The large project at home crawls forward, bit by bit. It’s funny, because it’s been so present in the front of my brain that sitting down and writing almost seems strange.
About two weeks ago, the following video came to my attention. I am neither a fan of Star Wars nor Disney, but the young woman in the video, Jenny Nicholson, is a YouTube creator who is fanatical about both (and theme parks as well), so much so that she paid well over $6000 for her and her sister to experience the short-lived Star Wars hotel (known officially as the Galactic Star Cruiser). She was not impressed. The video, clocking in at just over four hours, is a mix of background on the project, her interest in it, her experience at the attraction, and a lot of constructive criticism of how it could have been a lot better. It’s absolutely fascinating, to the point that a lot of people, like me, have watched or listened to the whole thing without having an interest in either Disney or Star Wars.
This video would not have been nearly as compelling had it been merely a list of complaints about an overpriced hotel experience. Instead, she touches on a lot of trends that contributed to the inevitable failure of this project, down to things just as basic as the scale – it seemed like it was big enough that the actors were almost overwhelmed with the groups sometimes, but it didn’t have a large enough scale to ever make a profit, even with the ridiculously high prices. Many things were unforced errors, such as some people’s apps not working correctly with the main game. She touches on the groupthink of Disney executives, who often seem stuck on the same buzzwords and of “influencer marketing” that gets to the point of being, at the very least, insincere.
However, she also manages to get to points that go much deeper into Disney corporate and corporate leadership in general. In Disney’s case, the transformation of the idea of a place that was basically all inclusive and went out of its way to treat their customers extremely well to a business that seems to want to maximize profit off the people visiting. I’m not saying that Disney ought to be operating at a loss, but she asks whether Disney is now aiming at an experience with their parks that families might visit and return to every few years, or an experience that some families can afford only once while their kids are young. When I was a kid in Chicago, even amongst families of modest means, there were a fair number of kids whose families had made trips to Disney. I hadn’t thought of this before she mentioned it, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve heard anybody say that they’ve been to Disney, apart from distant relatives who live about an hour from Disney World in Florida who offered their place to us if we ever wanted to go to Disney. Even with that, we never went. If I had to guess, I’d assume the percentage of Americans who have been to any of the Disney parks at least once is lower now than in the 1980s.
Is that a sustainable path for Disney? I can’t say. However, it’s the job of the board at Disney to be thinking about these things and planning for and against trends, both short-term and long, to the degree that they can. That Disney – Disney! – shuttered and wrote off an attraction that cost them $300 million after 19 months is indication that these things are not being done. Disney can weather the loss, but Nicholson’s video ought to be watched – and heeded – by anyone in business as a lesson on how it’s possible to alienate even your biggest supporters by corporate attitude and making strings of stupid decisions that would have been fairly easy to correct had anyone bothered to pay attention.
Breath of Hallelujah 