This is a brief post to share with you a way to give feedback to Disney, especially about decisions that affect you their guests. I am assuming that everyone has heard to news that the new Cars attractions coming to Magic Kingdom will be replacing Tom Sawyer Island and the Rivers of America and with that the Riverboat. The reasoning behind that decision is that these areas of the park are under utilized. As I have said before, the parks are more than just rides, but I stray from the point.

Disney Does Listen

Believe it or not, Disney does listen. They would be foolish not too. Recent evidence is the changes to the old Genie+ system. No, they did not go back to the free fastness system, but they did transform the paid system into something that should/may/could be better. Disney management looks at all kinds of data about crowds, wait times, revenue per guest etc. We influence Disney decisions all the time by our actions. These are more passive on our part, but at the end of the day, drives a lot of actions from Disney management.

BE ProActive

But did you know that you can take an active role? I am not talking about petitions and boycotts. These do not work, at least in the long term. The best way to effect change is to contact Disney directly. How you might ask? Well I’m about to tell you. Send an email to wdw.guest.communications@disneyworld.com . These messages get aggregated and treated like an unofficial poll. I’m sure they have some sort of AI doing it now, at least for the first screening. Believe it or not, these emails do get read. So here are a few of Grandpa’s dos and don’ts.

• DO be respectful. The quickest way to the discard pile is to be nasty.
• DO be succinct . An email should be to the point and not some multi page rant.
• DO be clear. Let them know your feelings. It should be obvious what you mean. Starting with the subject.
• DO make each email a single subject.
• DON’T be nasty. (see the first DO).
• DON’T rant and rave. This will put you in the looney pile or worse, a visit from local John Law!
• DON’T make empty threats like: “I will never spend another dime in your parks again.” They know this is an empty threat as in all likelihood you will be back.

Ole Grandpa is going to write 3 emails. The first one is about the Cars attraction. It will speak to the disappointment of losing Opening Day attractions. Now the decision has been made and permits filed, so I do not expect this decision to be overturned. HOWEVER, with enough negative feedback, it will influence future decisions such as my next point. The last email will be to express my excitement over Villains Land.

SAVE THE MUPPETS

The next big mystery from D23 is Where are they going to put Monsters Inc attractions in Hollywood Studios? This is the real point of this post. My second email will address this upcoming decision.

I am very excited that DHS is getting some love. It is the smallest park in terms of space and attractions. This means that the park is Crowded almost all of the time. The park itself is kinda land locked. It is surrounded by freeways and a waterway to the Epcot resorts. This makes expansion of WDW smallest park extremely tricky. That being said, I expect Monsters Inc to go into 1 of two spaces; Animation Courtyard or Muppets Vision. I for one would vote for Animation Courtyard. This area of the park is totally under utilized. Not much in the way of current attractions would have to change. So in essence, Nothing has to be lost to make this gain!

On the other hand losing Muppets Vision would be a great loss. There is even a push to make Muppets Vision 3D into a National Heritage Site. This website explains it much better than I and I encourage you to read it: https://www.vulture.com/article/muppet-vision-3d-national-heritage-site.html. As of this writing I do think Disney is not sure where to put Monstropolis. This makes feed back from us, very important and our voices can have the greatest direct effect.

So gentle readers, be proactive. Let Disney know how their decisions affect you, their benefactor. Lets save the Muppets, together.

Please leave a comment and let me know what YOU think. I would appreciate it. I also have some insight into why Cars is replacing Tom Sawyer Island and it has nothing to do with utilization. Let me know if you would like to hear my take on it.

Until next time