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Bus, Stop! (continued)

Perhaps a more realistic and attainable goal is to transfer the fleet to busses that use bio-fuels. I saw a test bus using a green technology of some kind at Fort Wilderness many months ago, so clearly this is on someone’s radar. That may well happen.

But the Operations folks are looking around, some of them quite worried, for yet more savings, particularly since bio-fuels aren’t ready for prime time yet. Recently, their discussions about ideas--again, nothing set in stone here!--turned to "controlling the controllables." If they can control an expense, they will try to do so.

One big idea: creating, publishing, making public, and actually sticking to an honest to goodness schedule for the busses. You’d arrive at Port Orleans Riverside, say, and they’d hand you a card with the bus schedules on it for the next week. You’d know when to get to the bus stop, and if you missed a bus, you’d know when to return. To be sure, Disney would only be doing this to realize some cost savings, meaning they’d probably only run busses every half hour, and busses would be fuller on each run. That may not be optimal for customer satisfaction.

And yet, would it be so bad? Other bus lines publish their timetable and schedule--just think of any large city! It may even be considered an enhancement to customer satisfaction, to actually KNOW when the next bus is coming.

A wrinkle they’d have to figure out is how to deal with the times when parks close. Clearly, you’ll need more busses on the road during those hours. And hopefully "cost savings" would not translate into "insanely long lines to get back to your hotel at 10pm". But on paper, the idea isn’t automatically customer-unfriendly.


Better check the schedule before you head to the busses!

While the bus schedule (and reduced bus expense) idea may realize some savings, there’s a second, parallel plan (again, just discussions, so far) to try something else: eliminate some of the bus lines altogether. The low-hanging fruit here has to do with the Magic Kingdom and Epcot. The daring plan works like this: what if you no longer offered busses from ANY hotels to Epcot or the Magic Kingdom, and only offered busses to the Ticket and Transportation Center instead? The TTC has monorails to MK and E, to take visitors those last miles, so busses are theoretically not needed. The MK also has the ferry option, which, like the monorail, is a lot cheaper to operate than the busses. In other words, since the infrastructure is already there, why not use it?

An intriguing side effect of this concept, if it comes to fruition, is that the Ticket and Transportation Center would finally live up to its name. Everything (well, at least "more things") would finally flow toward the TTC, and it would really work as a hub. Right now the TTC is being bypassed as a hub due to the busses. You hop on board a bus at Port Orleans Riverside and disembark next to the Magic Kingdom main entrance gate; no TTC or hub needed. Well, if the company needs to save money, perhaps that hub might come into vogue again. Ironically, this is what many airlines are doing these days as well… eliminating direct routes.

Is it customer unfriendly? Well, yes and no. Sure, it’s less convenient. You would then have to take two forms of transportation, not just one, and that would definitely add time and hassle to your "commute" to the parks. So how can I claim this is not necessarily customer unfriendly? Because you’d reap a side effect that I consider somewhat ephemeral and elusive, but nevertheless hugely important: atmosphere and scene-setting.

Consider: when you take a bus directly from Port Orleans Riverside to the Magic Kingdom gates, you step off something industrial and smelly and then you’re supposed to make a sudden switch in mentality to "happy mode" at the park. Doesn’t work so well, sometimes. Ditto the bus to Epcot, where you disembark in the magical land of concrete and the "courtyard-‘o-busses". Again, not so magical after all. But if you had to go to the TTC first, you’d transition first to a ferry or a monorail. You’d glimpse the Magic Kingdom from a distance, and excitement would build. As you got closer, the outside world would melt away and you’d transition more naturally to the magic of the Disney park. This is the way it was designed originally. The same would be true of Epcot, where your approach to the park involves a "fly over" via monorail, to give you a taste of what’s below. Do you really feel all that if you merely take a bus directly to the destination?


It’s called the Transportation Center, so why not make it one?

Note: since Disney’s Animal Kingdom and Disney’s Hollywood Studios don’t have monorails, the busses would continue to go from hotels to those parks. Only Epcot and the Magic Kingdom would see direct routes cut.

Since this is all preliminary, and just talk for the moment, no one knows if they will actually go to the plan to offer bus schedules, or remove "direct routes" from hotels. Perhaps they’ll even do both of the plans to realize maximal savings.

I’m not convinced that either plan is perfect, but both of them do offer some customer benefit, even while letting the company save money. I’m never one for maximizing Disney’s wealth (you have surely seen me rant and rave about high prices over the years, especially food and souvenirs), but I think in this case Disney can be excused for wanting to save some money. Especially if travel gets bad enough.


"Casino" Restaurants

Here’s an email I got last week that deserves to be quoted in its entirety:

We recently also visited "The Wave" and unfortunately did not have as good of an experience that you did. I originally wrote a whole listing of what our experience was and why I felt the need to tell you about our experience to give a counterpoint. However, when writing it a larger concept dawned on me. My dislike for my experience there didn’t come from all of the negatives, it was more because of my expectations and perspective I went into dining there with.

As a local resident and Disney Dining Experience cardholder, we have eaten at all of the Disney Resort restaurants and enjoy some of them so much we make a point to drive to property just for dinner. Several of our favorites are California Grill, Flying Fish Cafe and Artist Point. We make sure to go there occasionally to remember why we like them so much.

Seeing what price point that The Wave, it should be at a level of food and service equivalent to Narcoossee’s or the Kona Cafe. It did not reach that level at any time of our visit after the very pleasant welcome we received at the desk.

When thinking of why this restaurant was developed, I started to realize that this place was not designed with me in mind. I felt that it was overpriced, aspired to apparently lofty goals but for some reason or another failed to meet them and suffered from spotty execution. If I want to pay that much for a dinner, I could go to so many other places in Orlando and get better food, better service and lower prices.

Then I thought what would I think of the place if I was a guest visiting Disney World. What if I had spent most of the day at the Magic Kingdom and wanted to eat somewhere nice but not so nice that I’d have to go back to the room and change for an evening out? Also I’d also most likely be on the Disney Dining Plan. I’d want to maximize my "free meal" which I’ve already paid for. If that were the case, I would probably love this place. It’s close to the park but still removed. It’s sophisticated yet casual. The prices are high but I wouldn’t care because it’s already paid for. I’d be getting an expensive meal and not paying for it.

This would appear to be first of what I call "casino restaurants" to be opened at WDW. Only meant to be visited by those who are given free passes to eat there. The prices for those not going for free do not match the establishment. However, most people aren’t paying anyway. The higher the perceived value of the meal the better the person feels about getting it for "free".

This would be a continuing trend in focusing away from the local resident and more on the guest spending their entire vacation on site. The crippling of the Disney Dining Experience over the past few years was apparently just the beginning.

I’ll do the only thing I can to protest this change, I’ll continue to visit local establishments who care about my business. I’ll eat at Disney as a necessity, but no longer as a choice. I’ll still visit the few establishments which are run as fine restaurants, regardless of their location. Hopefully the grinding pressure will not force these places to yield to the trap of a "captive audience" which no longer has to provide the best experience to get people to walk through the door. Their sole purpose of being to provide a place to spend your "included meal".

Disney World probably wouldn’t even notice my protest though. They have apparently already decided that my patronage is not that important anyway.


Kevin Yee's New Books Now at Amazon

I have two new books for sale on Amazon, both of which have been discussed here before: "Mouse Trap - Memoir of a Disneyland Cast Member" and "Tokyo Disney Made Easy." Amazon finally asked for several boxes of stock for these titles (I've had them around for a couple of weeks), so I'm guessing sales will be prompt by July 1. Have a look below if you're interested.

Amazon Honor System Click Here to Pay Learn More

Kevin Yee may be e-mailed at [email protected] - Please keep in mind he may not be able to respond to each note personally.

© 2008 Kevin Yee


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Kevin’s Disney Books

Kevin is the author of many books on Disney theme parks, including:

  • Mouse Trap: Memoir of a Disneyland Cast Member provides the first authentic glimpse of what it’s like to work at Disneyland.
  • Tokyo Disney Made Easy is an unofficial travel guide to Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySeas, written to make the entire trip stress-free for non-speakers of Japanese.
  • Magic Quizdom offers an exhaustive trivia quiz on Disneyland park, with expansive paragraph-length answers that flesh out the fuller story on this place rich with details.
  • 101 Things You Never Knew About Disneyland is a list-oriented book that covers ground left intentionally unexposed in the trivia book, namely the tributes and homages around Disneyland, especially to past rides and attractions.
  • 101 Things You Never Knew About Walt Disney World follows the example of the Disneyland book, detailing tributes and homages in the four Disney World parks.
  • The Unofficial Dining Guide to Walt Disney World provides current menus and prices for all restaurants at Walt Disney World parks and hotels, including Downtown Disney and even the non-Disney restaurants in the area around the Disney property. Updated several times within each year.

More information on the above books, along with ordering options are at this link. Kevin is currently working on other theme park related books, and expects the next one to be published soon.

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