Affiliated Computer Services to be bought by Xerox

You many wonder what in the heck that title has to do with Disney and a blog named ‘All Things Disney’…  but then again, if you’ve found my little blog on the internet then you are, my friend, not your NORMAL Disneyana fan.  No?!

And given that premise you’d know then that I wouldn’t suggest something unless it was related, and of course you’d be correct…

Far strung throughout the Disney empire is a highly technical shop.  They make all kinds of things happen that bring people together, work tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure things are running smoothly and that everybody has a good time (or is being productive).  Who might that be you say?  Imagineering?  Parks and Resorts folks?  Neh, I say…  it’s really none other than Disney IT!

See not all that long ago, or so the story I’ve been told goes, Disney let each of the BU’s (that’s business units in management speak) run their own IT operations.  Each BU was like it’s own little ‘kingdom’ shall we say, to abuse a metaphor given the subject. 

But for a company the size of Disney that’s not always the most efficient or effective way to manage your resources.  So they began to coordinate the IT centers inside each of the BU’s.  Michael Eisner also named Michael Tasooji the first Disney CIO in 2000.  Michael stayed on until leaving Disney in 2003 for The Gap Inc., and just recently left there according to LinkedIn to start his own company Digital Innovation Technology.

Frankly it’s not exactly clear what happened next from the outside, but given the turmoil in the company at the time, it’s probably safe to assume that the official CIO job went empty until Disney hired Tony Scott from GM (yes, THAT GM) in early 2005. 

A lot of stuff was made out of Tony’s GM days, but the REAL answer was in his previous years at the drug maker Bristol-Meyers Squibb.  A speaking profile says this is where he ‘led the transformation of their technology infrastructure organization to a shared services model and the development of a corporate infrastructure to support implementation of SAP and web-based technologies.’ 

And that’s where ACS comes in.  Yep, you knew we’d get there eventually no? 

In June of 2005 Disney announced that they were outsourcing almost all of their IT services.  And guess you’ve figured out by now who won?  ACS of course.  At the time the contract was for 7 years and approx. $610 million. 

Tony (and probably some others as well) also brought with them from those drug industry days a passion for IT services management.  Today the most widely known standard here is the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (or ITIL) which was published in 2006 under v2 and more recently in v3.  Which of course is how Disney now operates most of their outsourced IT services as well (ITIL that is), including the contract under which ACS operates. 

Disney also has other outsourced IT services contracts covering other parts of their infrastructure requirements.  Where ACS does the ‘services’ side of the offering for instance, HP does all the print services.  Cell phone, land lines, etc. etc. etc… all come under the umbrella at some point of Disney IT.

Tony left Disney in 2008 to go work for Bill as his CIO.  And in May of 2008 Bob Iger and crew appointed Susan O’Day, the current CIO of Disney to her current position.  It’s probably little wonder by the way, that Susan also came from the drug industry, where she also spent 12 years at a little drug company named:  Bristol-Meyers Squibb. 

So there is how today’s $5.7 billion offer for Dallas based ACS by the Norwalk, CT based Xerox affects the world of ‘all things Disney’.

Disney Cruise Line goes on media blitz!

Starting on September 11, 2009, Disney seems to have quietly updated their cruise line loyalty program that goes by the name of Castaway Club. 

On that day they program split into 3 tiers:  silver, gold and platinum.  I’m surprised that they didn’t talk about this at the D23 presentation I went to last week, but here are the facts about the tiers:

	Silver Castaway Begins after your 1st completed cruise.	Gold Castaway Begins after your 5th completed cruise.	Platinum Castaway Begins after your 10th completed cruise.
Castaway Club Benefits at a Glance
AT-HOME BENEFITS
Insider Exclusives Just for members—Webcasts, info, tips and news.	•	•	•
Early Access to Online Activity Planning Advance booking for onboard amenities and shore excursions.	90 days prior to sailing	105 days prior to sailing	120 days prior to sailing
Dedicated Phone Number (800) 449-3380—your direct line for info and assistance.	•	•	•
Early Booking Opportunities Be among the first to book our newest itineraries and ships 7 days before the general public.		•	•
ONBOARD BENEFITS
Exclusive Cruise Terminal Check-In Sail through the boarding process in a separate, members-only line.	•	•	•
Welcome Back Stateroom Gift* Be welcomed back with a gift unique to your membership level.	•	•	•
Special Onboard Booking Offer While on board, enjoy special savings on future cruises.	•	•	•
Castaway Club Onboard Reception Meet and mingle with the ship's officers at a private party on voyages 4-nights and longer.		•	•
Special Merchandise Offering Take advantage of special onboard shopping opportunities.		•	•
Priority Check-In at Cruise Terminal Enjoy concierge priority boarding check-in at the cruise terminal.			•
Exclusive Platinum Experiences** Unforgettable Disney fun created just for Platinum members.			•
Complimentary Dinner at Palo*** Savor an elegant dinner at Palo, on us.			•

• * One gift per stateroom based on highest level Castaway Club member in stateroom.
• ** Exclusive Platinum experiences are subject to change without notice.
• *** Offer includes dining service fee ($15) for one dinner. Available to Platinum Castaway member and Guests staying in member's stateroom. Must be 18 years of age or older.

Additionally there will be a live broadcast online from New York City on October 29, at 4:15 PM with more details about the new Disney Dream ship currently under construction at Meyer Werft in Papenburg, Germany.  Appears that it will be broadcast through the Disney Cruise website.

And lastly, Disney will unveil a new 6 story tall Sailor Mickey balloon at this years Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. 

I’ll try to have some more D23 stuff up soon!

Disney Cruise Line announcements at D23

We were on hand to see the Disney Cruise Line presentation on Friday morning.  Of course the big announcement was that when the Disney Wonder moves permanently to the west coast in 2011, that DCL WILL be making cruises to Alaska despite previous rumor to the contrary. 

                      

They just won’t be making any of them to Glacier Bay.  Instead the Wonder will leave from the port of Vancouver, BC and sail the waters of the southern Alaskan including Juneau, Ketchikan and Skagway.  The full press release in case you missed it is here.

The interesting thing about the press release is that is has MORE data than was actually given in the presentation!  The Wonder is going into drydock in October for an undisclosed period, but the press release DOES mention that they will be adding a new dining option on Deck 10 called Outlook Café, which will connect to the Cove Café immediately below, which is the coffee/cigar/whiskey bar in the adults only area.  No pictures were given, but I take this to mean that they’ll be adding a new glassed in area on the upper deck (Deck 10) that will either take the place of the teen hang out in ‘the stack’ or wrap around the stack in some fashion to provide the vista views promised.

Only two real disappointments in this presentation I thought.

The first was that we waited in line almost an hour for what was support to be a 60 minute discussion.  We thought we’d get a few announcements and maybe some discussion about the cruise line, the new ships, how the cruise line business works, etc. etc.  What we got instead was a 30 minute very nicely put together marketing blitz that while intimate in size (only 198 people were let in the room that the day before had held over twice that many for the Imagineering discussion), wasn’t so intimate in presentation. 

The second was that almost NOTHING was said about what was going to be going on with the new Disney Dream.  It’s suppose to report on duty in 2011 so that the Wonder can leave for the west coast and presumably so that the Magic can leave again for Europe.  The only announcement really was what the statue would be (that of Admiral Donald).

Not much else to share with you on that front, though they did have a model in the Imagineering area.  Here are a couple of shots showing the front and back of the new ship (they didn’t stitch together very well of the overall length). 

So we’ll have to wait until later to hear more…

All pictures in this post are copyright The Walt Disney Company.

More D23

Here are a couple of nice panoramic photos I stitched together from D23.  It’s been a BUSY day, with the crowd more than tripling on Day 3 and the lines have been VERY VERY long.

Here is a picture of the Expo Hall in the center, just to give you an idea of how big it is.  This is ONE of three areas and the main entry area.  To my left is much of the area of pictures I posted yesterday with Consumer Products and Disneyana.  To my right is the Dream Store.

And behind me is this:

Which is the Imagineering area. 

Inside are things like the following…

The first are several models of the new Cars Land area coming to DCA.  Below you can see two panoramas I stitched together of the same model, which as you can tell is quite large!

 

Next is the Animatronics area.

Which has a small area at the end which is where Wall*E and Lucky have been performing. 

 The next area has a model of the new Disney Dream cruise ship, which I have to retake pictures of before I can post them as well as a large model of the new Hawaii DVC.

And of course last are the models and markups for the new expansions coming to Hong Kong Disneyland.  Here is a panoramic picture of the model:

More to come!

Greetings from D23!

Yep, I’m out here on the west coast along with a group of ‘dyed-in-the-wool’ Disney fans to take in Disney’s first, modern attempt to a build a sanctioned/official fan community.  We are just getting over with day 2 (and boy, was it a full day).  I didn’t get to post anything last night about day 1 due to some technical issues, but I’ll cover that in this installment as well.

Nothing much to especially mention from our trip a couple of weeks ago to WDW.  The park is still running, the hours are still being adjusted more or less on the fly as required, crowds seemed to be good, if a bit spotty, and as is typical this time of the year:  IT WAS HOT!  So hot, we took 2-3 hour off every afternoon to leave the parks and seek Starbucks and A/C while letting the little one take in a nap.

BTW, up front, if you hear of something you don’t think is being covered at D23, drop me a line at michael@allthingsdiz.com and I’ll try to follow up before the event ends Sunday night.

So first, the general overall impressions after 2 days of go-go-go and in no particular order.

The Anaheim Convention Center has in general done a good job of ‘swallowing’ the crowd yesterday and today, though I’d say Friday was bigger than Thursday which makes sense given that more locals turned out today than yesterday.  It’s hard to get a firm idea of how tickets are working since the only way to know is by the color of wristbands and even then they have two different versions of some colors:  one for D23 members and one without.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been some minor growing pains with crowds and lines.  Several of the more popular seminars have had lines where the wait has been in excess of 40-50 minutes and lines much longer than the venue could hold.  On day 1 some of the lines were so long we ended up only seeing one seminar due to the distance between venues (it’s a fairly large center after all).

Disney has done good by their goal of including the broader Disneyana community in the convention as well (though I’m sure they probably ‘paid’ for the honor of being part of the Expo as would be typical of a convention).  Many of the more popularly known Disney related fan sites are represented in person on the Expo floor, which I’ll cover below.  Many of the panels have also been hosted by folks who are either retired from the company or from the broader Disneyana community as well.  For instance, the panel on the new art documentary ‘El Group’ was hosted by none other than Jim Hill of Jim Hill Media.

Likewise, I have to give big props to Disney in terms of general production value.  So far there have been lots of surprises (good kinds) and overall fairly well produced (and scripted) larger and even many of the smaller settings.  There are some things to smooth out in the future, but overall this thing has gone off very well so far.

I also have to believe from what I’ve seen that it’s very true that D23 has the support of the top folks at the company as shown by the tons of people that have shown up from the company.  I’ve seen Tony Baxter more than once in the halls for instance, as well as tons of salaried cast members just to point out a couple instances.

EXPO

The Expo certainly takes up the largest part of the overall venue and most of the first floor.  The main areas of course surround the major elements of the overall company, and most of the consumer facing parts are well represented.  The Disney Consumer Products are also has Disney sanctioned licenses like Lego, Hasbro and Hallmark.  There is also a fairly large store for D23 stuff as you’d expect, though much of the ‘unique’ D23 stuff is actually available only through the disneystore.com website.  They have demo items to see of those, but you can’t actually buy them here. 

Here are some photos from the Disney and Disney sponsored areas:

And here are just a couple from the Disneyana area:

   

Day 1

We were a little late in getting here yesterday due to other work commitments, so I missed the Bob Iger keynote in the morning as well as the latest Legends induction ceremony.  No doubt you’ve seen the pictures of the distinguished list of individuals inducted this year and everybody said Bob did a good job with both his presentation and his MC duties.  No major announcements during that keynote that I heard or that I’ve read, just good solid discussions and about 30 minutes of the upcoming ‘Princess and the Frog’.

We did manage to make it to the Imagineering Legends discussion which was good, with that slightly irreverent fun you get when you get these guys together.

Marty Sklar and Bob Gurr joshed with each other (Marty saying they were still in an ongoing debate from the early 80’s over whether Bob quit or Marty fired him.  *laughs*), while Don Iwerks and Alice Davis had some great stories.  Blaine Gibson had a couple good stories too add too.  And of course you can’t have a good meeting like this without a straight man, which was more than taken care of by X. Atencio!   

I’ll try to get some Day 2 stuff up tomorrow.

Headed to the World

A quick separate post to let you know I’ll be leaving for ‘the World’ tomorrow night for a quick pre-labor day trip.  $48 discounted rooms at a Value resort were just too hard to pass up… Disney knows how to ply the weakness in this family with PIN offers!

If there is anything you’ve recently noted or were interested to find out more about, let me know and I’ll do my best to look into it and post next week when we return.

Are you going to D23?

Sorry it’s been a bit since my last post, things have been a whorl wind around here with the end of summer school (and my final class in my MBA thank you very much!) and work.  Yeah, I have a ‘boring’ day job too… so this site takes a back seat to that when things are hoppin’ at work like they have been.  It doesn’t hurt that things around Disney have been quiet as we expected with the exception of the recent string of unfortunate accidents.  Are prayers go out to those who’ve recently lost a loved one at Disney.

The fun news this month has been the build up to D23 of course, which I’m happy to report I (along with a friend and former Disney employee) will be attending.  Just today in fact it appears that Disney has begun issuing the online tickets for the Expo. 

Here is a peek at what they’ve sent to those of us to date:

Dear E-Ticket holder, Attached please find a PDF of your E-Ticket(s) to the D23 Expo. Please save this PDF to your computer and PRINT ALL necessary tickets. If you ordered multiple tickets, you MUST PRINT OUT each individual ticket. You will need to redeem your E-Ticket in the main lobby of the Anaheim Convention Center on the date of your confirmed attendance. Please make note of the Expo Hours listed below. Parking: Parking is available at the Anaheim Convention Center for $12 a day. Per Anaheim Convention Center policy, no special or complimentary parking rates will be offered to Annual Passholders at any of the lots, including overflow lots, for this event. Shuttles: The Anaheim Resort Transit will operate buses to and from the Anaheim Convention Center. Please check their schedule (www.rideart.org) for times and pick up/drop off locations. Hours: Ticketing will begin at 7 a.m. each day of the Expo. The show floor will open at 8 a.m. for D23 Members and 9 a.m. for the general public. The show floor will close at 5 p.m, with additional programming at the Expo theaters continuing throughout the evening. Line Formation: No on property line ups will be allowed at the Anaheim Convention Center prior to 5 am. For additional information please visit www.D23Expo.com. We look forward to seeing you at the Expo!

The box in the bottom right has my name, a bar code and the length of the pass (a 4 day in my case).

Disney did a great job with the Expo website and the links through to hotels in the area of the convention center as well.  Bravo on that.  we’ll be staying literally right across the street from the convention center, so it should be fun!