Year of a Million Problems

[bpgstudios]

OK those of us MK CM's had a big meeting last night (which i didn't have the opportunty to attend but my girlfriend went) about the Year of a Million Dreams. With less than a month to finish up the details, it seems they still have a lot to finish.

It seems from what she was telling me, this promotion may or *more likley* may not include anything for CMs. In some cases it will inconvenience us, such as one of the events in Fantasyland that, while its going on, blocks us off from getting from attraction to attraction for breaks and rotations. As usual, we won;t be able to win any of the prizes but thats to be expected.

MK had about 16 mil. go through its gates in 2004, with more lat year and even more this year. So these "1 million Dreams" seem awfully sparce compared to how many visitors. Anyone remember the 35th birthday Disneyland Dream Machine (I think thats what its called)? Gave out a prize to ALL guests, ranging from a pen to a new car. So why can't we make magic for more guests? Fastpass has been increased at Pan and Pooh to the point where pan's FP queue overflows towards the Village Haus. How will a 'Golden Fastpass' save them anything, much less gaurentee no waits? Giving a re-ad won't be as magical anymore since FP queues are so insane.

I try to make magic for everyone as a CM. I do what I can to make a crying little girl at carousel ride on Cindy's horse and always cheers them up. I'll give a re-ad to a little princess or pirate and tell them their late for a very important date. I know my park history and can talk with our older guests returning after a few years away from the World.

I don't think that 995,000 fastpasses will suffice. As someone has stated before, nobody dreams of fastpasses, churros and a small Coca-Cola product. They dream of going on vacation and having the best time of their life. They want memories created for them. I remember those little things CMs did when we visited the park when I was little. I don;t remember what we got free, or what kind of promotions they were giving away (except the pink cake but we wont go there).

In this meeting, they basically stated that they dont know how anything will work yet, what their doing for our cast to help us make more magic, and it seems that they don't really understand that you need a happy cast. WHo wants to go out of their way to make magic after a 15 hour shift when your deciding whether to buy gas or food? Those CMs that do make extra magic should be commended. It seems that Magical Moments and Take 5's no longer are enforced or encouraged. I havent seen one of the certificates in a while. I haven't seen a GSF card hung up by our break area like they used to in months.

Anyone else have concerns like me? or am I just reading too far into this? Is it just my area?
*Off his rarely used soapbox*

[IndyandMarion]

Damn. All right guys, that's the last time he gets to use the soapbox. He's right though, he never goes off on a tangent like that.

But I do have to disagree with you (and the person that stated it before) on one point: Whenever I go to MK, at one point during the day I do dream of a churro and a small coca cola product, racing to the TTA when Space is closed and filming the movie.

Still, it's Disney, so in their God like minds , this celebration will work flawlessly.

[lady ulrike]

I believe that what is meant by the Year of a Million Dreams, is not that there will be precisely 1 million dreams, I think it's meant to be 1 million big dreams. From my understanding from our meeting over here on the west coast, there will be at least 3 major dreams given out daily. The celebration is actually more than a year, but I forget how long so let's just calculate with a year. 365x3=1095...so that's at least 1100 major dreams, I think there were other major ones that I'm forgetting (the ones I'm thinking of, are staying in Cinderella Castle, the Mickey Mouse suite and grand marshall for every Magic Kingdom) Now these 1100 major dreams are not going to be given to just one person, whoever gets these dreams will be at Disneyland with someone whom I'm assuming will get to join them. So if you count each person as a separate dream (which Disney will to make it sound bigger) then that makes it at least 2200 major dreams. Now while the Golden Fastpass doesn't sound that great, to the guest that gets it (again, I'm assuming they'll give them to the family members they're there with otherwise it is useless) it'll be a dream come true.

Now all of those other things are just to make the million quota and if every CM in every park is giving out 1 dream a day, it'll hit the quota in nothing flat. The whole point of the milllion dreams, however is just to get people in the park...come to Disneyland and you can have your fondest dream come true...not guaranteed of course, but it could happen...lots of people gamble away all of their money on a could happen, so obviously they'll come to Disneyland for it. So, if you look at it for what it really is, a marketing ploy, it's genius.

[IndyandMarion]

The only dream I have and want to go true is for those SOBs to opologize for Stitch's Great Escape then sit in a corner for ten minutes of quite time.

Damn it, don't get me started. I'm listening to Lewis Black right now and I will go off onto a tangent like he does if I have to.

[Yeti Chaser]

In this meeting, they basically stated that they dont know how anything will work yet, what their doing for our cast to help us make more magic, and it seems that they don't really understand that you need a happy cast. WHo wants to go out of their way to make magic after a 15 hour shift when your deciding whether to buy gas or food? Those CMs that do make extra magic should be commended. It seems that Magical Moments and Take 5's no longer are enforced or encouraged. I havent seen one of the certificates in a while. I haven't seen a GSF card hung up by our break area like they used to in months.

Anyone else have concerns like me? or am I just reading too far into this? Is it just my area?
*Off his rarely used soapbox*

Your second question at the end states it well: "am I just reading too far into this?" Before we all go ballistic, let us see how this is going to shake out. Yes, this promotion was sprung on all of us, guests and CM's very rapidly. However, I am not going to condemn this new promotion.

Have any of you looked at the videos on Portal? They do give you some sense of what is going to happen. I think that part of this promotion is to go back to our roots, which we all at times forget about making things magical for our guests (no matter how nasty some can be). I for one am looking forward to this new promotion.

I now step down from the soapbox and put it back in the corner for someone else to use :D:

[bpgstudios]

still that leaves a lot of little dreams to be acounted for. If you assume that MK as well as DL will be giving away 3 major dreams per day, then you end up with 4,400 big dreams made in a year. That leaves 995,600 dreams left over to be split up (i would hope) evenly among MK and DL. that means that MK has 497,800 dreams to give and DL has 497,800 dreams. So over the course of a year that works out to approximately 1,364 dreams per day per park. That means that you can give one dream to everyone that rides pirates in a half hour.

Of course I don't think the breakdown will be that uniform day to day. But that is a very low number when you think about it and I am anticipating many guests to be disapointed when they see someone else win something. Its normal though.

I do agree though it is a brilliant marketing campaign. I'd love to see them make a couple million CM dreams come true as well. Like lower the amount of fastpass tickets back to how it was originally at pan. If they raised the amount of fastpasses being given out as part of their promotion, they need to rethink that. Stop by pan if you have 20 minutes to wait in a non-moving FP queue.

Indy is right, I hardly ever get this bothered by something. This whole campaign just doesnt agree with me I guess.
</rant>

[bpgstudios]

Have any of you looked at the videos on Portal? They do give you some sense of what is going to happen. I think that part of this promotion is to go back to our roots, which we all at times forget about making things magical for our guests (no matter how nasty some can be). I for one am looking forward to this new promotion.

Very true. The videos were moving I agree on that. But I don't think that we should be giving dreams out to a select few and not all. I know we're still allowed to give out non-counted dreams and make magic. I'm worried this promotion will prevent CM's from making as much magic. Not as much will be meaningful if guests think its a promotion. Now, we can give a re-ad out to a familyand think its magic and pixie dust, but when YoaMD starts will they think that its a contest prize? not as magical IMO.

[Stitch _Lover_Sith]

I have a dream...

I dream that one day Disney will realise that what the Disney parks need is to go back to focusing on providing a quality overall product, and not waste their time on half-assed promotions that the PR department will try to make sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread.

That right there, would be worth a million dreams to me.

Yeah like that is ever going to happen. Remember CMs are just trained monkeys paraphrasing our old CEO. What we or anyone thinks has no bearing on what they are going to do. My soapbox on this issue is what about Cast dreams? Where does the cast fit in to this other than the people making those pretty ads a reality? They really need to get their stuff together if they want this to work. Ok done with soap box next person can use it.

[mapmagic]

I'm bothered by this promotion. I was bothered by the WHOLE presentation that was given to us late at night. Watching some of the things that they are planning on doing just made me sick to my stomach. Let's just say I'm not bothered by most things. This Year of a Million Dreams IS bothersome. If you have your own family come into the park and THEY get picked they have to feel embarassed and say they are a family member of a cast member who works for Disney and everyone around them will know.

How are CMs going to be treated for making dreams come true for those guests everyday, all day and everything else of the matter? Suuure that whole presentation at the end of it all the presenter just had to put up there. "What can we do for you? Since you are making this all happen for us! We want to make backstage magic happen! But we don't have any ideas so far for it to happen." After hearing that after hearing about the NEW CELEBRATION! I was compeletly pissed off and you can tell with some others that they were too.

Don't get me started on the new celebration they are going to have. Let's just say.. rip off of Fantasmic! Much? I'm curious to see what A Year of A Million Dreams will bring, either success or huge failure. They still aren't completely solid on their ideas and that is what scares me the most. Fastpasses will be a huge issue! Don't get me started on that one either since I just go nuts when I go to Pan Merge!

[Stitch _Lover_Sith]

I'm bothered by this promotion. I was bothered by the WHOLE presentation that was given to us late at night. Watching some of the things that they are planning on doing just made me sick to my stomach. Let's just say I'm not bothered by most things. This Year of a Million Dreams IS bothersome. If you have your own family come into the park and THEY get picked they have to feel embarassed and say they are a family member of a cast member who works for Disney and everyone around them will know.

How are CMs going to be treated for making dreams come true for those guests everyday, all day and everything else of the matter? Suuure that whole presentation at the end of it all the presenter just had to put up there. "What can we do for you? Since you are making this all happen for us! We want to make backstage magic happen! But we don't have any ideas so far for it to happen." After hearing that after hearing about the NEW CELEBRATION! I was compeletly pissed off and you can tell with some others that they were too.

Don't get me started on the new celebration they are going to have. Let's just say.. rip off of Fantasmic! Much? I'm curious to see what A Year of A Million Dreams will bring, either success or huge failure. They still aren't completely solid on their ideas and that is what scares me the most. Fastpasses will be a huge issue! Don't get me started on that one either since I just go nuts when I go to Pan Merge!

Oh do not get me started on Pooh Grouper. Hello it put puts the stress into stressful. Why did I have to wait this long? When I got my FP it was only a ten minute wait and I have been here for twenty? These are just some of the questions. Then heaven forbid should the rode go down and you can't ride it at your FP time even though it is not working. FP have always been an issue to those times when the FP line is longer than Stand by to when the people think they are entitled to do whatever they want because they have that little sheet of paper. People just expect the magic and if their child does not get to ride in a Pink teacup well then the vacation was worthless. Or if after 14 hours of park operation they come up to a ride and it is closed well then there goes that dream vacation because the PARK IS CLOSED. Hello and we are going to have to put up with more of this because of the new promotion. When can we stay in the Castle? The free Cruise when is it? And how can we answer these questions well if you did not win that then well I would have to say NEVER. But we won't be able to say that. Oh and durring the ball were on earth is stroller parking going to be. The company is not thinking about the day to day stuff that we have to put up with and how that is just going to get worse.