Originally Posted By tangaroa I'm really surprised they haven't fired Marcie yet either. Coming out on an internet message board and saying "I work for the company and let me tell you what i know..." is a direct violation of company policy. Well you know - unless all that stuff I said about Al was also true about Marcie. Funny how all these online personalities seem to directly parallel the seperate political parties at Disney... curious indeed.
Originally Posted By BlueOhanaTerror >>><<So, am I one of these plants? Am I? >> I dunno ... are you?<<< To be a plant, one needs roots of relevance. All this rumormongering is much ado about nothing. Rumors have been going on and leaking out of WDI for decades. It's common in the movie industry. All that's old is new again. To get fired up and demand someone should be fired, for sharing corporate rumors with an internet journalist, is really a pretty self-absorbed and petty perspective. Especially when one is presuming so much on the circumstances surrounding: WHO the informant is. Their function. Their intent. What they ACTUALLY said. Their goodness or badness. Whether they were in fact DIRECTED by superiors to SPREAD information or misinformation. Speculating with such intense anger and calls for firing, reminds me of the sputtering and squawking of geese. That accomplishes very little, too.
Originally Posted By jonvn "I'm really surprised they haven't fired Marcie yet either." Unless, of course, she's a plant. Or has permission. "To get fired up and demand someone should be fired, for sharing corporate rumors with an internet journalist, is really a pretty self-absorbed and petty perspective" Depends on the journalist. "reminds me of the sputtering and squawking of geese." And, I suppose, your post was the sound of a braying donkey? In any case, no one is presuming anything. However, if someone is leaking information to someone who is outright hostile to the corporation, or behaves in a manner that is disloyal to the goals of the corporation, that person is deserving of termination, whether it be Disney or any other company. Now, if they were TOLD to do it, that is something else. But I rather doubt that is the case.
Originally Posted By Park Hopper I don’t think Al is hostile toward the Disney Company, quite the reverse. Al knows what Disney is capable of doing. He knows that they sometimes try to get away with doing less than their best and he simply won’t let them – at least not without making a lot of noise about it first. If he somehow effects change within the company so that they put out a higher quality product, it is beneficial for the company and the fans.
Originally Posted By mrichmondj I've never seen Al Lutz as hostile towards the Disney Company. In general, he is hostile towards management. I suspect he has an axe to grind from some past experience in his life that leads him to paint broad brush strokes of "us vs. them" when it comes to describing persons in a managerial position. Nearly all of his criticisms are aimed at Disney management without any real thought about what alternative decisions might be made or consideration of the business environment. It's this slanted approach and lack of a big picture view that really taints the information presented in his blog. Also, he has a tendency to morph his criticisms over time to match reality, but never acknowledges any errors in his opinion. The current TSI transformation into Pirates Island is a good example. His first writings on the subject spoke of how this was a purely corporate marketing gimmick with no backing fromt he creative types at Imagineering. However, over the past few weeks, he has begun to talk about some creative concepts for this makeover that the Imagineers are pretty excited about. The next transformation of this story will be how "management" is holding back the Imagineers on all their great ideas and not allowing them into the budget. It's a classic example of how everything written on MiceAge becomes a conflict of good vs. evil. Sadly, not everything is so black and white.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<Well you know - unless all that stuff I said about Al was also true about Marcie. Funny how all these online personalities seem to directly parallel the seperate political parties at Disney... curious indeed. >> Gee ... someone else actually noticed.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<All this rumormongering is much ado about nothing. Rumors have been going on and leaking out of WDI for decades. It's common in the movie industry. All that's old is new again. >> Ah ... but there's one huge difference over the past decade -- the Internet. The ability to disseminate information and misinformation to the masses has never been greater. And the power of sites like this is vast. Maybe there are only 100 regular posters here, but how many regular and casual readers/lurkers are there. <<To get fired up and demand someone should be fired, for sharing corporate rumors with an internet journalist, is really a pretty self-absorbed and petty perspective. >> Let's stop right there. Al Lutz is no journalist. Jim Hill is no journalist. Lee MacDonald is no journalist. This Marcie person (who I have never read and been told os actually a male publicist at DL) is certainly no journalist. They are bloggers. And anyone with a website has an agenda ... or a POV they want to spread to the world. It's that simple.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<I've never seen Al Lutz as hostile towards the Disney Company. In general, he is hostile towards management.>> That's my take on the man ... and his mission. And knowing many of the incompetent, bumbling excuses that are execs in WDI and the P&R Divisions, I don't have a problem (for the most part) with his rhetoric. If you haven't met or dealt with some of these people, I really don't think you can appreciate how bottom of the barrel they are.
Originally Posted By mrichmondj I've dealt with a lot non-management people who are bottom of the barrel. Al Lutz never points out these folks because he is blind to these sorts of deficienies. Followership is just as important as leadership in a successful organization. I would like to see some of the followership issues addressed as well as leadership issues to paint a true picture of what causes certain aspects of an organization to perform suboptimally. Al Lutz doesn't understand this. He is too personally invested in his anti-management agenda to grasp these sorts of concepts.
Originally Posted By BlueOhanaTerror >>>In any case, no one is presuming anything. However, if someone is leaking information to someone who is outright hostile to the corporation, or behaves in a manner that is disloyal to the goals of the corporation, that person is deserving of termination, whether it be Disney or any other company.<<< That's presumptuous right there, in that you're presuming Al Lutz is hostile to the Disney company. As others have pointed out, he clearly is not. And I don't think the equivalency can be made that he's hostile to the Disney company IF he's hostile to a few representatives that he sees as inept. And Spirit - you're right. "Journalist" was too generous a term. Blogger is a better term. I was hasty in use of the term.
Originally Posted By disneywatcher >> I suspect he has an axe to grind from some past experience in his life that leads him to paint broad brush strokes of "us vs. them" when it comes to describing persons in a managerial position. << I would guess it's more a case of his witnessing several years of boneheaded after boneheaded decisionmaking by a variety of people at the DisCo.
Originally Posted By Sweeper Al took a huge amount of heat from the on-line community when he bashed DCA even before it opened. But now look at what we have with DCA. He was right. I'm glad he's there doing what he does.
Originally Posted By mrichmondj Al bashed the 50th before it happened, too. It turned out to be a pretty successful year and a half for Disneyland. He pretty much bashes everything before it comes along, and then adjusts his story based upon how things turn out in the end.
Originally Posted By Sweeper I suppose that's true. That seems to be a pretty familiar story with others too... the readjusting part or the sudden drop of conversation.
Originally Posted By Spirit of 74 <<I've dealt with a lot non-management people who are bottom of the barrel. Al Lutz never points out these folks because he is blind to these sorts of deficienies. Followership is just as important as leadership in a successful organization.>> While I feel this point has a lot of merit, the bottom line is that everything begins at the top. The tone, attitude, what's important vs. what's not ... that comes from the top on down. If you don't have quality at the top, it doesn't matter whether or not you have it below. What's that saying? A fish rots from the head down.
Originally Posted By BlueOhanaTerror Damning an entire theme park and getting his predictions right on the money with that overall project, is a lot different from Al's predictions regarding the 50th Celebration. He underestimated the potential of new management to rally and "fix" the problems of the previous administration, a President and Vice-President he didn't know much about. He made a mistake there, but he was very right about DCA, when not so many others were willing to go out on a Billion-dollar (well, 2/3 of a Billion-dollars) limb.
Originally Posted By bean Its not going to happen. Dca will keep its gates. Yes tony did have that suggestion but there were many suggestion on what could be done to DCA. the idea was never taken seriously. At the end only a few interesting ideas from tony's suggestion have been considered and meshed together with a grander DCA project.
Originally Posted By bean in regards to post 76, i just looked for the post you mentioned in this other site. I think you might have misread marcie's comments. yes both Al and mArcie are right, the idea was brought up but Al's article makes it sound like it is a possibility and that it was actually seriously considered. It was not. It was an idea thrown out by Tony. just like other ideas thrown out by other people. Like marcie mentioned Tony's idea had some interesting things in it but the idea of removing the gates was not one of them and like marcie mentioned the bigger idea of spending capitol on theming lands to specific eras and adding not one but several attractions to DCA including an "e" ticket was the idea favored and just needs approval by the board because of its huge price tag.
Originally Posted By jonvn "who I have never read and been told os actually a male publicist at DL" I've heard a different story, presumably from people who are in a position to know, but who knows. Al is very anti-Disney. I don't know what people are saying he actually isn't anti. Anti management? That's the people running Disney and making it what it is. Perhaps he's not anti-Disney when Disney was what it was when he was a child in the middle part of the last century. I like that time, too, because I was young then. He seems to not have been able to transition into understanding how a corporation has to be run these days. I don't like a lot of what Disney does, either. But the level of vitriol and the attempts to cause people to be fired at ALL levels of employment at the company (not just management) indicates that he's not anti-management. He's anti-employee, and anti-Disney. I've been reading what he has had to say for a long time now. This is what he has done. He bashes just about everything. Now perhaps he finally realized a few years ago that he was coming across as a net kook, and toned down a bit. But he still has an axe to grind, still plainly blames disney for some thing or another, and is fixated on pointing out any failure he can. What a joyless existence.
