It’s a Small World of Cuts at Disneyland

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I went to Disneyland one day last week, and I was surprised by how it’s slipped from the Disneyland of only a few years ago.

The park is still clean, but you see more trash on the ground than you used to. The restrooms are tidy, but two of three towel dispensers were empty in one men’s room at midday. And are the Disney characters now on the endangered species list? I don’t recall seeing any.

Remember all those cheery, smiling faces on the “cast members”? You still see them, but mostly on the middle-age and older employees, what few remain. Many of the younger workers looked bored and stone-faced.

They seem particularly disengaged across the street in the California Adventure park. The girl who ushered us into our seats at the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror zoomed through her patter so quickly you’d think she had made a personal challenge: “Can I say three sentences in less than two seconds this time, too?” The ride is supposed to be thrilling, and it is, but now, several days later, I mostly remember how comical it was. Probably not one of the two dozen riders in the “elevator” car had any earthly notion of what that girl said in those two seconds before she slammed the doors closed.

The worst experience came at lunch in Disneyland. It’s not that we got overpriced food that was merely swallowable; you expect that. It’s that the order-and-pickup system at the Tomorrowland Terrace is bizarrely configured. You order from one person at a window, then pick up your order later from the same person at the window about 10 inches next to it, which is shared by another order taker. In other words, a lot of activity is funneled to one point.

When you give your order, you’re unsure where to go. I took a half-step to the side to the pickup window but quickly realized I was in the way amid the welter of customers, what with all the ordering and picking-up going on all around me. So I stepped back – just out of earshot when they yelled my name some minutes later. And I do mean some minutes later.

While I waited with some other patrons, and with only a little prompting from me, two guys volunteered that it was a head-scratcher of a system. A third pointed out that counter service was perfected years ago, so why had they employed this bad system? And why was it taking so long? After all, they have only a few things on the menu.

“You expect more from Disney,” one guy said.

Exactly. That’s it. You do expect more. Walt Disney Co. is synonymous with quality. It’s known for doing the little things as assiduously as the big things. And now, at least to me, it seems Disney is no longer obsessing about the little things.

Most everything I saw at the twin parks last week plus Downtown Disneyland, the adjoining commercial strip, seemed to scream the three C’s (Corporate Cost Control). There were more buying opportunities than I remember, but fewer sidewalk sweepers, a shorter parade, fewer employees – excuse me, cast members. A thousand little cuts.

To be sure, Disney seems to be doing big things quite well. It is Los Angeles County’s second biggest company, and, as you can see in our Special Report in this issue (beginning on page 23), it enjoyed a 20 percent increase in its market capitalization in the last year. That’s impressive, especially for a big company.

Still, I can’t help but wonder: Do wise cost-cutting moves for another company hurt a company like Disney? After all, Disney was built on providing an unparalleled customer experience with obsessive attention to every little thing.

Walt Disney was legendary for examining a detailed plan concerning, say, a new ride, and then instructing his exhausted Imagineers to take it back and make the whole thing better. Give particular attention to the little things. “Plus it up,” he’d say.

Sadly, it seems, Disney corporate mangers seem to have forgotten about plussing it up and are more intent on minusing it down.

Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].

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