering a superior product. The street doesn't believe in that. All they believe in is in cutting costs.
Originally Posted By gaston lives Those bendy busses wouldn't happen for one reason. The bus stops at the resorts are not long enough to satisfy their space requirements.
Originally Posted By Goofyernmost >>>They couldn't reconfigure the bus stops at the resorts because... ?<<< They don't want too?
Originally Posted By MPierce My biggest concern with transportation at WDW is having to stand on the bus or the monorail. This was from my trip Jan. 27- Feb. 4, value season midday, and you have to give up your seat so women with small children will not have to stand. What's wrong with this picture. Also shame on any man who does not offer his seat to a woman or a child. The cost of a stay at a Disney resort, even in value season is much to high to be forcrd to stand on a bus or monorail. As has been stated this is a very unsafe practice. This last trip I finally broke down, and took a taxi from our dinner at Boma back to the Wilderness Lodge. Bus service was always very prompt, but everyone knows resort to resort is a pain. The taxi ride was nice, but at $16.50 plus tip it is a luxury. I think the forward facing bus (RTS) is actually the best transportation they have now, not the most fun or a big favorite with the environmentalist. I would like to see them develope a light rail system. It is really a fun way to get around here in Houston, and has really added to the appearance of the landscape here in downtown. The only real problem we have with it here is that people don't seem to understand those speed bumps are there to keep you out of the rail lane, and that no left turn sign is there to keep you from turning in front of a train. I'm really OK with anything as long as you don't have to wait to long, and you don't have to stand.
Originally Posted By gaston lives They won't redo the bus stops for 2 reasons: 1) space 2) money The busses already nearly hit each other when they are parked. If they doubled the length of the busses, they'd have to extend their parking areas, and they just don't have the space for that.
Originally Posted By trekkeruss If I follow that line of reasoning, then they wouldn't be willing to spend money on any improvements to transportation period.
Originally Posted By trekkeruss Bingo? Leemac has already said they are looking to make some sweeping changes in transportation, so your answer doesn't make sense.
Originally Posted By trekkeruss ^^which doesn't discount articulated, bio-diesel, hybrid, electric, or any other kind of buses.
Originally Posted By leemac I am surprised that WDW hasn't come under greater pressure to make its transport fleet more environmentally friendly. For a corporation that is more green than most it seems they should take the opportunity to update their buses/trucks/MPVs etc. Disney own a lot of Toyota hybrids in California that CMs use and I would like to see this kind of green policy being instigated in Florida. It may be small potatoes but it is a start.
