News Round Up 2016

[luisov]

Either Star Wars or Pixar. It's kind of hard to know exactly. I think Star Wars though. This is the theater behind Muppet Vision that was hosting the Frozen Sing-Along.

This is in the streets of america area. I would say based on what I have seen its not related to Star Wars but things have been changing a lot lately.

Do you remember where the San Francisco facade was on Streets of America? It was sort of behind that. It was mostly used for special events, and then when Frozen Singalong first came it was in there before they moved it to the American Idol theater.

I'm impressed it's already getting the knockdown. I continue to like seeing the constant progress.

Thank you all! I think I know which one you're talking about. And yeah, it's great to see progress. It should be a matter of a couple of months before we start seeing a lot more going on.

 

[rteetz]

News

Disney having a great 2016 at the box office already

http://www.insidethemagic.net/2016/...e-thanks-to-zootopia-force-awakens-star-wars/

 

[rteetz]

News

Nick and Judy Hopps to debut in the move it play it street party this weekend.

http://wdwnt.com/blog/2016/03/nick-and-judy-from-zootopia-coming-to-disney-parks-this-weekend/

 

[rteetz]

News

Joy and Sadness Start April 3rd!

http://wdwnt.com/blog/2016/03/insideout/

 

[rteetz]

Photo update

A look into the Toy Story Hotel

https://twitter.com/ed92live/status/713349651081129984

 

[rteetz]

Budget cuts...

"Effective this Sunday, all of the Cast Service Centers across property will be eliminating all the cast (who will be moved to other positions).

The Cast Service Centers are there to support cast with things like paycheck assistance, language learning, health insurance info etc.

The service centers will remain in operation for now, unmanned, with a few books to help the cast in place of the humans.

To further underline just how desperate things are this time, the service center CMs survived the 9/11 and 2008 cuts."

This comes from wdwmagic

 

[ShellieR]

Wow!!

 

[luisov]

lol ... I mean, are they actually expecting Shanghai to flop or what is this really all about? I understand that they have to recover the costs for an over-budget 5-6 billion dollar complex, but I really don't see this going well in the long-term. Right now they can confidently take stuff away from their cash cow (US parks), but how long are they going to be able to do so before it actually has a negative effect on attendance?

 

[rteetz]

lol ... I mean, are they actually expecting Shanghai to flop or what is this really all about? I understand that they have to recover the costs for an over-budget 5-6 billion dollar complex, but I really don't see this going well in the long-term. Right now they can confidently take stuff away from their cash cow (US parks), but how long are they going to be able to do so before it actually has a negative effect on attendance?

Disney is seriously worried about this park.

 

[EricInPA]

"Effective this Sunday, all of the Cast Service Centers across property will be eliminating all the cast (who will be moved to other positions).

I guess this may worded oddly, but if they're being moved to other positions, is it a cut? Are they moving to an online system for these things?

Edit: I saw that they added books or something, but it would make more sense to have this as an online resource (my company has 100 people and we have that).

 

[Fantasia79]

Oh my. I don't think that we'll see the impact here in the immediate future, but increases likelihood of shotty cast members down the road when you cut workplace programs.

 

[pork]

Budget cuts...

"Effective this Sunday, all of the Cast Service Centers across property will be eliminating all the cast (who will be moved to other positions).

The Cast Service Centers are there to support cast with things like paycheck assistance, language learning, health insurance info etc.

The service centers will remain in operation for now, unmanned, with a few books to help the cast in place of the humans.

To further underline just how desperate things are this time, the service center CMs survived the 9/11 and 2008 cuts."

This comes from wdwmagic

I might be missing something but this didn't seem that bad. It just sounds like their cutting out a employee benifits resource center and adding that workforce to the parks. It seems like that's something easily replaced by a online resource.

 

[rteetz]

I might be missing something but this didn't seem that bad. It just sounds like their cutting out a employee benifits resource center and adding that workforce to the parks. It seems like that's something easily replaced by a online resource.

They aren't necessarily being moved to the parks though and who knows what the positions are they are being moved to. Their new positions may have less hours.

 

[jade1]

Disney is seriously worried about this park.

I heard they are not seriously worried about it.

 

[Maineiak]

Somewhat news?

In case you missed this 4-hour, 2-part documentary on PBS back in the fall, it is finally available for streaming for free from Amazon Prime if you have a membership. Just thought I'd share! I plan to start it tonight myself.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/walt-disney/

 

[Maineiak]

Disney is seriously worried about this park.

Death by a thousand cuts?

Normally, I don't have a problem with things like CEO pay, but to me it seems like Mr. Iger could take a 2% haircut and it would save them a boatload more money than doing things like this...

 

[luisov]

Yeah, online sounds way more efficient than having a bunch of books in there. It may sound drastic and everything, but I wonder if this could potentially harm CM's job satisfaction in some way.

Somewhat news?

In case you missed this 4-hour, 2-part documentary on PBS back in the fall, it is finally available for streaming for free from Amazon Prime if you have a membership. Just thought I'd share! I plan to start it tonight myself.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/walt-disney/

Wish I had enjoyed this documentary more than I actually did. To me it kind of felt unfair and unbalanced in some aspects. Though I appreciate they didn't go for the ''Walt sprinkled fairy dust over everything he touched'' approach, at times the documentary felt biased, especially during the animation department strike portion.

 

[EricInPA]

I guess some of these things are Disney Rorschach Tests. When someone tells me a department is eliminated and those folks are moved somewhere else, I don't see it as a budget cut. Especially when we're talking about a call-center for HR, that seems very out of place in 2016.

 

[adam.adbe]

I guess some of these things are Disney Rorschach Tests. When someone tells me a department is eliminated and those folks are moved somewhere else, I don't see it as a budget cut. Especially when we're talking about a call-center for HR, that seems very out of place in 2016.

Yes. They're a Fortune 500, they have an HR department. While it'd certainly be better if they had local on-hand support services for CMs (who may well be college kids, or young foreigners looking for a chance to see a bit of the world), I'm going to reserve judgement until something actually changes. It may even be that WDW is drifting away from having so many short term positions, as cutting staff hours across the board just creates a lot of ill-will. A slightly smaller, but properly full-time workforce is better than what they're currently doing.

WDW1974 has an agenda, and is good at phrasing things to make them read like a bigger deal than they are; especially over on WDWMagic, where there's a bit of a cult of personality thing going on. There are plenty of signs that the mouse is losing the plot, but this is probably not one of them.

 

[summerw]

So I'm pretty excited about Joy and Sadness and the Agent P on the phone thing. If anyone uses it, I'd love to hear if it means you can play past 6. Nice to see news that isn't canceling something I was looking forward to. I feel like it's been a lot of "bye bye" and "give me more money" from disney lately. Those and the 4th fast pass on the app are nice additions.