DIG fire sale & Reuters article

Now that we got yesterday's fun technical article out of the way *sigh*, we'll make a quick turn to a couple of other articles from the last couple of days on the business front.

The first has to do with what was called the Disney Internet Group, some of which I blogged about 'Musings on VMK and Disney's Online Presence', which is now the Disney Interactive Media Group. 

Anyhow, in my article I noted several of the online properties that DIG 'owned' and maintained and one of those was the site movies.com.  But no longer.  DIMG has sold off movies.com to Comcast, the current owner of the popular movie ticket site Fandango according to a CNNMoney.com story. 

Only thing that strikes me as odd is that Comcast is quoted as saying 'the purchase price was minimal'.  So if that's the case, then it no longer fit into a profile of Disney's long term online portfolio and profile.  So we'll have to keep an eye out and see if that focus changes from what it is now.

In other news, Reuters has an interesting article as I noted yesterday about Mssrs. Iger and Staggs (CEO and CFO respectively) working the Wall Street front to paraphrase the article loosely

'to raise the valuation of the Disney Company . . . by convincing Wall Street . . . that it should be viewed as a stable, global brand, vice a cyclical, hit driven media business'

If you read the rest of the article though, you'll see that the Street is still a bit skeptical.  I think Disney has to prove through the current market trend that they can still make money and increase revenue without deeply discounting or hurting the brand.  Obviously Mr. Iger's push into online media and overseas expansion are meant to bring some additional stability for the long run.

Of course, this focus on increasing the company's value and stock price shouldn't come as a surprise for a number of reasons.  Some obvious and maybe a few that aren't.

1. The Walt Disney Company is a business to it's investor's first and foremost, so while they like Mickey like you and me, they like him better when he is adding money to the vault like ole' Scrooge McDuck even better.
2. Increased valuation allows the company increased flexibility for borrowing money on favorable terms using the company's capital and cash flow as collateral.
3. Mr. Iger and Mr. Stagg's yearly bonus (along with a few other key individuals) is tied to an array of financial indicators, which include EPS, cash flow, etc. which you can read about as nauseam in last year's Proxy statement here.
4. Mr. Iger's vestment of his stock options is tied to the Company's stock performance in comparison to the S&P 500 total return as defined in his contract here (see Section 4).

Those aren't bad things.  It falls into that category of 'what's good for the goose is good for the gander'.  But with the DIS ticker symbol trading in a very narrow range for the last several months, that $27 million of compensation last year might NOT be as high this year.

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BTW, we are off this weekend for an out of town wedding, so no new posts until next week.  Have a good weekend!

Midway Mania Part Deux

Well, I had a hard time today figuring out what to go with.  I have a cool article in from a UK publication on the Disney Company and Bob Iger and Tom Stagg's work on raising the 'value' of the company, or to go with a really GREAT article I found with lots more insider detail on how Midway Mania is put together.

Since I'm an engineer (and an Imagineer at heart), I think we'll lead today with the technical article.  The business climate will ALWAYS be there, my pursuit of an MBA non-withstanding of course.

Over at Design News they have a very cool article entitled 'Disney Rides on Wireless Ethernet' that goes into GREAT detail about how exactly TSMM is constructed. The cool thing is from our previous dissection of the ride from those console pictures, we were pretty darn close to right about the components in the ride system.

Here is a copy of the video on Mr. Potato Head that shows cameos by Don Rickles and several Imagineers like Kevin Rafferty.

We were right on with the Siemens' automated control systems link that we posted the other day, and in fact the system uses two different version of the SIMATIC family of control systems I pointed to in the previous article.  Specifically:

• They use a SIMATIC S7-319 controller, which is the most powerful controller in the 300 series to control the overall ride flow
• They then use a slightly less powerful SIMATIC S7-315 onboard each vehicle to manage the onboard ride systems (think motor, safety systems, etc.)

So the rest of this is what I can put together from the article and my own engineering and design background.  Some is truth, some educated conjecture on my part, so don't treat it as gospel!

Siemens uses what is called Industrial Ethernet for their family of automation control systems.  Some further investigation shows that this is standard ethernet as you and I know it, just 'hardened' for nasty, dirty, hot industrial climates like the power plant I used to work in. 

The plugs are different than the same Cat5/6 plugs you and I use, but that's for a number of probably obvious reasons:

• dirt
• moisture
• humidity
• temperature
• vibration

Just to name a few.  Industrial areas are nasty dirty and often times almost violent.  So you need a VERY positive interlock to make sure cables stay connected and communicating.  When things go down, it costs people money... BIG money. 

In the power plant I worked in, if the main boiler when offline and spun down the generators, it often took over 2 hours to get everything back online again.  2 hours in an industrial application when your not producing or having to buy something from someone else gets expensive really quickly.

So, the overall communication profile, as the headline points out, is using Ethernet as it's primary communication bus (vice a completely proprietary bus architecture like some PLC control systems still use).  And the ride makes extensive use of wireless from each of the the cars to the off board systems as well, just like you and I use at home only hardened.  But wireless isn't the ONLY method. 

The cool bus in the ride is using the track itself as one communications bus.  The ride systems broadcast using wireless and get updates via the track, which is probably generally continuous but electrically isolated into many zones.  That way the ride has a 'positive' control for movement from one zone to the next I suspect: no signal, no go.  Additionally the onboard controller can throw the ride into a 'stop' condition based on any number of onboard safety profiles while sending an update over wireless to the main system to slow or stop the rest of the ride (that's typically called exception or interrupt reporting/controlling). 

When the ride goes into a slow or stop profile, the controller alerts the game systems, which are a connected on that same Ethernet, but area a separate part of the architecture. 

How worried is Imagineering about knowing where your car is?  So worried in fact that they use two completely DIFFERENT methods for determining it:  one based on absolute proximity sensors in the floor so they know where the cars really are (that's probably what we saw on the operators display) and the other reads what is essentially a bar code on the floor to make sure you are lined up with the game screen within an inch of resolution.  Likewise, the position data from the cars is fed to the game system so the gaming system knows where your gun point is at in relation to the screen and how to make your darts appear to come from your gun and not someplace else in space.  That's pretty cool.

So there you have it, Disney moves their new ride systems into the 21st century.  In that way TSMM is as much about the cool attraction it is as it is a down payment on using new and current technologies for the future.  Think of it as the entertainment version of the industrial processes we all love to watch on the Science Channel's show 'How Things Are Made'.

Update:  Fixed a couple of typos

George Carlin

What can you say about a guy like George Carlin? 

Sure, there are the many people as CNN and the AP note that remember him for his infamous '7 things you can't say on TV' bit, but to me that misses the larger point of his comic genius.

Of course most will remember him for what you might call his grotesque humor.  But as a guy who did not get into Carlin until college (Thanks Jas!), I remember him more as very witty, often insightful and some times even enlightening.  I can think of no higher form of comedy than to have the ability to point out some of the dumb and just strange things we do as humans, all while having a good laugh.  That's tough work, but guys like George Carlin and Richard Pryor, foul though some of their work may be, were grand artists at it to be certain.

While in college, we made a pilgrimage of sorts for 3 or 4 years in a row to see George when he was close to us (Kansas City or St Louis being about equi-distant from Columbia, Missouri).  I saw Carlin a couple of times after college in the DC area as well, and he was ALWAYS in top comedy form.  For as often as I saw him in person or on TV, had to be one of the hardest touring comedy guys in the world.

Of course as many of you know George Carlin, in addition to his standup comedy, always had other projects he starred in or worked on.  There is a pretty insightful list over at the IMDB.  Of course, the tie to Disney is he was the voice of Fillmore in the hit Pixar flick 'Cars'.

My mother was an elementary school teacher until her untimely passing in 1999.  She used to play lots of PBS shows at different times for the elementary classes that she saw each week, some of which I watched with them for hours on end late in high school (it was a small school, trust me). 

So while I'll always remember the fun college times with Carlin and my college buds, the posters, 'Simon Says Go . . .' T-shirts, and the rollicking laughs I shared with my brother over a Carlin skit.  I'll also forever remember him as characters like Mr. Conductor on Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends.

So today we raise a toast to our friend George Carlin. 

May your glass be ever full.
May the roof over your head be always strong.
And may you be in heaven
half an hour before the devil knows you're dead

 

Spaceship Earth and communication...

So today I've been reading through my textbook for the upcoming class I'm taking on 'Executive Communications' for my MBA, I keep having visions of Spaceship Earth.  Strange I know, but this is one of those attractions that made EPCOT one of my favorite places in the world. 

Yet honestly.... the new revision  hasn't really done much for me .  I still like the ride in general, (it certainly needed the TLC and upgrading).  But it doesn't 'grab me in the gut' the way it used too.

Sure there is the now old storyline that Imagineering came up with (with some help from Ray Bradbury) in the late 1970's which was ALL about "Communications" emphasis on the capital "C", but the new Spaceship Earth has a different storyline:

"Our new story is essentially about how all the innovations of one generation influence and inspire another." - Bob Zalk, Imagineer

So why would a Communications textbook make me think of the new Spaceship Earth?  Which really doesn't have a storyline that much to do with Communication per say?

Well, that's because Imagineering is all about storytelling right?  And what is good storytelling?  It's good COMMUNICATION.  Lets assume Don Fabun was right in 1968 that:

"Communication is the transfer of meaning."

Then for us to be communicating together effectively, it's not just enough to transfer my message and walk away.  Instead it is about you and I engaging in such a way that our communication is more deep: you receiving my message, understanding my message, and me imparting to you the necessary information such that you understand it the way I do - with all the intricacies, complexities, context and detail.  You don't have to agree, but you at least UNDERSTAND.

It's not something that the new Spaceship Earth does completely, although I'm sure at the refurb's conception the storytelling intent was otherwise.

Each ride in EPCOT (and many other Disney rides for that matter) is about communicating strategically some basic message.  That strategic reason is why Imagineering works so hard on backstory to communicate a sense of continuity and purpose to any setting, that makes you feel like you are there.  And they have to do so in a way that overcomes both the physiological (5 senses) as well as psychological (mental) barriers in an engaging way. 

And so from Bob's quote above, we have the strategic message for Spaceship Earth:  innovation throughout time has influenced and inspired future generations.

     "Okay Michael, so what?", you say.  "That's just way to deep for something that is suppose to be fun and maybe a bit informative."

    "I agree it's a bit deep, but it's the ESSENCE of what makes those experiences grab you deep inside and MOVE you in a way that nobody has been able to do like Disney", I say.

It is certainly what used to move me about EPCOT.  Every experience  in Future World made you want to laugh, to cry, to feel charged up, informed, excited, but somehow to FEEL someway; while World Showcase WANTS you to understand maybe as Maya Angelou likes to put it:

"We are more alike than we are different."

So back to Spaceship Earth and that core, strategic message.  After riding the new ride several times and listening to the audio track again while I'm typing this from a pretty good binaural recording done by Ricky Brigante over at his excellent podcast "Inside the Magic", the experience just doesn't quite do it for me on a few levels.  It's message is just too subtle in too many places.

Unfortunately, fixing some of them, like re-doing the loading area to reset the expectation to something like 'this ride is going to be wonderful for all of you and we are traveling through time, and oh, It will be NEW for all you old timers', would require taking the ride down again and spending more money. 

There are some things that can be done with the ride still in day operation that I think would help a little:

• for instance, the Bruce Broughton score is nice, but maybe a little TOO pianissimo (that's soft for those of you who don't read music ;).  When I exit the information tunnel where we are building 'velocity' and moving towards a crescendo bursting into the star field, I want a rousing John Williams timpani, cymbal crash, french horn, etc. or maybe some Copeland or my favorite which you can hear in the cue area at Soarin from 'The Last Starfighter' (all three links open an iTunes link).  Something to get the blood boiling from the build up on the assent.  Think IMAX audio cool.
• maybe tinker with the voice score as well so that when you hit that tunnel, Dame Judy is rising in speed, tone and just after that big audio moment gives you a meaty morsel to go with it and to think about as we move through the star field.  Maybe the current script is good, it just needs some more PUNCH at that apex point. 
• if you really wanted to bump it around a little, honestly I think the script hews just a little too close to the old information theme.  Sure it talks about innovation, but it stays too focused AROUND innovation in communication. 
• And lastly...Find someway to more closely tie the loading area and the idea of loading into a time machine into the decent as a conceptual background for peeking into the future and then returning to now. 

The point here isn't to get into rehashing Spaceship Earth however.  It instead is to highlight that well planned and thought out COMMUNICATION is what good storytelling is all about.  When Disney is firing on all levels, they are an unstoppable force in immersing us in a new world . . . and maybe, just maybe, changing our perceptions and ideas about the world around us.

UPDATE:  Added music links to three favorite/popular songs as ideas of what I mean.

Welcome to Innoventions

And the house you only WISH you could afford....Me too!.

I LOVE technology, I work in technology, I want to have every whiz bang gadget you can imagine, and yet when I look at all the tech in this space, somehow it just never quite satisfies does it?  That's the problem with today's technology and while I work in the field, even I'm not certain at the moment I know how to get to the next level.  It's still too complicated and too 'non-transparent' still to be a game changer.

So, lets take a little closer look at the technologies that have been listed as being in the new 'Home of the Future' at Disneyland. 

First, we should point out as some other places have, there is some of overlap with what's in Florida at Innoventions.  How much I can't tell, since we are mostly dissecting pictures.  But I know they are sponsored by many of the same companies.

So first up is HP stuff.

HP

Let's start with the HP TouchSmart computer in the kitchen. 

The up close is here courtesy of Microsoft. 

You may recall seeing these at your local Best Buy last year just after the launch of Windows Vista and leading up to the Holiday season.  The touch screen is kinda nice, and it works fairly well.  But you know what, I don't think it sold very well.  Despite the fact that it has a cable tuner, DVD player, etc. etc. etc., it was just too expensive.  And the kicker?  The computer you see in the picture isn't even available from HP anymore. 

The new models are out, and they are here. 

BTW, wanna watch TV on that thing?  Well, it has an integrated NTSC and ATSC tuner.  'Cool!', you say.  'Not so fast', I say.  Nothing in this world is as EASY (or cheap) as it seems.

ATSC is the format for the new HDTV tuners, but it requires an antenna.  Yeah, you know, that thing you did away with in the 80's when you got cable?  And it's a UHF antenna to boot, so break out the rabbit ears folks and pray you are within about 25 miles of the transmitter, else you'll need a much bigger antenna, possibly a roter (you do remember those, right?) and even a signal amplifier. 

'Holy 1970's Batman!'

Want to pull in cable?  Yeah, okay, but that's the Achilles heel of the entire Windows Media Center Experience really (or any other DVR for that matter).  Right now to directly tune MOST digital cable systems, you still have to have the outboard cable box from your company, which they will provide, but just like your beloved Tivo, you'll get one channel at a time and have to wire up something to tune the cable box directly (IR sensors in the case of TIVO for instance).

What about CABLECard you say?  Sure, if you want to buy an external CABLECard tuner from ATI or others.  But be prepared to give up all those fancy on demand, pay-per-view and other perks you and Comcast have come to love. And be prepared for LOTS of hassle from the cable company, since getting this thing to work never seems to go smoothly.  Ed Bott has a decent series of articles on getting it working at his ZDnet blog.  This ain't for the faint of heart folks.

See what I mean about being cool, but just TOO complicated?  My father can barely send e-mail and surf the web.  Run his cable box through his computer like this?  Never gonna happen.

As a side note, if you look close in that picture, just like in Florida, you'll notice that the appliances are from that same company we talked about in my recent 'Toy Story Midway Mania' deconstruction.  Surprised?  Not gonna find these at your local Lowe's or Home Depot though. 

And keep your sticky fingers off my expensive touchscreen computer!

Next in the HP line Gizmodo tells us is the iPAQ 510 Voice Messenger. 

The HP link is here.

So when I first read this, I thought, 'COOL!.  Maybe HP built a Wi-Fi enabled portable phone I could use with Vonage or something similar.'  But alas, it's not to be.  Not only is the phone crazy expensive at $320, it only works with an IP-PBX or an appropriate cellular carrier. I've often thought about running something like a small, free Asterisk PBX at home, but frankly who has the time? 

You can buy a small custom Asterisk based PBX for not a whole lot of money (say $500 or so), but now that makes your home phone system over $1,000 for two phones, plus monthly fees if you want to walk outside the house and to your land line SIP provider plus your Internet service to boot.  On top of that, if you want to use a regular old phone with your spanking new PBX, you have to buy an analog-to-IP convertor for every phone at about $90 each.  Or you can by an IP enabled phone, but most of those are WELL over $150.

Just don't let the power go out if you want to make a call.  ;)

Lastly in the easy to identify category are the HP MediaSmart LCD TV's.  Which do generally get pretty decent reviews and have the Microsoft Media Extender Technology built in, but see the next section on why they won't let you do everything you want to do.

Microsoft

Most of the Microsoft technology is in the infrastructure category, with the exception of the Xbox 360 (which certainly has an infrastructure component to it) and a few other devices.  Vista as the OS, Media Center and the associated extender technology to get to your TV screens and stereos. 

The major hold up with any of this technology is that Microsoft and others are platform companies, not CONTENT companies.  So unless you've ripped all your hard audio CD's to digital content or bypassed the copy protection on your DVD's to get them copied to your hard drive somehow (and in what format?  There are DOZENS!), the available content is pretty darn limited. 

Sure you can buy digital copies online, but as you and I know, almost none of those options come close to being even the quality of a DVD, let along Blu-Ray.  And if you are like me and own almost all the Disney Animated features on DVD, do you really want to shell out for them again in digital form just so you can have a copy that is of generally poorer quality and doesn't have the extras?  No thanks guys.  Not yet.

Not even Disney's home of the future has solved that problem I'm afraid.

Life|ware

The last major technology contributor is life|ware.  Lifeware makes software that is in the home automation space, and like most home automation systems they a) sell through dealers only and b) because of that are usually so expensive guys like you and I really can't afford it. 

Lifeware basically from what I can tell makes software that runs on top of Windows Vista to control your 'digital lifestyle'.  Like most home automation products, it can tie your HVAC, lighting, whole home audio, security systems, etc. together and make it available on your TV or incredibly expensive little fixed and portable touch screens throughout your home.  The list of compatible products is here (WARNING:  PDF link).

It's very impressive. . . and no doubt VERY expensive. 

Do they solve any of the afore mentioned media issues though?

Nope.  So even if they CAN sell you a 4 Terabyte, network connected, media streaming, WMCE enabled server. . . you are still stuck with ripping your media from disc.  *sigh*  Or watching it directly FROM disc.

But hey, you can connect your oven to it!  Oh wait, it's not the one that we mentioned earlier that is in the kitchen.  Oh well.  Who wants to remotely control their kitchen oven anyhow?

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So, in summation. . . a home of the near future?  Maybe. 

A home of interconnected, proprietary interconnects that don't free you from the tyranny of locked media?  For certain.

Easy on your pocketbook and easy to hook up and maintain?  Not on your life.

Sigh. 

As a technology guy I WANT this to work, really I do, and boy howdy if I could afford too, I just might.  The problem of course is that 'just might' frankly doesn't move product or money.  Back to the drawing board guys.

Midway Mania Throughput Numbers & the Economy

Al Lutz, who writes one of the best Disneyland columns/blogs on the net over at MiceAge.com, posted his most recent offering this past Tuesday. Al's columns come at inconsistent intervals, but then when you read one of them you'll know why: they are jam packed FULL of insider information.

Anyhow, on the first page of his 4 part article he notes, as I pointed out the other day when we deconstructed Midway Mania, that the DCA version:

they're now able to pull in 1,000 per hour counts and keep the line consistently shuffling past Mr. Potato Head.

So despite the ribbing I took from several on my math being a little shaky, I'll take Al's post as an indication that I wasn't too far off.

I have not been able to confirm that the setup in Florida is the same, but my guess is it's only the queue area that is different, and not the ride itself. So I'd expect around 1000-1100 guests an hour on average. That's a little smaller than the 1500 I've seen quoted in several places, but it's still a lot of people (over 10,000 in a typical 10 hour operating day).

Al's post also talks about the economy and its affects, as we did in another post last week as well, and its possible effects on Disneyland (which may or may not be the same for Florida). Looks like the biggest impact right now out west is in DVC sales for the first Disneyland Resort DVC not meeting initial expectations.

That shouldn't be much of a surprise I reckon, since it is a big commitment in this economy to post a $15,000+ downpayment plus signing up for yearly dues for a fractional ownership plan. But then you have to add in the additional costs of travel, tickets, food, etc. It is not a trivial cost, and this from somebody who LOVES to go to DisneyWorld. However, I'd say at the moment that for the typical Disney visitors the economic mood is as much psychological as anything.

That doesn't mean that Disney parks won't continue to thrive, just that new DVC sales may be plateuing just a bit, probably in Florida as well. That's probably the first indication of a slightly cooling market. I wonder how well they are doing for sales with all that hyper-expansion in Florida for DVC?

WDC and the VC world

Well, I must have been asleep at the technology and business switch on this one (of course when this endeavor started in 2000, I was still running around the world trying to make sure everything for my company was moving well after Y2K, so maybe I can get a bye).

Anyhow, it seems the the WDC has its very own little boutique VC firm called, not surprisingly, Steamboat Ventures that started in that year.  I came across the pointer to this in my recent June 16 issue of Business Week and you too can now read the article  entitled "Disney:When You Wish Upon a Startup".  Its a quick, but interesting read.

They also have a complete list of the current projects they are invested in under 'Portfolio' on the left.  Interesting stuff, but probably nothing you or I have heard much about yet.

Likewise, the new 'Innovations' section of the same issue on page 64 lists the WDC as one of the top 25 most innovative companies in the world (number 17 to be exact).  You can see the full chart here.  BizWeek has done this ranking for a number of years, it's just now highlighted in a whole section of the magazine (and web site) dedicated to Innovations.

Oh, and just as a quick aside to my post about the new DIMG group the other day being setup to make money... well, let's just say that yesterday I got some independent verification that they already DO.  Congrats to all at the new DIMG and best wishes for continued innovation and profitability.

"walkable ubanism" and the dream that was EPCOT

Okay, so normally I'd not post two things in one night (trying to save SOMETHING to talk about in the future when I feel like I'm running out), but this article at CNN was just too good to pass up.  Especially in relation to Walt's original dreams for the Florida Project for a Disney oriented blog. 

The article I speak of talks about how in many places younger and younger generations are spurning the suburbs for re-vitalized downtown areas that offer mass transit, walks to everything they need and what Christopher Leinberger of the U. of Michigan in the article calls 'walkable ubanism'.

Sounds a lot like a little project that never quite made it to reality in Florida some 40+ years ago no?

You can read the article here.

DCL/Panama Canal story OOPS

Well, it looks like the Disney Magic's recent crossing of the Panama Canal was not a record setter after all.  MSNBC.COM printed the following Associated Press retraction mid-day last Friday:

The authority now says it wrongly estimated the fees and that Disney paid US$283,400 for "Disney Magic" to cross on May 16, an amount that was not a record.

Still, with 875 staterooms, that works out to be about $324 per stateroom in taxes, ONEWAY.  They still have to make the trip back of course.

Likewise according to the Disney Cruise Line Ship Facts page both ships hold about 20,000 gallons of diesel fuel.  So in the past year the price of diesel for the ship went from $2.00 a gallon to $4.00 a gallon, which has increased the fuel price from US$40,000 to US$80,000.  Given the same 875 rooms that's about $92 a stateroom (vice $45 a stateroom before that).

Disney recently, like most of the other cruise lines, added a fuel surcharge of $8 per person, per day for the first two people in a stateroom, and $3 a day for everybody else.   Obviously they did it to keep their core rates competitive in the highly competitive cruise market, just like the airlines are doing.  So for a 4 day cruise for a family of 4, we'll pay another $88 in fuel surcharges. 

On our recent cruise on the DCL, I don't recall us taking on any fuel in the Bahamas and certainly I do not believe that Castaway Cay has much in the way of on shore bunker storage.  I wonder if the ships are capable of making the 3 and 4 day cruises without having to fuel enroute?  Which would make sense to design them that way from the beginning.  Besides that, it makes the most sense for Disney to fuel as MUCH as possible where they can by in bulk and store it themselves (as they do in Port Canaveral). 

We'll have to see how the price of gas has affected DCL at the end of July when Disney announces their second quarter earnings.  If the off property discounts that are currently flying around the Net for hotel rooms starting in August at WDW is any indication, it might not be rosy.  I sure hope those two new ships coming online were priced in service for today's higher fuel costs.

Animal Kingdom Dragon

I read with interest, as I always do, Honor Hunter's post today at his 'Blue Sky Disney' blog about 'The Disney Lands That Time Forgot'.

In the post he talks about many of the announced or just heavily rumored parks or lands that Disney has considered throughout the years.  Of interest to me always are the discussions about the 'Beastly Kingdom' part of the park that was axed as the story goes by Michael Eisner to keep the budget down (I'm sure many people at Disney and within Imagineering know the real answer, but we probably will never know if this is the EXACT truth or not.  And Joe Rhode didn't address is during his recent 10 year anniversary discussions that I'm aware of either).

Most of us also know that the original logo for the Animal Kingdom contained a large dragon silhouette right in in the middle of the Tree of Life logo, shown to the right.

Of course the current logo in use throughout much of the park no longer contains any animals at all. 

So, Beastly Kingdom was suppose to be built where Camp Minnie-Mickey is today.  But in one of those little Imaginnering tweaks to the powers that be and always fun to find is here too as a homage to the land that never really made it off the drawing board.

When you cross the bridge from Discovery Island on your way into the Camp, if you look across the right side of the bridge up the river on the left you will see a storm drain that looks, oh, sort of like that mythical creature in the middle of the old logo that never REALLY made it into the park.  Fun no?

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Unfortunately, in all my trips to AK, I have never been able to get a good picture of it, since it's just far enough away with the limited zoom on my little Canon point and shoot it always comes out blurry or too dark.  So if someone out there is in the area, or has a good 'head' shot of our friend sticking our from the bank, please send me a copy and I'll be sure to update this post with it.

Musings on VMK and Disney's online presence

For awhile I have been thinking about the media storm brewing in the online Disney community about the death of VMK.  I have done a lot of studying of the Disney company over the last couple of years and while they have a pretty tight ship (some things about how the company relates to itself can only seem to be created to keep lawyers employed and anybody trying to find out who owns what in obscurity, which is quite normal for any modern Fortune anything company BTW) you can read some things between the lines to infer certain things about that structure and business environment.

If you look closely, you'll notice that DIG (the Disney Internet Group) is pretty much responsible for the general management of the disney.com domain (which in reality if you've been around long enough turns out to REALLY be the remnants of the failed Michael Eisner era GO.COM in the Internet bubble), certain standards for the web site presence across the companies online media (think the toolbar you see at the top of most disney.com sites as one example), and a number of popular online Disney destinations (like Toontown Online, POTC Online, family.com, and movies.com among others. . .  you can get the full list here). 

It also is responsible for advertising that Disney places on select web pages on its sites for presumably companies that have either an affiliation with Disney or who meet Disney standards as someone Disney is okay in having their name and brand associated with.  It's a BIG deal for a company like Disney to give the impression that you can trust some one else's products, so we all know they take this part pretty seriously. 

Okay, so what you say?  Well, if you look closely at the management team page here and through the yearly report here, you will notice that WDIG is a FULL BLOWN business unit, right up there with Jay Rasulo for Parks and Resorts and Dick Cook for the Studios, among others.  Nobody in big business makes something a business unit (BU) unless they intend for it to MAKE money.  DIG right now doesn't do that, or at least they don't show it on the consolidated financials independently, so if it does it is still immaterial to the bottom line overall (my bet right now is on loosing money, but that's only a guess).  But they DO talk about it a lot, and it's a heavy focus area as we all know of the top brass, Bob Iger himself.

So why is that important?  If you look at some of the other links on the disney.com domain, like oh say disneyworld.com or disneyland.com to name two, you'll notice they are actually paid for and managed by Parks and Resorts (P&R), NOT DIG.  I don't know enough about the inner workings yet to know if P&R has its own data center or if they host it all through some big DIG data centers, but from some of the job postings I've seen I'd say they do both to some extent.  Regardless VMK was a P&R creation, hosted by P&R, and run presumably by P&R.  But most importantly it was in the P&R BU budget and it created ZERO monetary value. 

Sure, it was somewhat effective advertising to a certain slice of us online folks, but not what Disney would do for a typically marketing campaign I think.  My grandmother can't even tell you what VMK means, let alone surf the web effectively enough to use it. 

Which in my mind just goes to show why it was easy for P&R to pull the plug.  It was coming out of their budget, and not the budget of say, oh, the Internet Group.  And P&R, inlike DIG, DOES get reported in the financials directly.  Likewise, if they were starting to hit scale problems for numbers of users online, amount of money to invest to expand, etc. that ties up future capital that can go elsewhere in P&R, like the parks or other promotions (and of course the kicker, it wasn't making money anyhow, since it was never designed too).

Look at it this way:

1. closing VMK presumably frees up money in the P&R segment to do something else (maybe they will make an Internet version of Toy Story Mania, the subject of my long post yesterday, like they did Buzz Lightyear in California, or something else exciting we don't know about yet)
2. it is my theory for why Bob Iger just combined DIG and the Interactive Studios to form the Disney Interactive Media Group.  Scale and business acceleration.

So it is all in the name of accelerating Disney's move into the online and electronic frontier. . . profitably (and that's a good thing for you, me, the shareholders and the general public).  It's also why VMK had to go:  P&R didn't have the continual money to invest, because P&R could have handed it over to DIG, but DIG already has its plate FULL of all those other fun online adventures, and budgets just don't give way for unexpected projects on a whim.

DCA Toy Story Mania

Mouseketeer over at the Micechat.com forum's has posted some very interesting (and some pretty) pictures of the new DCA version of the rides I collectively call Toy Story Mania (despite the Midway in one, etc.).

ANYWHOO, the interesting picture to me as in enginerd is the last one which shows the visual part of the ride system operator's console.  You can see the pics here.

About half way down is a distance picture of the operator's station.  The controls look fairly normal for this type of attraction, and then to the immediate left is a flat panel display turned in portrait mode. 

One interesting by note here that I noticed in this and other pictures is that Disney and other ride operators seem to default to the more common sense format of 'green' means good, 'red' means bad.  Having worked in an industrial application for a while in college though (a coal fired power plant), I find it interesting since in those industries 'red' means engaged and operating and green means 'dis-engaged' or 'clear to approach'.  Maybe they use a mix of the two, but that would be even worse I would think.

But anyhow, you say, "okay, so it has a flat panel, so what?"  Well, if you look closely there are several things we can tell about the control system and possibly derive some even deeper information about how it's put together.

For instance, if you look at that kinda fuzzy in the details picture that shows the screen, you'll notice immediately that the computer pushing that display is running Windows XP.  We'll all hope that it's running and LEAST service pack 2 and if it's on a network outside the building hopefully it's on a segmented, non-Internet routable network.  Am I worried about Joey or Suzie surfing the web?  No, but you WOULD be worried about somebody hacking it or turning a virus loose on it.  The old systems in the other park rides are all mechanical and with closed loop, proprietary systems, or like in the case of early EPCOT where they were tied to the Sperry/Unisys computer systems in Communicore.  Now Disney's latest and greatest runs on. . . wait for it. . . . WINDOWS!

Closer to the bottom in the last two pictures there are lots of other geeky details just waiting to be seen.

For instance, the second from the bottom shows the header for the bottom window on that same LCD panel.  We don't get to see too much of it, but it:

• looks like a control log, tracking everything about the ride
• is suppose to be connected to another system called 'The Hub', but obviously wasn't (see 'Failed to connect to APEXHub.  (Ensure the hub is running).
• if you look at the tabs closely they are labeled 'all', 'RCS' (probably for Ride Control System), 'vcc' (which I presume is for the video control system) and 'game'

The last picture shows a closer picture of the upper part of the screen, which shows the RCS in diagram.  So what can we see from this?  Well, at 9 PM at night, the ride had dispatched 1397 cars, which if DCA opened at 9, means in 12 hours they did about 116.4 rides an hour.  If we do the math using the dispatch interval, 1397 dispatches at a 38 second average is 53,086 seconds, or 884.76 minutes, or 14.74 hours.  So it obviously starts counting when the ride is 'powered up' in the morning and not when the park day opens to guests. 

Of course, those calculations are assuming a uniform distribution of people at all hours of the day, which NEVER happens in a real environment like this. 

So I'll use the earlier number assuming that testing and maintenance dispatches are small and therefore negligible.  It also means the dispatch interval statistic really isn't much help, since it's just an average over times when the ride is running full tilt and also when it's hardly running at all.

I don't know what the throughput for the ride is, since Disney keeps that a secret, but at 8 riders a car, that means about 931.2 guests an hour enjoyed Toy Story Mania at DCA. 

That doesn't really tell us a whole lot, since I made a few possibly wrong assumptions like that the ride was open to guests all day, which it might not have been, thereby making the number of rides an hour more.  That number seems maybe a little low, but it's also a new ride. That means about 11,175 guests for the day.

Just a couple of other points to add to this however.  It appears that 19 vehicles were in motion in the ride, and we can see that 2 were tagged out:  one for the ADA loading ramp (in purple) and one for maintenance (in grey) which is probably the backup vehicle for the day if they keep one offline.  I count 22 total vehicles however, so the one in the loading area maybe doesn't count?

The ride shows a co-mingled track, with one main track in the loading area that splits into two, probably identical tracks in the back, the A and B track, which re-converge after scene 7X2 (scene 7 has two screens each for both track A and B).  All of the scenes in the ride when this picture was taken were in 'use' by a ride vehicle, so the ride was a least full (so at any point in time it appears that 15 vehicles or 60 people are really in the ride at any one point in time).  It also appears that the people loading and unloading from the ADA access area do not see the final scene entitles 'WAV'.

The ride monitor at the top doesn't tell us too much, since the dates in the log are all prior to the current date.  One good note here however is that the system does appear to be using a private, non-routable address space (note the 192.168.X.X address), so if it's connected outside, at least it's presumably through a firewall and at LEAST through a router running NAT (that's a good thing for you non-techie types).  It also shows that Rack 0, Slot 2 is online, which means the systems used throughout the ride are a modular planed system of some sort, probably what is called a 'programmable logic controller' or PLC, which is typical in industrial style applications and very reliable.  PLC systems have been in use for a long time and have a very good track record.

Lastly, we can just make out the title for this window, which is 'SIMATIC WINCC Flexible Runtime'.  I'd never heard of SIMATIC, but a quick Google finds that, guess what, it is software from an industrial automation system sold by. . . click here.  That means the whole track system is probably wired with sensors from the same company.  I like reading this type of stuff, but you guys might find it kind of boring.  ;)

Which I guess should not be a surprise, given the recent sponsorship changes in Flordia for a heavyweight EPCOT attraction.  Maybe they upgraded the control system for it during the recent refurb?

I wonder if they got a good deal?

UPDATE:  It also appears from what I can tell that that display is in fact the total computer, probably a model 477B.

UPDATE 2:  BTW, I base my 8 people per on the following picture from Florida:

http://www.disunplugged.com/2008/05/10/pictures-toy-story-mania/

Look at the 9th picture down, it shows a large 'advertisement' for the ride vehicle and states:'2-8 players'.  Technically you can get twelve in the car, but there are only 8 guns per total vehicle, so if you put in 12, 4 people would only get to watch.

Kevin Yee article on high oil and closing a park!

In our current and ongoing discussion of the effects of high oil and what that does to people and their vacation dollars, Kevin Yee has written an article over at miceage.com talking about the possibility of closing one of the smaller parks like AK or DHS once a week on a rotating basis if attendance falls to low.

Likewise, he muses on the thoughts of the impacts to the recent massive and quick expansions of DVC sites.  Will Disney continue to be able to sell them out quickly, or will the resale market spike as people decide they can no longer really afford the $200-$300 a month in DVC loan payments PLUS dues (which are sure to go up just like everything else)?

I have to agree with Kevin, its a tricky time and an even trickier time to be dumping lots of extra money in the parks as I noted the other day.  I wouldn't expect another park in Florida, boutique or not, until the air clears (nor do I expect any significant expansion in California).

Bummer.

Disney jobs and the economy? (and the state of Disney's recruiting web site)

As you might have noticed (or not) in my footer for the blog, someday I hope to spend my days happily employed in the Happiest Place on Earth (specifically the one on the eastern seaboard at the moment).

So you can imagine for several months I have been keeping a keen eye on the comings and goings of job postings on the Disney Jobs web site (Disney Careers).  I'm not certain if it is a sign of the times quite yet, or just a meandering into the early parts of summer and coming up late in the fiscal year for Disney (their fiscal year runs the same as Uncle Sam's, which is to say October 1 through Sept. 30).

Anyhow, at one point Florida had more open jobs then you could get returned in one query (the limit appears to be somewhere around 250).  I used to be able to get two or three full queries worth as early as the first months of the year.  Today that number for ALL of Florida stands at just around 100, with many of those jobs being professional positions sure, but many seem to be much lower in the 'food chain' than they used to be.

On another note about the same web site, I have tried to share with the Company on a number of occasions the MANY technical and security related issues that they have on the site.  I even went so far one time to write a letter to the head of HR in California, who passed it to the gentlemen in charge of the it.  Todd and I spoke a couple of times, and they have been playing with the edges, but I haven't seen any appreciable changes since last he and I spoke in last October.

Now it may come across here as me sounding snooty, but for a company that wants to be the 'employer of choice' and whom I dearly both a) want to work for someday and b) ALWAYS want to look the best they can, this web site is a MAJOR deterrent. 

For instance, the web site is ACTUALLY outsourced from a popular HR management company by the name of Vurv (formerly Recruitmax) (look at that URL closely on the site).  Vurv recently upgraded the database and front end for Disney's site to probably streamline some internal processes a lot.  In the process they messed up a lot of things for us outsiders trying to find postings.

One example is a classic cross security domain issue that shows up on the web a lot.  Basically is you look the disney.recruitmax.com web site is a SECURE web site (HTTPS using SSL).  However, the graphics on the web pages and the left hand column are all on Disney domain servers and are NOT secured.  This does not really present any formal security issues, but it IS why every time you go to a page in Internet Explorer (the browser the site says it prefers) you get those nice little pop ups saying the site contains both secure and unsecure items and would you like to proceed?  And I do mean EVERY page! 

Ironically, it is not an issue in Firefox, since Firefox doesn't do as rigorous a security checking as IE does, and it is probably what the programmer who built and tested the site used too, since it's very common in the programming communities.

It's an easy fix (make sure the graphics URL's being pointed to can also be seen on a secure connection on the original server vice the obviously currently situation where they are on an using an unsecure link).  Better yet, put them on the same server as the web server for the actually page to begin with, so you don't have ANY possibility of security leakage.

The site has some other highly annoying issues, like broken sort, broken e-mailing of saved searches, etc.  As a technology kind of guy it's sometimes painful to watch a Company you like so much put such a seemingly shaky foot forward before you even get in the door.

----

Update: For what it's worth, the security is pretty tight on that site too.  I can tell you for instance that they are running Corporate Edition 7.3.9  ;)

Small World music and Steve Jobs keynote

Steve Jobs and crew used the music for Small World as a backdrop today to show all the countries the iPhone 3G will soon be available in (it's at about 1 hour 30 minutes or so in the stream if you watch it from the apple.com website).

It took several minutes to show the over 70 countries they will soon be in...  what I wonder is how many people walked out of the keynote with that song stuck in their head??  Woot!

ABC Fall Primetime schedule announced

Disney recently announced the changes to their upcoming fall lineup.  Looks like lots of returning shows with just two new additions at the moment.  A sci-fi-ey drama called 'Life on Mars' and a new reality series game show called 'Opportunity Knocks' which is being produced (for the first time?) by a team including Ashton Kutcher.

All the other recent fan favorites seem to be making returns except for 'Lost!' of course, which seems to have run its course.  There are also a few mid-season announcements, but no other information.

ABC seems to be doing well in the 18-49 year old brackets, which would also probably be the main target ranges for families searching for vacation spots.  Sound like maybe a key demographic?

Feedburner counter

You know, I'm sure there are many Bloggers that started and built a huge audience before adding a counter of people subscribed to their weblog to their site.

For people like me just starting, but being ahead of the theory game anyhow, and putting a subscriber counter on a new blog, looking at a 0 is always humbling.

The summer movie slate

Jim Hill this morning posts about how well the Dreamworks Animation movie 'Kung Fu Panda' did very well at the box office this past weekend.  In its opening weekend he cites a figure of about $60 million (but doesn't give the source, presumably it is someplace like BoxOffice Mojo).

Anyhow, he goes on to say some of his insiders at Disney studios are stoked about the summer for the upcoming Pixar release 'WALL-E'.  The notable part to me given my long post yesterday on the state of the economy is that:

'all these insiders would say is that they expected Disney & Pixar officials to be very pleased by the time Labor Day arrived'

Which would leave me, as it did yesterday, to believe that the Studios segment is looking to capitalize on people staying closer to home for vacation but still seeking family entertainment venues (i.e. the movies).  We'll have to see how the early summer numbers trend over last year.

It also means, in my opinion, that the Disney folks are confident that the summer holds no appreciable box office contestant (the only other scheduled animation release for the month of July is FOX's 'Space Chimps ' after all).  It also would seem to imply they think WALL-E is seen as having the same international box office appeal as Ratatouille. 

The business side of the House of Mickey

As you can tell from most of the links on the right side of the blog, I subscribe to a lot of other blogs about the Mouse, its current happenings and in many cases its past.

I am an avid reader in general and read just about anything I can get my hands on about the Disney company past and current.  From Michael Barrier and Bob Thomas's excellent biographies to some of the more recent books like Disney War.  Each paints a little different facet of the company.

So in the interest of not blogging generally about things that most of the other guys are covering just fine, and since I hope to someday be employed by the Company itself, I think I'm going to hew towards the business side of things as much as I can. 

I have no inside information or informants (believe me, if I did I wouldn't have taken up this blog to try and find/chronicle my way into the company), so we'll rely mostly on what's in the free press, books, etc.  Nothing any company does, the Mouse included, happens in a vacuum however.  Everything has its purpose and its time, even if its bad timing.

On Friday, June 8th for instance, in the broader sell off that was the worst trading day to date this calendar year, saw Disney down about 4 1/3 percent in one day.  Obviously the high price of oil is starting to weigh heavily on investor confidence in the tourism industry (among others).  What may bode poorly for the parks and resorts group might be offset slightly by more people going to summer movies closer to home instead of trekking to Florida or California for vacations.  I doubt the margins in the movie business are as good as they are in the parks, so like most I think I'd still expect some flat earnings coming up.

Florida for instance seems to have been more than making up for surely declining domestic bookings with increased foreign travelers since the dollar is in such bad shape against almost all foreign currencies.  That's bad for you and me, but keeps Disney going.

California on the other hand appears to not have quite the international draw that Florida does, despite the 30-40% currency discount.  It also is in a much tougher geographic location since all the closest airports are smaller and just the size of ones that the big airlines are leaving in droves at the moment. 

I know many sites have lots to say about delays at the makeover for DCA, but to me it has to be an inherently fiscal one at this point.  Bob Weis and his crew have surely figured out how to start to crack the nut that is DCA. 

Walt probably would have gone by now but he had the spirit and the drive of an entrepreneur, which is much different than the spirit and drive of a current minded businessman.  Disney is a mature business after all, and hardly in major growth mode like a much smaller organization.

But given that nobody knows where the economy is going, and P&R is posting 20% plus gains with the product mix today, would you put a billion on the table?

One serious post before I go

I took this picture in Downtown Disney out in California several months ago. 

This store front isn't anything exceptional to many of you no doubt, it is only a candy store after all . . .

But you might find it interesting to know that my father lives not more than 3 blocks from Walt and Roy Disney's boyhood home in Marceline, MO. 

The general house is still there (the current owner's aren't related, and it has been remodeled over the years), but out back the barn is still there and so is the tree that Walt called his dreaming tree.

Michael Barrier has a great line of information and pictures on his website at:

http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Essays/Missouri/Missouri2.htm

Beware Heavy Lifting

Oh and I suppose it goes without saying, watch out for loose ends around here at the moment.

Lots of heavy lifting going on as we get the steel up and the concrete in the ground as they say in the construction trade!

Always has to be a first post eh?

Well, like so many with so much more to say than me, there must always be a first post and a first time for everything!

So I'll start off my blog with a quote from Arthur C. Clarke who as most of you know contributed heavily to the early thinking for EPCOT Center. . . by way of his third law and the heart of so much at Disney and Imagineering.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.