In Case You Were Wondering What I Was Thinking

In Case You Were Wondering What I Was Thinking

We’re completing our stay at Disney World with the family. We’ve had a wonderful time watching the granddaughters have a ball. The place is really built for two and three year-olds who rejoice in seeing Mickey. I can never turn off my consultant’s sonar, radar, and ESP, however, and here’s what’s surprised me about Disney World, where we first came about 35 years ago and where I haven’t been for over a decade:

• Maybe because of federal laws, or maybe because of fearful company attorneys, the employees here never shut up. On the trams from the parking lot, on the monorail, on a line for an attraction, your are besieged with warnings, advisories, and instructions. How many times do you have to ask me to hold on to a handrail or not poke my head into the water? How did I drive a car over here and learn to eat using utensils, if you have to educate me not to put my fingers in moving equipment? Everyone here is treated as a kid, and we all know that kids don’t listen. Maybe it’s because all employees believe they’re cast members (despite evidence to the contrary, see below) and should be speaking into a microphone all the time? The yakking is incessant and condescending.

• Disney’s ROI on some attractions much be approaching a bijillion percent. From what I can see, not a scintilla of It’s A Small, Small World has changed, and only a single Johnny Depp character has been added to Pirates of the Caribbean. They apparently just dust them off every so often. The Bear Jamboree is so old and unchanged that it actually contains politically incorrect comments that would never be allowed in a new offering today. At one point, a bear’s weight was insulted, and that bear was smaller than three people in my row alone.

• The rides are either continuous flow as the ones above and the Jungle Cruise, for example, or they are incredibly short. Jumbo flies around for only about 60 seconds, as does the Magic Carpet, as twirls the Carousel. The flume ride takes about 12 seconds to roll down the hill.

• Either because of federal law or lax hiring, the “cast members” are not nearly as passionate or lively or even as neat as they once were. I don’t know about you, but an obese person, poorly groomed, serving food is not part of a cast I want to be in. There is a superficial courtesy, but it’s not as genuine or impressive as you’d find in a luxury hotel in the U.S. Disney, which once forbade facial hair, has become lax or frightened of discrimination laws, but there are some unkempt people working in the hotels here. I’m all for diversity, but I don’t think that includes diverse levels of cleanliness.

• There is a tired nature to the place that I never witnessed before, either here or in Disneyland. Some paint is faded. Some of the actors are clearly just going through their paces without any kind of convincing energy or passion. The park isn’t as meticulously clean as it once was. You see plastic bottles left on docks, and room service platters left in hallways. (I know it’s people who leave them, but they were always promptly removed before.)

• A lot of people who ought to be well into retirement or a slower pace of life are working here in menial jobs. Good for Disney for employing them, but try working for six hours or so picking up detritus in 90-degree heat and in a full uniform. They don’t look all that happy to be in the cast.

• The sheer amount of overweight people we saw in the park and in the hotels was staggering. I mean obese and morbidly obese. Men, women, and children. Many are so heavy they ride scooters that you once saw used only by the disabled, and it’s not uncommon to see a dozen or more in close proximity. One woman’s scooter was stopping and starting all the way down the hotel corridor because she was steering with one hand while trying to balance a ginormous sundae in the other. If anyone doubts the fattening of America and the consequent health problems it will engender, come here for a day and watch this phenomenon. Most of these people are relatively young.

Maybe I’m remembering another age with a fogged memory. That could be. And maybe I’m acting too much as a consultant and being unforgiving of relatively unimportant things. That could be.

But maybe since Walt left the scene the money people don’t care as much and the nation’s standards have slipped considerably. That, too, could be.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.