News

• Jim and I are doing our first-ever Disney Dish cruise in 2022.  We’re calling it “The Disney Dish on the Disney Wish”  

• Dates are September 23-26, 2022.  That’s a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday out of Port Canaveral
• We made it 3 nights so it’s as affordable as possible.
• We’ll have tons of chances to meet up while on board, we’re planning some exciting events so we can all get to know the ship, and we’ll record a special, live show while on board.
• Disney’s given us our last batch of 8 cabins.
• Storybookdestinations.com/disneydish

• Disney announced a 6-week delay to the launch of the Disney Wish.  This doesn’t affect our cruise, which is September 23-26.
  
• Disney earnings call this week.  Bob Chapek says that further capacity increases are being limited by restaurant staffing and live entertainment.  That’s something that we’ve been saying for a while.

• We’ve got a number of emails this week, including one from Ryan and Kim in Houston, about the lack of resort availability in the fall.  And I think this staffing shortage is what’s keeping large chunks of resorts closed, too - Disney doesn’t want to sell hotel rooms to people who can’t get into the parks.  
• And that probably means that we’re not likely to see the return of the Disney Dining Plan anytime soon.
• Also - somewhere between a third and half of guests are purchasing G+ or ILL
  

Surveys

From Becky in the UK-

Thanks for all the brilliant content you guys produce.

We are hopefully going to WDW in April after having 2 trips postponed.  We will be traveling with our almost 5-year-old daughter and staying on property.  We have been twice before and were huge Fastpass+ maximisers.  

As an obsessive Disney trip planner, I am becoming a bit concerned about our upcoming trip due to uncertainty around Genie+ and individual lightning Lane.  Will we be ok with a touring plan and early entry or do we need to buy into Genie+ and individual lightning lane to now have a good trip and see / do everything?

The cost of this trip will be at least double the cost of our 2019 trip due to lack of Disney discounts offered to UK guests (we've benefitted from free dining previously), very expensive flights to / from the US and having to pay for previously free items such as Magical Express.  The cost of adding Genie on for our length of stay is another $400 for the three of us even with the discounted rate offered to UK guests.

Len: Thank you, Becky!  Two things make this question interesting:

• Easter is really late this year - April 17 - so Becky can still run into Spring Break crowds
• Will Becky and her spouse be going on any thrill rides without their daughter?

In January we had our own Becky on the show - Becky Gandillon, who went over which G+ and ILL attractions saved the most time in line.  For ILLs, our Becky thought it was these:

So let’s start with the easy parts:

• A good way of thinking of whether to buy an ILL is how much it costs for every hour you’re saving.  And that’s because a decent ballpark estimate is that you’re spending around $15/hour just to be in the parks.  So anything that costs you less than $15 for every hour you save, is a good deal.
• Based on that number, ILL would make sense at Remy, Rise, Frozen, Flight of Passage, and 7DMT.  But not MMRR, Space Mountain, or Everest.  

• Of course, you won’t need ILL for all of them if you arrive early and head to one of those first-thing in the morning.  The tricky part will be EPCOT, and for that I’d head to Remy first thing.
• If you can get to Remy, Rise, FoP, and 7DMT first, then you might only need 1 ILL (for Frozen) for your entire trip.  And I’d actually walk over from Remy to FEA first before buying ILL, just to see what the line is like before spending the $30.

• As for Genie+, because you’re going during a busier time of year, and we know that up to half the park guests are going to be using G+, the standby lines are likely to be longer.  So that probably makes sense.  But I wouldn’t buy it for every day of your trip.  What I’d do is buy it for the first day you’re in the MK or DHS (and make that one of your first in-park days), and see how it goes.  If you think it’s useful, then try it at the other park, and maybe AK.  

• Don’t forget to enter your G+ times into your touring plan - the plan will optimize around your return times.  I’m working on some extra code now, and it looks like that with just a couple of key G+ reservations, you can get most of your wait times under 25 minutes, maybe with one wait of, you know, maybe 45 minutes.  And that’s where you can decided whether it’s worth spending the $48 per day.

And UK Becky, if you want to talk to our Becky about this, let me know.

From an anonymous listener who we’ll call “Gene” - 

On last week’s episode, you were talking about the ratio of Lightning Lanes vs Standby Line that are moved forward at the merge point. When I was a cast member, we had specific guidelines for this based on how busy the park was. Very busy days were called "phase 4" and we would push at least 30 people from FastPass and then only a handful of Standby.

Phases were a park wide determination and our managers would let us know what phase we were in. It sounds like lightening lane uses something close to this ratio.

It's unfortunate that they are doing this because it really slows down the standby line, even if there aren't a ton of people in line. I also speculate that because wait times go up, more guests are inclined to buy LL. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go open the Cinnabon store.

Our friends at WDWMagic.com reported on a Disney survey that asks this interesting question about EPCOT:

How would you rate your overall experience with Harmonious compared to your overall experience with Illuminations: Reflections of Earth? Would you say that Harmonious was...

Better

About the same

Worse

Len: I mean, Disney already knows the answer to this question, right? All they have to do is compare survey results.  And so that’s what we did:

________________ROE____EP4Ever____Harm

Pre-School______3.8______4.0_______4.2*

Grade School____4.2______4.1_______4.3*

Teens___________4.3______4.1_______4.5*

Young Adults____4.4______4.1_______4.1*

Over 30s________4.4______4.0_______4.1

Seniors_________4.5______4.0_______4.0

Likewise, here’s Wishes, Happily Ever After, and Enchantment:

Maybe pre-schoolers like Enchantment better than Wishes or Happily.  But it’s clear that anyone who’s smart enough to graduate kindergarten, thinks the other shows were better.

I’ll add that I spoke with an insider this week about other surveys, and they added this:

Survey results for Genie have been disastrous. Far below the lowest expectations. Alarm bells are ringing loudly

Jim, setting that aside, with the failure of Rivers of Light, this means Disney is now 0-for-three on its latest round of nighttime events.  Where do they go from here?

Jim’s Notes:

WDW Entertainment knows that they dropped the ball when it comes to Epcot’s new nighttime spectacular (which debuted back on October 1st of last year). “HarmonioUS” has only been running for 19 weeks at this point (Not even 5 full months). And WDW Entertainment commissioned this survey because they’re already looking for money to overhaul this show.

Key belief now among EPCOT managers is that this over-23-minute-long show ends wrong. In that “HarmonioUS” ends with a ballad, “Someday” (which was originally written for Disney’s animated version of “Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Which got released to theaters in June of 1996).

It’s worth noting here that “Someday” (which was written by Academy Award winners Stephen Schwartz & Alan Menken) was eventually cut from “Hunchback” because executives at Disney Studios thought that this ballad was just too depressed. Which is why Schwartz & Menken then wrote “God Bless the Outcasts” for Disney’s “Hunchback.”

So how is WDW Entertainment looking to fix “HarmonioUS” ? By cutting “Someday” and coming up with a new far more upbeat & soaring finale for Epcot’s newish nighttime spectacular. There’s also talk of adding at least two songs from “Encanto” to “HarmonioUS” (Which -- remember -- got reworked from its initial premise because Disney’s new CEO Bob Chapek wanted Epcot’s new nighttime spectacular to be more of a Disney concert. A best-of / greatest-hits sort of show).

If WDW Entertainment gets the results from this survey that they hope, work would be immediately on an overhaul of Disney “HarmonioUS.” Of course, the new music for this nighttime show would need to be recorded. Likewise new firework shells for that reworked portion of “HarmonioUS.”

Late night testing of a revamped version of “HarmonioUS” could begin as early as late Summer of this year. Goal is to have reworked show up & running for October 1st (which is when WDW Resort is expected to announce that its 50th anniversary celebration will be extended through March of 2023).

Hook for this campaign is “ … Even if you’ve already been to Walt Disney World for this Resort’s 50th anniversary, there are new things to see … Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, the ‘Encanto’ themed stuff in ‘HarmonioUS,’ plus a tease of TRON Lightcycle Run.”

From our close, personal friend Chris Cox:

I’m considering a dining package option for Harmonious. On looking at the website it only seems to offer the Rose & Crown or Spice Road. Are any other restaurants available and if not are either of these any good? I’m aware you love the sweet spot (ie the only place you can actually see everything) so wondered if it’s worth just eating someplace else and standing there instead?

Len: Those are the only two right now.  And since Chris is from London, I’m not sure he’s going to think of Rose & Crown as, you know, exotic.  Spice Road table is actually pretty highly rated, so that’s option #1, Chris.

The things to consider here are: (1) Do I like this restaurant enough to pick this just for Harmonious? And (2) Am I going to order enough food at dinner to justify the cost, as opposed to (say), just eating around the World.

If you wanted to eat dinner somewhere that gets really good ratings (right now that’s Teppan Edo, Spice Road, Via Napoli, Garden Grill, Rose & Crown, Le Cellier, Biergarten, and La Hacienda), and then try to find a spot for Harmonious.  Or, you know, if Harmonious gets the ILL treatment, buy that instead.

Listener Questions

SPECIAL GUEST:

Part three of four:

During the design phase and then the actual construction of EPCOT Center, John Hench (who -- at the time -- was the senior vice president of WED Enterprises) saw ComuniCore’s true potential, how this part of Future World could have a huge impact on the public when it came to shining a spotlight on the future that lay just over the horizon. Technologies that -- in the early 1980s -- seemed fantastic but just 10, 15, 20 years later would become part of our day-to-day lives.

EX: Touching a video screen & summoning up an EPCOT Center Host or Hostesses who could then make a dinner reservation for you or your family. A listener wrote in earlier this week (Sorry. I’m blanking their name) to talk about how this was one of their strongest memories from their family’s very first visit to EPCOT. How their Mom first touched that video screen and then began conversing with that EPCOT Cast Member. Which was very, very different from how their television behaved at home.

The idea here was to -- of course -- introduce visitors to Walt Disney World to the concept of touch-screen technology. Which would then go on to revolutionize banking when ATMS then became a feature of virtually every bank & mall in America.

FYI: The very first ATM in the United States opened at the Chemical Bank in Rockville Centre, NY back in September of 1969. The world’s first ATM opened two years earlier in the UK. To be specific, at a branch of Barclays in Enfield, North London. There’s actually a big blue plaque on the outside of this bank to commemorate this technological break-thru.

Touch screen technology was actually a perfect example of what John Hench wanted to showcase in CommuniCore.  John Hench was very big -- when it came to this part of Future World -- on shining a spotlight on what he liked to call “the future-present.”

What he wanted to have on display in CommuniCore was a wide variety of hands-on displays that blended today’s reality with tomorrow’s dreams. John was very insistent -- whenever he met with would-be sponsors of exhibits for CommuniCore -- that the exhibits that they were prepping for EPCOT Center (with the help of the Imagineers, of course) not be theoretical. Something that could maybe happen at some point far off in our distant future. But -- rather -- be a demonstration of a prototype systems that is here today.

That’s another key difference between the Future World pavilions -- which, as part of their shows, would show mankind already colonizing space, living deep beneath the sea or zooming around in flying cars -- and the displays at CommuniCore. Which were supposed to show people how computers would soon go from being the “HAL 9000” in “2001: A Space Odyssey” to become part of our day-to-days lives. Far-off future versus future-present.

Mind you, John Hench couldn’t afford to be all that picky. CommuniCore was huge. Its two buildings combined took up 267,000 square feet of Future World. The next largest structure in this part of EPCOT Center was The Land pavilion. That show building was just over 130,00 square feet (less than half the size of CommuniCore).

In order to fill up all that space with exhibits … Especially in those final months just before EPCOT Center opened to the public in October of 1982, Hench sometimes had to squint and say “Okay. That display is sort of Future-Present.”

Take -- for example -- the TravelPort, which was a CommuniCore exhibit that was sponsored by American Express. FYI: American Express got offered this spot in Future World as a “Thank You” from Disney Corporate for coming on-board “American Adventure” as a co-sponsor of that World Showcase pavilion. Coca-Cola was -- of course -- the other co-sponsor of “American Adventure.”

Anyway … Where exactly was the American Express TravelPort located in CommuniCore? Okay. Think of Future World as the face of a clock and then put Spaceship Earth in the 12 o’clock position. If we travel clockwise around that clock face, we first encounter CommuniCore’s Northeast quadrant (i.e., where the numbers 1, 2 & 3 would be located on that clock face).

TravelPort would be located approximately where the number 2 would be on our clock face. This would be where visitors to the Walt Disney World Resort could get all the normal American Express services and travel information (EX: buy travelers checks or get reservations assistance) while they were visiting EPCOT Center

But remember that American Express’ TravelPort is located in the CommuniCore portion of Future World. Where John Hench was then insisting that any corporations that offer services or present displays in this area must embrace the idea of being “future-present.”

So how does American Express do something that’s “future present” ? By turning its TravelPort at CommuniCore into a travel agency of the future, where Guests can experience various destinations before they then book their vacation package.

American Express -- with the help of the Imagineers -- brought this futuristic concept to life in kind of a cool way. At the entrance of TravelPort was the World Festival Sphere, a 14-foot-in-diameter sphere that functioned (I’m reading from an EPCOT Center press release now) “… as a magic crystal ball that then previews exotic travel destinations from around the globe.”

The concept powering the World Festival Sphere was both simple and kind of ingenious. Say you were thinking about taking your family on a South American adventure. To be specific, you wanted to go to Columbia and visit the region of that country that inspired Disney’s “Encanto.”

The way the World Festival Sphere worked was … First you could the attendant working at this CommuniCore attraction that you wanted to experience the Republic of Columbia. That EPCOT Center Host or Hostess then input the proper destination in the computer that powered this 14-foot-in-diameter sphere. You then stepped inside of the World Festival Sphere. And -- for 60 seconds -- music and images from that country washed over you.

American Express’ World Festival Sphere was outfitted with all sorts of video elements and theatrical lighting. The goal of this display was to temporarily overwhelm all of your senses. Make you feel like you had to go on vacation to this part of the world.

The prototype of the World Festival Sphere that the Imagineers mocked up back in Glendale initially had a smellitizer element. You know, the tech that made you smell the bubbling sulfur pools as your theater car moved through “Universe of Energy” or get that whiff of citrus as your flying car flew thru those orange groves in that “pick-your-own-ending” finale of “Horizons.”

The smellitizer aspect of the World Festival Sphere got dropped during this exhibit’s test phase when the Imagineers learned the hard way that the smell of spicy tapas (which was used to help Guests think that they were experiencing Sunny Spain) would linger inside of that 14-foot-in-diameter sphere. Which made for kind of a nasal disconnect when the next set of Guests wanted to experience the cool green forests of Canada or the cozy tea-and-crumpets world of the United Kingdom.

And remember how I said that CommuniCore was supposed to help get visitors to Walt Disney World ready for the idea that touch screen technology was just over the horizon? That -- as a part of the future-present -- this tech would soon become a part of our everyday lines?

Well, that’s why TravelPort was equipped with five Vacation Stations. Where -- as Guests were waiting for their chance to experience the World Festival Sphere -- they could kill time by stepping up to a television that was equipped with touch screen technology and then select a 60-second-long video that then gave them information about a specific vacation destination.

We didn’t yet talk about what was located in the 1 o’clock position at CommuniCore. This was EPCOT Central. Not EPCOT Center, but EPCOT Central. Which was supposed to take people behind-the-scenes at this theme park and then show them how all of the attractions and Audio-Animatronics were actually controlled by computers.

The only problem is … The room where all of the computer servers are kept isn’t really all that sexy or exciting. It’s just a big bunch of rectangles that are being kept cool so that they don’t overheat. This was the early 1980s after all.  So there were still disk drives. Those large cake-carrier-shaped things which were full of tapes.

The Imagineers knew that -- in order to make EPCOT Central entertaining -- they’d have to effectively overlay a show on top of the server room itself. So -- making use of the very same over-a-century-old-at-that-time projection effect (Pepper’s Ghost was first presented in a London Theatre back in 1862) -- they used the very windows that the Guests stared down through into EPCOT Center’s server room as a stage to present “The Astuter Computer Revue” on.

For all you Sondheim fans out there: Ken Jennings -- the actor who played Earlie the Pearlie, the human host of “The Astuter Computer Revue” (i.e., the cockney character who -- via Pepper’s Ghost -- jumped from server to server in the EPCOT Central show space) played Tobias in the original Broadway cast of “Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street” back in 1979. “Nothing’s gonna harm you. Not like those evil animatronic figures that you see in Westworld, I mean.”

For those of you who remember EPCOT Central (The “Astuter Computer Revue” was extremely short-lived. It was shut down by January of 1984), it was the pre-show space for this CommuniCore exhibit that had the broadest appeal to the young would-be technology fans of tomorrow.

Pre-show space had six hands-on experiments that demonstrated various dimensions of computer usage and allow Guests to interact with technology in new and unique ways. Most of the exhibits consist of touch screen games that demonstrate the ways computers are used to increase efficiency, while at the same time providing the Guest with enjoyable entertainment.

One of the more exciting experiences in this area is the CAD (computer aided design) exhibit, which focuses on computers and their role in design. Here Guests actually actually become designers as they simulate constructing a workable roller coaster by selecting various pieces of tracks such as spirals and loops and assembling them in the order they choose. Once the roller coaster is complete, the computer fills in the rest of the picture and gives the designer a point-of-view ride on the roller coaster he created.

June 1998 -- DisneyQuest opens. CyberSpace Mountain. Again, Guests get to design your own coaster. Only this time, you then get to ride it.

2009 - Sum of All Thrills too.

Wrap up this series on next week’s Disney Dish. Walk through the rest of CommuniCore and see what aspects of this Future World exhibit still survive.

Other unbuilt ideas for CommuniCore: https://waltdatedworld.com/id206.htm