Guest Relations
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A Pirated Event

I'm not the right person to join in all the complaints about Disneyland's Pirates of the Caribbean event. I wasn't there.

In my business, however, you don't always have to be there to get the story. You don't go by hearsay either. But if enough people have the same opinion on an event, you can pretty much figure that a majority of people share it.

To get the story here, you just had to read the message boards on this site about the May 20 event:

Not exactly the kind of glowing reviews they place in movie trailers. More like what people say when they're stuck in line at the DMV.

I'm not about to join in the boo parade. As I said, I wasn't there.

However, while the frigid response by the guests was impressive, the response by Disneyland Guest Relations - the real one - was even more impressive.

"As a result of our poor execution, many of our Guests had to wait in long and slow moving lines to claim their merchandise and some have still not received it. This is UNACCEPTABLE and INEXCUSABLE!" said Vice President of Merchandising Tom DeCaro, who probably wrote in all caps and didn't actually yell.

"Through an error on our part, many of you had to wait in an excessively long and slow-moving line to claim your merchandise," said Park President Cynthia Harriss in a letter sent to all of those who did attend the event … by overnight mail, no less.

You've probably dealt before with bad service at a restaurant, missed maid service at a hotel or having to sit through all five American Ninja movies (Yes, there were five of them).

Each time, you wanted to complain. In some cases, you actually did.

But did you ever get a FedExed letter from the proprietor apologizing?

Did they do everything that needed to be done to keep the incident from happening again?

If you got a defective product, did the place you bought it from offer to send you new merchandise and pay the cost of all shipping?

Did you get a full refund?

Like them or not, Disneyland has done all of that. While they could have done a better job with keeping their event from becoming a disaster, their disaster recovery has been better than FEMA.

Add Pirates: Just about all of the problems at the Pirates event seemed to come on the merchandise end judging from the discussion board comments of those who just came for the tribute to the ride.

The last thing that should come from the Pirates fiasco is an end to these events. However, it should spark a de-emphasizing of the merchandise aspects of them.

For the past Haunted Mansion and Mr. Toad events, the lasting images that people had weren't of the new plate they bought, but of Harriss appearing to rise through a trap door and the special wild ride through Toad Hall.

Instead of trying to sell collectibles, give people a chance to win them. Hold a drawing to give out prizes to the guests.

Fantasyland Theatre would be a fun place if everyone was anticipating winning an old car from Mr. Toad or a Skyway bucket. The reaction would be better than what you see from contestants on The Price is Right.

It would feel more like an event than just another excuse to sell merchandise.

Just One More Thing on Pirates: What people aren't talking about is how, (according to rumors, Disneyland decided to sell more tickets to the event than they initially offered. After the quota of 1,000 had been reached, Disneyland decided to sell 400 more tickets.

If you ever see news stories of events that went wrong, they usually went wrong because they had too many people there. It can be argued that with 400 less people at the Pirates event, the lines at merchandise wouldn't have been as long.

Video Gaming: A few weeks ago, I attended the Electronic Entertainment Expo, otherwise known as the "E3."

Makers of video and computer games showed off their new wares and Disney had a large area to themselves.

I got a chance to try out the new Walt Disney World Racing for the Dreamcast and had a blast. The realism of the Dreamcast version stood out, except for the fact that I happened to be racing a car through the Magic Kingdom park, no cast members or security were trying to stop me and there was no line for Splash Mountain.

Something Disney Fans Would Like to See: More Figment at Epcot's Journey Into Your Imagination.

Something Disney Fans Would Not Like to See: More outdated dioramas added to Spaceship Earth.

Is That Your Final Answer: A year ago at this time, there were grumbles throughout the Disney Company about the lackluster performance of its ABC television unit.

ABC was third among the networks and many cited it as the main reason behind Disney's lagging profits.

That summer, they debuted an import of a game show from Britain and the rest is history.

Everything seemed to be against Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? It's host, Regis Philbin, was a big draw on daytime TV, but you wouldn't expect Sally Jesse Raphael to become the star of prime time now. People didn't expect Regis to either. Most against the new show was that prime time game shows were a thing of the past.

Goes to show that you can't predict the future. "Millionaire" has single-handedly carried ABC to tops among all the networks.

If only the questions weren't so easy.

What if It Was a Disney Movie: "Big Momma's House" would be "Big Momma's Shoe" and be a live-action version of the Mother Goose fable, "The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe." The twist here would be that she would be living in Shaquille O'Neal's size 22 shoe.

Until next time … Dead men sell no merchandise.