Zailo.Com!

I CAN HARDLY WAIT...
until Disneyland gets rid of the haunted Mansion, then I will have absolutely no reasons left for ever going back there. Apparently they are in the midst of modifying the Pirates of the Caribbean in order to make it more reminiscent of the Johnny Depp movies.

Great! I understand that Disneyland feels it has to keep up with the times. What I think the execs at Disney don't get themselves is that there are still people who would not mind going back to Disneyland and seeing their favorite attraction again unchanged. Unfortunately we are probably a dwindling faction of attendees. This recent round of changes is a bit different than the last PC prompted changes.

One of the important lessons I learned working as a scenic painter doing stuff for Disneyland was the reason why. Why does Disney want to update it's attractions. The people who used to come out from Disney to check up on us were called "job managers". It was funny because some of the job managers did not seem to understand what I learned from simple observation and deduction. The why.

You have to realize that Disney updates the park because they already have your money. You are already in the park. They want you to have a good time. A good enough time that you will want to come back again. "Man that was awesome! We have to come back and see that again!" And at that second time they will have something newer to entice a future third visit. And so on and so on. All the work they are doing now is geared towards future, not present attendance.

You know how every summer there seems to be two almost identical movies that come out from different studios? You know the old Armageddon/ Deep Impact phenomenon? Well I am here to tell you that amusement park execs are just as bad. It is some kind of game to these people. If they find out that a competitor is coming out with, say, a mermaid themed attraction, then they have to come out with something along the same lines. But faster. I am not joking.
We had to actually cover up any project for a rival client anytime a job manager would come out for a visit. Whether they be from Disney or Knotts or whoever. Because if you worked for Disney and went to a scenic studio, saw a half completed mermaid display twenty feet tall you would rush back to the office in order to start plans on your own mermaid display right? Well apparently these guys do. I guess it would be easier to do that than to actually come up with an even better idea that you could do right.

Just to tell you what kind of people we are talking about, these people would come out to see the progress of a project and react in one of two different ways. They would either fall all over themselves praising the work, "Wow! This is great. It looks better than I could have imagined!". Or they would tear it apart through the use of nitpicking. "Oh, that red it isn't exactly the red we had on the callouts". It took me a little while to figure out what the hell was these people's problem. (I guess I am a bit of an armchair psychologist) Of course they are going to find something a little wrong with each project. It's job security. That way they can head back to the office and tell the boss "Don't worry. I set those guys straight. I am on the job." If they always go back and say everything is fine then the boss will start to ask him or herself "What am I paying this guy for?"

One job I worked on was for Disneyland Tokyo. It was a giant shield with giant swords crossed above it. The job manager was out and had some notes on the appearance of some minor details on the face of the shield. This shield was going to be on a stage thirty feet from the nearest observer. Believe me when I say that nobody was going to be able to even see the details he was complaining about. Again he needed something to prove that he was doing his job.

We had one group of Disney job managers who would show up and like clockwork find a few minor problems that could be relatively easily fixed. Fixed in about a week's time. That way they would have to be back out to check up on the improvements. What took me a few months to figure out was that every time that they went on a junket to a studio they got to have a meal on the company credit card. If they had to come back in a few days they got to have a free lunch again.

posted by zailo @ 10:58 PM

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Tuesday, April 04, 2006