New Presenteeism Policies...

[americawestguy]

it seems castmembers are more unhappy under Matt, then under Paul or Cynthia. do you think this is true? It seems Matt is pleasing the guests, but not necessarily his castmembers. I think in an ideal world he would be pleasing both, but I guess that really would be a Fantasyland.

[PirateJohn]

it seems castmembers are more unhappy under Matt, then under Paul or Cynthia. do you think this is true? It seems Matt is pleasing the guests, but not necessarily his castmembers. I think in an ideal world he would be pleasing both, but I guess that really would be a Fantasyland.

IMO, we are starting to see the ultimate effects of the mismanagement that occurred under Paul and Cynthia.

I've met Matt several times, and I can tell you he is in touch with his cast members. But he was given a pretty lousy hand and the problems that were boiling up for years are now starting to explode in his face. It will take a heck of a lot of work to get the place back to where it needs to be, and I'm not entirely certain Matt would even be allowed to make the necessary changes because they would all result in a pretty solid thwack to Disney's pocketbook.

[Wizard69]

Check out the article on Miceage regarding Presenteeism.

http://www.miceage.com/kevinyee/ky122205a.htm

[Natural Selection Fan]

That would be helpful, but the current HR is still convinced that DLR is the only game in town. It will probably take a whole lot of bounced reality checks to make that happen.

[BirdMom]

DL was the only game in town in the 60's, 70's and early 80's when the permanant wage was much higher than at any of the comparable theme parks in the area. Eisner and co.'s bottom line attitude have ruined the place for everyone, and that's all there is to it. It's more important to have happy shareholders than happy employees to please the guests coming in on a daily basis. Go figure.

[SRT_GB]

If you ask me, right now Disneyland is selling itself on its name alone. People used to come to Disneyland because it's clean, safe, the people are friendly, and they're innovative, right? Well because of the cutbacks in staffing, all of those have gone down the toilet. Trash is regularly seen on the grounds, security has been cut back and from what I've heard isn't even hiring, and with the people they've been hiring in all departments, you can forget the service part. Let's not forget that just about every addition to the DLR in the last 10 years has been imported from Florida or bought from Rides-R-Us. Bad publicity is abundant, especially when it comes to ride safety. Add to that the two increases in admission prices this year and the overinflated price of merchandise and food, and you get guests who aren't seeing their dollar go very far.

So why are 70,000+ guests still coming into the park every day? Some have never been and so they can't be blamed for not knowing better. Others just plain don't want to see the bad stuff because they loved Disneyland as a child or the Disneyland from whatever year they came before. Whatever the case may be, people are coming because of Disneyland's generally good reputation. The corporate execs know this and are milking it as much as they possibly can.

And of course if the place is still standing after the 50th anniversary is done, those corporate execs are going to be patting themselves on the back for a job well done.

[goose]

About the article:

Closing DCA for two days a week (how about 4!) and sending the cms to work at DLand is a great idea! It's not like anyone really goes to DCA these days. DCA would be awesome to the guest if you charged them 20 dollars for admission. The admission price is 55 dollars. DCA is not worth 55 dollars! Anyone who's been there knows that!

The majority of people that work at DL are high school and college students. You obviously have to be flexible when you employ a college student. It's not unreasonable for a cm to request only night shifts with Monday and Tuesdays off.

Scheduling has been telling cm's to pick. Work or school. Many have chosen school.

If things don't get better soon, DLand will soon become Knotts. Knotts, with a big fat rat. I would love to see Dateline do a report on how awful Dland is. It would be pretty funny.

It doesn't take a genius to know that you have to make your cast happy if you want your guests happy. CM's are not asking for much. No mandatory overtime, and flexible schedules. That's about all it would take to make most of us happy.

[lewitz]

It doesn't take a genius to know that you have to make your cast happy if you want your guests happy. CM's are not asking for much. No mandatory overtime, and flexible schedules. That's about all it would take to make most of us happy.

I completely agree! (That and going on lunch break at a reasonable time, how about before 3:00 PM? ;) )

[BirdMom]

I'm curious as to why no one will actually say A) get rid of Annual Passes and one price gets all rides and B) go back to being closed Mondays and Tuesdays in the off season.

Back in the REALLY olden days of ticket books, the books themselves regulated the size of your lines. With the regular ticket books, you only got 5 "E" tickets, so you rationed them carefully and most of the time, you didn't have to wait longer than 1/2 hour for one of the great rides. Space and Thunder were "E" tickets when they opened, and of course things like the Main Street streetcars were "A" tickets. If you really wanted to go on more rides, there were ticket booths in each area and you could buy another "E" ticket for a whopping 85 cents. This also let the departments know how each attraction was doing, paying for itself or not. These days with the one price buys it all, people get into lines over and over again for things like Splash, and other attractions go begging for bodies. With the ticket books, the guests spread themselves out equally over the park. The other advantage of ticket books was that you could show up at 5:00 p.m. and just buy a general admission ticket (it was $4.00 for juniors when I was in high school - yes, there were child, JUNIOR, and adult prices), go in, have dinner, go dancing and shop. The park got a lot of business that way, with people who just wanted to do fun stuff without going on rides.

There are a lot of advantages to the park being closed Mondays, Tuesdays. First of all, the wear and tear on all of the onstage facilities and equipment. There are two days when maintenance can do what needs to be done and won't spoil the show for the guests. Second, it's only the full-time CM's working then anyway - there were very few part-timers working in the off season then. So if you weren't serious about the job, you didn't bother asking to go above Casual Seasonal status. And it really was a career back then - people used to live in fear of getting caught talking between dispatch cycles in attractions. You just didn't do it. You were professional about being a ride operator or a merchandise hostess or whatever it was that you did. I'm sorry to rag on some CM's but it's obvious that there are some people there these days who only take their social lives seriously, and they think that they deserve a paycheck for showing up and warming up a spot in the rotation with their shoes. Sorry, kids, but that doesn't cut it. The other thing about that was that there were limited jobs available, which meant that only the creme of the crop was accepted to work there - for a proportionally higher wage than they are paying now. For some reason, I'm always impressed when I go to In n Out Burger, because it's middle class, friendly kids working there, who are mostly good at service, and I wonder why they're not at the park until I remind myself what a miserable bunch of corporate misers have done to the place.

This may sound random, but the other good thing about Mondays and Tuesdays off was that people got married in the off season, and they didn't have to pay through the nose to have a Saturday wedding/reception. There were a lot of advantageous social aspects to having those odd days off! Everyone knew that if it was an odd day wedding or event, it was people from Disneyland.

[Fantasmic_Freak]

Well ,i do agree with some comments and the article i didnt really get, just because im too young to care or get LPH or SPH, but alot of people still want to hold Disney to a higher standard, but i really dont want the park to fall back into the Pressler :twisted: budget cuts era! But i do hope Matt and Greg, Emmer, the unseen hand in the park operations, do figure out a way to keep its competitiveness or get some for the lack of as in wages and employee gratitude.