Was just about to say the same thing. You stay up all night one night and it completely messes up your sleep schedule for a while. Can you imagine 2-6 year olds the next few days??? It would not only affect guests, but Cast members, too. Could be a safety issue as well, for CM's.
They can't hire enough people to staff the longer hours. The local market is basically tapped out, that is why they are going hard with recruiting college students. They can't even open 2 waterparks at the same time - during the summer! Or have daily housekeeping at moderates and values, a lot is still not back to normal.
They *could* hire enough people, they are just choosing not to. If they offered housekeepers 60k a year, they would suddenly have enough staffing. They won't do that though, so the "There's not enough workers in Florida" argument will continue to be the excuse given. There aren't enough workers willing to clean rooms or lifeguard for $11 an hour part time, that's the real "issue". If you pay them, they will come.
They are being paid $20+ an hour now, not $11. If they paid housekeepers $60K a year, there would be no values or moderates, they would have to raise rooms rates quite a bit, pricing out many guests. There is a labor shortage as well as an affordable housing shortage (Disney is working on building affordable housing, but it's a few years out and still won't solve the problem).
If they are seeing data and feedback from customers that leads them to believe that people who visit during a very crowded time are less likely to come back, then it would make sense.
This reminded me of a thread on here from a few months ago where people were talking about how In-N-Out paid more than a minimum wage Disneyland CM. If that's the case, then it's a no brainer why Disneyland is running on a skeleton crew and Disney has zero issues letting it operate that way.
I live in southern California, about an hour from any beach, and its high 90s/100s for us this week.
To prove to everyone I’m not a blind “pixie duster”, as a former cast member I agree with all of this. Disney has done better with allowing people to be themselves at work, but they do need to continue work with what we call “charitable assumption” at Topgolf. The points system comes off as complete fault, and while they will work with you on points for situations you shouldn’t have to beg a company to not punish you for having to miss days for a variety of reasons.
Can you briefly explain the points system? i know I've seen it referenced before but don't remember the details. Thanks!
It's actually pretty generous, now it's been awhile since I was working for Disney, but here is what I remember (and these are points for attendance only, job performance/safety violations are a separate matrix).
That is definitely part of it. There is no way its the main reason for July 4th being the lowest attended July 4th in 10 years. IMO with most of the world open now people are opting for other places outside of the US
No. Encanto cost alot less (120 to 200 million) and came out when Covid was a legit excuse against a movie not doing great. It still made its money back and did very well on Disney Plus back during covid's apex, and also did very well as a musical. It also more importantly had small ad spend, as it came out during Covid, the big marketing push that accompanies most movies was not there. Those marketing pushes are AT LEAST 50 percent of production costs these days and sometimes equal the movies cost.
I think all of what you say is why saying something was a "failure" or not (and I'm not even sure what constitutes a failure) is not a simple look at box office receipts. It is much more than that as you say, production costs, marketing costs, merchandise sales etc. What is each individual movie's return on investment?
People only seem seem to be going for the blockbusters now. There best best is to stop including new movies with D+. Make them available for rent for $20 when released on D+ for the first 8 months.
