Have we really reached this point?

Picture this...

You're on vacation at Disneyland, and while standing in a painfully long line waiting to get some overpriced food at the nearest buffeteria, you notice that there's a second line that's completely closed while the one open line stretches all the way to Fantasyland. You casually pick up a comment card and sarcastically suggest that when it's busy they open the second serving line. Next year you return to the same place, and lo and behold, both serving lines are open.

What do you do?

A typical response would be: "Hey, they took my suggestion! Look at how much better it is!"

But apparently, far too often the response has been: "Hey! I gave them that idea! Now Disney owes me money for using it."

Seriously? Is this what our American society has come to?

As reported this morning on MiceAge, it's exactly what it's come to:

"In late July all Guest Relations offices in Disneyland and DCA stopped allowing any visitor to fill out a comment card or leave any comment in writing.
Whether it's a compliment about a great Jungle Cruise skipper, or a complaint
about cold gumbo in New Orleans Square, you can no longer write anything down at
Disneyland Guest Relations. Believe it or not, this new decree comes from
Disney's legal department who was getting tired of being threatened with
lawsuits from angry park visitors upset about something they had put on a
complaint form at City Hall."

The article goes on to explain the lengths to which Disney is going to ensure that in no way will any suggestion/complaint/compliment ever get any attention by the company whatsoever.

Obviously these aren't isolated incidents, and obviously they have their own various success rates based on the fact that Disney is so afraid of them. It's utterly ridiculous that our society actually allows such frivolous lawsuits to occur--that we are so consumed by greed and entitlement that no good deed goes unpunished. While many frivolous lawsuits regarding the perceived negligence of companies have become perhaps less favorable in the eyes of society, we've moved onto the age of protecting "intellectual property", in whatever form it may conceivably take. Soon, the world will be left to fend for itself. Nobody will help anyone else for fear that their good-intentioned help will be seen as a hindrance punishable by gobs of monetary damages. Is this really protecting our interests and the freedoms we hold?

Google Earth, meet Disney

What happens when the marketing gurus as Disney start talking to the techies? They come up with this:

Walt Disney World in 3D

Disney has designed a complete 3D rendering of Disney World, every attraction, every building, every hotel, everything. The detail they put into these renderings are amazing.

Perhaps I'm just too easily entertained. Despite the fact that it takes quite a while to load (and my computer suddenly gets rather warm trying to draw the whole thing), it's well worth a look. Almost makes you feel like you're visiting.

Another reason to go to Disney World

As if anyone *needs* a reason to go to Disney World, here's one anyway... the opening of yet another new and thrilling adventure: Toy Story Midway Mania.

Designed as a carnival in Toy Story's world of toys, Disney has taken rides into the 21st century once again and made things interactive. Looks like loads of fun.

There's a great MiceAge Review of the ride at Disney's Hollywood Studios in Disney World. An identical ride is being built in California at Disney's California Adventure, but I'll take my original assessment and use this as an excuse to go to Orlando instead of Anaheim sometime.

My last WDW trip was all the way back in September 2005... it's hard to believe it's been 2.5 years. I still haven't made it back there since their last big attraction Expedition Everest opened. I suspect within the next year or so it will once again be time to plan another sojourn to Florida.

Imagineering the Music update

Avid blog readers will remember my post from a couple weeks ago regarding the talk I attended with Marty Sklar of Walt Disney Imagineering. Well, Disney news and information is one of the hottest blog topics on the net it seems, and my brief recap was recently picked up by The Disney Blog, an outstanding resource which seems to scour the web for Disney bits and bites. (And scour he must, especially if he found my little home on the blogosphere.) While I follow a good number of Disney blogs, I'm ashamed to say I never previously encountered The Disney Blog, though have quickly added it to my daily blog roundup I check everyday.

It makes me wish I had more to say about the talk... but alas, I have a horrible memory and didn't write much down. Next time I have the opportunity to see something through, I'll certainly have to take better notes to share with the blogging world. :)

Webapalooza I

Realizing there are some web sites I frequent but nobody else has ever heard of, I introduce Webapalooza, a brief introduction to sites I think are great and worth knowing about.

Travel-related web sites:

Kayak - www.kayak.com - One of the best airfare search engines out there, though also does hotels, cars and more. Unlike some other travel sites, Kayak does no booking, but rather helps you find the cheapest flights then takes you directly to the site to book it. Similar to some others out there, but I find Kayak far superior. Definitely worth checking out.

Travelocity - www.travelocity.com - I'm not a huge fan of these consolidated booking sites, but I do use Travelocity for one good feature they have. If you are simply looking to find what the cheapest airfare to a destination is, regardless of when you want to go. To find that, enter the origin and destination, but instead of entering dates click "Flexible Dates". You'll get a list of all airfares on all available airlines. If you're looking for the absolute cheapest fares, this is a good place to start. Never book it on Travelocity though, go directly to the airline's website.

FareCompare - www.farecompare.com - This is a relatively new site on the web travel landscape. It's unique in that it keeps a decent airfare history for every route, which helps you know how good a good deal really is. It seems to have much the same use as how I use Travelocity, and may be a bit better.

SeatCounter - www.seatcounter.com - SeatCounter is designed for one specific purpose, to see flight availability by fare bucket. This is useful mainly to figure out availability for frequent flyer award tickets and such, and really you have to deeply understand how airfares work to find this site useful. :) But I use it.

Site59 - www.site59.com - The place to look for last-minute airfares. If you're looking to book tickets for travel within the next 3 weeks, you can get some incredible deals here. One caveat is that you must either get Air+Hotel or Air+Car together, but even at that it's usually cheaper than buying the exact same airline ticket alone from another site.

Disney-related web sites:

MiceAge - www.miceage.com - THE definitive site for the latest news on Disney theme parks. A lot of underground Disney news breaks here before it even publically released by Disney. Other news and reviews from a great team of reviewers and reporters. I keep it on my daily web rundown.

MouseSavers - www.mousesavers.com - This site always has the latest Disney deals and discounts. I mainly use this to keep up on the latest deals for Disney parks, but it also has deals for other Disney-related merchandise, as well as the other theme parks around. Definitely a must-see next time you're trying to plan a Disney vacation.

AllEarsNet - www.allearsnet.com - A one-stop shop for all things Disney World. They have a bit of a section on Disneyland too, but are much more focused on Orlando. This is one of the oldest web sites dedicated to WDW, and as such has a HUGE amount of information, all consistently updated.

Imagineering the Music

Tonight I attended a talk at the EMP with Marty Sklar, former president of Walt Disney Imagineering. Talk about a man with some stories, he has worked at at WDI for over 50 years, and started way back as a writer for Walt Disney himself. You quickly realize that he's been involved in some way with nearly every project that Disney has ever undertaken, and certainly has plenty of stories to go along with them.

He began with a perpared multimedia presentation, including some talks about the history of Imagineering, but then the second half of the presentation really focused on the music used throughout all of the parks. Several themes came through during the presentation, most notably his real love for Epcot, the park that he really shaped. I think there were little bits from nearly every ride's soundtrack at Epcot. It was really a well-imagineered presentation.

But then following his 45-minute or so presentation, he took a few questions, that actually amounted to at least another 45-minutes. Fortunately there were quite a few good questions that came from others in the audience, and Marty had a story for every one of them. One of the more entertaining quotes was in response to a question regarding the relative failure of Disney's California Adventure:

"You can't build a park with 18 attractions next to Disneyland with over 70 attractions and charge the same price. People are too smart for that."

I really got the impression that those in Imagineering really care about the work they do, it's really what you expect. They've proven time and again that if you build it well, people will come, but if you cut corners like the executives with MBAs seem to like to do to save a few bucks, you'll lose in the end. Funny how that seems to be a common trend you see everywhere.

It was a fascinating and entertaining talk, and since I'm an EMP member it was free, except for the $6 I had to pay for parking down at Seattle Center. Oh well, it was still worth it.